This tour was presented by the Archaeological Conservancy. I believe that they tour the Yucatan Peninsula every other year, so I had been waiting for this trip to come around. Nevertheless, it was quite intense. There was a lot of walking involved, which I like, and many hours on the bus between sights as we had to cover a lot of ground in 10 days. Our accompanying archeologist expert was so overly enthusiastic and excessively verbose that I wandered off way too often to tune in to the sites and take photos. I had not expected to be taking a college course in archaeology!
In spite of that the trip was entirely worth it, as we got to so many places that the usual tourist never goes to. The last several days of the trip were spent in and near the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve which is located near the border with Guatemala. It is a protected jungle filled with ruins, spider monkeys, howler monkeys, all sorts of tropical birds, and even the occasional jaguar. There were even some orchids blooming there.
We started off the trip from Merida. I have to start by saying that most if not all of these sites have solstice and equinox alignments, and even some lunar ones. That was not the area of expertise of our archaeologist, but on our first day out, we visited an equinox temple. The site was Dzibilchaltun. After visiting a lovely cenote with ruins built alongside it, we proceeded down a sacbe, or Mayan paved road much like a causeway, which connected the cenote to the Temple of the Seven Dolls. Here is the cenote, with water lilies in bloom!
This is a photo from an informational sign that features the equinox rising sun shining through the doorway of the temple. Imagine standing on that causeway at that moment and seeing that sight!
This location also has the longest stairway of any of the Mayan ruins.
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