Patrick: Week 4: The Pez

To recap last week, we spent a few days at Uxmal and a few more on the island of Cozumel.

At the Mayan ruins it's highly recommended to hire one of the tour guides to walk you around and tell you about what your looking at.  The quantity of symbology that the ancient Mayans used at Uxmal in their decorating was astounding.  They also had a ball court with stone hoops.  Only one hoop remained but it was cool to see.  They played with round 4 lb. solid rubber balls.

One of the tour guides was talking about the iguanas that were all over the place and referred to them as the "squirrels" of the yucatan.  "You don't play with squirrles do you?  Well, we don't play with our iguanas."

Our time in Cozumel was great.  We stayed in the equivalent of a VRBO apartment that had a separate room for the kids and was really reasonably priced (score!)  Rented a car and made a full circuit of the island at least twice.  Spent a lot of time on the beach and playing in the water.  The kids aren't confident with snorkel gear yet so we couldn't take them out as far as the reef at Punta Sur.   The view from the lightouse though was fantastic.

We did the dolphin encounter and had a lot of fun.  Except for Sea World in San Diego, I don't know if I've ever seen dolphins in person before.  Definitely not that close.  We got to touch them (Otis said they feel like rubber) and have a splash battle.  Sofia found out that if you place your fingers on their forehead they make rude noises out the spout (which got lots of laughs.)  They said that was a normal noise that was part of the dolphin vocabulary.

Now we're on Isla Mujeres (the Island of Women.)  The Spanish named it thus after finding all the statues of Mayan goddesses.  We named this week The Pez (fish) because we plan to spend more time in the water doing snorkely and scuba-y things here.  Otis and I have already found a couple schools of fish with our masks and goggles in the shadow of a bridge over some shallow water.  So cool!  I can't wait to see some reefs in person.

We're not going anywhere else for nearly 2 weeks and the pace here is significantly slower (the golf carts everyone drive go about 20 kph?) so we're looking forward to slowing down and getting to know the place.

Pictured below: Dolphin pics, Otis holding the giant iguana.