Xcaret park

It rained a bit this morning in the open air lobby.

I tell ya, no one likes a soggy macaw.

We went to Xcaret park today, an "eco-archaelogical park" attached to the resort.

The first thing we did was go up in the tower we saw from the resort's lagoon. The tower turns and from it you can see quite far away.

Overlooking the jungle to the west.

Our resort. Near the centre, between the trees, you can see the building where our room was. To the left of that is the pool we frequented with the restaurant / swim up bar.

A close up of our building, with the ramped, beach-like pool in front.

In the other direction there's a port for cruise ships. In the foreground is the beautiful San Francisco de Asis Chapel which we had a look at later on. In front of that is the Mayan-Mexican cemetery. A cemetery! In a park! You won't see that at Disneyland.

Off in the distance is Playa del Carmen.

And somewhere a little closer is Allegro Playacar, the first resort we went to.

Well, it is a tropical park so there were lots of exotic animals to be seen, like...

manatees...

tapirs...

oxen... OK, oxen aren't very exotic, but you don't get bulls like that in Alberta.

Here's one of those coatis that were wandering around our yard in Allegro Playacar.

Aren't they cute!

These macaws were drier than the ones we saw in the lobby.

Roof pigs in the bat cave... OK, they're actually bats. But if I'd written "bats in the bat cave" you'd be sitting there saying, "no kidding... were you expecting roof pigs?"

I'm just really glad there was a big moat between me and this jaguar. Looks like he was a little bored with cow or whatever they feed him and would have liked a little gringo for a change.

No Canadian food tonight, so he just decided to have a nap with his spotty friend.

When we came back a little later he was up again, looking for an evening snack.

There was a puma there too.

They have a great aquarium at Xcaret park.

You can get a close look at things...

... and even touch some things.

They had the entire life cycle of sea turtles there. The babies being cute...

... the teenagers stirring up trouble...

... and the old folks just looking for some peace and quiet.

We almost missed this crocodile, cleverly camouflaged under the leaves.

And there were dolphins. But we didn't just look at the dolphins, oh no...

We played with them.

At a hundred bucks a pop I wasn't too keen on petting a dolphin, but Donnie Darko, A----, Janice, Sherry, Cornell, and Edith went. Calvin thought they would eat him or something, so he didn't want to go either.

This actually looked really cool. Calvin and I both changed our minds and signed up to play with the dolphins on Thursday.

Meanwhile, though, we'd see what else the park offered.

Well, there's lots of ruins...

These raised platforms served the same purpose as fences in our culture — demarcating property — with the height of the platform signifying status.

Again this just made me want to go to Chichen Itza all the more. Just one more day...

They have this little boat tour in the park. We were in a rush to meet the others at the boat launch, but we had to walk through ten minutes of thick, beautiful jungle to get there.

From the boat we saw this cave with a Mayan carving.

We saw some Mayan artifacts.

We also went through some tunnels, including one with a waterfall inside it. Really neat, but not terribly photogenic.

Leaving the boat tour we saw this carving of an iguana...

... and walked through some caves.

Next stop, the cemetery. I still don't know if anyone is actually buried here, but if so I couldn't think of a nicer place to decompose.

Each gravesite was made by a different artist.

Beautiful. But there's more...

One of the big surprises is that the cemetery is hollow, and there's a labyrinthine crypt-like structure inside.

It was dark in here except for a few small lights scattered around. I had no idea what this room looked like until I downloaded the photo from my camera when I got home.

Donnie is doing his zombie bit. Appropriate, but I don't think the boys fully realized that this place might have corpses stashed in it here and there. Otherwise they might have resisted when I told them to go to the end of the long, dark corridor. "Keep in mind, if something jumps out at you here, it's not animatronic."

It was getting late, and we had to get back for the Espectacular show which started at dusk. I thought we should take a shortcut through the Mayan underground village.

Pretty neat, so far.

There sure are a lot of branching caverns, though.

At this point I thought we might miss the show. And possibly our flights home. And Easter...

But we did eventually find the way out and quickly headed for the nightly Mexican Espectacular show. The place was pretty full already when we got there.

The first part of the show was about Mayan creation myths and pre-Columbian history.

There was a ceremony that lead to...

... the famous Mayan ball game. The players wear rubber shields which they use to bounce a solid rubber ball through the air. There were several attempts to get the ball through the hoops on the sides, but the hoops are small. After several unsuccessful attempts, the tension in the audience was mounting. Finally, one team did get the ball through to thunderous cheers and applause from the audience.

Some historians say the losers of this game would be sacrificed to the gods. Some say the winners were sacrificed.

"Wait, what did you say we get for winning?"

There's another Mayan ball game that I'd never heard about. This one is like hockey, where the players use sticks to get a ball into a goal area at their opponents' end of the court. Did I mention the ball is on fire?

At one point, a goalie at one end stopped the ball, scooped it into the air, and ran down the entire court while keeping the ball in the air with taps from his stick. The other players got out of his way (well, wouldn't you?) until he got to the end and lobbed it into the goal. Awesome game!

This is FoxTrax done right.

Well, everything was fun and games until the conquistadores showed up.

The conversion of Mayans to Christianity. Pretty dramatic moment.

The first half of the show ended with a swell of music and an eagle flying through the theater. I've never seen a trained eagle before. I couldn't believe my eyes.

There was an intermission then the second half of the show started. This was a succession of folk music and dances from various eras and regions in Mexico.