If you are doing a cruise along the Yucatán Peninsula and stop in Cozumel, one of the places to visit is visit San Gervasio which is a set of Mayan ruins built 1000-1200 AD.  We did it as a shore excursion from the ship but I believe you could arrange it yourself also.

We enjoyed our visit which included lunch from memory, but the ruins nowhere near as impressive as Tulum.  If you have to pick one go with Tulum as the site and scenery were spectacular (I’ll do a future blog post about Tulum).

San Gervasio contains a temple built to honor the godess Ix Chel, so is a more significant site than Tulum which was just a coast outlook.  Ix Chel is the Mayan godess of fertility and rain.

There were a lot of iguanas around the ruins along with other lizards which we enjoyed watching.  Some of the iguanas are huge!  Apparently peccaries and coatis are also sometimes seen though we weren’t fortunate enough to see those.