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If any vacation to the Yucatan, whether to Cancun or elsewhere, includes a visit to a Mayan site, it is most likely Chichen Itza. This place gets over three million visitors a year and depending on when you visit, you might think they are all there with you! (See below...) Chichen Itza (along with Palenque in Chiapas and Tikal in Guatemala) is generally considered to be among the most impressive Mayan sites and is certainly among the most extensively restored.
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Carved relief in the doorway of the temple atop the pyramid. |
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and page through... Chichen Itza Index
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One piece of advice...that you will get from most any guidebook and I can certainly confirm: visit the site early in the morning or late in the afternoon. The tourist busses roll in by 11:00 in the morning and you will know it when they get there. My anecdote to demonstrate this: we arrived mid-afternoon and I climbed the pyramid around 4:30. There were maybe half a dozen people on the top with me. The next day, we were there early but climbed the pyramid around 11:30. This time it was shoulder to shoulder at the temple and so crowded you could barely move around the perimeter of the top, much less get a picture with an uncluttered background. |
Snake heads adorn the staircases of the Ossuary. |
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| All this, plus getting to hear a mother yell at her kid:
"Hurry up! We've only got 20 minutes to climb this thing!". You get the idea... It's much more enjoyable without the crowds... I highly recommend doing what we did: staying there for at least a night. Both the Mayaland and the Hacienda Chichen are essentially on the grounds, certainly within an easy walk of the ruins, and you get a much better feel for the place. We liked the Hacienda Chichen so well that I have included some a page for it here. Take a look...
The mouth of the Sacred Cenote where ritual offerings were made.. |
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