Here are a some pictures from our trip:
This bottle of tequila was a welcome gift from our hotel. That's right, it's wearing a mini sombrero and poncho! We haven't tried it yet... a little scared.
Beautiful beach at our hotel. You could see Cozumel off in the distance and the water was as warm as bath water! We had drink service while lying in lounge chairs on the beach. It was absolutely wonderful!
Our half-day trip to Tulum, old Mayan port city on the Caribbean. We saw pyramids and carvings left by the Mayans. In some places on the pyramids/carvings you can faintly see dyed plaster that still hangs on, after all these years.
Mayan ruin above the Caribbean Sea.
Giant Iguana at Tulum. These guys were all over the place but this one was by far the biggest. They had plenty to eat out there in the jungle... mosquitos the size of house flies!
One of the temples at Tulum. We were standing in this open field when Patrick's sandaled foot was viscously attacked by a troupe of fire ants. This, in addition to him being car sick on the drive out, having blisters on his feet from our previous day's adventures, being eaten alive by mosqiutos and it being 95 degrees with 99% humidity, made for a miserable Patrick.
The beautiful swimming beach at Tulum. By this point, all Patrick was looking forward to was getting in the water and cooling off... and then he lost his VERY nice sunglasses in the ocean. It was not a good day for Patrick!
The day after our trip to Tulum, we took a full day trip out into the jungle to visit the Mayan ruin of Coba. Coba is the most recently discovered Mayan city and at over 80 square miles it's also the biggest they've ever found. It's the least excavated at only 5%. Since this city was built at the beginning of the Mayan society it doesn't have all the carvings/art to be studied so the archiologists are more interested in other more advanced cities. This is one of the temples at Coba. Some of the temples are 9 levels high. Every 50 years the Mayans would add a level to their temples, so doing the math, some of these temples took 450 years to become what you see today!
Half of the Mayan ball court. The game they played wasn't for fun or exercise but to see who would give the blood sacarafice to the gods. You may think it would be the loser to give the sacarafice but actually it was the winner. It was viewed as an honor. The Mayans never did human sacarafices (that was the Aztecs), they would pierce different body parts and give the blood to the gods. Before this, they only did animal sacarafices, but when they were going through hard times they heard from the Aztecs that if they wanted more from the gods they had to give more and that's when they decided to give human blood as well as animal sacarafice.
Our guide didn't talk about this temple at all but we did learn that the Mayans learned about rounding their buildings from the Toltecs. I found this one so interesting because it was so obviously different and influenced by the Toltec culture. The slab of rock under the grass hut is an altar to whatever god this temple was for. There were these altars at most of the temples throughout Coba. The rocks had Mayan writing on them which to us look like a whole bunch of dots and lines.
At the end of our tour through Coba, we finally came to the highest and oldest temple in all of Mexico and the only one that you can still climb. I'm not the biggest fan of heights but we biked through the jungle for half the day to finally get to this point. It was so hot that we were both drenched in sweat (My legs were running with sweat. I had no idea you could sweat that much.) and there was no way I was missing out on climbing a pyramid!
The people on the right are going down!
Taking a much needed rest at the top. Each step was about a foot high. At one point I stopped to look about me and realized that was not a good idea, so I put my head down and didn't stop again until the top.
After visiting Coba, we stopped at a Mayan family's house. This is their pet monkey that greeted us when we arrived.
Also, at the Mayan house they kept coatimundis, which is basically a Mexican racoon. They kept some as pets but others to eat.
After visiting the Mayan family, we traveled down the road to a Mayan village. Outside the village, was this beautiful lake. The same lake that earlier in the day we had seen crocodiles in. We canoed over to the other side, hiked through the jungle and then ziplined over the lake back to our starting point.
That's me ziplining across the lake!!! I don't do well with heights, but Patrick was so impressed with how well I did and how excited I was to do it.
You can barely see me out over the lake. At the end of the zipline, there were 2 little Mayan boys to catch you. I was very grateful that they were actually able to stop me. When it was all over, I totally wanted to do it again. It was so fun!
Patrick paddling us back across the lake.
The view from our boat. It was so beautiful. After we got to the other side again, we rapelled down into a cenote (a cave with water in it) to swim, snorkel, and cool off. We had been so hot all day and the water was so cold because it's in a cave that I cursed when I hit the water and then had to explain to our guide what the curse meant since he'd never heard it before. The cenote was really dark and pretty small, but as your eyes adjusted to the darkness you could see much better. Our guide brought snorkel gear so we could view the Mayan bones at the bottom of the cenote. In ancient times the Mayans used this cenote as a burial ground. So, we snorkeled with Mayan bones. It was so awesome! We don't have any pictures of rappelling or of the cenote because we would have had to have a water proof camera, but it was the highlight of the day, for sure!
Sadly, the last margarita before heading to the airport to fly home.
