Zona Arqueológica El Tajín — Attraction in Terrenos del Lote 19 "Ojital y Potrero"

We stayed in nearby Papantla to make travelling here easier for a full day of exploring. If travelling from Papantla the bus passes by on the main road through town - wait outside the Oxxo shop and board any second class bus for Poza Rica. We checked with the driver to be sure he was headed past the site - they get enough tourist traffic to know where it is!

The site itself is excellent - fairly large museum (no English translations) and quite extensive to walk around. Be aware it gets quite hot here in the afternoons - bring plenty of water. The temples are a unique style, with niches build into them to symbolise routes to the underworld.

Outside there are lots of vendors and also a Voledor pole and performance. The Voledores sit at the top and wait for a big enough audience to contribute before they jump. We left as we didn’t feel like waiting (low season so smaller crowds).

Taxis back to papantla aren’t too expensive, we were quoted 80peso, but walked away and suddenly it became a colectivo taxi for half the price. Or you can wait for the bus to pass...

This is an ancient site populated by people from about the 5th Century ad. It is very very well maintained and the people running it are very very nice when my girlfriend and I visited it was very sparse with people but even if there were 10 times as many people it would still not feel overly crowded. There are lots of vendors on your way in and they were little bit pushy but because there were so few people they had time to be pushy but they were still very friendly. The site is not enormous but it is big it took us over an hour to walk the site not everything is accessible they have a wonderful Museum that explains everything and you get to almost touch something that has more than a thousand years old that's pretty special. I highly recommend it.! Most of the stuff sold is made in China so I would avoid most of the things sold.! One thing you should buy if you love vanilla you can buy vanilla beans for about 40 pesos a piece. They are over $6 a piece in Walmart United States and 40 pesos is about $2.20. Make sure that it...

Visited in 2004, not sure what has changed since then. When we went, we were essentially free to wander as we pleased. No guides, no gift shop, no roped off areas.

Was on a trip from Tlaxcala to Veracruz with my parents and we stopped, as they knew it was a very interesting site. The Pyramid of the Niches is such an odd duck, haven't seen anything else quite like it in all the other sites I have seen. Most pre-Columbian sites have the standard pyramids, plazas, ball courts, temples and homes. But each seems to have it's own special building. Like the oval pyramid in Uxmal or the Observatory in Chichen Itza. El Tajin has the Pirámide de los Nichos.

Such a strange sense of history you get wandering around these places. Who were they, what were they like, why did they build what they did and where they did? All we can do is make guesses... And all we see are the macro elements of their lives. No clothes or food or wooden items. Just the bare bones of their constructions, with only our imaginations left to fill...