Today was another excursion! We did all of the fun excursion things in one day... Cenotes in the morning, ruins at noon, panuchos for lunch, and exploring pueblos in the afternoon. It was a big day, but lots of fun!
There's nothing I love more than seeing signs like this!
Birds eye view!
We all secretly wanted Aaron to jump into the cenote from up here. Apparently they have diving competitions here every year so he totally could have done it too!
Cenotesss! Marie, Me, Laura, and Tyler
Caty. Dorbs.
We had to climb down some stairs to get into it.... I felt like we were climbing down into a dungeon.
One of the most beautiful cenotes I've ever seen! The vines hanging down were so gorgeous and all the plants inside were unlike any other cenotes that we have ever been to. It was really pretty but kind of more touristy and well taken care of. Fun, but not as pretty as just pure, natural beauty that we've seen in other cenotes.
Asian tourists =)
This cenote was FILLED with fish! And they weren't scared of people either. While I was swimming they would touch me everywhere! One time I was under the water with my eyes open and one swam right at my face! Lily (profe's daughter) was so funny too because she kept trying to catch them. She's much braver than I am.
Cenotes.... <3 P.S. I look bald. Equis.
Wait there are things here to climb and jump off of? Obviously Brooke and I are so there!
And jump! Photocred: Ryan
Jumping pics!
After swimming for about an hour or so we got back in the bus and headed to Ek' Balam. Just as a warning we all look so bad in the rest of the pictures from today because we were still wet from the cenotes, had crazy hair, and it was probably one of the hottest days that we've had so far. The sun was just beating down the whole time we were at the ruins. I think I was drier when I was at the cenotes than I was when I was at the ruins! lol
Bienvenidos as Ek' Balam.
This guy was at the entrance and you could take pictures with him... Amber wanted a picture with him and so he did this. Haha might be one of the best pictures from the trip!
Mayan band!
I have to admit, I wasn't too stoked to go to more ruins. I was kind of ruin-ed out at this point. Once you've seen one pile of rocks, you've seen them all. But I was pleasantly surprised by these ruins. They were GORGEOUS and we got to climb them all so that was a ton of fun. The site wasn't huge either so it was fun just hanging out and climbing all of them together!
Group shot on top of a temple =) After this picture my camera died so the rest of the pictures here were ones that I stole from my friends. Boo.
Peek-a-Boo!
We love Laura-squared pics!
Nat, me, Brad, Jackie, and Alannah
I'm on top of the world eh!
Our attempt at writing LOVE with our bodies lol
Cuties... Me, Gayleen, Morgan and Audrey.
Candid. Just exploring the ruins.
Pyramid climbing.
Aaron! Pose with me!
I love all the thick trees all around the ruins. It made it feel so magical and secluded.
These two are hilarious. They love crazy shirts and so today they decided to change shirts. Caitlin is wearing Ethan's whale shirt and Ethan's wearing Catlin's horse shirt. Also, Caitlin is wearing my shorts and I am wore her shorts all day. We love sharing clothes!
They were tired of taking normal pictures.
Ek' Balam! I loved that we didn't have a guide or anything and that we just got to explore on our own.
Next we all climbed this huge temple thing.
Longest climb ever in the hot hot hot heat! There were 105 steps. We counted!
Almost to the top! Aaron was crazy.... he ran up all the stairs in 25 seconds. He would. haha
These steps definitely rival the RB stairs at BYU... after these stairs those are a piece of cake!
Obviously the climb was so worth it though! Look at this beautiful view!
Little ancient Mayan town.
We were feeling so in touch with nature today.
First ones to the top of the temple! Obviously I was so slow... Less panuchos and more exercise is needed haha.
We love stairs. But not really. But we love to climb things. First world pains.
Let me interpret these ancient Mayan inscriptions for you: The world is going to end in 2012.
There was no one here so Caitlin and I climbed under some ropes and snuck up these super steep little stairs... just for the pic of course!
Little plaza with either the most giant baptismal font in the history of the world or some giant hole for another reason haha.
We found this little room and for some reason it was nice and cold. As you can see in this picture we were all soaked in sweat and so we hung out here for a bit to cool off.
Where is the hidden air conditioner?
Then I was walking with Ryan and Morgan and Ryan wanted to climb this tree! I told him that I've never climbed a tree before and he couldn't believe that, so he told me I had to climb up the tree with him. It was actually so fun! He was so fast though, he raced up that those branches and then chilled at the top like Katniss.
Ryan showed me all the good branches to climb on! I had such a deprived childhood living in Canada where all the trees are so small because they break from the weight of the snow. The only big ones we have are pine trees. Not so good for climbing.
And we made it down safe too! First tree-climbing experience = success!
Favourite critter of the day. There weren't many iguanas here for me to take pictures of sadly. Mom, you'll have to visit these ruins if we ever come back!
When we finished at the ruins/started dying of heat stroke we got back in the bus and headed for Valladolid. Another town in Yucatan that's a few hours from Merida.
We were pretty hungry when we got there but we didn't know where any good places to eat were. We decided our best bet was to just follow the locals and eat where ever they ate. Luckily we found this big Mexican-style food court and had a delicious lunch.
Let me translate... we have everything delicious that you would ever want!
I got my faves, panuchos and Caitlin tried Lomitos de Valladolid (loins - hopefully girded haha)
After lunch we had a few hours of spare time and so we went for a walk and decided to tour the town by ourselves a bit. Of course Valladolid had a cathedral in the center of the town. Typical mexican town.
The cathedral.
Today was the first day of the olympics and so all the stores had TVs in them and they were all playing the Olympics. We watched some women's volleyball for a bit.
Then we set off with our gigantic map to explore the city!
We saw so many cute, multi-coloured streets.
We love walking around Mexican towns. The houses just have such a natural beauty. I could walk up and down these streets all day.
We saw this slide in someone's backyard. I feel like the extreme heat in Yucatan + a metal slide does not provide a lot of fun. But maybe...
Then as we were walking we randomly saw this super cool little garden thing! The whole thing was made out of broken pieces of pottery. Legit eh?
Hola! Quieres tomar de mi fuente?
Isn't that so cool!?
I'm painting my future house this colour. No questions asked.
Maybe I'll paint the sides pink and green?
Just chillin' in a park. We decided to go here because it was highlighted blue on the map but it was pretty lame. Good thing I love Caitlin so much because even though we didn't do anything too cool in Valladolid we just had fun walking and talking together.
The wind was making it quite difficult to read my map haha
Caitlin's dad is a dentist so she needed this picture just for him.
Then we decided to go to this famous intersection when 5 streets meet at one place. Someone told us about it so we went but.... umm.... it was literally just an intersection. If I didn't know that it was supposed to be something cool I would have completely missed it haha.
Five streets! Woooo! hahaha
I think this town runs completely on a grid system and so the fact that there are more that two streets intersecting is apparently super padre? haha
Then on the way back to the bus we had to get ice cream =) We asked her if we could try a few flavours and she told us that we could and so we both tried one and she gave us tester spoons. Then we asked her to try another and she looked at us kind of weird. We didn't know why she looked so confused and then she's like umm well, I need your spoons if you want to try something else. Sooo apparently germs aren't a problem here? I hope that the person that tried oreo ice cream before me wasn't sick lol.
Today was pretty fun! I think my favourite part was definitely the cenote though! Sooo cool! And, I just love swimming/anything to do with water. Great day.
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