Easy to Cancún. Easy to hotel. Room floodlit blue.

Take an unexpectedly long walk along empty, wide, dark streets to a cafe under a canopy. Order a quesadilla but it's not what I thought (hoped) it would be. So I order more, approaching the unfamiliar menu with a reckless scattered approach. Get soup, unexpectedly.

Return to hotel and sleep, so gladly. In the middle of the night, about 2am, I attempt to persuade myself - unsuccessfully - that the day has not yet begun. So I lie there in the dark listening the loud drone of the air conditioner, waiting with mild anxiety for daylight and the moment when I will rise.

Leave Cancun as soon as I can. En route to Valladolid I see a large, drooping vinyl poster advertising a barbecue cafe. A whole third is taken up by a photo of a brown sheep, shot at night with heavy flash and deep shadows. The sheep looks disturbed, its eyes glinting wildly. I listen to Beethoven's third symphony and feel disturbed myself.

When I arrive in Valladolid, Octavio Paz reminds me that a human consciousness without games and work has to confront its innate aloneness. Travelling - at the beginning at least - is neither a game nor work.

But in the evening at a café on the edge of a square I enter the first mescal haze of the trip and all anxieties become replaced by an empty consciousness throbbing with the easy primitives of the kinetic world. Then, in a cloistered courtyard with a fig tree and a fountain, sincere guitar strumming echoes with tension around the columns and I eat well.

Woke up to an army of cockerels crying out in terrifying unison, as if to announce an imminent apocalypse. Amidst and over their bloody wailing, a jeering whoop, whistle, and shriek rings out from what I imagine are those skittish dark bobbing birds with talons that are far too long. These birds have also sensed the apocalypse but welcome it with a nihilistic glee and find the cockerels' simple terror hilarious. The end does not come, but I take shelter underground nonetheless.

A short cycle ride takes me to two cenotes: caves that resemble vast buried condensation flasks, left for centuries to mould over and fester. Both have small apertures in their ceilings where the sun knifes through and explodes in turquoise blades across and into the surface of the water. Bats flit and cheep overhead and hang by magic from the damp jagged rock of the ceiling; black, blind catfish gently stir in brownian motions; and gods crouch invisible, waiting for some sacrifice that has now been so long in coming.

This morning I leave early to reach the ruins of Chichén Itzá before the tour buses from Cancun arrive. On the combi (collective taxi) is a British couple, pale and early thirties, and a backpacking pair of girls, both speaking english but one identifying as Dutch. I try with concentrated determination to appear as distant as possible, although my first tactic of defence - to feign a lack of english comprehension - gets dismantled early when the Dutch girl asked me where I was from. After that lapse, however, no more words are required of me and the backpackers drone backpacking stories exclusively to each other.

All along the short walk from the entrance to the first temple vendors are neatly laying out their skulls, rugs, and small statues of fallen gods. The path soon opens out onto a huge expanse of short, dry grass and a towering towering temple: a square base with steep staircases up each side and several other powerful stone structures distantly surrounding it.

With no forewarning and no premeditation a vivid image comes to me of this expanse from some 1,000 years ago. It is almost unchanged except in place of the gawping tour groups in their matching safety-orange t-shirts there are short naked Mayans walking about, fearing the temple and its volatile gods, ignorant of Cortés and his steel, and unsure whether the sun will rise again the next day. The thought that all of this once was and is now no longer is so immediate, unexpected and painful that for a brief moment, tears come my eyes, spill over the frames of my sunglasses and roll down my cheeks.

As the day quickly matures the sun redoubles its power. The tour groups multiply and the vendors begin their subtle trade. They don’t push hard or pursue long; just a mild “Hola. Buenas días” as you walk past. One man offers a “Good morning” to a british woman in a pink strapless top (and pinker neck) to which she audibly sighs and in her best brummie accent squeezes out an exhausted “Morning.”

The most forward sales approach involves demonstrations of a leopard-growl instrument. Every few minutes or so you’ll hear a vicious snarl from behind some bush and hope that this time, just maybe, it’s a real leopard and that soon to follow there’ll be some authentic human screaming as a sweaty foreigner gets savagely disembowelled (sacrificed) by one of those sacred, swift, and violent beasts.

On a stone platform two iguanas are in battle. The larger of the two lizards has the other’s throat in its mouth while the smaller one flails with its mouth gaping open, presumably trying to reciprocate. They writhe and hiss and circle one another in violent jerky movements. Overlooking them is another lizard, at least three times bigger than the fighting pair, unblinking, unflinching. And overlooking all of this is the temple and its gods.

More ruins today at Ek Balam. Much smaller than Chichén Itzá but with well preserved stucco reliefs and evidence of colour: a glimpse into the reality that how these “ruins” appear today, all dusty white and crumbling, is a far cry from the ornate and vividly coloured world the Maya would have experienced.

On leaving, I follow an overgrown footpath that Google Maps promises will lead to the village of Ek Balam. Halfway along I realise I have managed to reenter the ruin site, bypassing the official entrance and toll collection. I continue nonetheless. Soon I come to a barbed wire fence guarded by a boy sitting under the powerful sun. I ask him if I can pass. This troubles him. He is clearly finding it difficult to find a reason why not but knows that he really shouldn’t given that guarding this fence is the sole purpose for his sitting there.

He asks me why I want to pass. To go to Ek Balam I say. Why? Because there’s a cafe there. Hmm.

Grudgingly, he says I can pass, but manages to somewhat satisfy his role as gatekeeper by making no effort to assist me with the barbed wire. I look sceptically at the strips of rusty spikes. How do I pass? I ask. He gestures vaguely at the fence. I gesture vaguely at the fence. Finally he gives in, gets up, and lifts up the barbs the smallest amount. I squeeze through, thank him, and carry on towards Ek Balam.

There was nothing in Ek Balam. The cafe was closed until August and everyone was asleep. How will I get back? I suddenly start to worry. There’s no question of returning the way I came via the boy and his fence. I ask a man asleep in a hammock. He doesn’t know. I ask two more men also asleep in their hammocks. They don’t know. One of them seems to think buses come by “sometimes” that will take me all the way back to Valladolid.

There's a taxi parked under a tree with all its windows open so I sit next to this hoping the owner will turn up shortly. Ten minutes pass and a man walks past. I ask him whether this taxi will go to Valladolid. His shrugs suggests a negative. I ask him how I might get back to Valladolid. He doesn't know. I suddenly get the idea that there might be taxis at the ruins that will take me back. I ask him if he thinks so. Yeah, probably.

Google Maps shows a road back to the ruins, a lot longer than the footpath shortcut. Standing at the edge of the village I look down this road. It stretches a long way into nothing and is buzzing with the high midday heat. So I walk back to the ruins.

Three quarters of the way there, a man pulls up on a red motorcycle. He offers me a ride. I look at his bike and its shiny-slippery black seat. I look at the road and its the shiny-hard black tarmac. And I look at his head, fragile and unhelmeted. I say no thanks. He buzzes off. The sun intensifies. And I immediately regret it.

Almost back at the ruins now, a taxi comes past going in the right direction and I wave at it frantically. It speeds past. I can’t actually see the face of the driver but I see his face as sneering. Another taxi comes past and I wave again. It speeds past. Then it slows. Then it stops. I run up:

“¿Valladolid?”
“Sí”
“¡Bueno! ¿Puedo?”
“Sí”
“¡Bueno! ¡Muchas gracias!”

I look at the back seat and there are the two glum english people from the bus yesterday to Chichén Itzá. They’re looking at me bitterly. I thank them, in Spanish, take my place up front next to the driver and together we all speed off back to Valladolid.

On returning I get a haircut. In the baking hot salon, and the 35ºc outside, the first thing the hairdresser asks me is: “So, is it hot outside?”. I tell her it is and she asks if I’ve got children. No. She looks concerned and asks if I’m married. No. Well, how old are you? 27. Oh you’ve got plenty of time, she laughs nervously.