I won't bore you with the details of the flight down, but after a 3 hour drive to Kansas City, our plane left 4 hours late for no apparent reason! oh, they said the Cancun airport was just so busy they had to delay our flight. When we were on board our flight attendant announced it was a scheduling error between Funjet and Allegro. (I believe that one!) Funjet has never been my favorite charter. Some people have really good luck with them, but not us! As I was finishing up this report, I heard from Mark @ TravelFrom.com it looks like Funjet will be sending us 4 $50.00 vouchers, thank you Mark and Funjet!
Anyway, arriving in Cancun at midnight had some advantage...no line at customs :) green light, even after Perry confesses to the customs agent that we have a bunch of calendars and maps. I guess at 1AM they don't much care.He says it's best to tell them ahead of time so it doesn't look like we're trying to sneak them in, (even though we are) he's probably right. We just don't feel like dealing with a shuttle after this long day, so we take a taxi for $40.00, the shuttle would have been $36.00.
At the last minute I decided it might be a good idea to have a hotel reservation when we arrived. It's a good thing I did, can you imagine us schlepping around Cancun at 1 AM looking for a room?! So Friday before we left I reserved a room online at Xbalamque in downtown Cancun through Kuartos, www.kuartos.com the rate for this hotel with Kuartos was $40.00 a night including taxes. We found out later the rate at the hotel was $80.00 a night, for high season. I'd say that was a pretty good deal. The room was O.K., nothing fancy but a good place to crash, nice pool. Although it was freezing cold!! But that doesn't stop a 7 year old! As I sat there trying to get a tiny bit of sun and watching my family turn into little icebergs, I noticed a helicoptor kept going over pretty low. It was the police evidently looking for a bad guy. One policeman was outside on the landing skid of the helicoptor with his gun. I was hoping he wasn't going to try to shoot at the bad guy from up there! Or at least I'm hoping he's a good shot!
I'm awoken the next morning by an annoying ringing! and then a pleasant voice saying"hello Laura, this is your Entertainment Plus wake-up call" It's Brant! Brant sells a great 2 for 1 discount card, www.entertainment-plus.net take a look at his site , the card is well worth it. I don't know where Perry has taken off to this early but, he's gone, "probably out trying to sell calendars" I tell Brant. He gives me his number to call him later .( I'm so sorry Brant, we left on our great adventure and never got back to Cancun until we went to the airport. We will definitely meet on our next trip, maybe March.) Turns out Perry has been out looking for a rental car, and wasn't having much luck. We grab a taxi and head over to Walmart and Market 28 for a few things before we leave for Chichen-Itza. Market 28 has changed since the last time I was there, it seems to be all tourist and souvenir places now. A guy in a shop tells me that with Walmart, Costco and Sam's Club , the local people can shop and get good prices for their needs at those stores . City Hall is all decorated for Christmas, children are sitting on the various Santa's laps (I counted 4 different Santas) while loud Christmas songs, sung by the Chipmunks play over very loud speakers, my kids think this is so funny because I gave them the speech about how in Mexico Christmas isn't commercial and the focus is more on the religous holiday..blah,blah,blah.... well, they enjoyed rubbing it in on "how religous everything was" :) (smart alecks) I was surprised by it all, but I did see many nativity scenes, which we don't see as much of at home anymore, (that's really a shame) There is a big long row of food carts from one end of City Hall to another......I'm gonna say 30 carts.....and they all have the same thing!!! potato chips, french fries and churros. Wierd. I thought at least one would have something else! Oh well, I'll try the potato chips, a little greasy but they go good with a cold Sol.
The adventure begins
Hit the toll road to Chichen-Itza about 12:30, all of us excited about our new adventure.Kids happily playing their new GameBoys they got for Christmas, good thing Santa knew they would be in the car a long time. :)
I was surprised that we drove about an hour before we came to the toll place, I kept saying "where do we pay? is this the right road" "are you sure this is the right road?" I drove Perry crazy. we finally come to it, the toll is 155 pesos.
Perry parks on the other side of the toll and then gets out to go take some pics, I get out to stretch my legs. I look up and a tour bus is going by with the driver and a couple of the guides waving at me. I am in Mexico! Nobody at home waves at me :( LOL!
Valladolid
I've always wanted to come here! I'm thinking this is a small town, then I see the sign that says Habitaciones 62,430....not that small :) We park at the zocola and take pictures of the beautiful old church, Santa Lucia cathedral, on our way back through town a couple days later we spend the night in Valladolid and sneak a peek at a wedding going on here, it was so beautiful!
After walking and exploring a little more we decide we need to eat. We end up at the hotel Maria de la Luz restaurant, it's nice and open and we can watch all the goings on in town. Perry had shrimp brochetta which were awesome, (he shared with me) I had the sopa de lima, yummy, and Kelsey and Alec shared a huge fruit plate of pineapple, bannana, &melons, we all had cokes and the bill came to 200 pesos.
More Valladolid pics
After our late lunch we decide we better head for Chichen before dark, on the way out of town we stop at cenote Zaci, 10 pesos for adults, 5 pesos for kids, it was absolutely gorgeous! It was just too darn cold to get in. This picture doesn't do it justice.
There was also a very nice restaurant there, if we had known about it, we would have eaten here.
Back on the toll road to Chichen, it's now 4:40 pm, after about 25 minutes we come to the turn off to Chichen-Itza, here you pay another toll of 40 pesos. Soon after, we come to the town of Piste, lots of little souvenir shops and people at every tope trying to sell their goods.
Everyone has told me we should stay at the Hacienda Chichen I should have known that on Christmas Eve I should have had a reservation, but since we really don't do well with a schedule I didn't do it. Big mistake, they were full. I recognized a couple we saw at the Valladolid restaurant. The very nice man at Hacienda told me they had rooms across the road at Club Med. Well, I never invisoned myself at a Club Med, but there weren't a lot of choices. I was very happy with our accomodations at Club Med, we got 2 beautiful adjoining rooms for 900 pesos. All of the hotels were having special Christmas Eve dinners, here is dinner by the pool at Club Med, isn't is beautiful? again, this picture doesn't do it justice .
Master bedroom
One of the beds in the kid's room
Chichen-Itza night show
After getting settled in at Club Med, we hiked a short ways to the back gate of the ruins for the night show. The show starts at 6:30, admission was 30 pesos for Perry and I, the kids were free and you could also get headphones that translated the program to English for $2.50 US. We all got them, it was a beautiful site. It lasted about 45 minutes , which was about 30 minutes too long for Alec, when you're 7, the program just doesn't hold your attention that long. He wanted to go climb the temple, not just look at it! But he was a very good sport and sat and played in the dirt like a good kid :)
After the show we drove in to Piste for some snacks and stuff (O.K., beer) There are a couple of well stocked grocery stores in town. But they didn't have cerveza, we had to go to a small liquor store. While there, we saw 2 Santas, one was riding around in the back of a pick-up truck with 2 little kids dressed as elves, they were going through the neighborhoods and kids were coming out of their houses and getting up in the tuck to sit on Santa's lap. My kids thought this was pretty funny, ....why didn't I bring the camera!Then we saw Santa number 2, he was in a car with a big cut out of a sleigh attatched to the sides, he was driving through town with Christmas music playing and waving at everyone.I couldn't help but laugh, here we are in this little town in the middle of the Yucatan and there are Santas everywhere! It was wierd :)
Back to our room we found 2 pretty packages of candy, one in each room, filled with chocolates and those chocolates filled with Anejo 1800 tequilla, I ran to the kids room and got theirs ( I traded them some Hershey Kisses for their tequilla candies!) Alec soon fell asleep and Perry, Kelsey and I talked about all kinds of silly stuff and toasted Christmas Eve. We have an early day tomorrow, Alec wants to be the first one to the top of El Castillo!
Chichen-Itza by day
The gates open at 8 AM, we were there by 8:30 and since it was Christmas, the admission was free. Sundays and holidays are free at all of the ruins. The weather was perfect for exploring and climbing temples, a little cool and slightly overcast.
I couldn't hold Alec back, he wanted to get to the top of that temple, while I was a bit hesitant, (I'm scared of heights!) but, I knew I had to do this, I couldn't miss out on something so spectacular, and if I chickened out, Kelsey might too and I didn't want her to miss this opportunity either. It's along way up those 91 steps! I was very thankful for those spinning classes I'd been going to. Alec had been up there for 10 minutes before the rest of us caught up with him! Youth!
The view was unbelieveable!
We were there early enough that we had to wait for other people to come so someone could take our picture. If you can go and spend the night and get to the ruins early, do it before the tour buses arrive. The family we saw at Valladolid, and then again at Hacienda Chichen arrived, and took the pic for us.
After spending about an hour up there we decide to look at the rest of Chichen, the "going down" part had me nervous, but it really wasn't that bad. I must be getting brave in my old age!
The ball court
This is the sacraficial well, we heard at the show last night that they sometimes painted children blue and threw them in. From then on, we used the "get the blue paint" everytime Alec or Kelsey would get unruley :)
(Had to use it on Perry a few times too)
Observatory
Platform of Skulls
Kelsey & Patches, according to Patches' passport he's been to Mexico 9 times
He's very easy to travel with :)
we meet the family again by the well. We keep seeing them everywhere so, it's timefor introductions, we tell each other where we're from, what we've done so far on our trip, etc. and have a nice chat. Right near the well is a snack and gift shop, I know, strange place for something like that, seeings how people used to sacrafice themselves and their children just a few feet away. But, I have kids in need of snacks, so we go....
.
the best thing at the snack shop
....kittens
The doors to the inner temple open at 11 am, so we get there at about 10 minutes til
El Castillo is actually built on top of another temple, archeologists found this jaguar throne and a statue of chac-mool at the top of the inner temple. You can go up to the top and see these items, the jaguar has jade eyes and his original red colored paint is still in good condition. To get here , you go in to a little door at the bottom of El Castillo, on the side of the sacraficial well. It is a very narrow steep climb to the top, I'm so glad we were here when it was cool, I can't imagine doing this when it is very hot. There is no air circulation in here at all! This is about the best we could do on pictures, flashes are not allowed.
After looking around a bit more, and running into our friends a few more times :) we head back to Club Med, everyone is tired and hungry. We take a look at the hotel restaurant's menu and don't see much that we would like to spend that kind of money on, so we go ahead and check out. The manager of the hotel is there, and he is so nice. I decide to ask him how far it is to Uxmal, who knows where we might end up? He tells me it's about 2 1/2 hours away.
Did I mention we were hungry, O.K....starving! Climbing temples works up an appetite.
We decide to see if we can find a place in Piste to eat. It's Christmas Day and town is pretty quiet, but almost everything is open and there are only a few people selling souvenirs. Driving through town, I tried to pick the nicest looking non-touristy place, and we found Restaurant El Carrousel, we parked out front and chose a table by the front door so we could watch people go by outside. Big mistake! Our rental car stuck out like a sore thumb for all the salesman in town! and since we strategiacally sat right in the front doorway, we were visited by ALL of them! The most entertaining was a little guy named Juaqim ( pronounced waa keem) He was about 6 or 7 and spoke some English. He and his buddies came in trying to sell us some carvings that we weren't interested in, Juaqim proceeded to shower us with compliments, he touches my shirt sleeve and says "oh my god this is bonita!" (it was only a t-shirt) when he realizes we aren't buying he comes out and says "how about 5 pesos for me?" then he asks us to buy him a coke, we say "lo siento, adios Juaqim" and he finally leaves. We end up meeting several of the town's top salespeople while we wait for our food. We actually end up buying a couple of things that they were selling for $1.00 US.
Finally the food arrives, it's great! The kids each get fried chicken, I get the cochinta pibil and Perry is so hungry he couldn't decide, so he ordered 2 meals! a breaded pork and some kind of steak, it was all very good! We did alot of sharing and trying each others stuff. So, 5 meals and 4 cokes came to 200 pesos. With full tummys the journey continues......
to be continued..........
