Vacation, Day 3

When you take a vacation, what do you prefer to do? Some people like to simply be lazy, figuring they work enough, and vacation is a time to relax. Others look at vacation and want to explore the sights and wonders where they have traveled. It has taken Carrie and I a while to figure out the balance of the two when we go on vacation.

I mention this because day 3 of our trip to Cancun found us getting up early to catch a travel bus heading to Chichen Itza. This is perhaps one of the most famous of the Mayan ruins, and was about a 2 hour bus ride away from our hotel. We got up, caught our bus, and then headed out for the ruins.

Of course, on a bus trip like this, you get to see some of the sights of the land. And when you travel to Mexico, there is usually one particular kind of drink that may spring to mind. (Yes, tequila!!!) Along the way, our bus driver took us off the main road to show us one of the places where they grow the agave, which is later on distilled into everyone's favorite margarita drink. Carrie couldn't resist a beautiful picture.
And for your information, no, I did not go grab a plant to bring home and grow in the backyard.

Finally, we arrived at the ruins. When you enter, the first thing that stands out is the large pyramid. But off to one side, they have what has been known as the ball court. It appears to be an old arena of sorts, where the guide told us they had to put the ball through large stone hoops high up on the sides of the wall, but without using hands, feet, or head. While I don't know how much I believe that, it was still impressive to see. The way that the ball court conveyed sound, though, was very impressive.

After the ball court, we went to a small, raised platform. The walls of the base were covered with stones which were engraved with skulls. It seems that there are differing thoughts on the reason for the skulls. Some thought that the Mayan gods wanted the best sacrifices, and so the winners of the games would be sacrificed. Others thought that the losers would be sacrificed. Just imagine what our professional games would be like if either the winners or losers would have their heads cut off at the end of the competition!
From there, we were directed to the large pyramid. It has 91 steps on each side, which adds up to 364. When you add the platform on the top, you come up with 365, which just happens to be the number of days in a year. Since there aren't any Mayans around from that era, we can't go back and ask if they did that on purpose. Regardless, it makes for a rather large structure, as you can see behind the two of us. (Thanks to the California family we met that day, who took the picture of the two of us!)
Carrie was so enamored of the large pyramid that she decided to play around with her camera and take a few extra shots of it. Here is the same pyramid, only with the sepia setting on her camera. (If you don't know what sepia means, welcome to my world.)

As we toured around, we saw quite a few ruins. Looking at the top of one building toward the end of our tour, I looked up and saw something that looked kind of familiar. So what do you think? Mayan tic-tac-toe?
One of the buildings we passed appears to have been an ancient observatory. The Mayans made much of the stars, sun, and moon, and must have made this building to aid in their observations. Just think of what an astronomy tower this must have been roughly 1,000 years ago.
After wandering around the ruins for several hours, our time there came to an end. However, as we were exiting, we noticed something interesting. If you would like to attend this concert on April 3, 2010, we would love to hear what it's like.
Now, if you think that was the end of the fun for our tour, you would be sadly mistaken. From the ruins, they took us away for lunch. It was a local buffet, which had some good food. However, the real entertainment came when the servers jumped up on stage and started dancing for us. Look closely to see what they were balancing on their heads as they danced around in circles.
Following lunch (and a beer or two), we headed for one of the cenotes that the Yucatan peninsula is noted for. One interesting thing is that there are no running bodies of water on the peninsula. Instead, all over you have cenotes, which are pretty much large depressions where the limestone has caved in and created underground water holes. They took us to one that we were able to swim in. Here's the view looking down. Notice all of the hanging vines reaching down into the water.

Down inside, they had a ledge where you could climb up and them jump in. The highest part of the ledge was perhaps 25-30 feet above the water's surface. Of course, me being myself, I went up there and jumped in. The water wasn't exactly warm, but after the initial shock, it wasn't too bad. I swam in there for a few minutes, and then got out to jump in again. Here's the view looking up from the ledge where we entered. Look carefully to see me swimming!

After the cenote, it was pretty much time to jump back on the bus and head back to Cancun. After a day of walking around and swimming, we were both pretty tired. But we needed to eat dinner, so when we got back, we decided to try another adventure. We crossed the road to McDonald's, of course. We thought we had figured out the days of the week in Spanish, and knew that the value meal of the day was a guacamole hamburger. Since we both like a little adventure in our lives, we decided to try it. Want proof? Here you go!

I'm just waiting for McDonald's to add that hamburger to the menu back home.

With such a full day, and with so many adventures and pictures, you can imagine that we slept pretty well that night. But check in again soon to hear about some more of our vacation. You never know what you might see.