On the bus to our excursion for the day: Mayan ruins and a water park.
There are three different sets of Mayan ruins relatively near Cancun. We opted for the closest that was about an hour away. It's called Tulum which means "wall" or "fortress".
We had to take a trolley from the parking lot to the entrance of the ruins. It's about a 5-10 minute ride. Jason was trying to take my picture, but at the exact moment Jason leaned out with the camera, our tour guide leaned out too so it looked like I was staring directly at him. It made things awkward so I turned my head before Jason could snap a picture. Haha. Oh well.
I loved all the jungle and green all around us. In Utah people have to plant the trees once they are done building things to make it pretty, and in Cancun they have to carve out space from the trees to build things. It's just so lush and beautiful.
There are five entrances in the wall of Tulum, but only two are in use. The other three are blocked off to visitors. The wall orginially stood about 19 feet to protect the "high society" people living within. Basically it was an ancient gated community.
My handsome hubby
When Tulum was discovered it was completely ran over with jungle. They had to clean it out and restore the grounds for the tourists.
This is the main temple of Tulum.
Tulum is the only Mayan city built on a coast and one of the few protected by a wall.
It was a seaport trading mainly in jade and turquoise.
We saw iguanas like this guy everywhere! I think he had the best view though. :)
There is a beach you can access from the ruins. They don't encourage a lot of people to go swimming there though because it is a sea turtle refuge. (I didn't see any while we were there.)
It was so beautiful!
So we had a couple hours at Tulum then we were supposed to board the tour bus and head to Xel-Ha (the water park). Jason and I mis-calculated how much time it would take to get back to the bus. By the time we got back to the trolley stop, we had just barely missed a trolley and didn't know how long it would take for the next one to arrive so we decided to just start walking. Unfortunately we were walking in the wrong direction and when we realized our mistake, it was time for the bus to leave. So we turned around and started running in sandals and flip-flops back to the trolley stop, where we missed yet another trolley so ran in the correct direction. By the time we got to the correct parking lot, our bus was nowhere to be found. Thanks to lucky timing, Jason spotted the bus driving away and we were able to flag it down and climb on. All the other passengers cheered for us and the tour guide got on the intercom and announced "mission accomplished". We were DRENCHED in sweat because of the humidity and heat and panting like dogs. But we made it and headed on to our next adventure.
The first thing on our agenda when we arrived at Xel-Ha was to go snorkeling. We found the snorkeling spot and dove in.
The water was a little chilly but you got used to it pretty fast. (Jason can't tell us apart in pictures when we are in snorkel gear, so in case you were wondering this is me pictured.)
Selfie!
The snorkeling here was rather underwhelming. The water was murky from all the people swimming around and kicking up sand. There wasn't a whole lot of rocks or coral so therefore not a ton of fish. But we did have fun swimming around for about 15 minutes checking things out and then we were ready for the next thing.
A lot of the paths to the different activities were paved through the jungle. It made me laugh to see so many trees that they decided to keep and just pave around instead of cutting them down. This was a typical path:
Jason tried out the rope swing several times.
I was too chicken because I heard people commenting about the water being a little cold. Apparently it wasn't too bad.
Walking along the path we would find beautiful scenes like this one. The water was SO CLEAR!
There was a "lazy river" that was so lazy you had to often help yourself along by grabbing branches. But look at how cool this mangrove forest was that we floated through!
I would have loved to do it again, but we ran out of time before I had the chance.
Near the end of the lazy river there were places to cliff jump.
Jason was the brave one.
They also had a ropes course thing. Walking across this rope bridge made me feel a little like I was doing a Survivor challenge. It was definitely HARD. Especially since there were several people walking on it at once so the weight caused the lower rope to dip pretty far and made it hard for me to reach both ropes at once. Plus there were a few guys behind me purposely wiggling the rope and causing me and a girl behind me to completely lose our foothold and hang from the arm rope for a few seconds before we could get our feet back under us. But they did it all in good fun and it was a fun little challenge. Jason was surprised I made it across the whole bridge without falling into the water. He kept looking behind him expecting to see that I had fallen off.
Part of the ropes course included ziplines. You could either choose a swing one that allowed you to sit or a bar to hang onto. The first time across I did the swing one because after the rope bridge my arms were super sore. But they recovered a bit and I was able to do the bar one a couple of times as well.
At that point we were pretty hungry so we ate some delicious BBQ dinner (the water park was all-inclusive so we could eat whenever and whatever we wanted). Right by the food pavilion were some hammocks that we relaxed in for a few minutes before grabbing out stuff from the lockers and heading back to the bus (which we did not miss this time).
That evening at the resort they had a drum and fire show that was entertaining to watch.
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