Smiling Mom

Hubby and I took our first real vaca­tion together since we were married six years ago.  And we took it without kids!!  Thanks to my mom and dad, we were given the gift of time to recon­nect, relax, and enjoy Mexico’s Yuca­tan Penin­sula.  It was gor­geous!!  Hubby deci­ded to blog send daily emails to our family to let them know how our trip was going.  I called this a blog­ging, he did not.  Wha­te­ver.   Since he did the leg work, I thought I’d steal his words and sprin­kle in a few addi­tio­nal pic­tu­res for your enjoy­ment! 

Today we took the big trip to Chichen Itza. Rose at 6:20, van left at 7:45. 3 hour ride there with one tourist-shop stop mid­way. Once we arri­ved, we were cer­tainly in the middle of the jun­gle. The heat was stifling.

The ruins were incredible.

Our tour guide, Ser­gio, was a wealth of know­ledge, having been in the tou­rism industry for 28 years. He not only gave us details about the ruins, but he told us about his­tory, geo­logy, and anth­ro­po­lo­gi­cal facts that I’m cer­tain weren’t widely disseminated.

He did the entire tour in both English and Spa­nish as we had peo­ple from Spain, Argen­tina, and us in our little 10-person tour group.  Nette and I were ama­zed at the pre­ci­sion of cons­truc­tion, the sheer size and com­ple­xity of some of the struc­tu­res, and the inter­wea­ving of science, math, and the calen­dar into all aspects of their life and buil­ding. Not to men­tion, the man­da­tory deca­pi­ta­tion for the cap­tain of the losing team for Mayan bas­ket­ball was pretty cool.

(I felt a wee bit lame doing this…as evi­dent on my face.)

After the ruins, we hea­ded off to an “authen­tic” (trans­la­ted: “dive”) Mayan buf­fet. The place was crappy, but the food was great.

Next stop was going to be an old Spa­nish town from the 1400’s, but while on our way there, it abso­lu­tely star­ted pou­ring. When we arri­ved in the town (very quaint, by the way), all the streets were com­ple­tely floo­ded. We drove once around the town square and hea­ded out to our final destination.

A cenote, a limes­tone cave filled with fresh water.  It was breath­ta­king. The bot­tom has filled with water up to 16 feet deep in some parts. So, natu­rally, we had to swim in it. We wal­ked down many limes­tone steps maybe 100 feet under­ground or so and swam in a giant limes­tone cave. Very cool.

Then another 2 hour van ride back to the hotel. Total time: 12 hours.

Din­ner con­sis­ted of an awe­some shrimp-filled avo­cado appe­ti­zer, soup, a chic­ken main course, and a cho­co­late mousse des­sert. Of course, I had to have my san­gria with din­ner (I love me my fruity drinks) while Nette par­took of a piña colada.

We hit the sack right after din­ner because we are so abso­lu­tely exhaus­ted from the day. Hence, the view from here…