We drove up to the city of Merida. Despite having a map, we still had trouble finding our way around Merida. The road signs are hard to spot, or just missing all together. The biggest frustration was that we mistakenly went to the Museum of Anthropology, but that turns out not to hold Mayan artifacts at all. Unfortunately, we didn't discover the mistake until we had already paid admission and entered the museum - and the clerk at the front desk refused to return our admission price even though we had only been there for just five minutes.

When we finally found the new Mayan Museum, I thought it would be a treasure trove of Mayan artifacts. But despite the impressive exterior, the museum itself doesn't really hold that many first class objects. Many items on display are merely replicas of the real objects. Displays lacked labels identifying pieces with dates and locations. The videos are Spanish only. Overall, I liked the museum at Palenque better.

In retrospect, I wish we had gone to the site of Dzibilchaltun and looked at the ruins there.

We got to the Hotel Mayaland relatively early, so we had time to walk around the extensive hotel grounds. It is a pretty impressive site, and it is located right next to the western entrance to Chichen Itza - it is so close that the iconic Observatory building of Chichen Itza is clearly visible from the front entrance of Hotel Mayaland. We watched the sun set over it. The next morning we enjoyed a buffet breakfast at Hotel Mayaland. There were many colorful birds all over - some in the nearby trees, some right on top of the breakfast tables and chairs. It was cool to see, I wish I could have identified them.

All the graphic images are my own design, but the textured background is taken from a site, EOS development, that offers non-profit users free use of their graphics. Click below to visit their site.