LA and Mexico!

We spent Thanksgiving in LA with Josh's family. We landed at LAX late Wednesday night and flew out early Monday morning. We had a great time with his family. Josh's mom made a delicious Thanksgiving dinner and we spent the day catching up with family and friends.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday went by really fast. We ate at In-in-Out, went to the beach, Josh's sister and I saw "Breaking Dawn", visited with Josh's cousin, visited with friends, played with the dog, and ate more good food. It was a pretty relaxed visit and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Early Monday morning we left LA for Cancun. This was only the second time I had traveled internationally and I was a little nervous about going through customs. My anxiety about customs was completely unfounded though. Once we landed in Cancun it took less than 30 to go trough baggage claim and customs. We got lucky and when we pushed it button it turned green instead of red. If the light had turned red I think they would have checked our bags, but I'm not really sure. As we were leaving the airport we were tricked by one of the men waiting to try and coerce tourists to join time-shares. We initially thought he was an airport employee, offering to show us which platform our resort transportation would be on, but quickly discovered he was not. Rookie mistake. Once we got past him and made it to our shuttle it was smooth sailing.

The resort we stayed at was about 1.5 hours south of Cancun. We didn't arrive until after dark so we couldn't get a good view from our balcony. Josh took some pictures with a long exposure and they gave us a pretty good idea of what the view would be like the next morning.

The view from our balcony at night

View on the first morning. Yeah, we had a good time... :)

On Tuesday we lounged on the beach, played volleyball, and enjoyed having nothing that we HAD to do. It became apparent fairly quickly that most of our fellow vacationers were European. Speedos galore. We were playing volleyball with one such Speedo clad gentleman and he was kind enough to inform me that the next time I played volleyball I didn't need to wear a skirt over my swimming suit. Let's keep in mind that my 5 1/2 month pregnant belly is protruding out from under my tankini. I am clearly in no condition to wear less clothing. Pregnant belly aside, it was incredibly awkward to have this guy request that I come wearing less clothing to the next volleyball game. Josh was standing right there too! So very strange. We didn't play volleyball again.

The next day we went to Chichen Itza. It was a 2.5 hour bus ride and the tour was tri-lingual, Spanish, French, and English. The drive out was fairly uneventful but it was interesting to see smaller towns and rural areas. One of the first things we noticed at the ruins were all the hawkers. They were lining the walkways selling everything imaginable. From what our tour guide said, a few years ago people were not allowed in the ruins to peddle but they sure are now! Once you move past the sellers and get to the actual ruins it was awesome. Seeing buildings and temples that old was incredible.

El Caracol (The Snail) - Observatory

El Caracol is the only known round structure in all of Mayan culture. There is a spiral staircase inside, (hence the name 'the snail') leading to a series of windows on the top level. These windows would align with certain astronomical events, and were mainly used to track the traverse of Venus across the heavens.

A Little Darling at The Ossario - a miniature version of the Castillo shown below. In Mayan culture there were calendar cycles that signaled a time of renewal. These occurred about every 50 years and temples were often rebuilt over existing structures. Inside the Ossario there is another identical structure, only smaller.

A view of the back of the Castillo. The right side has been completely rebuilt, while left side has undergone far less restoration.

The Glorious Castillo. This Sturcture is one of the reasons Chichen Itza is one of the new 7 Wonders of the world. Twice every year, at the Spring and Autumnal equinoxes, the triangle shapes on the staircase are lit by the sun and resemble a snake (symbol of Deity) descending to the earth. This event signified the beginning and end of the harvest period.

The Great Ball Court. It is the largest and best preserved ball court in ancient Mesoamerica. The field is shaped like a capital "I". Games were highly symbolic and ritualistic and at the end of the game (when a solid rubber ball passed through the hoop on the wall) one of the players would be sacrificed to the gods. Since this was considered an honor, it was likely not a member of the losing team who received this honor. Maybe the one who scored the winning goal was the lucky one?

Tzompantli - Plataforma de los Cráneos - The Skull Platform

Carvings on the Skull Platform - the Pantalones 2nd most favorite feature of the site.

Just a couple of gringos having a good time in Mexico!

After Chichen Itza we went to lunch and then to a small market to do some shopping. After shopping we headed to a cenote. Josh swam, I took pictures.

View from the bottom of the cenote

Josh is out there somewhere. And the man standing half way up the picture on the right is NOT naked. I promise. Like I said, there were plenty of Speedos.

Thursday was spent back at the resort. We did a bit more lounging but we spent much of the day snorkeling. A reef was right offshore and it offered some fantastic snorkeling. We saw squid, HUGE parrot fish, at least 8 turtles, and a myriad of other fish that I won't try to name. Josh saw some stingrays too. Sadly I did not see them as I had already gone back to land. We didn't have an underwater camera so you will just have to imagine all of the fishes. Feel free to let your imagination run wild though, because it really was amazing.

This is the beach right outside our room, where we went snorkeling. You can see the water breaking out past the reef.

Seemed like a nice place to relax.

Friday was our last day in Mexico and we spent it at Tulum and XelHa. Tulum is another Mayan site located right on the ocean.

The Great Palace. Currently home to several iguanas.

Mayan head on the Temple of the Frescoes. Eyes opened on this one, while the one on the opposite corner had closed eyes. Really wanted to see the artwork inside, but there is no public access.

View of the Caribbean from the north side of the Castillo.

The Castillo at Tulum.

The Caribbean, Tulum's sandy beach port, and the Lighthouse. The Lighthouse would have had unique flags to identify the city and fire on top to light the shoreline.

After a few hours at Tulum we went to XelHa, which is a water park of sorts. It is more of a nature park based around water than a water park. There were tons of places to snorkel and swim, some small zip lines, and a "cliff jump" that was only about 15-20 feet. It was fun, relaxing, and beautiful.