There were good things about our $10 tour to Chichen Itza and there were bad things.

Good things:
* amazing photos
* Diana got to conquer her fear of heights by climbing the 91 steps to the top of the pyramid, altho she was afraid to step out much to admire the view at that elevation
* I can say “veni, vidi, vici”.

Bad things:
* we woke up late (Diana’s alarm wasn’t set right) and ran the hell to the front of our resort to meet our pick-up at 7a, who was apparently on “Mexican time” (a lot of people were on “Mexican time”, which we learned means 15 mins late, treated cavalierly and without apology), so we sat idly for awhile wondering if we actually missed the pick-up, altho we were there punctually at 7a.
* the pick-up van dropped us off at a large tourist-sucking souvenier shop to assemble with other people going on the same tour…to wait 2 hours for the bus. We were ticked off. First of all, had we known this was their schedule, we would’ve just walked the 5 or so blocks from our resort to this meeting place and gotten there at 9, right before the bus came to pick everybody up, and we could’ve gotten more sleep and had a gourmet breakfast at our all-inclusive resort. Second of all, making us sit at the store in their transparent attempt to get us to spend our money is retarded because we’re not stupid enough to buy crap we have to carry around in the heat all day on tour.
* one of many indicia of bad planning by the tour organizers: the bus filled up completely and there were still 13 of us who had not boarded. Instead of riding the air-conditioned tour bus for 2.5 hrs to our destination, we went in a bumpy van following the bus which tossed us in all directions the entire drive out there.
* we had been told the tour included a buffet meal, and since we reached Chichen Itza at noon, we figured we’d have lunch there. After all, forcing us to leave at 7a means everybody skips breakfast, since the resort restaurants don’t typically open until 7:30a or 8a. But no. We were herded, hot, tired and hungry, to the grounds of the Mayan ruins.
* not eating and severe heat would’ve been tolerable, had not the tourguide completely ridden my nerves. Since he was a descendant of Mayan blood, he had a lot of pride in the ruins and lots, lots to say. Instead of an intro to the buildings’ history and architecture, we were subjected to hours in the hot sun of his favorite explorers (he walked around photos of these explorers), every build and rebuild history of the pyramid, and how he had “good look” (he meant “luck,” I’m pretty sure) because his Mayan gods saw to it that he had the blood of heroes running in his veins, on and on. While we stood there, unable to go exploring, I saw other tourgroups that arrived after us start going into the buildings as the place got more and more crowded. I grew so irritated that I tuned out his incessant rambling and walked away to take photos.
* we did not get our meal until close to 4pm, which was in the outdoor cafeteria restaurant of a nearby hotel. The hotel was rustic and pretty, there were peacocks running wildly among the patrons, but the food SUCKED. It made me miss the authenticity of Taco Bell.

The people on our van were so irritated that instead of going to the underground caverns of natural springs, which was next on our list, we opted to leave early and the van driver acquiesced by taking us back to our hotels. The people on the bus were apparently in good spirits and comfortable enough to finish up the tour. I tried to sleep thru the 2.5 hr van ride back to Cancun, but the severe jolts as I was nearly thrown from my seat in all directions on the x, y and z planes made the ride very miserable.

This was when Diana and I started referring to Dreams Resort as “home.” “I wanna go home!” “Oh, it’s SO good to be home!”