Our last port of call was Cozumel, Mexico. We were quite excited about getting to see the Tulum Ruins. Both Lyssa and I are history nerds so we knew it was the perfect trip for us!
Cozumel is actually an island off the Mexico mainland so we had to begin our journey with a ferry ride. Lyssa was less than thrilled about this because she fights sea sickness, but she did GREAT 🙂
I expected the ferry to be pretty scary, but it was was nicer than I expected.This is me on the ferry before it was so hot that I almost died of heat stroke…
Look how happy I still look. and calm… don’t I look calm? There was air conditioning on the ferry.
After the forty minute ferry ride we were guided to buses and got to ride those for another hour! Thankfully they were quite nice and they had air conditioning too! We even got a shopping stop. I finally have my very own Mexican hammock, but I have to convince my dad to build me a stand for it. I just have to quit having other things for him to fix, so he has time to build it for me.
The Tulum Ruins are an amazingly well preserved set of Mayan ruins. They were absoluely beautiful.
In school this year, the kids studied Mayan civilization, and it was so neat to see this up close and have history right before my eyes. The guides talked about the same things we studied this year.
The skill of their architecture was amazing, and the way they were able to build so accurately in sync with astronomical cycles is mind boggling.
The building in the left of this picture looks crooked compared to all the other buildings but truly it is built so that the sun is visible through the different windows and doors during the summer and winter solstices sand spring and fall equinoxes. What a feat!
One of the fun things (I thought) was all the iguanas! They were EVERYWHERE. I took a lot of pictures of iguanas. By the time we were done, Lyssa was little tired of iguanas, but I still was snapping pictures. They liked eating the hibiscus that were there.
The beach there was amazing, but Lyssa and I had not brought our suits out that day, and so we did not go swimming at Tulum.
The water seemed to have its own special color.
If it wouldn’t have been so STINKING hot there that day I could have sat and looked at this view all day long.
After the whole amazing thing, we took a TROLLEY back to the BUS which took us back to the FERRY…..
and then they did not even take us back to the pier where they got us! They took us to downtown Cozumel where we had to find a taxi to get back to the ship. So I took this oh so lovely picture of us to commemorate the occasion of our Mexican taxi ride. I was HOT. We were TIRED, and we were dumped in the middle of downtown where we did not want to be!
We survived the taxi ride, and he took us to the right place! We made it and had a GREAT day in a beautiful place.
