Honeymoon: Chichen Itza

A Wonder of the World

We arrived at Chichen Itza right on schedule around 9:30AM and the parking lot was pretty empty, only one person was in line at the ticket book ahead of us.  It's a big site but once you walk out of the visitor's center the main temple is pretty much right there, so it's "wow" from the start.

The place was pretty deserted early, which we came to really appreciate.

I read online when planning our trip that you really have to get there early to enjoy the visit and we started to understand why this was so important.  We to see everything alone before it got hot and without a lot of noise or nuisance.   There also weren't lots of people crowding all of our pictures, which is nice too.  

I've wanted to see this ever since I was a kid, it was pretty gratifying to finally do it.

It's impressive how good of shape all of the carving are in.

We got crafty and used the camera self-timer for this one.

You can no longer climb on the ruins but there is one plaza that they let tourists walk around on and see everything up close. 

I didn't notice the carvings of warriors on these columns at first, but they're great.

Nathan at the nunnery, it's a pretty amazing building on its own.

They have a mock-up of a period hut so you can see what the Mayans lived in.

We were able to see everything by about 12:30, and by then around 2,000 people showed up!  It was crazy, the line to get in was wrapped around the parking lot.  We felt like we got a private tour compared with all of the people who arrived late.  Totally a tip worth passing on.

On to lunch . . .