Honeymoon - Chichen-Itza

The first trip we took was to one of the seven modern wonders of the world - Chichen-Itza. The bus ride took almost two hours but we were on a nice bus. The way the buses worked was very mysterious to me. If someone was looking for us they never would have been able to find us. We were recorded on trips as Salder, Sandler, Gregorio Sadler. We never returned on the bus that picked us up. They would meet us at the hotel on bus 60, write a number of the back of the ticket and say "Get on bus 13 at the checkpoint". So we would switch buses at the checkpoint and then they would remove the sign from the front of the bus and say "This is no longer bus 13, from now on this is bus 68" and we would have to find that bus at the end of the day. It was very mysterious and I'm surprised we ever made it back to the hotel but we did.

The tour guide for this trip was very good. He would give his speech in Spanish and then give it in English as the bus was split up about 50-50 between people who spoke Spanish and English. He made a joke on the way down that there was one stop on the way to Chichen-Itza so it you needed to go to the bathroom inbetween they would stop the bus, but you would have to use the Mayan toilet...behind the tree (!)

We had wondered why we couldn't find any Pepsi in the area and this is why...they had a Coke factory just outside of Cancun. The guide told us that the minimum wage in Mexico was 47 pesos a day (less than $5 US dollars)

Edward Scissorhands came to Mexico?!

These next pictures are from a sinkhole that we stopped at (the one stop mentioned above) before we went for lunch and went to Chichen-Itza. It really was something

And finally we arrived. Our tour guide told us that up until a couple of years ago the public could walk up to the top of all the pyramids and even go inside, but vandalism and just wear and tear had forced the Mexican government to close them to the public. Some of the buildings have been restored and there is a lot of work going on there. It was unbelievable

The guide told us about how on the equinoxes the shadow lines up along the jagged staircase to form the shadow of a snake. In Mayan tradition snakes are symbols of fertility.

Craig and Jane in front of the ballfield where four times a year two teams of seven players a side would come and try and put a ball through a hoop 20 feet in the air by hitting it with their elbows, hips and knees. We saw an exhibition of it later in the week and it is impressive. Whomever scored the goal was sacrificed and it was a great honour to the people

The tour guide jokingly referred to this as the first "Hall of Fame". The players who were gloriously sacrificed were represented here.