An Ancient Adventure

A very early morning start with the alarm clock screaming at 04:30am, while still pitch black dark outside, I try desperately to find my personality swirling in the bottom of my coffee mug, as we will be meeting friends at the ferry dock, to catch the 06:00am to Cancun. Semi-human we manage to stumble into our dinghy and motor to land, followed by the 2km zombie march to the ferry. Yes of course, things can’t possibly just go to plan, that would be boring. We arrive at the ferry terminal, to realize we (Eric) might have left our dinghy lights on grrrrr, being the lovely wife that I am, I volunteered to take the long walk back to turn them off ( I was happy to get the extra steps in ) Although felt rather annoyed to discover that they were off. 😭 I did feel somewhat consoled by the sight of our friends who had suffered their own dinghy drama at this unreasonable hour.

Thankfully we are not getting herded onto a bus with 100 sweaty tourists asking us if we drop anchor in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean so we can sleep, but rather on a private tour just the 4 of us and a dog named Miço.

After a very comfortable 2 ½ hour car drive, further into the Yucatan Peninsula, we arrived at the beautifully preserved Chitchen Itza (aka Chicken Pizza 😂) this UNESCO World Heritage site, took us back a few millennia to a time when the Maya ruled these lands. Here we learnt about the lives, and culture of the Mayan people, who are one of the indigenous people of Mexico and Central America, many moons before the Spaniards arrived. Based on their drawings and writings, it has been determined that they were an extremely advanced civilization, so much so that pyramids were built to depict astronomical events, sort of an ancient NASA, making them probably the most advanced astrologers at this time. Well preserved pyramids and temples, even entire cities in the rainforest have given archaeologists the ability to piece together this very interesting and ancient civilization.

There is still a fairly strong Mayan culture today in the Yucatan peninsula, where language and traditions are still practiced, however it certainly is not the empire of millennia past, the challenge still for archaeologist is what caused the ultimate fall of the Mayan empire, could it have been war as there has been much evidence to this fact….however as we are told the re-search continues.

With temperatures hitting 32°C at 09:20 in the morning, I suddenly felt quite grateful for the early morning start to do the first tour of the day as by noon it would be around 40°C

By now we are absolutely roasting and happy to head back to our airconditioned van to make our way to the beautiful X’keken Cenote. What is a cenote?  One could think of it as natures underground spa. 😁  Very basically it is a natural sinkhole, that permanently contains water. It is filled by both rain and underground rivers. The Yucatan Peninsula has hundreds of Cenotes, and these used to be a source of water for the Mayan people.

After roasting under the Yucatan sun,  stepping down into the dark cave to enjoy the cool underground temperatures and natures natural spa with water at a delightful 22°C was very welcome on all our bodies, we enjoyed  floating peacefully under the beautiful stalactite (mineral formations that hang down like icicles in a cave) Our guide read our personalities well and decided to take us to a cenote with almost no tourists so we had the place practically to ourselves.

We decided to take the go pro down instead of the iPhone for photos, but I have now officially concluded that the go pro takes lousy pictures.

After a very satisfying lunch, we had a walk around the quaint little town of Valladolid before taking the 2-hour drive back to Cancun, where there was no longer too much chatter as we all just passed out for most of the ride back.

The day felt satisfying, as we got a dose of everything, culture, exercise, good food and rounded the day off with a sunset, and a couple of cocktails on the beach back in Isla Mujeres