Feb 14, 2009

We took a tour to Tulum today, it is a Mayan ruin that sits right on the cliff overlooking the Carribean. Such a beautiful site, the ruin in quite small with a few buildings but the location is spectacular.

Most of the people on the tour were going on to Coba, so we paid a little extra and added it on. We were glad we did. There was a stop at a Mayan village to let us see how they lived, and buy some crafts from them. Out front of their stick lean to house was a flower garden, some planted in the ground and other is buckets. The girls in traditional dress who I suppose were there to talk to tourists were very busy flirting with the van driver.

The ruins at Coba are more similar to Angkor Wat in that they are in fairly dense jungle and spaced farther apart. The ball court has been restored. We took a bicycle taxi to the furthest ruin which is the second largest Mayan pyramid, or what is left of it. Len climbed to the top.

One of the most interesting things at Coba were the Mayan roads. It is the crossroads for all the ancient toll roads that went from Tulum to the inland cities, and you can see them, they are raised by about a foot and packed with limestone. Our guide was a funny guy named Freddy.

It was a long day we got back around 7.

Sunday, Today we took the ferry to Cozumel and walked around a bit. The water is so beautiful, shades of blue depending on the depth, ranging from ultramarine to cerelean. There was very good live music on the ferry and we sat up on top on the return.