Don't forget the sunblock

From Tulum, looking back toward Cancun. Tulum is a huge archealogical site about an hour south of Playa del Carmen. It was hot, but fascinating.

I'm finally getting around to posting pictures from our trip to Mexico in June. I've forgotten that the first items posted get pushed ahead. In this case, the photos appear in reverse order as they were taken during the trip. This is the Mayaland Hotel, a hacienda built in the 1930's, within the national park of Chichen Itza. We had 1/2 of this nifty little stick/stucco/palm leaves cabin very close to the main building.

Wendell and Emily in front of our cabana.

The great pyramid at Chichen Itza.

Our tour guide, Esteban Mejia from Puebla speaks. Deanna listens intently.
At a pyramid at Ek Balam. The Carvings look fresh and new because this pyramid was covered with vegetation until just recently. A shade of posts and palm branches has been erected over this entrance with its beautiful carvings to protect them from the elements, now that the protective vegetation has been removed.

Esteban, our Mexican certified national tour guide, explaining something fascinating.


Wendell @ Ek Balam, standing at the top of 90 steps on a pyramid that is 1500 years old, overlooking other recently uncovered structures. Our guides told us the current estimate is that there are 63,000 pyramids in Mexico, most of them still covered with vegetation. Any hill seen rising above the canopy is an ancient structure, since the Yucatan is essentially a large, completely flat limestone rock, no mountains, as it rose from the sea about 1500 years ago, raising a land bridge to the rest of Mexico.

It was a long way up... and a long way down.

Along a path to the bathrooms at Ek-Balam.

Our guides.. Esteban Mejia & Jerry Ainsworth. You can see Jerry's work on Book of Mormon sites at http://mormonsites.org/.

New friends Lura & Tracy (grandmother & granddaughter)




The swimming pool at the resort, the Wyndham Viva Mayan.
The amazing buffet at the resort. It was really hard not to gain weight. Well, actually, we did gain weight.

Sunblock is your friend. I forgot to do my front, arms and legs.

Emily enjoyed dancing with staff members at the evening shows at the Wyndham Viva resort. Handsome, young people, often very well-educated, speaking multiple languages, very courteous and kind, who thought of this as a working vacation (15-hour days, cranky tourists).