Day four started out with a sunrise (one of maybe five I've seen in my life):
We packed up and hit the road for Chitchen Itza, eager to arrive before the huge tour buses. It took just over two hours to drive there, but we beat the crowds and it was totally worth it! We were lucky enough to get Ray as our tour guide and he explained why Chitchen Itza is so special.
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| Main temple |
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| Temple of a Thousand Pillars |
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| Ball Court |
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| Observatory |
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| Skulls engravings near the ball court |
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| Symbol of the ball with a skull and snake engraved |
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| Ball court player - holding the severed head of another player |
From there, we drove straight to Tulum (which was supposed to be 2.5 hours drive, but took us just over an hour in our rented Dodge Attitude, oh yeah!).
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| Road to Tulum |
Upon arrival, we drove through the center of town hoping to find a place that was showing the US/Belgium game, but to no avail. Instead, we headed down the main strip of Tulum's water-front resorts to find our hotel, La Zebra, but were a bit sad to discover that the place was not as we left it back in 2008. More tourists, more eco-chic hotels, more restaurants, more shops. It's fantastic for the people in the town, but disappointing to find that it's so much more discovered than before. Anyway, upon checking in at La Zebra, we found that not much had changed, so we settled in with a margarita while our room was being prepared. The soccer game was on, so we watched in anticipation. Ultimately, it wasn't our time to move on, so we sulked to our room and got over the loss quickly with more margaritas and a dip in the ocean :).
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| Cheers to the game |
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| View from our room |
Our dinner destination tonight was El Tobano, a place written up in the NYT, Chowhound, etc. It was good, but not what we expected with all the hype. I had habenero shrimp and Andrew had roasted chicken along with a bottle of wine and some sparkling water.
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| avocado salad appetizer |
Off to bed we went, drunken dreams awaiting us. Tomorrow is snorkeling and beach day. So excited!!!
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