Chichen Itza

On Friday we went to Chichen Itza in Estado de Yucatan. It was about a 2 hour drive from the resort, after doing some loop-de-loops at the turn. We decided to take the carretera "cuota", o sea, toll road, on the way there to save time. It cost about 11 dollars after two toll booths. The drive was really, really boring. The vegetation, for the most part, in that part of the peninsula is not the lush green that one might expect. I kind of liken it to "sticks with leaves." That's how it stuck in my mind. Not rainforest or other plushnes. I'm not saying it was ugly, but it wasn't terribly enjoyable to look at. Especially not for two hours on a highway where all you can see are the road in front of you and the sticks with leaves on either side.

The one excellent part of the road trip was stopping at the service station about 40km or so before the second toll booth. It was the first gas station in 135km, and we weren't going to hit another one before the booth (where you also turn off for Chichen Itza), so if we didn't stop times might have been tight for going home. Anyways, we stopped, got gas and a bite to eat at one of the two little restaurants: taquitos de pollo (o chancho?) with a red sauce. They were excellent (again, a Bill and Ted's kind of excellent). Delicious and just the right kind of picante. We also ordered empanadas, on which I dared to try one of the salsas on the table: a sort of khaki colored sauce that I wisely only dabbed on. Pre-tty darn hot. But good.

We pulled up to Chichen Itza and parked outside the park, along the road. Since we'd had something of a late start, leaving around 12 or so, we kind of did a rush job of the park and didn't really see everything we might have liked to. But we did get up the Piramide de Kukulkan (in the picture).