03 Jul 2021
Chichen Itza did not disappoint. It was a lovely and magical place, not dampered by the oodles of folks trying to sell us their stuff pretty much everywhere. Id highly recommend going to anyone. We also had an excellent trip to the Cenote nearby. Beautiful swimming sanctuary that each of our 4 kids enjoyed greatly.
The rest of the expedition did not fare so well.
3 planned stops on this excursion. We ended up making 4. This took away time from the other 3 and that was unfortunate.
The first stop was to basically a roadstop RV park dressed up as a touristy attracting village. It was a cash grab. It was a 60-90 minute infomercial where the promised lunch was served and we were bombarded by very overpriced and repetitive goods of obsidian as well as personalized cartouches and blessings by a shaman who blessed for wads of dollars essentially.
To be straight, this whole portion rubbed me the wrong way. It was unscheduled and I respect that times are tough and companies need their money to be made and kickbacks are a good way to do it, but the time we wasted there at that awful roadside stop cost us precious time in the last stop in Vallilodid(spelling?). We had 25 minutes to explore this town that was actually lovely and deserved more.
This trip was also 14 hours long and that wasnt mentioned up front and there were no dinner opportunities as a result of the shortened stay in the village.
All in all, the content was great with this excursion, aside from the cash grab. But the execution, organization and time usage was not up to par.