Chichen Itza Pyramid
On Tuesday, my boss and I traveled to Merida, Mexico, for a conference. It was my first time in the Yucatan Peninsula, and it was lovely – but hot, hot, hot! The newspapers said they were having record heat; each day was triple digits. John flew in on Thursday afternoon as my conference was wrapping up, and we spent Friday and Saturday sightseeing.
Friday we hired a driver/guide to take us to the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza. It was pretty amazing. Aside from the main pyramid, there were several outlying ruins on the compound that were interesting. My favorite had bas reliefs of skulls.
Bas relief skulls
Afterward, we drove to a cenote, basically a big fresh water pool of water (per Wikipedia: a natural pit, or sinkhole, resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath). The first one we saw was really beautiful, and the water was about 30 or 40 feet underground. The vegetation around the opening was lush, with hanging vines with mot-mot birds flying about (they are a beautiful iridescent blue). You can swim in them – a very popular thing to do.
Cenote
Saturday the driver took us to the coast where we saw salt ponds and pink flamingos in the wild – lovely! I had never seen them except in zoos; too bad I didn’t take a zoom lens with me.
Wild flamingo
Salt Pond
We had lunch overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, then drove through several small towns to see their cenotes – none anywhere near as impressive as the first one we saw. The drive through the towns was very interesting, though, just to see how people live.
The Yucatan food was delicious! We had dinner at Chaya Maya Friday night (chaya is like spinach) and the food was amazing. We went to the original one, which is quite small and mostly locals eating there. They have ladies making corn tortillas by hand and cooking them over a small flame on the floor (several places we ate do this).
Making tortillas
Sunday morning before we left, I walked around the city a bit. The architecture is beautiful, old Colonial style. Many old houses have been refurbished and repurposed, but there are still many in desperate need of repair. A really fun trip!
Restored home, Merida
Church