Okay can I first start out by saying thanks to everyone who's been reading my blog. Today I reached over 1000 views! I'd love to hear what you think of it so if you've been following, let me know! I'm so glad that I have such great friends and family. I can't wait to tell all of you about this when I get home.
Also, I want to give a shout out to Caitlin's grandma who faithfully reads my blog. I hope to meet you when I come back to Utah!
Also, my mom said that I should write on here that I'm kind of a few days behind on my blog so for example I went to Chichen Itza on Friday, not Tuesday as it says. It's kind of confusing because I like to catch up on my blog on Sunday, but from the dates on my blog it seems like I was out and about doing activities on Sunday. I promise that I go to church and stay home on Sundays, so just ignore the dates at the top.
But anyways, back to business... Today was an INCREDIBLE day! How often do you get to say that you went to visit one of the seven wonders of the world on the weekend? Well this weekend I did! Oh and just FYI for anyone else who is wondering (like I was) what the other six wonders of the world are, they include: The great wall of China, Petra in Jordan, Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, Machu Pichuu in Peru, the Colosseum in Italy, the Taj Mahal in India, and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. Okay, new bucket list starting now... must visit all of these places before I die! If they're as cool as Chichen Itza, it's definitely worth it!
Welcome! Prepare to be amazed!
I am now the official hair-braider of the group. All the girls always want fun braids in their hair! I feel like I'm at girl's camp all over again. I love doing other people's hair!
This is the first building we saw when we walked in! All the pillars were pretty cool. There were a ton of really awesome things to look at, so I was easily distracted from Paco's speeches... Speaking of Paco, I was telling my roommates this morning that I hope we don't have a guide like Paco again because it's more fun to just explore on our own, but of course right when we got to the park to get on the bus guess who was standing there? Paco! haha, of course! Oh and if you forget who Paco is, he was our guide that came with us to Uxmal. Bless his heart; he's probably such a great guy, but we're not all Mayan History majors like him, so we're not always as serious about learning every detail of history as he is, but he doesn't realize that and he's always super serious.
I love the trees here! This is Kaitlin and I loving the lush, green jungle.
Warning: This excursion slowly turns into "Brooke and Laura's day at Chichen Ita" lol. We were together the WHOLE day! We both just really love the same things. Obviously taking pictures is our number one priority, then people-watching, and then after that is learning stuff from Paco #priorities
The smaller pyramid... wait to see the big one coming up!
This is the temple for the wind god. You can tell because there is a round tower on top. It's very rare to see round structures in Mayan architecture and usually when you do, it symbolizes the god of wind.
There were some beautiful clouds in the sky today.
Morgan and I
Brooke and I in front of this way cool little temple/hut thing. It was so detailed and one of the coolest things I've ever seen!
Ethan and I... Ethan's a free-rider. He didn't bring a camera and he so he just takes pictures with everyone else and then uses their pictures.
You can tell that this is for the rain god, Chaac, because of the little elephant-like noses on the sides.
Bigote club! Three posers and one real bigote. (Bigote = mustache)
There were so many fun things to buy here but I didn't have my money with me because there has never been anything to buy on any of the other excursions. I was kind of bummed, but it was still fun to look at all of the little things they had.
My profe told me that even though the vendors are selling cool stuff, a lot of it is fake, and made in China. He kind of discouraged us from buying here, but after thinking about it, I decided that I didn't really care. To me it is more about the memory and the excursion than the quality. I'm pretty sure that 80 percent of things that I own were made in China so.... equis.
Now you can see why it's one of the seven wonders of the world! It was soo beautiful! Also, about two months ago, right before this trip, I had a dream that I went to Chichen Itza in my Hedley shirt, and that I took a picture in front of this pyramid. Then in my dream I Tweeted them and they replied! So today I finally took my dream picture!
Nike shorts club in front of the pyramid #justdoit
Laurita, Brooke, Caitlin, I
The stairs were actually really steep! I wish we could have climbed them, but all of the ruins had ropes around them, so you couldn't climb/touch them. That part was kind of a bummer because we had so much fun climbing things at Dzibilchaltun and Uxmal.
Chichen Itza is BY FAR the most popular Mayan ruin site. There were tons of people there! And all though it was gorgeous, it kind of took the magic out of it. The other ruins were a lot more peaceful because we had the parks almost to ourselves. I loved just walking around the other sites and thinking about who might have walked there in the past. Was I walking through a place where Nephi, King Benjamin, Mormon, or even the Saviour might have been? The other sites were kind of spiritual in a way, but there were thousands of people here so it was definitely a completely different experience. Still cool, but different.
This Pyramid was the highlight for me. Sorry about all the pictures coming up in front of it. I probably captured every angle possible, but it was just so pretty!
Definitely my favourite ruin of all ruins!
Some info about the pyramid...
As you can see in the picture there were also a ton of workers working on the pyramid. They were probably just preserving it, but as I watched them, I noticed that some of the rocks were on little hinges and we actually just little hidden doors that led to a storage room. That was kind of a bummer to see. It makes you wonder how much of this is actually still real and how much the pyramid now actually resembles the original structure?
Hedley #represent
We ALWAYS need roommate pictures!
Classmates admiring the pyramid.
Caitlin was paying a lot of attention to Paco ;)
Group shot! Everyone in front of the pyramid! I'm quite impressed with how organized we look... this sure is a great group of friends that I have here. Everyone is so great!
Paco. The group celebrity.
Daily workout...
Brooke and I found these cool column things so we had to take a picture. There were so many and there were rows and rows of them.
The Mayans probably meditated too...
The Mayan king, his queen, and his personal fanner
We spent a lot of the day scouting out any shade we could find! Today was probably the hottest that it has ever been since I've been in Mexico, and we were stuck in a wide open field for 4 hours with barely any trees or shade. We were all dying and soaked in sweat. A few people got heat stroke too. It was not pretty. I've never been so hot and sweaty in my life. We could have used some help from those wind and rain gods today...
I'm still trying to get into the bigote club... maybe one day they'll accept me!
Some more ruins with one of the gods. People used to offer sacrifices to the gods by placing them on this guys' stomach!
Next we went and saw a Cenote and I wanted to go in it sooo bad! We couldn't though because apparently it's a holy cenote. That's pretty cool and all but I'm guessing that it's more likely they don't want to have 1000 people in the cenote at one time haha. Too many tourists here!
Brooke and I with the holy cenote in the background.
If you stand in this exact spot and then clap really loud it echoes through the top window of the pyramid and makes a weird duck-quack sounds. It was fun to try!
Professional clappers.
This is a picture of a bird eating a human heart... not exactly sure why but it's kind of cool/gross.
Profe's daughter, Lily stood in front of this wall covered in fossilized skulls and said "Hey look at my skeleton face." It was probably the cutest thing of my life so she taught me how to do it.
The Mayans are known for this football/soccer/rugby/raquetball game that they used to play with only their hips and forearms. The point was to keep the ball in play and then get it through the circular goals (you can see one on the right in the top, middle part of the wall). Everyone used to play it, even women and children, but they also had intense tournaments within the city that involed human sacrifices.
This is the largest mesoamerican ball court in the world!
The walls had a ton of cool designs in it. They were probably the advertisement banners sponsoring the games ;) ... I think?
Bradley and his big mouth!
#goof
Trekkin' along like the Nephites and Lamanites once did =)
This picture is so precious. This is profe and his family. They all look just as exhausted as everyone was feeling. Today was full of a lot of sun, walking, and sweating.
... One last look. Bye Chichen!
After a long day we finally got to sit down for a minute and rest. We went to a restaurant at Chichen Itza and had a Mayan buffet. Everything was delicious and we had dancers come to our table and dance the jarana for us. It was fun and relaxing.
Tyler's thinking about trying out for the jarana dance team ;)
After lunch we got to go swimming! Of course Brooke and I were the first ones in as always! The cool water had never felt so good. We were all so sweaty from today everyone got in the water and we had fun swimming, doing hand stand contests, and playing underwater bridge. It was a great time.
Alli's awesome tan line from today! I'm pretty sure we all got burnt a little bit...
Oh, and by the way for anyone who was wondering, my dream became reality today. I tweeted this picture to Hedley and then checked my Twitter patiently all day. Then I had dinner, came back, and they favourited and retweeted my picture! I can always count on Tommy Mac! Today, over 140, 000 people saw this picture! I have all these random, new followers now too haha. Life is good =)
No comments:
Post a Comment