Jungle Adventure

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DAY 41
We got up nice and early around 6am ready for our tour pickup at 7.50am. We showered, brekky and packed our day bag. We got picked up right on time. After picking up one last group from another resort we headed on our way to Coba. The tour consisted of guided tour of the Mayan ruins at Coba, Ziplining in the jungle, kayak in the jungle and rapell into a cenote (which is an underground cave with water in it). It took about an hour to get to Coba and our guide introduced us to another guide who would give us some history on the Mayan culture and architecture. We went to a couple of sets of ruins first. First was a temple that you could climb about half way up and you could see some of the rooms that were off to the side. Also got to walk into a small corridor and saw a bat in there. The guide gave us some history on the Mayans and their calendar. We learnt that after each 52 years the Mayan calendar repeats itself. After each 52 years the Mayans would “re-do” their temples by adding another temple on top of the old ones. This resulted in a lot of the temples having 7 or 8 structures inside the outer layer. We also saw what looked like a sports field. You can see in my photos, but there are two walls on an incline with hoops on each side. It was a 2 player sport and players used their hips and upper arms to move the ball. The reason the played the game was to give a sacrifice to the Mayan Gods. The winner of the game would be sacrificed to the gods as he was the best the people had to offer. There are a total of 7 sports arenas in the Coba area. We then got to walk ourselves to the largest Mayan temple. It was about a 20 minutes walk, but the temple was pretty big. We climbed up to the top which was pretty hard work and had some good views of the jungle around us. After walking down the temple, we walked back to the bus and checked out a few other ruins on the way back. We even saw a giant bee/fly on one of the ruins. He was huge!!Bought a little souvenir from one of the local shops and boarded the bus ready for our activities. It was about a 30min drive to the jungle where we were doing all our activities and we passed a lot of Mayan towns along the way. Most of them didn’t have electricity and the people slept in hammocks so as bugs can’t crawl on the bed and because it is so hot and humid. The town where we did our tours does have electricity as the government is helping the people to try and get on their feet. The town also works with the tour company we used as guides/photographers etc. We left most of our stuff on the bus (including camera as didn’t want it to get wet) and got into our bathers. First stop was kayaking, where we had about 20minutes to kayak around a lake. There were heaps of turtles in the lake which we saw before we got in the kayaks. Next stop was a short walk through the jungle before arriving at the zipline. Our guide warned us of some of the dangers in the jungle – snakes, tarantulas and some of the trees (one variety of tree its sap can give you burns like you were sunburnt). That successfully managed to freak me out – just the tarantulas alone!! The walk was really nice and the jungle was really pretty – and we didn’t see any tarantulas. We got to the area where we zipline and there was a big body of water which we zipline over. The only catch ¬ - there are 2 crocodiles living in the water and we saw one of them!! We walked around to the area where you zipline and put on our harness and helmet. You get connected to the zipline and use a stick to help keep you facing forward. I went about 6th and it was lots of fun! I didn’t fall in and get eaten by crocodiles! Got pretty fast, but would have been good if i got to go even faster. Once we all finished the zipline we took another short walk to where we would rapell down into the Cenote. We took our shoes off here and had to jump under a cold shower to remove all sweat and chemicals from our body as they are trying to keep the water pure. Before we got there we also participated in a Mayan ceremony where a Mayan elder prayed to the gods to keep us safe in our journey into the cave. It was pretty cool. One by each everyone rappelled down into the cave which was about 20 metres below the entrance at the top. We ended up going last. You go down together by rope and it was really fun! Scott and i were pretty much the fastest couple to go down. So much so that the guy at the bottom was not ready for us and we hit the water before he realised we were coming – usually he has a blow up tyre reading for you to sit in! The water was surprisingly warm and clear. We swam around the cave for a bit and got to see some more bats and catfish swimming with us! We stayed in the cave for about ½ hour and learnt that all of the cenotes on the Riveria Maya are all connected and all flow into the ocean. There are heaps of them. We got pulled out of the cave by rope – some poor guys at the top had to pull us all out – must be a sucky job! After this we headed to lunch, which was surprisingly nice. We had empanalas (with beans in them), rice, refried beans and spaghetti. Also drank tamarind juice which looked disgusting but was really nice. After lunch we headed to the shop where we got to have a look at all of the photos that the photographer had been taking of us all afternoon. As we didn’t take the camera with us we purchased a CD of all the photos. We got to choose a free gift as well which was cool. I would have chosen the tequila other than the fact our luggage was already too heavy so i picked a tshirt instead. Whilst waiting for everyone to finalise their purchases our guide poured us all a shot of tequila and we each had one. It wasn’t bad actually. On our way out of the Mayan village, the driver stopped in the middle of the road and pointed out something crossing it. I was expecting to see an iguana or monkey or something, but no it was a TARANTULA. It was so freaky, this giant spider was crossing the road and you could see it from the bus. It was huge. So glad i didn’t see one of them in the jungle or you would have heard me scream! We also drove past a house that kept a spider monkey, which had been rescued when he was young. He is now unable to be realised to the wild as he wouldn’t survive. He was pretty cool! The trip back to the hotel was over an hour and we got back just before 6pm. We decided we would have some more tequila as it had been 3 days in mexico and no tequila shot yet. So we went to the lobby bar and ordered a beer and a shot – the staff really like it when you order tequila shots they get excited! We headed back to our room after this and checked a few things on the internet before getting ready to go out for dinner. We stopped by lobby bar again for a few dinner cocktails before heading to the buffet. We had another shot of tequila at the start of dinner and asked for another one at the end. The waiter offered us another type of tequila shot – flaming, so we said sure! He brought out the 2 shots on fire and we had to drink it up through a straw – it was really nice! After dinner, but before the show in the theatre we went back to the lobby bar and ordered another flaming tequila – and discovered it had kahlua and tequila in it. The second one was much nicer. We went to see the show for the night, and it was better than the first one we had seen. It was called Cubanisimo and featured dancing and singing. They did a cool routine where they wore thongs and “tapped” to the music, it was really awesome. We had a few more drinks at the show and at the end they pulled people up on stage to dance. Scott conveniently left to go to the bar for more drinks and i got pulled up on stage. It was pretty fun actually even though i can’t dance to save myself. At the end of the show we sat at the bar and had a few more drinks and chatted to some people who had been at a wedding. Once the bar closed, we decided we’d head over to the discotheque to see what it was like. We had a few more drinks at the discotheque but it was pretty bad. By this stage i was fairly drunk so we headed back to the room for bed at about 1ish.

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