1: Chichén Itzá, Ek Balam and Cancún

There was a point when I thought the flight to Mexico was never going to be over. On the Dallas leg, I was cramped up between an American teenage boy and a professor of DNA on his way to visit relatives in Las Vegas (he drank four small bottles of white wine during the trip). The films were average and mind numbing, and eating the food was like committing carbicide: lunch of pasta with three cheese sauce plus white bread, followed by biscuits, then a snack of pizza. By the time I got to Dallas I felt like I'd swallowed a brick.

At the beginning and end of the flight they gave completely contradictory instructions on what to do with bags, so after going through immigration I hung around wondering whether I should wait to pick it up or if it would go straight through. The Americans didn't seem to know ("it might go straight but maybe stay here for a bit and see if it comes out") but were very helpful in communicating that they didn't know anything, and did so with a smile. I decided to wait, and luckily so, as out the bag popped. I transported it about 50 metres only to recheck it on the other side of customs.

Clare greeted me with a big hug in Mexico and was very happy that I had brought her Grazia and two massive bars of Fruit and Nut. The hostel was very welcoming and we went straight up to the roof terrace to have frozen margaritas; they'd saved some food for me and despite it being my eighth meal of the day, it was lovely. Carbohydrate number 8: tortilla chips, bread and rice. Yum!

The pyramid at Chichén Itzá

We decided to dive in at the deep end and booked on to the tour going inland to the Mayan ruins of Chichén Itzá and Ek Balam. I forced myself to stay up until about 11.30pm (5.30am UK time) and chatted with the other guys at the hostel: two Aussie blokes, a German who looked weirdly like a cross between Elliot Cowan and Arnie (and sounded like the latter), two American girls, a Geordie called Rachel, a doctor called Richard and some others (I think I'm going to have to get better at learning names).

An iguana at Chichén Itzá

The bus journey to Chichén Itzá took a good couple of hours between bursts of hot sun and hosing rain. You are not allowed to climb the temples (or enter them) but the sights were pretty impressive. The Castillo (the central pyramid) represents the Mayan calendar and its points are precisely aligned to North, South, East and West. There is a weird echo that sounds like an Eagle if you stand directly in front of the steps and clap loudly. There is also a ball court where the losers (or winners - nobody seems to know which) were decapitated as a sacrificial offering: these were represented by carvings on the side of the ball court. As Clare pointed out though, it may be that these carvings had about as much truth as a Batman comic, so who knows really. The others walked to the Cenote (a big sinkhole full of water) but Clare and I wandered through the shade and looked at some of the less crowded areas.

A swim in the cenote

We then journeyed to another Cenote where we had a swim - it was basically like walking down and swimming in a cave. There were little black catfish in the (very clear) water and birds that looked like house martins zooming around on the roof. From above it looked like a load of people jumping into water at the bottom of a bucket, but once you were down there it was very atmospheric. There were vines dangling down from the edges and tiny waterfalls cascading down  through the vines. The water was cool but fresh and very clean. Clare had an underwater camera (not good for diving but fine up to 3m) so lots of stupid videos of the boys diving in from the ledges were taken and some very amusing underwater poses that I won't post!

The view across Ek Balam

Unlike Chichén Itzá, Ek Balam was comparatively quiet, and the land around it had not been cleared to the same extent. It was like being Indy and coming across ruins in the jungle. Massive parasitical orchids grew on the trees and everywhere was the plant I've been trying to save in my living room. I've no idea what it's called (Tom didn't know either, when we bought it) but it is green on the top of the leaf and deep purple on the underside. The ones growing in the ground looked a bit happier than mine! There was a soft cacophany of birds and insects emanating from the trees, but nothing you could actually see. From the top of one of the smaller temples you could see the ruins of a much larger one with, approximately a million steps. In adventure mode, I said: that must be climbed. Some of the others seemed doubtful but with only 25 minutes until the site closed I trapsed across the wet grass and tackled the steps.

It was worth it. The view from the top was amazing; the land was flat and jungle-fied as far as you could see and the rest of the temple complex stood out splendidly. Clare got to the top soon after me and shortly followed the others. Arnie (apparently the fittest of all of us, I thought, due to the astonishing size of his muscles) reached the top and sounded as though he might die, possibly due to the fact he'd been drinking beer at 8.45 and his continual fag habit.

Ek Balam

So that was day 1 of my trip.