Yucatan Part 4 - The Ruins & Coming Home!!!

Saturday (July 16) we were up early to leave our donations on a table and pack the bus.  We headed out to see Chichen-Itza (pronounced: Chee chin eat za, or to some :-) chicken pizza)

We were on our way to see one of the 7 wonders of the world. Chichen-itza 7 wonders

Some of us pitched in and bought a tour guide and it was well worth it.  He was full of information to debunk several of the myths of the Mayan world and calendar.  And he had pictures of the sights that occur on certain days of the year at the ruins and just overall helped to give more meaning to the sites we were seeing.

Once he was done we took a closer look at some of the structures.  I toured most of the time with Patina, Ally, Mia & Gabby as you can see from some of the pics.

After seeing the ruins we piled back in the bus and headed to Merida.  Once there we unloaded at the hotel, got our room assignments and some of us went to walk the city and look for the market.  It was overly crowded due to it being Saturday and the free Shakira concert later that night which made it hard to see anything, so we headed back, purchased the last few bottled drinks and snacks that we would need and went back to wait on pizza.  During this time we were pleasantly surprised to discover that not only did we have a working AC unit in our room (we were in the "good" hall) even if we couldn't adjust it, it was a welcome change, we also had a shower with pressure and warm water!  We still had to brush our teeth with bottled water and still felt better getting ready with bug spray but this was quite a step from our previous 8 nights.  We also had a tv and after flipping around we settled on watching Finding Nemo in Spanish. ...our pizza arrived on Mexican time (an hour and a half late).

So after a few short hours of sleep (kind of) we piled on the bus to go to the airport.  The plane was late to depart and our connection in Houston was tight considering we had to make it through customs, re-check our bags, go back through security, but luckily we all made it...but not all of our luggage did.  We arrived in Dallas with 8 bags missing.  Mine took the 4 p.m. flight from Houston (I was at my house before 2) and it was at my door around 10:30 that night. 

After I got home, Grant decided not to stay the extra night in Panhandle and he piled the tired kiddos in the car to begin their trek home.  He survived despite a screaming Andrew that after so many hours logged in his carseat was protesting.

It was great to be home!