When the party begins

Okay now this is the vacation I signed up for! Kickin it at the beach, eating tacos al pastor and checking out some sweet Mayan ruins. Not to mention the swimming. Oh man.


Today we went to the Mayan ruins Dzibilchaltún. I'm just going to start by saying the Mayan people were absolutely genius. Dzibilchaltún is famous for a temple called "El Templo de las Siete Muñecas" (the temple of the seven dolls). At the spring and fall equinoxes the sun shines directly through the two windows on the walls of the temple. 

It was such a beautiful thing to see and really humbling. It was fun to speculate the correlations found in the Book of Mormon. 

"This city was once lead by the administrative and religious elite". Reign of the judges, anyone? 

At one point my roommate Morgan stopped and just said, "I wonder if we're standing where King Mosiah stood?" 

It was just cool to think that one day we will know the mysteries of the world. But until then, look at more cool pictures of me climbing on stuff. 

When we came into the site, they said we could climb on everything. Challenge accepted. After I climbed on the temple, I felt super guilty. Just like I had disrespected an entire civilization. Who do I think I am climbing on an ancient Mayan temple? 

"Everything you see here is a reconstruction, the temple was destroyed long ago and this is a representation according to records we have." Let the climbing resume.

After we had time to check out the ruins and climb every rock in sight, we went over to what is called a cenote. It is basically a sink hole and they are all over the Yucatán. 

The Yucatán has tons of underground rivers. Every once in a while there will be access to them from the surface. They are the most refreshing thing I have ever swam in. Perfect temperature and great ledges to jump off of. 

Being a Brown, of course I had to jump. That's just what we do. So I did, backwards.

Terrible form. Also, sorry for the immodesty.

It was so sweet and tons of fun. Sometimes I forget how much I love being in the water. It's just pure bliss for me to swim. However having a fish swim with you, inside your swimsuit is not so great. Guh-ross. Speaking of fish. I couldn't wear sunscreen while swimming because of them. Since cenotes are natural water resources, there are fish that live there. And apparently sunscreen is pretty lethal for them. Luckily I had already put on three applications when they told us this.

Once we had our fill of the cenote, it was off to the beach. We went to a beach house of one of the host families that was literally right on the beach. We ate tacos al pastor and played ultimate frisbee in the Gulf. We're Mormon, what else are we supposed to do? Provo meets Mexico. It was such a beautiful day. After a while in the gulf it actually got hot. I had to get out of the water because it was too hot. We're not in the Pacific anymore, Todo. It was crazy.

I live with the 3 tannest girls in the group. What a joke.