Originally, I planned to visit this world-famous site two times in two days, first day in the evening and next day early morning in order to avoid the hoard of visitors, as a result I chose to stay in a hotel that located next to the historical park with special separate entrance that open before and close after official time. Unfortunately, because of terrible car accident, instead of arrived around midday, I arrived the hotel around midnight! I managed to wake up and went to the entrance, after some argument with an officer on my tiny camera tripod which he insisted that it was prohibited, I was quite sleepy when I was standing next to the famous El Castillo, the iconic site of Chichen Itza. The step pyramid temple was indeed really beautiful and photogenic while bigger than I anticipated. I spent my time relaxing around the pyramid almost alone with few gardeners, it was a great experience to enjoy the world class monument without any tourist, sadly such peacefulness lost only 45 minutes.

Then I moved my attention to see the countless rows of column of Templo de los Guerreros and felt depressed when I saw the infamous sacrificial altar. After seeing many ceremonial platforms around El Castillo, I found myself alone again at Gran Juego de Pelota, funny I saw the iconic stone ring then my mind was full of story of ancient football as in the documentary before abruptly ended that the losing team maybe killed after the game. Chichen Itza was an impressive sight but quite depressing at the same time. After seeing all the landmark, I decided to walk back to my hotel to get Mexican breakfast and much needed coffee to recharge my sleeping brain. I started my second phase of Chichen Itza experience by seeing the long queue at famous X'toloc cenote, and the ground around El Castillo were overwhelmed with hundreds of tourists! Luckily the area I planned to visit was much less crowd and some place seemed to be forgotten. I went to El Caracol to see the ancient observatory; it was really interesting to see; however, the real highlight was the impressive Grupo de las Monjas. The group of ruins had the best stone craving in all Chichen Itza. After spent totally around 4 hours in this vast complex, I decided to go back to my hotel and relaxed before drove to my next destination, Uxmal, after late lunch.

To be honest, Chichen Itza is the great World Heritage Site, its monuments are impressive and truly world class. But maybe because it appeared so often in documentary TV channel, I felt that I did not find something new, which so contrast with Uxmal or even Izamal that I hardly heard before I visited. Anyway, I was quite happy to visit this iconic site. My plan to stay in hotel next to the park was a really good decision. Not only gave me a chance to go back to my room anytime I wanted, but I could also manage time to avoid the peak arrival time of tour groups. I did this trick with Uxmal and Tulum and really enjoyed the experiences.