Cancun

This is kind of a postdated post since I've actually been home for a while but have not had a lot of time to work on pictures. I'm always excited about having a chance to add an additional stamp to my passport. So when I figured out a way to justify an invitation to Cancun I was very excited. Despite my excitement I have to admit that the first stop of this trip did leave a little to be desired...Wal-Mart. I travel all the way to Cancun and we go to Wal-Mart. I guess on the bright side starting out this way means the trip can only get better.

It did. We had a condo right on the beach and spent most of our time in the water. Four of the group were certified for scuba so they went on an open water dive. (They saw a nurse shark, I was very jealous.) I spent a lot of my time snorkeling. There were some very nice reefs right off our beach. Swam with a few rays and some very beautiful fish.



There was also a lagoon right by our condo in Akumal that we went snorkeling in.


We did go on a very colorful tour of Tulum. When our tour guide found out that we were LDS I think he pulled out a different tour book and gave us a very non-scientific pro-LDS tour. It was funny, not very educational but we had a good time.

This was our condo.

Apparently not only us Americans come to Cancun to relax. This dog was totally on vacation.

We also went scuba diving/snorkeling in the dos ojos cenote. There are no rivers in Cancun, all of the water runs underground and occasionally the ground will collapse where the water has eroded the ground enough. This is one of those places and it is quite beautiful. The water is very clear and still relatively warm. It is only about 5 degrees colder than the ocean.

While me and Becca waited for the four scuba divers we went and made friends with this little monkey that was over by a gift shop.

We spent our last night in a small town closer to Chichen Itza I'm not sure what it was called but looking at maps I believe it was Valladolid. Our timing was pretty good, the town was at the end
of a week long Latin celebration. We had planned on doing some tourist shopping but all the shops were closed for the festival so we decided to join in.







Finally we went to Chichen Itza. We had planned on going here the night before but we didn't move nearly fast enough that day. We spent a lot longer at the dos ojos cenote than we had planned on and the drive was longer than we had planned on. As a result we would only have two hours to be able to see all of Chicen Itza before we had to leave to catch our plane. It was way to quick. Luckily tripods are illegal because apparently if you are using a tripod you are a professional and will be trying to make money. Since I couldn't make money I was able to move much quicker and was able to see quite a bit. So if you think any of these pictures turned out nice and you would like to purchase one I will have to warn you that they will not be "professional" because I could not use a tripod.







Just in case you were wondering not only were the Mayan extremely talented in architecture, astronomy, and athletics but they also seemed to have developed a very early form of Tic-Tac-Toe. I think they missed the basic gist of the game since X took more turns and O still won but it does demonstrate the sheer ingenuity of the ancient Mayan.




And finally as a new twist on the self portrait we did one while driving to the airport. And you thought talking on your cell phone while driving was unsafe.