Chichen Itza!!!

Wednesday was our tour to Chichen Itza. I failed to mention before, but on all of these tours, they make you stop along the way at these different 'Mayan Guap' places. They tell you how this culture still survives in the jungle without modern conveniences and they hand-make these items and sell them to support their families and keep their culture alive. Then everyone has to get off the bus for at least thirty minutes. The English translation is "tourist trap".

The first day we didn't buy anything, but on this tour, the place had a lot of jewelry. Mexico is known for its silver. I found a beautiful set of obsidian and abalone in silver that I loved. We haggled down to 55% of his first offer and took it! It is a necklace, bracelet, and earrings that are just beautiful and can go with almost everything! This place also had a restaurant and was a little community center. We had our lunch there before going on to Chichen Itza.

Chichen Itza was a huge archeological site with many buildings. They had restored some of them: the pyramid, the ball court, etc. but others were literally just ruins. The guide talked a lot about the human sacrifice that went along with the ball game they played. The scale of these buildings was amazing, they really were just huge. They are still working on excavating some of the area and have found more structures under the ground.
The 'feathered serpents' were everywhere.
Jim got some pointers for his basketball from the ancients.
A small excavation site, the pyramid was built on other structures that are still underground.
This building has the 'reclining man' statue where they think the sacrifices were done.
The back side of the big pyramid that hasn't been restored.
After the guide finished his schpeal, we had fun wandering around to some of the other buildings. It was a lot of walking around this huge complex. Throughout the whole area, there were venders selling all sorts of stuff. They would say, "One dollar, only one dollar!" but when you looked closer, there were only a few items that were actually one dollar. My other favorite line was, "Almost free!" Hahaha! It still makes me laugh.
This is the astronomy building.
More feathered serpents!
We were impressed the lattice work had survived so long. It really was beautiful.
This building was also very detailed.
We were pretty exhausted by the time we got home. It was a long drive and we had done a LOT of walking in the hottest part of the day. We showered and changed when we got back to the hotel and went downstairs to dinner. We ate outside on the ocean again and had a great dinner again. They had these awesome fried chicken tacos with a cream sauce and the Mexican cheese on top that hit my happy spot. I also had a fillet of Grouper grilled to perfection. They were setting up a stage on the beach for a show later that night. We were way too tired to stay downstairs, so I got a bunch of the desserts in a to-go box and we went back to our room. We put on our PJs and watched the show from our balcony while enjoying our dessert! It was a great ending to our day.