Chichen Itza

Our tour of the Mayan Ruins at Chichen Itza picked us up on our hotel early on Tuesday morning. It was a nice big chartered bus and wasn't close to full. It was about a 2 hour drive inland to the ruins. Our tour guide was Rafael. He was witty and knowledgable, and we learned a lot about the Mayan culture and ruins from him. 

Chichen Itza actually means "at the mouth of the well of the wizard". You can imagine that any source of water in that area would be a valuable asset to the people who controlled it.

The large temple is the centerpiece of the area, surrounded by other platforms buildings, and structures to create a wide city center. The temple has 4 sides representing the 4 seasons. Each corner has 9 platforms corresponding to the 9 months of gestation in the birth of  a child. Each side has 90 steps, with the 91st step being the top platform, to represent the days in each season. Each side is also aligned perfectly north, south, east, and west, according to the poles of the earth. And all this was built without use of any modern tools. In fact, scholars have no idea how they managed to build it.

When our guide was asked about the Mayan calendar ending in our year 2012, he responded that the Mayan people didn't mean for that to indicate the end of the world. They understood that life comes in cycles and seasons. Mathematically they came up with some 5000 plus years when creating their calendar. That signaled a changing in life cycles, or a significant event in the life of the people after that. It didn't mean the end of the whole world. Phew.... I was scared there for a moment.

The serpent head and jaguar appear as symbols on the structures and in their writings.

The skulls in the picture above are on the walls of a large platform. This platform is wear the king would display the decapitated heads (impaled on sticks) of enemies or slaves as a warning to any who would try to cross him. He would do this at times when visiting peoples were coming for trade or for games.

Yes, games. The ring in the picture above is in a large rectangular field with a high wall and ring on an opposite wall as well. The object was for the two teams of men to get the ball made from a rubber tree through that ring without using their hands. The legend has it that the winning team would then be given the "honor" of being sacrificed to the gods. I'll take the losing team any day...

The acoustics were amazing in there. Each sound echoed off the four walls bouncing around and around. And you could whisper at one end and be heard clearly all around.

These are some well preserved hieroglyphs under a ledge on one of the walls in the games arena.

Much of the Mayan culture, religion, science, mathematics, and architectural knowledge is lost to us today because the Catholic church burned many of their manuscripts in an attempt to wipe out the paganism. I think that's why much of what we see and hear about them is just the savagery that was part of their survival as a strong people. They are a people of peace now, and the crime is very low where the Mayan descendants live.

nuestros excelentes vacaciones

Barry and I just returned from a 5 day trip to the Mayan Riviera (near Cancun, Mexico). We left a little after 7 am on Sunday and arrived in Cancun at 7:30 pm. It was so much less stressful traveling without our kids. Bathroom stops took only a few minutes as opposed to 20. We were very tired and both had headaches by the time we arrived at our hotel.

Our room was luxurious, and there was even a couch on the balcony that was great for enjoying our ocean view.

The shower was a rainfall shower dropping from above you in the middle of the large walk-in area. Our only complaint of the room at all was that it took a long time to get any hot water to the shower, but it wasn't a big deal because once it heated up it felt great and never ran out.

We spent a lot of our relaxation time on the private beach, just reading and enjoying the sounds of the waves. We even received wonderful massages in a hut on the beach where no noise machines or cds were needed to induce the relaxing atmosphere.

The picture below is of us inside a cabana (Bali bed) on the beach one morning. It was only about 80 degrees but the humidity made us sweat because we aren't used to it where we live. There was a nice breeze the whole time we were there though.

I just had to take a picture of the sand tractor for our son Ryan. It went by a couple times a day raking the sand and collecting the seaweed. 

It was a beautiful All-Inclusive resort called Azul Sensatori, and we didn't have any bad experiences or bad food while we were there.  We did learn quickly that you have to be on guard because it is such a high tourist area and everyone has a "deal" for you. You just have to learn when to take advantage of it and when to walk on by.

The building our room was in was adults-only which was nice because there weren't any kids running up and down the walkways, and there was one whole pool that was adults only too... but every time we saw a family out at the beach or in the restaurants we always said how much fun our own kids would be having. They have a kid pool with shallow area, water slide, and other water squirting apartuses, as well as an indoor playground building with toys for all ages, and playground on the beach. So we definitely will be going back with our kids, hopefully next year.

(Note: On Tuesday, we visited the Mayan ruins at Chichan Itza, but that deserves it's own post in a couple days)

And We're Off

Grandma and Grandpa are here... and Barry and I leave in the morning for a resort outside Cancun, Mexico for the next 5 days. We're very excited, already tired, and ready to go... hopefully.

The morning will not be fun since the kids don't know we're leaving yet... but they are in loving and capable hands while we're gone.

Circus Day!!!

On Saturday we drove to Lubbock, TX to see the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey circus. It was lots of fun, and very tiring.

We left our house at 8 am to drop Kellyn and all her pariphanalia off at a friend's house for the day. Mrs. Paul and Mr. John were happy to play grandparents to our "perfect" baby girl for the day (their words, not mine). I think she had lots of fun, and she was sound asleep in her crib at our house when we got home last night.

We left our city at 8:30 and made the almost 2 hour drive to Lubbock with one potty break stop. I'll say right now that Alyna and Ryan both did very well using the potty all day long, with the exception of Ryan's two poopy episodes. He still won't do that on the potty most days. But even on the long drives they stayed dry.

Our first stop in Lubbock was their favorite park. It has a big fortress with winding staircases, ramps, and slides. Of course Ryan and Alyna both spent about 20 minutes on the swings as well. By the time we left the park at 11:30 (our time) for lunch, it was already 90 degrees, so I was glad we had done that first.

We ate at our favorite place to eat with the kids, Rosa's Tortilla Factory. It's our favorite because it's fast, naturally loud, and our kids will actually eat the food.

After that we went to a used tool store for Daddy to buy a new router he needs for building his very own arcade cabinet in the next few months. Then we killed 20 minutes at Barnes & Noble where Mommy visited the bathroom with assorted company 4 different times.

Finally we made our way to Texas Tech's campus arena for the circus show. Alyna and Ryan were both very excited to see the elephants.

At the pre-show, we watched the clowns jump ropes, dance, etc. The kids got circus temporary tatoos on their arms and tried on some glittery costumes.

We found our seats and Ryan looked through the program. They had never been in a big arena before, so just watching all the people was enough to keep them busy until the show started.

We enjoyed the usual circus snacks... cotton candy, popcorn, and fresh squeezed lemonade. All outrageously priced of course.

Ryan actually fell asleep in my lap just before the part he'd been waiting for... the motorcycles. It was also the loudest part of the show just before the finale. I was very glad we hadn't brought Kellyn with us.

We decided against fast food for dinner, and ate at Johnny Carino's, bringing 3 boxes of leftovers home with us to eat for Sunday lunch. Yummy! The 2 hour drive home was uneventful, especially since the kids were engrosed in finishing watching "Monsters Inc." and then "Cars".

I was very proud of the kids' behavior all day. It was an exciting adventure for us.