A Day-Long Adventure

So, we signed up for a day-long tour inland to visit some ruins. And let me tell you, it was worth every stinkin' penny of the 99$ US it cost.

Friday morning, we got on a big bus. We were served breakfast en route and entertained by a tour guide named Alex. He was a source of great entertainment and very knowledgeable. Did you known the Mayans knew the speed of sound years before the Europeans figured it out? Did you know the Mayans came up with the binary system of numbering thousands of years before we started using it as a basis for all computer language? Smart cookies. We watched a National Geographic video about the area and the history surrounding the ancient Mayan city of ChichenItza : one of the new Seven Wonders of the World and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Our destination.

On the way, we toured a Mayan village called Piste yuc.mex. I like the pic I have included...if you look closely you can see Marilyn's reflection. And interesting little place of houses with thatched roofs and cinder block construction, lime trees, mangoes and smiling people. We also drove though an Agave plantation. Who knew that it takes 8 years to produce 3 litres of tequila???

And then, although I have no pics because I was using an underwater camera that has yet to be developed, we stopped at Ik Kil Eco-Archaeolgical Park (how is that for a word of the day?) for a swim in a cenote. Think of it as a giant well. We had to climb down many stairs in a cave to get to it and it was amazing. 100 feet from the top of the water to the opening and 150 feet of clear water you could see fish swimming around it. Brave people climbed up to a cliff to jump off...we preferred to jump in at "ground" level. I swam all the way across and back.

Then it was a stop for an authentic Mexican meal at a small hotel where there was entertainment galore: people in traditional costume dancing around with beer bottles on their heads!

And finally, our destination. You are no longer allowed to climb the main temple, but we spent and hour with Alex who gave us tons of info and wowed us with demonstrations of how precise the construction of it was to be able to line up perfectly with the sun on Summer Solstice to reveal a snake shadow slithering up the entire length of it. Yes, a violent culture by Western standards (you know, the whole virgin sacrifice thing), but really did all have a purpose.

I love this shot of Troy sitting by the sacrificial cenote (where they threw the battered bodies of the virgins after they ripped their still-beating hearts out of their chests and kicked the honoured girls down the temple steps). It really was that green! The cenote we swam in was more narrow at the top than this one.

On the way back, Alex put on a movie (The last Indiana Jones one where there is a Mayan temple at the end) and we made it back to the hotel 12 hours after we left it.

A truly wonderful day filled with laughs and history and adventure.