Chichen Itza

After spending a great few days on the coast (luckily before the hurricane came!) we had to begin the mammoth journey back to Mexico City. The direct bus from Playa Del Carmen back to Mexico City takes over 30 hours so we decided that we should split it up with a stop off at the site of the famous Chichen Itza ruins. We spent the whole day following a tour group around so that we could get explanations about all of the different pyramids and sites (we are so tight!). The tour was really interesting and my personal favourite fact from the extremely camp guide was, "As you can see in the carving there is a Viking man. We think that Vikings may has sailed to Mexico by accident and were treated as gods because they had blonde hair and pale skin!" I was shocked to find that the Vikings had sailed thousands of miles across the Atlantic by "ACCIDENT" over a thousand years before any sailing ships capable of this existed. WOW! After this amazing fact we took some of his other special facts with a pinch of salt.

We did however get to see the sacrifice platform that is decorated with carved skulls and when in use would have been surrounded with hundreds of heads on poles. Even cooler is the most intact ball court in the world is at Chichen. The hoops that were used as goals are still present along with thousands of carvings depicting games. Another interesting fact from the guide, "even though the carvings show losing teams being massacred, I don't think that this happened, I think that it is symbolic" (we would have asked for our money back if we had paid!).

In the evening we attended the........ drum role..... "light and sound show!" We were slightly dubious of attending this as it sounded like Dave's fantastic wedding disco (but in Spanish!). However, we glad to find that translation earphones were available as we were given an acted out audio history of the ancient sight. It also included the different buildings being lit up in an array of colours to make them look pretty and to demonstrate the shadow of the snake that appears every summer solstice. The highlight was the acted audio execution of a rival tribal chief, complete with gargling scream!

So after an interesting day of culture we set off back to Mexico City for our final night before we headed to America. Fancying a few quite drinks we walked into the small cantina that was attached to our hostel. As soon as we entered we realised that sunday night must be the night to go out and get drunk with your guitar! The quite drink ended in lots of drinks and an interesting sing along with the locals. What a great end to Mexico!