What a FANTASTIC weekend of adventures Tim and I shared with Fernando and Jeff! We left Merida at 8:30 and headed to the largest cave in the Yucatan penninsula. You can walk for 4 hrs in and never meet a dead end! We were only in there for 2 hrs, but wow was it awesome:
Here I am at the very beggining of the adventure, taking the latter town to the enterance of the cave.
Here is Fernando, Tim, and Jeff scaling rocks outside the enterance of the cave.
These above pictures show the enterance... from this point on there is absolutely NO light inside the cave! We had to use flashlight to even see our own hands. The cave was filled with INCREDIBLE structures, stalagtites and stalagmites, and awesome formations.
There were also broken pottery from the Mayans - hundreds of years old. The Mayans used this cave for a ceremonial center where they would do human sacrificies to appease the Gods. We stood in the "cathedral"- which was a huge open section in the cave where the roof was more than 200 feet above us. In this cathedral they would split the chest of a live human and pull out the heart. Gruesom.
After a couple hours exploring the completely different and strage underground world, we set off to explore Mayan Ruins. This was our first experience looking at ruins, and it was fascinating. To think that these structures were built between 300 and 500 BC is impossible to comprehend.
Fernando is an amazing tour-guide... in fact he used to be a tour-guide for his career and used to take people on the exact adventure in which he took us. He is very knowledge able. In the picture below, he is explaining how this building was constructed and the physics behind why it continues to stand today:
In the picture below, Tim and I are about to enter "The Labryth." This was a maze inside of a pyramid. It was built to test the intellegence of the religious leaders to see if they were smart enough to be accepted as leader... but the maze was pretty easy.
The maze was sweet though... inside the pyramid it was completely dark except intential holes that were left to let small amounts of light in to make the maze possible to complete. While in the maze we saw a snake, a lizard, spiders and approximately 100 milllion mosquitos. It was so cool though, that this structure was made in 300 or 400 BC and is still standing today! The maze was on 3 different levels from bottom to top and back down again.
This is me in the middle of the main pyramid in this Mayan city. Pretty amazing that we were able to see history this close up!
Tim did a great job of documenting the day's adventures with our stinkin SWEET camera that my friends gave us for our wedding gift. All the pictures are taken by Tim, minus this one! Great job Tim!
After all the hot, outdoor adventures... we cooled off in this sweet cenote! All the cenotes we have visited are so incredibly different! This was couched in a cave no more than 7 feet high, and the water was only 2 feet deep in one half, and abotu 15 feet in the other half, and around the edges it plumeted to abotu 150 feet. It was a nice refreshing treat after hiking around the ruins in 105 degree weather!
So - as you can see, like is a wondering, interesting, fun-filled adventure here for us in Merida. We are loving life, feeling good, loving eachother, loving teaching (which by the way gets better each day!), enjoying new relationships and friendships - and overall having a wonderful time!
Here I am at the very beggining of the adventure, taking the latter town to the enterance of the cave.
Here is Fernando, Tim, and Jeff scaling rocks outside the enterance of the cave.
These above pictures show the enterance... from this point on there is absolutely NO light inside the cave! We had to use flashlight to even see our own hands. The cave was filled with INCREDIBLE structures, stalagtites and stalagmites, and awesome formations.
There were also broken pottery from the Mayans - hundreds of years old. The Mayans used this cave for a ceremonial center where they would do human sacrificies to appease the Gods. We stood in the "cathedral"- which was a huge open section in the cave where the roof was more than 200 feet above us. In this cathedral they would split the chest of a live human and pull out the heart. Gruesom.After a couple hours exploring the completely different and strage underground world, we set off to explore Mayan Ruins. This was our first experience looking at ruins, and it was fascinating. To think that these structures were built between 300 and 500 BC is impossible to comprehend.
Fernando is an amazing tour-guide... in fact he used to be a tour-guide for his career and used to take people on the exact adventure in which he took us. He is very knowledge able. In the picture below, he is explaining how this building was constructed and the physics behind why it continues to stand today:
In the picture below, Tim and I are about to enter "The Labryth." This was a maze inside of a pyramid. It was built to test the intellegence of the religious leaders to see if they were smart enough to be accepted as leader... but the maze was pretty easy.
The maze was sweet though... inside the pyramid it was completely dark except intential holes that were left to let small amounts of light in to make the maze possible to complete. While in the maze we saw a snake, a lizard, spiders and approximately 100 milllion mosquitos. It was so cool though, that this structure was made in 300 or 400 BC and is still standing today! The maze was on 3 different levels from bottom to top and back down again.This is me in the middle of the main pyramid in this Mayan city. Pretty amazing that we were able to see history this close up!
Tim did a great job of documenting the day's adventures with our stinkin SWEET camera that my friends gave us for our wedding gift. All the pictures are taken by Tim, minus this one! Great job Tim!After all the hot, outdoor adventures... we cooled off in this sweet cenote! All the cenotes we have visited are so incredibly different! This was couched in a cave no more than 7 feet high, and the water was only 2 feet deep in one half, and abotu 15 feet in the other half, and around the edges it plumeted to abotu 150 feet. It was a nice refreshing treat after hiking around the ruins in 105 degree weather!
So - as you can see, like is a wondering, interesting, fun-filled adventure here for us in Merida. We are loving life, feeling good, loving eachother, loving teaching (which by the way gets better each day!), enjoying new relationships and friendships - and overall having a wonderful time!Thank you for your love, support and prayers!
Email us - even though we're doing great an dhaving fun, we miss ome, and specifically miss the PEOPLE from home!
- Karina and Timoteo-
ps- more pictures, some great ones too - on Kari's facebook page, take a look!
ps- more pictures, some great ones too - on Kari's facebook page, take a look!
karina, "knowledge able"....seriously? how is going teaching grammar to your kids? hehe. that's my sister for you! i love you.
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