Today, the morning began when the sun peaked through my curtains at the ass crack of dawn. Literally. I was at first annoyed, until I got out of bed and saw the magnificent sunrise over the Gulf... It was a nice way to wake up. Not much later, Tere was at the hotel ready to take me to the seaside Mayan ruins known as Tulum. We thought we would be the first ones there this morning, but we weren't... Once we had walked to the entrance, we walked passed it to what Tere called the VIP entrance. Overlooking the ocean, we took a much lesser traveled path right on the cliff above the ocean to the ruins. This is what we saw:
My friend Marius would have been in herp-heaven as he would say with all the iguanas and other reptiles...
A view from the beach.
A view from the hill.
It was the 21st of April today, and apparently on the 21st of each month a group of sun worshipers come and have a ceremony there on the grounds. I didn't want to take pictures of a religious ceremony in progress, but the way they were blowing conchs and whatnot, I figured they didn't mind. I took this from way above on a cliff with my telephoto lens, so they wouldn't notice.
Crazy sun hippie prayer circle.
After we started to get all crowded out at Tulum (there were SO many people for such a small site), we left, and as we were leaving we saw tons more people on the way. You just can't get to this place early enough to enjoy it without tons of people around. We did see some pretty birds on the way out.
So we left Tulum and made our way to the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve. When we got there, a large Korean group had just taken ALL the boats, so Tere suggested we go to a nearby Mayan ruin called Muyil and visit it while we were waiting for the boats to return. What a good suggestion. There absolutely no other people at this site (as it is quite small and not really renovated), but we were able to climb to the top of the highest pyramid there (although I probably shouldn't have because the place is a deathtrap).
View from below.
View from the top.
There also was another smaller pyramid way back in the woods that you had to hike through some fairly dense forest with only a small, unworn path to lead you there. I honestly felt like I was back in Mayan times! The pyramid has several trees growing on it, which added to the forest feel!
Once we had explored this site to it's fullest extent, I took the nature trail from the site to the Biosphere Reserve, stopping at the watch tower to take some pictures. The view from up there really was amazing. It's a shame my pictures really don't do it justice...
Eventually I made my way back to the boat launch at the Reserve and got in a boat that took me across one freshwater lagoon (the one you can see in the picture above) through a small canal made by the Mayans, which connected the first lagoon to a much larger one.
After making our way through the second lagoon, we entered a natural channel which passed a small Mayan temple. We then got out of the boat and floated through the mangrove for about an hour. Then we were picked up by the boat and made our way back to the boat launch. Here's a picture of what we floated in:
It was nice, cool freshwater and the current was nice and slow. It made for a nice, lazy float through the mangrove on a very hot day. After we returned to the boat dock, Tere brought me back to my hotel, where I spent most of the afternoon in the hammock on my patio, watching the waves lap the shore. I was a little pink after being in the sun earlier, so I had to stay out of the sun this evening. All in all, a great day! Tomorrow is just a transfer to Cancun so that I can catch my early morning flight to Guatemala on Saturday.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
My friend Marius would have been in herp-heaven as he would say with all the iguanas and other reptiles...
A view from the beach.
A view from the hill.
It was the 21st of April today, and apparently on the 21st of each month a group of sun worshipers come and have a ceremony there on the grounds. I didn't want to take pictures of a religious ceremony in progress, but the way they were blowing conchs and whatnot, I figured they didn't mind. I took this from way above on a cliff with my telephoto lens, so they wouldn't notice.
Crazy sun hippie prayer circle.
After we started to get all crowded out at Tulum (there were SO many people for such a small site), we left, and as we were leaving we saw tons more people on the way. You just can't get to this place early enough to enjoy it without tons of people around. We did see some pretty birds on the way out.
So we left Tulum and made our way to the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve. When we got there, a large Korean group had just taken ALL the boats, so Tere suggested we go to a nearby Mayan ruin called Muyil and visit it while we were waiting for the boats to return. What a good suggestion. There absolutely no other people at this site (as it is quite small and not really renovated), but we were able to climb to the top of the highest pyramid there (although I probably shouldn't have because the place is a deathtrap).
View from below.
View from the top.
There also was another smaller pyramid way back in the woods that you had to hike through some fairly dense forest with only a small, unworn path to lead you there. I honestly felt like I was back in Mayan times! The pyramid has several trees growing on it, which added to the forest feel!
Once we had explored this site to it's fullest extent, I took the nature trail from the site to the Biosphere Reserve, stopping at the watch tower to take some pictures. The view from up there really was amazing. It's a shame my pictures really don't do it justice...
Eventually I made my way back to the boat launch at the Reserve and got in a boat that took me across one freshwater lagoon (the one you can see in the picture above) through a small canal made by the Mayans, which connected the first lagoon to a much larger one.
After making our way through the second lagoon, we entered a natural channel which passed a small Mayan temple. We then got out of the boat and floated through the mangrove for about an hour. Then we were picked up by the boat and made our way back to the boat launch. Here's a picture of what we floated in:
It was nice, cool freshwater and the current was nice and slow. It made for a nice, lazy float through the mangrove on a very hot day. After we returned to the boat dock, Tere brought me back to my hotel, where I spent most of the afternoon in the hammock on my patio, watching the waves lap the shore. I was a little pink after being in the sun earlier, so I had to stay out of the sun this evening. All in all, a great day! Tomorrow is just a transfer to Cancun so that I can catch my early morning flight to Guatemala on Saturday.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Mexico
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