Mexico!

This is the backside of the temple that my grandparents are serving their mission at.

There are bikes like this everywhere, and I really want one! I took this picture in hopes of replicating it with one of the old bikes we have laying around. It looks really simple, the main problem is the cart part. Still, I am sure it is do-able.


This is called a cenote, (seh-noh-tay). It is actually a large sink-hole. There are no lakes or rivers in this part of Mexico, except for these geological phenomenon. The edge around this is actually a shelf, because the water is under the land that I was standing on to take this picture. It is really shallow in one end, and then just drops very steep. This is on the site of a Maya ruin. On Sundays the Maya go there and swim. It is only open to the Maya, because it is their land, after all. This was at a site called Dzibilchaltun. (D'z'beel-chal-toon. The D, Z, B sound are all sort of smooshed together). Last time we were in Mexico, we went to Uxmal (Oosh-mall), which I really liked, except 1. It was super, ridiculously hot and muggy and I was sweating like a pig. And 2. It was overrun with tourists. At Dzibilchaltun, which is admittedly smaller, we were the ONLY ones there. It made it feel so much more serene and sort of MORE awe-inspiring, because you aren't distracted. Although it was really hot, it wasn't humid, which is the kind of heat that I don't do well in.
We also drove out to the coast. This is a little town called Telchac Puerto, where we ate lunch (superb food, that was really cheap and really delicious, and oh man, I really want deep fried plantain for the rest of my life.) This is a picture o fmy mom and my grandma out on the pier. This town was not very busy at all, and it is definitely not tourist, which is always obnoxious to get caught in.

This is the path to the temple at Dzibilcaltun. I will now let wikipedia talk:
The most famous structure is the Temple Of The Seven Dolls, so named because of seven small effigies found at the site when the temple was discovered under the ruins of a later temple pyramid by archaeologists in the 1950s. On the Spring equinox, the sun rises so that it shines directly through one window of the temple and out the other. The temple is connected to the rest of the site by a or "white road," so-called because they were originally coated with white limestone, built over stone-and-rubble fill.

So, there is a tiny little sample of our vacation here in Mexico! More pictures soon!