Kicking Off Our Adventure: The Start of Our Central America Tour

Meeting the group

We got a taxi across to our new hotel. The reception/pool and courtyard are fine but actual rooms....mmmm, 1 star. Luckily only one woodlouse spotted. It isn't great but when we met up with the tour guide she reminded us this is the basic tour. Some hotels will be better and some not, at least we aren't in same place for too long.

The group is currently 10 but 2 more will be joining in a couple of days. Ages range from 20s to 60s with Australian, Canadian, German, Irish and English.

Everyone seems really nice and over our first evening meal a trip was planned for the following day, as we had a free day on our official tour. We are catching the tail end of a tropical storm so rains expected.

Just a day out at Chichen Itza Mayan Temple

An early start saw us leave the hotel at 7.30am for Chichen Itza, which is Unesco World Heritage Site. Yep, lots of rain and localised flooding. We stopped at a Mayan centre where local Mayans are taught trades and then use these either to run the centre so admin and computer skills, cook food or produce stuff for tourists. We were blessed by a Shaman which was good and 5 minutes later he was blessing the next group. I think he just liked throwing water in peoples' faces as those at the front got wet. The tour guide didn't really explain the process so we did feel we were wandering around a bit lost but we got fed and it was a lovely meal.

We then headed to Chichen Itza. This is a Mayan Temple which been really well preserved. It was a bizarre experience as it is privately owned and they allow the hawkers in, so a lot of hassling to buy stuff. My favourite quote was "best price, nearly free and my name is Black Friday". This Black Friday was a sales reference and nothing today with skin colour in case anyone was about to cancel us.

The temple is amazing and the guided tour showing us the acoustics was amazing. Claps came back at us, some claps reverberating like a Rattle snake and in one place they sounded like a bird singing. The snakes and birds are included in the architecture of the building so I'm guessing the Mayans knew this would happen. The most amazing bit was all standing in a line and shouting Hola! And hearing your own "hola" come back at you from across the field.

After this we headed to a cenote plunge hole where we went for a swim. A great feeling to be swimming in what was a massive well/sink hole.

The bus stopped at a local town for us to have tea and then headed back to the hotel. We got back near 10pm so a long day but definitely worthwhile.