Saturday, January 20, 2007

Exploring the resort

Elwyn and Janice arrived yesterday from Arizona, as did A---- from Vancouver. Donnie Darko is close in age to his cousin and the two get along very well. Greg and Alicia arrived later that day, as did Sherry and Cornell, and Cornell's mom Edith and her sister.

This resort has several restaurants requiring reservations. We tried a couple but mostly ate breakfast and dinner at the buffet and lunch at the poolside restaurant (the burgers there were awesome, like those from Peter's Drive-In). The food in general was better than at the previous resort, but we still got tired of it after a week. The buffet was also further away from our room, though the walk was nice.

We saw flamingos by a pool on our way to breakfast, and part of the walk took us through the jungle.

After breakfast we did some exploring.

There are Mayan ruins within the resort. We could see one set by the shore, off in the distance. We went to check them all out.

This is some kind of throne room, apparently.

They had these great tiled maps with descriptions of the ruins. The northern (leftmost) three ruins -- F, G, and H -- are in the resort while the rest are in Xcaret park.

The throne or altar.

I'm not sure I buy this as a throne. Not that impressive, really. Maybe it was just for receiving really small foreign delegations.

Oh, I know. Remember going to the circus and seeing twenty clowns get out of a tiny car? I'll bet this throne room was used like a pre-Columbian version of that. A delegation of Toltecs shows up and twenty Mayan warriors pile out of the room in brightly coloured costumes. That would be impressive.

Temple F-II. Apparently one of those new fangled miniaturized temples the Japanese came up with.

Here are the ruins of a Spanish chapel. It's looking pretty shabby compared to the much older Mayan ruins.

I'd be pretty embarassed if I was Spanish. Didn't the Inquisition have building codes?

I mean, where's the pride in workmanship? Couldn't they take a little time away from slaughtering the natives to make a proper House of God?

There was one more set of ruins in the resort that we wanted to see, the ones we saw off in the distance, by the shore. Look who we ran into on the way, though.

I always wondered where he went in the off-season.

And in case he wasn't warm enough in that outfit he could always drop by the sweat lodge.

Funny. No line-up.

Here's the shore, approaching the ruins. There's not a lot of beach at this resort, even at the best of times.

Baby's got the whole wind-in-the-hair, some-day-my-prince-will-come thing down.


Sorry about the shaky video. The first pan was too quick so I went to do it again. Except I forgot to turn the video off. And then I forgot to turn it back on again.

Calvin checked out the ruins. I just hope he wasn't inspired to new levels of destruction.

Looking back in the other direction you can see the huts from one of the dolphin swim areas in Xcaret park. We'd be checking that out the next day.

Some amazing history here. It really whets my appetite for Chichen Itza. Just a few more days...

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