Quote:
Originally Posted by BadNick
Are you in Mexico?
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No but you're getting warmer
Quote:
Originally Posted by BadNick
Tul, do you hate Chichen Itza or the tourist related exploitation of that place? I'm curious since to me it seems like such a significant, fantastic place if you could remove the tourist related influences.
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Yes, it's the tourists and the problems they bring. It use to be such a cool place. I used to make yearly, sometime twice yearly treks to Chichen. It started getting bad about 10 years ago. Then when it made one of the "new seven wonders" list, well now it's just a waste of time, IMO. There's no way to see most of it. A lot of it's roped off now. What you can see is blocked by tourist who stand in front of things while they decide weighty topics such as whether or not to do the snorkel tour tomorrow or whether or not to let little Megan get her hair braided this trip. Apparently making these decisions any where other then a doorway to a jaguar's throne simply wouldn't make any sense.
The vendors nearly out number the tourists, which is really saying something. Vendors line every walk way to every structure. I went one year for summer solstice and came away thinking "Wow! Never doing that again. The number of people was completely insane and the vendors were everywhere." Now it's like that everyday. The only change I've noticed in the last year or so is the vendors used to say "Come, see, cheaper then Wal-Mart, cheaper then Wal-Mart. " Now they've replaced Wal-Mart with Target for some unknown reason.
Want to see a cool Mayan ruin go somewhere like Uxmal.