Greetings from the internet-less La Selva Lacandon! We moved into our campsite on the 12th and have had some interesting encounters since then. Life feels very much like summer camp right now with some minor alterations. We sleep in bunk beds, but the beds are shrouded in mosquito nets; there are lots of bugs, but scorpions in our roofs as well; and sometimes we get unwanted visitors like ants or spiders, but on the first night an opossum with the munchies decided to drop by on one of the girl’s beds. Food is about the same, except with less singing - definitely an improvement.

Apart from adjusting to camp life, we’ve been busy exploring Mayan sites like Bonampak and Yaxchilan and splashing around in the water. I know what you’re thinking, didn’t your beach adventures come to a close at the end of spring break in Puerto Morelos. You my friends have overlooked the other water bodies that are scarce but still present in the Yucatan Peninsula. A river runs through our camp and today we took rafts out on them and traversed a number of waterfalls. No rafting day would be complete without a couple wipeouts. What was great about our floating fails was that singular persons weren’t just thrown from the raft, but two rafts flipped entirely on two separate occasions. Sadly, I could not take part in any of these events because my raft was just too skilled to be thwarted by a single river’s trickery. I did however jump out of my own free will and swim down a smaller waterfall. Because the water level was lower than normal, at one point we had to get out of our rafts because we could not get over the waterfall otherwise. Fortunately this meant the only way down was to jump! So today I jumped off a waterfall.

Over these past two days I have been intimately involved with several waterfalls. Yesterday, after exploring Yaxchilan, we took time out of our afternoon to swim in a waterfall pool. After swimming under its shower, I climbed its slope and sat against the flow. It was an incredible feeling, perched above a pool with water pelting me from behind and flowing quickly past me. Today after our rafting adventure we enjoyed yet another waterfall. This time, I climbed into a cavern of sorts, a slight indent in the steep rock. I stood under the force of the waterfall, deafened by the sound, and tickled to smile by the heavy, falling water.

Tomorrow the Dawleys “own us” (there words, not mine); we have our last Maya quiz first thing in the morning and are in lecture the rest of the day. We are having a going away party for our guide Hugo, bus driver Ramon, and Maya teacher Chris in the evening but there won’t be any waterfalls. I guess a party in some way redeems the lack of waterfalls but only if the nix the soggy milk cake. Never again Mexico.