Chichen Itza – Yucatan, Mexico

I hate tour groups by default. You’re herded like sheep, shuttled from place to place, usually by a guy who is repeating his spiel for the 200^th time this month and is just too tired to deliver it with any animation. That sums up all of our pre-Lares Trek guides in Peru, so we have very low expectations – we only signed up for the day trip so that we wouldn’t have to wrangle with public transportation.

But our experience with Mexico-Kan is so different. Not because we had low expectations, but because the quality of the tour is truly exceptional: Professional, intelligible, and led by a guide who says just enough and comes prepared with key visuals on his IPad.

He starts in the towering ball court, where we gaze up in wonder at the tiny, lofty hoop through which they send a 7-pound ball. There are really only two rules: Aim high and try not to get sacrificed to the gods.

We walk out into the main area, and our guide tells us to “try to ignore the massive pyramid” and describes the details of the smaller structures first. El Castillo is just the tiniest bit distracting, but his strategy is sound. We would never notice the smaller temples otherwise.

And finally, El Castillo. It is towering, and it is breathtaking. Two or three sides are restored to their original glory, and it is a majestic structure. The Mayans must have thought they could touch the heavens from the top. They also built it without bulldozers and cranes. Don’t ask me how.

We walk over to the Osario group of structures and aim our cameras at the Osario Pyramid, one of many structures we see throughout the morning.

Chichen Itza holds so many wonders of an ancient world, but it would take too long to describe them all. There are a lot of snakes and jaguars, for sure, and it’s clear that the Mayans have a recurring theme. They were a deeply religious people, and they placed a lot of significance on their animals and their cenotes. So a cenote is the natural next stop, and our guide plays a short Ted Talk to get our minds moving during the car ride there. The talk is a plea to embrace the unconscious, a pro-ayahuasca speech that is as controversial as it is fascinating.