Chichen Itza....

...or my special visit to tour bus hell. Sarah and I decided to make one last ruins tour to the huge and popular site of Chichen Itza. Our Lonely Planet guide book (which I trust less and less as the days go on) recommended Chichen Itza as a site to wow even the most jaded traveler. I was wowed alright. We arrived as early as possible with a small trickle of visitors and got some good time to run around and appreciate all of the very well preserved buildings. Chichen Itza has the largest ball court in Mesoamerica and the buildings and carvings are all in excellent condition. There was a great platform with about 300 skulls carved all the way around it, most long staircases had amazing plumed serpents carved down the sides and the sacred cenote was gorgeous (as long as you could ignore the sacred gift shop in the background). The drawback to Chichen Itza is that you can´t climb most of the buildings and any interesting exploring you might do has been anticipated and blocked off with yellow caution tape. I didn´t really appreciate why until we were just about ready to leave the site and the tour busses arrived. It was kind of like being at a Six Flags or Disneyland but with ancient ruins as the backdrop instead of roller coasters and hot dog stands. In the last few buildings of the ruins there were tunnels that you could walk through with a few unlit dead end passages. Sarah and I both had our lighters out and were enjoying the cool solitude when, like moths to a flame, the narrow dark passages filled and clogged with Cancun package tourists following our adventurous spirit. I killed my flame and began pushing back towards the lit passages as a dozen more people pushed their way in, asking, "What´s back there? A room? A tomb? Can you get out? Can you go further?" From the tunnels all the way back to the entrance of the ruins was like swimming upstream through a river of tourists. Upwards of 40 large tour busses had disgorged their walking wallets just as we got out. It was all kind of surreal... we hadn´t seen so many people, let alone people from our country, for a good long while. The feeling of being removed from reality only increased when our taxi driver told us that George Bush was going to visit Chichen Itza on Thursday. We drove by the helipad and caught a glimpse of some of the preparations for his visit. I had visions of Bush stripping to the waist, donning a plumed headdress and addressing his people from the top of El Castillo (we can´t climb the temple but I´m sure the high priest of compassionate conservatism will be allowed). Human sacrifices are frowned upon these days but perhaps some sort of political sacrifice will be in order... I wouldn´t want to be a low level republican staffer at Chichen Itza tomorrow, it´s a long way to the bottom of the sacred cenote.
-Dirk