Travel Weekly’s Gay Nagle Myers is at the Iberostar Grand Paraiso in Mexico’s Riviera Maya. Her second dispatch follows. Click to read her first and third dispatches and view a slideshow from the trip.
"In k’aba eh Gay," I said.
"Excellent," said Victor Palacios, tour guide for Cancun Sightseeing Co.
What I had just said, in the Mayan language: "My name is Gay." 
The language lesson occurred during a break in a walking tour of Chichen Itza, the magical Mayan site located on the Yucatan Peninsula about two hours west of the Riviera Maya.
Palacios is one of 800 guides licensed by Mexico’s Ministry of Tourism as an official guide for the country’s 3,000-plus tourist sites.
More than 5 million visitors a year visit Chichen Itza, one of Mexico’s most popular attractions.
I ran into tourists from all over the world, most of whom were dutifully following their guides through the ancient ball courts and playing fields, and standing in front of the big pyramid called the Temple of Warriors.
Until a few years ago, visitors were allowed to climb the 91 steps to the top of the pyramid. A tourist fell down the steps in 2005 and that ended that.
Before my group got to Chichen Itza, we stopped at a cenote, an amazing water hole fed by a system of underground rivers.
I took the plunge and jumped off a rock ledge about 15 feet into the 70-degree water that was sprinkled with blind catfish that darted to and fro.
Overhead, the sun shone down on the emerald waters, roots dangled from the limestone ceiling and swallows flitted about from small nests set into grooves in the rock walls.
I'm here in the Riviera Maya on a Delta Vacations package marketed and sold by MLT Vacations. The Chichen Itza daylong excursion was an option offered as part of the vacation package. It’s got my seal of approval, for sure.
Tomorrow, I get some beach time and then explore Playa del Carmen, the nearby town known for its Fifth Avenue shopping promenade and lots of funky bars and restaurants in the back streets.