MEXICO!

We went to Mexico for a week in the end of May and beginning of June.  We flew into Cancun and then drove an hour to our resort in Playa del Carmen.

We stayed at the Iberostar Tucan.  The property is actually shared with the Iberostar Quetzal, so that means the pool is huge, there are twice as many restaurants, and the property is GINORMOUS!!  The restaurants have great food.  The restaurant options are: two all-you-can-eat buffets, four dress-up restaurants, and two beach/poolside restaurants.  For breakfast we ate at the buffets, for lunch we ate down at the pool, and for dinner we mostly did the buffet.  We went to two of the dress-up restaurants though.  The restaurants we went to were Japanese and seafood.  At night there were shows to see.  During the day, we spent a lot of time by/in the pool/ocean.  We bought a ball that can bounce on water from Brookstone before we went.  By the time we left, two other groups had bought the balls from the gift shop at the front of the hotel.  When we weren't doing that we did some other pretty fun stuff.

One day, we went on a tour to Tulum, Chichen Itza, and a Cenote called Ik Kil. Both of the ruins, are ruins of the Mayan People.  We went with a tour group called Alma's LDS Tours. We loved hearing about the similarities of their beliefs to the LDS church.  Similarities like: their God was a white, bearded man, that he was born of an Earthly mother and a Heavenly Father, that he came to Earth and will come again one day. There are too many similarities on here to list but look them up or ask me!

We were picked up at our hotel in a van by our tour guide.

This is our tour guide, Miguel 

First we drove to Tulum where we looked at ruins for about an hour and a half.  Here are some pictures from that.

Tulum literally means "walled" and the city of Tulum was surrounded by walls on three sides and backed onto a steep cliff that overlooked the ocean.  Inside of the walls was where rulers and priests lived, while the commoners lived outside of the walls.   

The temples were places of worship and only the highest priest was allowed inside.  In order to pay reverence to their God, the steps leading to the Temple were so narrow that the priest would have to walk up them sideways and therefore would never have their back to God.  The doors were also very low, meaning the priest would have to bow to enter.

The Mayans were known for their amazing architecture.  In the picture above, on the Spring Equinox (also considered the birth of their God), the Sun would perfectly shine between the 2 buldings on the left.  The light would then shine directly into the Temple of Fertility (picture below). 

From there, we drove to Chichen Itza.  This was a much bigger ruin.  Here are some pictures from there.

This is the main attraction at Chichen Itza,  El Castillo or the Temple of Kukulkan (The Feathered Serpent).  Chichen Itza was one of the largest Mayan cities, built around the 9th century AD.  It is also one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Each of the pyramid's four sides (representing the four seasons) has 91 steps which, when added together and including the temple platform on top as the final 'step', produces a total of 365 steps.  The current temple is actually built on top of a smaller identical temple.

This is the side of the main temple.  During the spring and autumn Equinoxes, the Descent of the Feathered Serpent occurs.  The Mayans believed that their God would return in the form of a Feathered Serpent.  The snake on the side is built in such a way that during those days the northwest corner of the pyramid casts a series of triangular shadows against the western stairs that creates an illusion of the serpent is slowly descending day by day until the whole serpent appears.

 

This is what the final serpent looks like. (Clicky thing)

 This is the ball court at Chichen Itza.  Here is a description of the game played here.

That little hoop is where the teams had to get the ball through.

This was where the priests and rulers would sit to watch the game.

These are depictions of the skulls of the Team Captains of the winning team.  The losing team cut off the heads of the winning teams and then the heads were drawn in memory.

After Chichen Itza, we drove to Ik Kil.  Ik Kil is a cenote.  It is a natural swimming hole.  Here are some pictures:

This is what it looked like from above.  We had to walk down steps (see below picture) to get to it.

Here we are jumping in! The water was FREEZING. But definetly worth it after a SCORCHING hot day with very high humidity.

  

The water was so clear! You could see tons of fish swimming around.

This is me jumping from the 20ft high platform!

Overall, we all really enjoyed our day!  At the end of the day, our guide gave us a gift.  It was a recreation of this stone carving.  The carving is believed to be of the Tree of Life as seen in Lehi's vision.   

 

We had a great day and would recommend this tour company or a tour like it to anyone visiting this area of Mexico.

Another excursion we did was to Xel-Ha.  Xel-Ha is a natural waterpark.  There is a lazy river, snorkeling, zip lines, cliff jumping, bike riding  swimming with the dolphins, and so much more.  The way it works is that you buy a wristband that lets you do almost everything (scuba, dolphins, and a few other things are an additional fee. We drove about an hour to get there.  When we got there, we got our lockers and got ready to go out. I hadn't been feeling good, so we got me some Pepto Bismal and I was good to go.  Then we headed to get breakfast.  After breakfast, we went on the lazy river.  This lazy river was a natural river that took about 45 minutes to float down.  You got to go down in either single or double tubes.

Along the way there were zip lines and spots to jump off cliffs.

 We did that a few times and then went to the main lagoon.  Here you can float and snorkel around (the snorkel stuff was free).

 We saw a ton of rays along the bottom of the lagoon.  We touched them.  They're slimy.

Other than those trips, we just lazed around the resort.  We did walk into town one night but quickly returned because of the high humidity.  Great TRIP!