Month: May 2008

One afternoon while we were in Cancun Bryan and I snorkeled at the Punta Nizuca reef. The best thing was that it was in front of the hotel next to ours, and it was completely free! We saw a bunch of different fish and even a couple of squids.  The squids we saw came within a foot of Bryan. We also saw some neat looking coral. We didn’t take pictures of all the fish we saw, but I took a few of the better ones.

We chartered a catamaran one of the days we were in Cancun and the captain took us wherever we wanted to go. We decided to go to Isla Mujeres and had lunch and snorkeled. The pictures are horrible since they were taken with a point and shoot camera. We saw many different fish, starfish, and even a ray. We also saw a huge parrot fish the size of football. On the way back to Cancun the Captain turned off the motor and we slowly sailed back. Since it was breeding time for the Sea Turtles we saw a couple of them surface. We had such an amazing day!

The first day we were in Cancun we went on a zipline tour. The tour included a number of zip lines followed by a short bike ride to a Cenote. The zip lines were so amazing! They wound 2 miles through the beautiful Yucatan jungle. Then we rode about a mile through the jungle to a gorgeous cenote. We swam in the cenote and Bryan rode the zip line into the water. It was such a fun and exciting day!

For dinner we went to La casa de las Margaritas. While we ate dinner we listened to a marachi band. It was so much fun!

When we were in Cancun we had a couple of days that we didn’t have anythign planned so that we could relax and soak up some sun at the beach. On Saturday evening we made reservastions at the Laguna Grill so we could watch the sunset. However, after dinner we got a real treat when an alligator swam up right next to our table. We all decided that the Laguna grill had the best atmosphere in Cancun.

Last Friday we visited the AMAZING Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza. We had a guided tour which took us 2.5 hours from Cancun to Chichen Itza. On the way there we got a good glimpse of how most of Mexico lives when we passed through the small villages. When we got there we ate an authentic Mexican meal at the Mayaland Hotel and watched some talented dancers. A lady was making corn tortillas from scratch. The men and women first danced with bottles of water on their head. Then they came out with trays that were filled with cups of water. When they danced they would spin around and the good dancers were able to keep the trays spinning on their heads after they stopped twirling. 

After lunch we took a guided tour of Chichen Itza. Words can’t even describe how intelligent and advanced the Mayan people were. The people built the Temple of the Kukulcan (Meaning Feathered Serpent), with such knowledge of the seasons and they based it off the Mayan calendar. Every step, design, and platform on the temple represented something significant in the Mayan world. The Temple had 4 sides to it, which included 91 steps for the 91 days of each season, the last platform on the top was the extra day of the year. It was named after the Feathered Serpent because when the sun sets they built the temple so that you can see a serpent sliding down the side of the temple in the shadow. They also made the temple perfectly acoustic. If you clapped at the base of the south side of the temple your echo would be the noise of a bird. That was so amazing to hear. There were many other structures at the Chichen Itza site. They were all so intricate and detailed. The whole experience was so mind boggling and now we know why Chichen Itza was recently deemed one of the new 7 wonders of the world.