Chichen Itza

This was the sight I was most into getting to see on this continent.  We found a rad day tour that did all we wanted so by 8am we had walked to the ferry, ridden the 45 minutes of vomit inducement across the bay, and were on our bus with continental breakfast. 

This was valentines day which we had planned to have a big splash out for. 

Chichen itza is a giant step pyramid but more so it's a whole city which can kind of tell the story of a culture.  They have a stadium and the carvings of the games and subsequent sacrifices, with echo technology that allowed them to hear the announcements all over the stadium. 

Multiple temples and alters, the warrior place and the women's and different designs.  In the center part of the city, there is a library, observatory and school. 

The quality of the carvings varied a lot, but there were some in enough detail to see the exact pictures, and there were multiple aspects of the feathered serpent. 

Iguanas climbed on and lived in many of these. The observatory had a big dome, just like a modern one though of course no telescope.  One of the alters showed a carving of a jaguar with his mouth open swallowing a human skull. 

Overall though, I was perhaps underwhelmed by the complex.  From an archeological standpoint it was impressively complete.  But from a personal standpoint I expected it to be a lot more impressive than Teotihuacan, and it was more so just the same.

Also when I went to Teotihuacan, they let you climb on them.  Interestingly, they said they banned that here in 2006 so maybe it's a generational thing rather than the different sites. 

But the real whelming came at the last spot of the day and unexpectedly, at the cenote.