Ik Kil

I wish I could have spent a couple of days running around Mexican villages to photograph the old architecture.


Friday started early. We had to be up at 6 a.m. in order to be ready for the bus that was going to pick us up by 7 a.m.

We decided Friday would be our tourist day where we went and saw some of the countryside and some of the villages.

We bought an all-day trip to Chichen Itza, which is the Mayan ruins located southwest of Cancun in Yucatan.

Unfortunately breakfast didn't start until 7:30 so we didn't have anything to eat. As we hadn't asked too many questions about the trip we weren't sure about breakfast. Nor did we pack our books for a long bus trip. We thought the trip might only be a half hour, but it ended up being several hours.

So with no food and no entertainment we set off for a long bus trip with few people who speak English. If anyone knows Steph, they know the 'no food' part is a recipe for disaster.

Luckily she's trying to be as cheery as possible. Luckily the guide on the bus tells us about all the interesting facts about Mexico.
It was really interesting to hear him say everything in Spanish and
English. I actually picked up on many of the things he was saying in Spanish.

On the way he tells us we will be stopping by a little place called Ik Kil. It's a natural cenote before you get to Chichen Itza. The drop from the top is about 60 meters and the water depth is about 40 meters once you get to the bottom. There's a cool stairwell that leads to the bottom where you can take a dip if you like. I was all about it. I actually took a leap off the top stairwell that is about 20 feet up.

It was kind of scary, but really no higher than a high dive. It was really thrilling to jump into a pool and know there was nothing below you to keep your body up. The closes thing to the bottom was 120 feet.

Steph did get a blurry photo of me jumping in.

I climbed up out, dried off and got Steph a small snack to tide her over until lunch.
After a quick stop here we all loaded back up and headed to our lunch destination in a small village between.

Lunch was a pretty nice spread and everything except drinks were paid for already. It was cool that they actually had dancers/entertainers during the dessert of our lunch.
I snapped a few shots within the block we were in, but I would have loved to been able to spend a whole day in the villages. Stuff like that is really interesting to me. It was absolutely nuts to see people in huts made of sticks watching televisions and on computers. Another thing I noticed was a multitude of internet cafes. I guess if not many people in town had computers this would make sense to have a common place for them to be used.

Everything was loaded backup and we headed for Chichen Itza. More to come tomorrow.