Ruins of Tulum

Cinco de Mayo in Mexico... doesn't really exist except in a small part in Western Mexico.  To the rest of Mexico it is just another day incase you are wondering how awesome it was and were the margaritas that great?  To start the day we took a ferry from Cozumel over to the Mainland of Mexico.  The crew on the boat were entertaining...offering to sell us shots of Tequila (out of glass shotgun bottles).  When we finally arrived I could not get off the ferry fast enough.  I thought I might throw up on the ride over since it was extremely rough.

Once we were off the boat we were escorted to a bus for an hour and a half ride to the ruins of Tulum.  Our guide Angel was amazing.  He told us all sorts of facts and the history of the Mayan culture.  We even learned that to be a guide he needed to go to college and take classes in a variety of content areas to be well versed in the culture and history of Mexico.  Even after graduating he still needs to take so many classes to maintain his guide certification.

 Yes, it was absolutely gorgeous.  Yes, it was also over 100 outside and we were quite toasty.  Good thing I brought a bottle of Powerade with us.  I also know that Luke is always saying, "take a picture of that."  I gave him one of our cameras for the day and had one for myself.  His ideas of pictures are of things and I like to put people in the photo most of the time since I think it makes it more interesting (people I know anyways).

 The building behind us was the decoy light house.  They would light it up and people would crash their ships/boats into the reef so by the time they swam to the shore they were captured and too exhausted to put up a fight.  The Mayans actually had their real channel to the area further down the beach where they had broke through the reef for a secret entry.

 Of course Luke was a little disappointed we couldn't climb on or go into any of the ruins so he had to sit on this part that wasn't roped off and have me take a picture of him.  Such a silly man.

This particular tree is hallow except at the base where when you thwack it you hear a thud sound instead of a knock sound.  That is because it is filled with water at the bottom.  If you are ever stuck in the jungle this is the tree you want to find, kind of like a cactus in the desert. (Hello informative tour guide Angel!)

Crawling all over the place were these giant lizards.  When I say all over I mean all over.  They were everywhere and fortunately for us they were a bit intimidated by people or I'd have been freaking out.  We happened to catch these two fighting over a spot on the ruins.

Despite it being very hot we really enjoyed our trip to the ruins and learned a lot about the history and culture of the Mayans.  We had a little bit of time before our bus and ferry trip back to the cruise ship so we enjoyed some beverages and tried the fish tacos (I liked the ones in So. Cal. better).  I didn't have time to finish my drink so it was put in a classy to go cup for our bus trip.

 The excursion was 7 hours in length and we were told to bring water with us.  For the bus ride back we were provided a towel soaked in ice water to wipe off with before boarding the buss as well as a bottle of water, bag of snack chips and a cookie.

 Adios Mexico!  We are sad that we didn't get to spend any time in Cozumel but maybe someday we will make it back and get to do that.