I decided to change my tactic with vacation posts. I'm going to pick some things that each of us enjoyed and focus on them individually.
I loved visiting the Mayan ruins. The three we visited were each different, but so similar. It's amazing to imagine what the different cities would have been like in their heydays.
Chichen Itza
El Castillo(the main temple) is in amazing condition. One fun thing is that if you stand in front the steps and clap you hear an echo that sounds like a bird. There are a bunch of places like this around the temple and it seems like they must have specially built this in to use during their rituals. (There is one spot between three temples that echos between the three.)
It's a huge tourist trap, but still really beautiful.
After seeing El Castillo all Woof-woof wanted to do was sit down and build her own.
Sweetie and Woof-woof were excited that there was a place they could climb.
One funny thing about these ruins was that a tour guide pegged us as being mormons at the gate. He asked us if we wanted the "Mormon" tour. We asked what he covered in the tour. He told us all of these crazy things. Pretty much if there was a place mentioned in the Book of Mormon, he said that that place was in Chichen Itza. We thought it was really funny because a) apparently everything happened in that one place and b) Chichen Itza was built in about 800 AD.
Cobá
Cobá is really cool because it's accessible. It's really large, so to get around they rent bicycles and have tricycle taxis that you can ride in. They let you really get a feel for the ruins. You can walk through just about everything.
This city was a transportation hub. There are roads all over. One of the roads even runs to Chichen Itza(62 miles). The roads are these wide, white rock, perfectly flat structures that go through the jungle. It's amazing to think about how they were possibly made.
Cobá was really overgrown from the jungle. That was sad because it would have been cool to see how large it really was if it wasn't such dense jungle.
This is a ball court that the Mayans used. If you didn't win you died! Talk about incentive.
We got to hike to the top of Nohoch Mul(the temple). The view from the top was amazing. You could see across the jungle for miles. We didn't get to go to the top of the watch tower, but being at the top of the temple gave me perspective as to how helpful the watch towers were.
Sweetie and I are at the top of the temple.
The Guy and Woof-woof at about the half-way point.
Here we are in our tricycle taxi. Sweetie, The Guy and I each took turns on a bicycle too.
Tulum
Tulum was my favorite of all of the ruins. It was small enough that you could see how the city was set up and how it would have worked. It was also situated on the shore so the setting was beautiful.
The Guy and I finally left the kids under a tree(with Auntie J) and wandered around together.
A view of the temple from across the city.
I love these carvings that are still on the corner of this building. And if you look closely you can see some red handprints on the upper left of the structure. Apparently all of the buildings were painted blue and red in this city. The red handprints were some of these decorations.
I loved the ruins. They were so amazing and gave me a better feel for how the Mayans lived. I'd love to go back and see more of them.
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