Hola from Mexico!

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Hola gringos!  The trip is now more than half over.  When we arrived, we picked up the car and drove straight to a nice little town called Valladolid.  We got the last hotel room in the town and arrived just as a Day of the Dead parade was starting.  In the morning, we drove about a half hour to Chichen Itza, a large Mayan ruins site.  We spent the day checking out all the sites and learning about how they worship the sun so that the corn will grow.  At night, we returned for the Sound and Light Show.  We spent the night in the randomest hotel I've ever seen.  Since it's way off-season, it was like a ghost town.  Our hotel was a flashback from the 1940's - and nothing has changed since then.  It is owned by a cat loving American couple who were more than unique.

Anyway, we left Chichen for another town full of Mayan ruins called Coba.  This is a really cool site that used to house more than 40,000 people or so.  Most has yet to be excavated and covers a lot of land.... and so we rented bicycles for the day.   We got to see a full fledged fully intact ball court... which if you actually sink the 6 pound stone ball, your captain has the honor of having his head cut off.

All over this part of Mexico are dozens of these things called cenotes.  Cenotes are limestone sinkholes.  They are kind of like caves, only they go straight down.  Outside of Coba were three, which we visited.  They were amazing!!  Imagine, you descend tons and tons of stairs to arrive underground only to find a massive swimming hole!  One of them was Olympic sized, only round.  Incredible.  We are headed to another one of those today.

After two full days of Mayan ruin viewing, we opted for a few days at the beach.  We rented a condo right on the beach in a place called Akumal.  We spent a full day just taking in the sun and reading.  Our only interruption was the food truck that came by.  Akumal is one big road full of condos... with lots of workers who need to eat lunch.  Every day this woman and her husband come by with different Mayan specialties.  Of course, Rob spotted a commotion and went to check it out and this is how  we got the privilege of eating this amazing food.  We made sure to by there again yesterday when the truck came by.

Also in Akumal is a lagoon that feeds out to the sea.  We went snorkeling for awhile in there.  There were so many colorful fish!!  Of course, Rob got underwater photos of them all.  Akumal is also home to lots of turtles!!  We heard a rumor that a few turtles live in the water off the public beach, so we went in with our snorkels and within 20 minutes we found them.  Three in all.  I love turtles :)

Now we are leaving our beachfront home and headed to Tulum to check out some more ruins and visit the Gran Cenote.  From there we head to Playa del Carmen until we come home again.

Adios mis amigitos!!
Alison & Rob