The Temple of Kukulcan Without Tourists

The Temple of Kukulcan is the centerpiece of Chichen Itza, one of the most famous Meso-American archeological sites in Central America. When I visited, the place was swarming with tourists and vendors with jaguar sound makers. The air was thick with humidity and the crowds didn’t help. But I was lucky enough to get an angle of El Castillo without anyone in the frame.

This is my most viewed photo on Unsplash, with over a million views and ten thousand downloads. It’s definitely not the best of the temple on Unsplash, but I’m proud of it.

Las Médulas, Castilla y León

After a pretty cold night in the van in A Rúa next to its dam, we visited the UNESCO World Heritage site of Las Médulas in Castilla y León for a few hikes. This was an old Roman gold-mining town now famous for the beauty of the fracked mountain tops.

The Romans used a technique to fill the worthless first layer of the rock with water using aqueducts and tunnels to ‘wreck the mountain’, revealing the gold deposits underneath.