New content, New Continent. Press Play to continue! MEXICO!

Well I’ve moved from Asia, to north America. I have now arrived in Mexico, Cancun. My goal is to see the Mayan Temples scattered around the place.

To make this blog easier to understand where I am I have included a map of the area, numbers represent the days in the blog.

The flight from Hanoi to Mexico was a grueling 29 hours flight, I was extremely happy to know my “delta” flight had changed to Korean airlines. Not only did the plane have power at the seat but also internet access. It made the trip go past so quickly and nice.

Anyways I hit Mexico and it was hot,  after 2 days of jetlag I was finally awake enough during the day to explore the town. 


There was a large stretch of hotels and resorts along the beach called the “hotel zone” this was very very touristy, loads of clubs and bars. The next day I hit up a island off the coast of cancun called “Isla Mujeres”, it was a hot spot for snorkeling and spending time at the beach. Today I was more just relaxing, so I rented a scooter and went zipping around the island.

The island wasn’t very long at all, it only took me 15 min to drive to the other end (with my very safe driving J ), at the far end of the island was a lighthouse and a outdoor art exposition. It was also home to some large iguanas.

After standing on the furthest east point of Mexico, I headed back into town and found a nice little pub that was on the beach and relaxed the rest of the day. After all I was in the Caribbean.

The next day I had finally decided on how I was going to see Mexico… on 2 wheels. I scouted around for the most of the day till I found a shop that had a good deal on motorbike rentals. I hired a Suzuki 150CC cruiser for $45 a day. It was rather expensive for what I was use to paying in Vietnam but it was cheaper than a car or even other bike shops.

That afternoon I practiced driving the bike, this would be the first time I had driven a fully manual motorbike with clutch and the lot. It was a lot easier than I though, and I got the hang of it in no time.

The next day I packed a day bag and headed south, I was still not sure what the roads in mexico were like so going on a long trip was still a bit iffy… but a day trip to Tulum a town some 200km south would be a good way to practice riding the bike and see what that roads were like.

About 50km out of cancun there was a police checkpoint. They were heavily armed with machine guns. It was ok, they checked my bag for drugs and things and I was on my way again. A few hours later I arrived at a place called Xel-Ha, a group of ruins on the side of the road. There was a theme park next door but I wasn’t interested in that…

Mosquitoes on my leg... 

The ruins were my first taste of Mayan ruins and I was pleasantly surprised. You could walk around freely in the buildings and see what you liked. It also happened to be my first taste of the jungle and its mosquito friends… I had to keep my jumper on as my arms and legs were black from the number of mosquitoes on them.  The area was also crawling with iguanas, everywhere you looked there were lizards as large as the goanna’s at home.

I kept cruising down the coast till eventually I reached the Mayan ruins of Tulum. The ruins were set on a cliff top overlooking the ocean. The large area had been cleared out of all trees to open up the ruins.

The area was amazing to wonder around, there was also a beach below one of the larger temples people could swim at.

The larger temple was a small building raised with a grand staircase leading up to the top.

Before I could finish viewing the entire area a large storm started rumbling on the horizon, and I had no wet weather gear, and still had to get back to Cancun that evening. I cut my losses and headed back to my bike as quickly as possible. I was ½ way back to Cancun when the wall of water hit.  I ended up buying from large garbage bags from a shop and put all my things in my bag inside that and kept riding. I was like a river when I walked into the hostel that night.

The next morning I checked out of the hostel and headed west, My goal was to see a place called “Chichén Itzá”, the distance was a bit longer than I had expected, the rain also made it slow progress.

With the bike I have many more options to what I can see than if I was on a tour bus or transportation bus, there was a sign off the main Hwy to a place called “Ek Balam”. With the sun high in the sky I figured I would have loads of time to see this, so I turned off.

This was definitely off the beaten track, the village I drove through was very run down and people were staring at me as I drove through on my bike. Eventually I found the ruins and started exploring.

As these ruins were more off the track than the Tulum ones the area wasn’t cleared or as open. But I liked it that way it added more atmosphere to the place. The site featured more than one pyramids, and temples. It was all open to climb up on and look over. The buildings all had extravagant corner artwork and looked amazing.

The next thing I visited on the site was the “ball arena”  or games arena. Its 2 walls with a slope and 2 hoops that are vertical (not like basket ball). It was quite large and very impressive.  

Beyond the ball arena was the first Mayan pyramid it had a makeshift roof covering some special carvings and figures. The climb to the top of the pyramid was well worth it as the view was amazing over the rain forest.

That evening I didn’t manage to get to Chichén Itzá that afternoon, so I pulled into a old colonial town called Valladolid. Rolling into the town it was like nothing I have ever seen the streets were narrow,  and very old. The center of the town revolved around the church, which was a grand conquistador style church.

That night the town was one big party, with fireworks and people dressed up and dancing in the streets. It was a festival for one of there saints and I just happened to be in town the day it all kicked off.

The next morning I was off early heading towards Chichén Itzá. It didn’t take me long to arrive at the site. It was very touristy but I was expecting this, the site was quite large and took me hours to walk around.

At the center of the site was a giant Mayan pyramid, it was definitely the center piece of the site.

Walking around I came to a large Mayan ball arena. The walls were all decorated in carvings and the hoops were still there. It is apparently the largest ball arena in the world.

The site also had a number of smaller buildings each was very well preserved with stone carving on the wall.

There where some large buildings to the other side of the area, they had 1000’s of pillars all with carvings of them.  

There was a large number of other buildings but each one was far smaller than the main buildings. Ive included a few photos of them on the sides. All up i walked around the site for a good 2 hours. It was amazing... but very very touristy.

After leaving Chichén Itzá I headed towards Merida, my next stop for the evening. About 5km outside of merida there was a large army/police check point. 


They called me out of the queue of cars and I pulled up to the officer. He didn’t speak a word of English and I didn’t speak a word of Spanish.It somehow went very bad very quickly when I was pointing at my guide book as to where I was going because all of a sudden I was face down on the ground with guns pointed at me, while the officers pulled all my belongings out of my bags. The papers for the motorbike were not with me, and the bike wasn’t registered so after 2 hours on the ground finally I got though that I was a tourist and I was heading to the town and had not booked anything… they fined me $20 for the registration and noted all my Passport details then sent me on my way… I have never been so scared before… the guns were large machine guns.

I arrived in merida and found the center of town. There was again 2 large church and a square to make the old town. The center of town was also marked by old buildings with sculptures and patterns on the front. Very impressive.

The next day I headed towards another ruins called Uxmal, and a loop of other Mayan ruins. The road in between them was very uneventful, sadly the roads were flat and not pretty to look at, it was all jungle and extremely hot to ride.

Uxmal was another extremely large site but much less touristy than Chichén Itzá.

It had not just one pyramid but 3, one grand one and 2 lesser. It also had several large plaza’s and courts. Rather than explain the lot heres a few pictures.

From Uxmal, I drove around a road that looped a bunch of Mayan sites, like Kabah, Sayil, Xlapak, and Labna. Each one was very small only 20 min stops, and almost no toursits.
 But because they were less touristy it was more jungle surrounding them and more atmosphere when exploring the ruins.

Some where palaces, some where courts and plaza’s, others market places. All were part of a larger city that spanned 100’s of kilometers once, or smallers villages with higher classes living there.

Towards the end of the day the storm clouds rolled in and it was tine to stop the tomb raiding again.

The next morning I was up bight and early, I had a long drive today, I was heading to a town called Xpujil, some 300+ km away. No visiting mayan things today just driving. The trip started out fine but I got worried when I had not seen a car or a town for 2 hours… it happened I was driving through the jungle national park. Anyways I managed to reach the town and find a hotel just on sunset so it was all ok in the end.

I took a ½ day off from riding and relaxed at the pool at the hotel it was hot… over 40oC and humid. I was going to stay at the hotel for 2 days just to relax. That afternoon I headed out to a remote ruin, it was on some serious wet rain forest jungle roads, the bike struggled to get any grip to the road as all the rotting leaves made it slippery. 


The ruins themselves were nice, not very large but they looked like a old castle but with mayan faces and gods on them.  There was a bunch of wild monkeys playing in the trees around the ruins as well which was cool to see.

As I left the Google streets view team drove up. They were doing imagining on all the sites as well, so I got talking to a few of them before they had to get back to work.

That afternoon I headed to 2 more temples much closer to my hotel, one had a large pyramid, and the building at the back of the site looked closer to something from Angkor than mayan with 3 pillars.

The second site was a large city like area, they had palaces and temples and a pyramid. They even had paved walk ways and coverings and tunnels  to get around the city.

I was able to climb up the top of one of the pyramids and it gave a amazing view over the entire forest.

Heres a few pictires from them both.

The next day I left Xpujil, but that’s for the next blog post…

Till then HAVE FUN,

Steffen.