Really the first day we spent traveling. We left my sister's house at around 8 am and got to Cancun about 9 pm. Since we told our hotel we would be there about 9:30, and we actually didn't get to the hotel until 10:30 they had given our room away. We ended up staying in a place that was a "real Mexico experience" complete with no toilet seat and a shower that you had better wear your sandals in and no AC. It made us appreciate our other hotels so much more.
So I guess the second day we went on a tour which included see the ruins Tulum and Coba, and swimming in a cenote.
A good friend of mine had recently been to Cancun. she told us about these tours she took of the ruins with a member of the church. She said he had really neat insights about the ruins and their connection to the book of Mormon. We book this tour with him. It actually was his son-in-law Carlos that took us, but he was a great guide.
Tulum is a ruin built in the post-classical period. Because of a 50 year drought people had to move to the seashore. Tulum is literally built on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. It was so pretty. It is the only ruin where both the inner and outter walls of the city still remain. Because it was a time of less wealth, the workmanship of the stones was not as careful or ornate as others. We learned a lot of stuff, but if you want to know all of that we will have to talk to you- I'm not typing it all!
This is a watch tower. The windows are actually facing into the city because they acted kind of like a mega-phone to amplify the sound so everyone could hear.
Can you see the iguana in this picture? They are so camouflaged, we did not see them until after we had taken a few pictures.
This is the beach below Tulum.
Can you tell this is a face carved into the stone. one eye is open and one is closed.
While we were at Tulum we asked our guide about good seafood restaurants. He told us he would take us to a great one instead of the buffet we were supposed to go to. It was my favorite seafood of the whole trip. They just took this fish that they caught in the morning and fried it up. It was soooo good. I also tried octopus- not so good.
After we ate we went snorkeling in a cenote. The Yucatan peninsula is really flat. It is all made of limestone. There are no rivers above the ground, but the water table is very high. In some places there is an air-bubble in the limestone which eventually falls away and leaves a cenote. There are lots of these, and they have very cold water, but it's very hot there so it felt good to take a swim. When we looked under the water you could see stalactites and stalagmites. It was pretty clear, and very neat.
Next we went to the ruin of Coba. This was built in the classical period- about 250- 900 AD. If you know your Book of Mormon this is when people started to grow wicked again and build up temples unto themselves. The stone work is more ornate here than at Tulum. Coba is still being restored, so it is really in the jungle.
This is Devon with our guide Carlos.
Coba is so spread out that we rented bikes to ride around.
This is actually a ball court. Here they played a much smaller version of the Mayan ball game. I will talk more about that with the huge ball court at Chitzen Itza.
This is a sign to show the carving on the next rock. They actually had a lot of these huge slabs of rock with the sign showing the carving next to them.
The pyramid here is the tallest in Mexico. There are people climbing it, but the had to cross the caution barriers to do so. We decided to play it safe, and let our guide keep his license.
So that was day 1. We were exhausted at the end, but it was really neat. That was the most packed day on our trip- so hopefully the other days won't take so long to post.
1 comment:
that is awesome!
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