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Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Back from Vacation

It's been a week of amazingness in the Yucatan Peninsula with some friends for me.  Thought I'd share some photos :)

A large group of us went for a friend's wedding, though we took advantage of the locale and went on a Mayan excursion one of the days.

The one up top is of me grimacing towards the jungle below from the top of the Coba Pyramid.  The picture makes me laugh because it looks like I'm running my own survival reality-TV show... but all I did was climb up there, hahaha.  Not to say it wasn't hard, mind.  It was hot and very humid.  Just walking around on flat ground was enough to make sweat ooze from every pore... and Coba's steps are steep, but that pic kinda looks like I'd been without civilization for days instead of just hours, hahaha.


That's the Coba pyramid from the ground.  They've kindly hung a rope for the trip down.  Climbing down is even more intimidating than going up, surprisingly.  The steep stone steps could easily break bone or kill if you slipped and went down the hard way.

Of course, what's the point in climbing an ancient Mayan ziggurat without a little human sacrifice?  That's the groom on the block there ;)

They have 2 ball courts at Coba.  The guide said that the sloped sides made this a practice court, as the real-deal ball courts had straight walls.  Apparently you have to get a leather ball through the hoop without using your arms... like in the movie El Dorado, except that the game was over when the first point was scored, and that often took more than a day.  The guide was unsure whether the winners or losers were sacrificed, though he said there was more evidence supporting the winners getting that "honor."

The whole trip wasn't jungle and ruins, though.

A lot of my time was spent in this Mexican restaurant.  I'm not really into tequila or margaritas, but on day one the waiter here asked if I'd like a margarita.  I figured that this was my best chance to see if I really didn't like them, or if I just hadn't had them made right.  I took him up on his offer, and told him that I normally don't like margaritas, but am figuring that this is probably the best chance anyone would have of changing my mind.  He seemed to take it as a kind of challenge.

And boy did he deliver.  I ended up ordering 8 more that night alone.  From then on it was tequila dreams and margarita sunshine.

And the weather was nice too.  ;)


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