And we are back in Mex­ico for the final leg of the trip–one more week to go.

Cross­ing the bor­der turned out eas­ier than planned, as we dis­cov­ered there was a boat from San Pedro to Chetu­mal. We didn’t even have to back­track to Belize City—a 90 minute-long ride, a smooth one this time, took us across the border.

As soon as the boat arrived, we jumped on the quay and were told to stand in line, a few feet behind our back­packs. The mil­i­tary and a trained dog inspected our lug­gage but no one trav­eled with a few pounds of cocaine so we were let go quickly. At the other end of the spec­trum, the migracíon offi­cer didn’t even bother look­ing at our passports—he just stamped them with­out check­ing our IDs.

From Chetu­mal, we jumped in a bus to Tulum, three hours away. We some­how got a chicken bus that stopped every­where. “Directo” in Mex­ico doesn’t mean “direct” as in “this bus won’t stop every five metres to pick up pas­sen­gers on the ride of the road”, it means that you don’t have to change bus to reach your des­ti­na­tion. Semantics…

By the time we arrived in Tulum, we were starv­ing and tired and we didn’t accom­plish much other than eat­ing que­sadil­las and mar­veling at the mod­ern con­ve­nience stores. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fran­chise per­son and I’m not a huge con­sumer in gen­eral. But we hadn’t seen a real con­ve­nience store (and much less a well-stocked super­mar­ket) since south­ern Guatemala. Most stores in Belize and Hon­duras are just lit­tle tien­di­tas where prod­ucts aren’t always fresh. And I’m not buy­ing yogurts unless I take them from a fridge that is actu­ally plugged in and actu­ally cold.

From Tulum, we headed to Valladolid—more on that later as soon as I learn how to pro­nounce the name of that city prop­erly. Our first stop was of course in Chichén Itzá, a few kilo­me­tres away.

Chichén Itzá is prob­a­bly the most famous and most vis­ited Maya arche­o­log­i­cal site. The main tem­ple is one of the icons of Mex­ico and it never fails to impress. We’ve been there three times and I’m still in awe!

Because Chichén Itzá is easy to access (unlike Tikal, for instance), you have to share it with hordes of tourists from Can­cún. It does get very crowded and the park­ing lot was packed with tour buses. You can’t climb any of the struc­tures any­more (we did in 2001!) which is kind of a shame.

Another annoy­ance was the num­ber of tacky sou­venir stalls in the site. Usu­ally, in such places, sou­venir stalls are out­side or right at the entrance—it used to be like that in Chichén Itzá any­way. But now, stalls are lined up between each struc­ture and it feels like walk­ing in a mar­ket. Every two metres, some­one tried to sell us plas­tic “Maya” masks and other tacky stuff. I know, the sell­ers are only try­ing to make a liv­ing, but it doesn’t make the site very enjoy­able when you have to say “no gra­cias” every two min­utes. I won­der if there are more sell­ers this year because of the whole “2012 end of the world” prediction?

Regard­less, it was great to be back at Chichén Itzá and we enjoyed it despite the buzz.

Arriv­ing in Mex­ico, Chetumal

Road Block in Mex­ico (one of many!)

Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza, The Main Temple

Lazy Lizard on Top of the Pyramid

Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza

The Only Round Build­ing in the Maya World

Chichen Itza

The Ball Court

Skulls

The Ball Court

Chichen Itza

The Ball Court

Chichen Itza

Related arti­cles:

1. Val­ladolid, Cenote and More Ruinas
2. Playa Del Carmen
3. Tikal and the Lost World of the Mayas
4. Tulum, Playa y Pueblo
5. Back in Belize, Placencia