February 4

We finally made it out of the US on February 2^nd, but instead of returning directly to Guatemala, we flew to Cancun where my mom has a time-share at a resort called The Mayan Palace. We’re only been here once before, about 4 years ago, and there have been a number of hurricanes since. Luckily, the resort shows no signs of this, except that all the buildings are new, and there’s now a new pool, instead of the water park promised. (It’s still coming, but construction got delayed.) The resort is as beautiful as I remember it, and the pool almost as big. (It used to have the title of biggest pool in the world, but I think it’s now the second biggest pool…something in Argentina is supposedly bigger now.)

The first couple of days, we just spent time on the beach and in the pool, hanging out and relaxing. On Wednesday, we went on a tour with a program called AllTourNative, which we’ve used before. Last time we had an amazing time, so we were very optimistic. And we weren’t disappointed! This time we had to drive for about two hours to get to the start of the tour, which was a little unfortunate, but it gave me time to sleep some more since we had to leave at 7 am. The first thing we did was canoe around a lake there, but we only had about 15 minutes to explore the whole thing, which wasn’t exactly the world’s smallest lake. However, Riss and mom and I saw a turtle (from a distance…we were making too much noise to get close) and it was in the middle of the jungle, so it was definitely pretty.

After that, we walked through more of the jungle and learned about local plants, some which are poisonous and make you itch for the next 40 years (we got the feeling our guide was exaggerating a little, but he never told us the real number) and bark that was an antidote to the itching. A tree that cured kidney stones. A plant that helped with cancer. It was a very pretty walk up a small hill, where we started to do the zip line. It wasn’t quite as steep or long as some of the ones we had been on before, but it was still lots of fun to through yourself off a cliff into the air…and not die! The entire group did the activity and had lots of fun, even though a bunch of them were tentative at first.

From there we went on to a ritual ceremony performed by a local Mayan shaman, who was blessing and cleansing us, before we went into the sacred Cenote. (These are sacred pools which are clean and have fresh water that the Mayans drink out of; these are very common as underground pools in the Yucatán.) This particular one was about 50 feet underground, and so we couldn’t just jump in. Instead we got to repel down into the water, which wasn’t cold at all; in fact it was very refreshing and nobody wanted to get out. Inside, it was like a cave, since there were only two or three holes that let sunlight in. The water was so clear that you could see deep down under the water, where there was coral and fish (it was about 120 feet deep).

After we got out of the water, we went to have a delicious lunch at a near-by Mayan village, which was supported through the AllTourNative program (taking pictures of us, and making souvenirs). It was typical rice and black beans with chicken sauce, plus hibiscus juice (almost exactly what a local lunch would have been like in Guatemala) and I’m not sure if I was just really hungry or the feel was really good or both, but it was one of the best lunches I’ve had. Instead of having time to rest after that, we got right in the van again to drive to an ancient Mayan village called Copá.

We didn’t have a whole lot of time there, but it was a really amazing experience also, because we saw one temple that was shaped like a pyramid and was dedicated to the Mayan god of rain. It had nine levels, and took the ancient Mayans about 450 years to build. The finished product was somewhere around 80 feet tall. Just my estimate; they didn’t actually give us a number. We also got to see the ball courts where a game that was a mix of soccer and basketball was played. The winner’s were sacrificed to the gods. Excellent prize huh?! A little bit away from here, was a pyramid called the Watchtower, and it is supposedly the tallest one in the Yucatán. This one had only seven levels, but was somewhere between 120 and 140 feet tall. (They tell you the number of steps, which are each about a foot high and mom, Riss and I all disagree, so I’m not sure exactly what the number was.)

When we finally made it back to the resort around 7 o’clock that night, we were all exhausted from driving and being out in the sun so much. However, it was a really fun day.