We had very hot and uncomfortable night's sleep last night as the electricity turned off which meant we had no fan! There was a lot of hanging around this morning as we waited for the coach to arrive for Chichén Itzá. Despite leaving later than planned the journey was only 2 hours and we had anticipated 4 which made up for it! We had a guided tour around the most important buildings including a church, graveyard and the most impressive one the calendar pyramid (one of the New Seven Wonders of the World). It has 91 steps on each side plus the top which makes 365 in total, one for each day of the year. There are 52 corner stones which count for the number of years in a Mayan cycle, not weeks in a year. The Myans have 18 months of 20 days per year and one month of just 5 days. On the 21st of March and September the equinox occurs and the structure lights up to look like a snake which attracts thousands of visitors.

After the visit we went to an all you can eat buffet for lunch, there were a lot of people and a massive queue but we still manage to stuff ourselves. They had very impressive dancers balancing trays of glasses and bottles on their heads whilst dancing! On the way back we stopped at a cenote, a deep well inside a cave with water 90 meters deep! We were reluctant to go in as there were soo many people but we gave it a go, just to take a photo and then got out as it was cold and kind of gross with so many people in a small space!

Our final stop was a town called Valladolid to try a Myan drink, this confirmed our opinion that this trip, although enjoyable, felt too forced and everything was engineered to encourage you to buy or tip. As it was raining we stood in the shop entrance for 20 minutes waiting to get back on the bus and head for Playa del Carmen. We arrived about 7.30pm, our hostel 'The Yak' was really close to where we got dropped off but we still managed to walk in circles for a bit! The hostel staff are all young and friendly, it's in a lively area near the main street of restaurants, bars and clubs. We had a free welcome drink and then went exploring down the main strip.