Adios a Mexico

We spent our last few days in Mexico staying in Merida in the Yucatan Peninsular. The most interesting thing we saw was a Mayan site called Chichen Itza which is a couple of hours drive from Merida.

I got quite bad vertigo climbing up the Pyramid of Kukulkán in Chichen Itza. The stone steps go directly upwards without any landings. This seemed ok on the way up, but after avoiding the issue for a while by chatting to other tourists, I ended up by coming back down on my bum.

There is also a large ball court in Chichen Itza where the Mayans used to play their favourite sport. There are faint pictures around the court that show ball game players being decapitated. The information sign says that the winning team in the ball game would gain the honor of being sacrificed to the gods. Personally, human nature being what it is, I bet it was the losing team that got sacrificed. Otherwise it would have been a pretty boring game, with all the players trying really hard not to score!

On the 6th January we got up early to get our flight to Mexico City from where my Dad had a connecting flight to London. Unfortunately it turned out that I had actually booked the flight from Merida to Mexico City for the 1st June and the date printed on my eticket receipt was in American date format (where they put the month first). Fortunately there was still some space left on the plane so it all worked out ok.