After the previous day, the troop has learned to appreciate the concept of getting an early start so we’re over having breakfast by 7am. Very good food and not as over priced as it could have been. We’d arranged for a guide at the front desk and he’s waiting for us at a 7:55am to walk over to Uxmal. Miguel is very knowledgeable and friendly. He speaks, English, Spanish, Mayan and Italian. As he talks in Mayan I’m struck as how similar it sound to the languages of our Native Americans, especially, Lakota. Lots of Iguanas and mosquitoes. The long sleeve shirts with mosquito repellant have been lifesavers. We spend two hours with Miguel, climbing everything that can be climbed then hit the pool again before leaving Uxmal. Thank God for late check out times. As we left two big tour buses pulled in. Again, great timing.

Pyramid of the Magician
Nunnery Quad

Nunnery with House of Turtles and the HOuse of the Pigeonsin background

Governor's palace

Masks of Chaac, the rain god on the Pyramid

Snake Sculpture on Facade of Nunnery Quadrangle



Next, we head to Kabah. Very impressive but its starting to get hot and ruins are starting to run together. We keep it short and decide to skip Sayil in favor of going to Labna. The pictures that Catherwood made of Labna understated its beauty. The arch is simple yet elegant in its design. After an hour of traipsing around we start off again to Chichen Itza. I’d wanted to do the Convent Route, but everyone is getting a little cranky so we altered our plans. Here the ‘suggestions’ from the map are working against us.







Did you know Iguana's are good tree climbers? Really Good.


From Tekax, the map says to go straight through Oxkutzcab to get to Ticul. When we come to a T in the road my little voice is yelling again. We poke around a little to see if there is a way around but my little voice is screaming, ‘Cut your losses, go back and do the church route’! We do and find a major road marked for the Convent Route. The road stays out of the villages but does have exits to all of them. By now its almost 3pm and the thought of swimming again is calling us to Chichen Itza. We work our way up to Acanceh hoping for something to eat but all we found was a small tienda that sold junk food. On the plus side the taste of the BBQ chips killed out appetites so we weren’t as hungry as we had been before eating them.
The last two days we’d hit sprinkles as we pulled into our hotels. Today we ran into a full-blown monsoon. Of course we couldn’t hit rain while on the slow roads, nope. We find rain while on the highway. Luckily, it doesn’t last long. It stops as we get off the highway before the Toll. Somewhere after Union Libre, we get behind a Pig Truck. Two compartments wide and three wide, this truck was filled with pigs going to market. Ryan wants to know why can’t pigs smell nicer, like cinnamon? I tell him if they did then Cinnamon would taste like Pork. Chris comes up with the Phrase of the Day. “Make a swizzle stick out of that and swirl it in you tea.” We follow the Pigs for a little while until we can pass them.
Odiforous Pig Truck

Passing the pigs


Just outside of Piste we stop at the Pemex to fill up. Two downsides to this: the pigs get in front of us again and the bathrooms are the worst the guys have ever seen. (Think the scene from “Train Spotting”) We decide there could be worse things than following a pig truck, because we’ve just seen it and follow him to our turn off. We’ve reservations at the Lodge at Chichen Itza for tonight because in the morning, we’re doing the horseback ride at 8am. Our bungalow is as far away from the front as possible and the rainstorm we went through has caught up with us. Luckily, they have big carts to take us and our luggage there and keep us mostly dry.
By the time we unpack we need to decide if we want to do the light show or not. We figure this is a good decision to make over dinner. The restaurant seemed a bit pricey but the buffet was just opening and seemed ok price wise. Chris is not a fan of buffets but there was this Red Snapper there that made him go back for seconds and thirds! Ryan had enough plates in front of him for the whole table. We asked the waiter what the light show was like and how it compared to Uxmal. He said he like Uxmal better because it was a smaller, more intimate setting. That was all the convincing we needed to decide a swim and bedtime were in our plans for the night. The pool was a short walk from our bungalow, tucked into a vine-covered grotto. It was our private pool for 30 mins before we went back to go to sleep.