Day 5-- Chichen Itza and a Fun Cenote!!

It was such a fun day exploring the ruins of Chichen Itza!  I LOVE to do this!  It was a beautiful day to do this tour and it didn't start to rain until after swimming in the cenote, when we were safely aboard our bus!  The picture below is the observatory for the Mayans at Chichen Itza.  They were really into astronomy and the solar and lunar calendar... our guide was so knowledgeable about their language and number system,as well.  It was so interesting to listen to him talk about all this on the bus on our way over there.  (It was a 2 hour drive...)  We enjoyed learning about all the ruins and that in March-- on the Spring Equinox, the snake comes alive on the temple!  So cool!  The way the sun hits it, it looks like it's moving!  (See the picture below... the triangles look like the diamond back on a snake!)  And the acoustics are amazing, as well!  A speaker could stand in the middle at the top of the temple, and his voice was amplified by the architecture of the building... our guide had us stand at a certain place down below and clap and it could be heard as it echoed back and forth!  So cool!  Same thing on their ball field... or whatever you call that sport.  It amplified in there as well.  But only with the vibration of clapping... nothing else.  There is also a picture in a stone of the "white God" Quetzalcoatl (the Mayans had a different name for Him and I can't remember it.)  Quetzalcoatl was the Aztec name for Him.  This was very interesting to me!  Also, in there ball game, the captain of the team that loses gets his head cut off!  I forgotten this since the last time we saw Mayan ruins when we came to Mexico!  I'd sure hate to be the captain.  You can see the carvings in the stone of the guy kneeling and getting his head cut off by the other captain.  The teams are standing behind each captain.  I think every team had 7 men, so there are 7 on each side.  (I only got 2 of them in my picture, but they are dressed like warriors.)  It was so fun to poke around these ruins and imagine what life would've been like living in this civilization and culture.  Our guide also pointed out that there are still Mayans that practice certain aspects of their religion and they come to Chichen Itza on March 21st every year as a pilgrimage to celebrate their religion.  This is the Spring Equinox I spoke of earlier where the snake on the temple comes alive...  Fun stuff!

After we poked around these ruins, we ate at a hacienda nearby.  It was a really tasty Mexican buffet.  I had the white sauce on my taco which I thought would be safe-- like a ranch or something... well I can seriously say that I've never eaten anything so hot in my life!  My mouth was on fire!  I doused it with water and ate other things and it burned like crazy!  I went back and got another taco that tasted much better WITHOUT the sauce!  I stuck with the pico de gallo and green tomaltillo sauce!  Boy was it good though... and the tropical fruits are to die for!  The papaya here is SOOOOO sweet!  I helped myself to a lot of the fruit!

After we were all finished eating, we headed over to a cenote (natural formed swimming hole/sink hole) where we took a swim and cooled off.  They have international diving contests here, where men dive off of scaffolding much higher than the top of the cenote!  That just scares me!  It was fun to swim down in it though, and it felt good to cool off!  It was a warm, humid day!!

It rained hard on the drive home and everybody just slept!  We got back to our hotel room and hurried and got cleaned up for our reservation for dinner at Sen Lin-- an Asian restaurant.  The food was so good and so gourmet... I just loved every single bite!  What a fun day!