Chichen Itza 🇲🇽
- laurenlcoon
- Dec 17, 2016
- 3 min read
Chichén Itzá is a world-famous complex of Mayan ruins on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula and considered one of the 7 Wonders of the World! Since we were planning on being in Mexico for a wedding... I decided why not try and make the trip over to see this phenomenon?
Depending on where you are staying, your drive could vary. We were staying in the Yucatan peninsula for a wedding in early December for good friends of both myself and Brandon and the ruins were about a 2 hour drive from the resort we stayed at. We had flown from ATL to Cancun and were only in town for 3 days so the trip would be quick. The ruins are 1 hour behind so there is a time change going back and forth.
Other drive times include:
Tulum – 2 hours Playa del Carmen – 2.5 hours Cancun – 3 hours
(Real quick... can we talk about how stunning this couple is?!)
There are countless tours and excursion packages to take you from a majority of the resorts to Chichen Itza. The bride and groom actually did one of the tours a couple days prior to our arrival and said, it was amazing but a very long day. The tours depart at 7am and you don't return back until the evening. If you're smart... you'd get to the ruins before 11am as that is when most of the buses arrive and you'll have the most crowds.
We instead opted to rent a car from the airport and park it at the resort until the day we checked out. We stayed at Secrets Capri resort and very much enjoyed it. We checked out on a Sunday around lunch time and drove the 2 hours to the ruins.
We grabbed our 'attitude,' some Pesos ($100 worth- the conversion rate was about 22 pesos to $1 while we were there), our friends and hit the road to Chicen Itza AKA 'Chicken Pizza'. The drive was about 2 hours from the resort and then another 2 hours to get to the Cancun Airport.
Secrets is an all inclusive resort and we had found flights to and from Mexico were much cheaper if we flew out early Monday morning. So our friends we were traveling with used points to put us up in the Four Points Sheraton Hotel that night before our early flight out Monday. It was a nice hotel and good location for us since our flight was very early!
We walked around for an hour or two and saw all kinds of ruins. Some were in excellent condition for their age and others had deteriorated extremely. You should expect lots of crowds, lots of sun (bring SPF) and a lot of people wandering aimlessly through your photos. We took our time and enjoyed the sites.
If you do opt to drive yourself, stay on the main roads and do not speed. Its not unlikely to get pulled over and be given a ticket. We were warned that the authorities love to ticket tourists after they visit the ruins and we even had friends get pulled over on their way back about 2 hours before us.
After a long day of driving, we found a restaurant for dinner and enjoyed our 100th margarita of the weekend before calling it a night and getting up for our early flight the next morning.
PS. Try using cash as much as possible, I used my card once and immediately charges appeared in Juarez, MX.
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