Our tour leader was late because of airline delays in the US (he had been taking his own vacation in Switzerland). Also, two of our tour group turned up late. Once we got all of that sorted, we were off in a van for our first Mayan site: Chichen Itza.

Chichen Itza is one of the more popular Mayan sites. Perhaps too popular, since you can’t climb up any of the pyramids any more.

A closeup of some carvings: the jaguar in the sunken panel represents the sun god in the underworld at night and the quetzal in the raised panel represents the sun god in the sky during the day.

The big temples are form the post-classical period: they’re big because they’ve been built over again and again. There are also earlier buildings form the classical period, such as the observatory:

Here’s the group in front of another classical era building, the “Nunnery”:

We then took the ADO commerical coach bus to our hotel in Merida. The bus was as good if not better than any I’ve taken in the US, including the heavy-duty air conditioning. 😎 Getting through Merida was tricky, since it was the next to last night of Carnivale and our hotel was on the wrong side of the main street closed for the parade.