We went to the Mercado today in Cancun. We first went to a huge market, Market 28 had lots of tourist stuff. It was very hot and people were very persistent because business has been slow due to the swine flu scare. I enjoyed bartering but Roger did not. I bought some jewelry, vanilla and t-shirts. Then we went to lunch where Grady had a full blown melt down and would not even come into the restaurant and Asher was asleep and stayed asleep thru lunch. When we talked Grady down he came in and fell asleep on two chairs without eating lunch.
After lunch we went to the fish and meat Mercado, Market 24 here was a candy store there and Ryan got a piñata for Maddie’s birthday. We also found a toy booth, we let each of the boys buy something. Jack and Grady bought sling shots or razor terra in Spanish. Asher got some plastic lizards.
Saturday we stayed at the resort and played in the pool. Everyone needed a break from the heat and riding in the car. Marsha and I went kayaking and to the spa. The kids went to kid’s club and played in the sand and the pool. Ryan and Roger built sand castles.
Sunday we went to Ek Balam one of the big highlights of our vacation! These ruins are some of the only ruins that you can still climb. It was so incredible to see this city and wonder at the Mayan people that once lived here. They are doing extensive restoration and you can see in come of the pictures what it would of looked like when it was inhabited with stucco covering the stones and thatch on the roofs. I felt so blessed to be able to experience this incredible place. We climbed to the top of the largest intact structure and as you look around you can see how much work that has gone into putting these structures back together. On either side of the main structures there are hills of what looks like rubble I wonder if that is what it looked like for each of the structures when they were first discovered. This was truly one of the neatest experiences. The number of people that must of inhabited this city was larger than Tulum and they are still uncovering more structures.
After Ek Balam we drove thru a little village and saw how people lived in the more rural areas. My camera died at Ek Balam or I would have captured some of this village because people live in huts built out of sticks with thatch roofs and dirt floors. We could see one family’s cooking fire thru the gaps in the wall of their little hut. The families in this village mostly live in one room huts so no bedrooms for privacy and no bathroom in their hut. There was baseball field complete with dugouts that was nice and there was a school with open air classrooms kind of like a self carwash building, there was a roof and two walls and a concrete floor. The town also had a restaurant and hotel probably to service the tourists of Ek Balam. As we drove into a more wealthy village I saw a gated church that was very nicely kept and noticed it was and LDS church.
Chichen Itza
above is the ball court There is a hoop above my head, we all discussed how difficult that would be to get the ball thru those hoops. The hoop is small and is more than 12 feet off the ground.
This city was enormous. There were archeological digs open for you to see how much more there is to uncover if they could dig down another 4 feet throughout the city.
Above is the jaguar bench. The jaguar and the serpent are very popular in the carvings throughout the city.
The kids were getting tired at this point in the day and you can’t climb on these structures so the children were not as interested at Chichen Itza. It was a very large city though and there were people everywhere set up to sell their wares. When were done looking at the city I bought some Mexican style shirts for everyone and then we all hoped in the van and headed back to the resort.
