I have had an incredibly busy couple of days and it has left me very, very tired. Plus, these early mornings are starting to get to me. 6:30 every day? No bueno! See that? My Spanish is improving (barely) but enough for minor boost of self-esteem. But no one wants to hear about my puny ego so I'll move on to more exciting matters.

This past Saturday I visited the first of many Mayan ruins: Dzibilchaltún y Izamal! At Dzibilchaltún we climbed our first pyramid...

...and then later swam in our first cenote!



For those less informed readers, a cenote is essentially a cave filled with water. When the ceilings of these caves collapse however, the pool or underground lake is revealed. The cenote at Dzibilchaltún was very close to the surface so it just looks like a very clear, pretty lake. It was so much fun to swim in though! There are a bunch of nice pictures in the Dawley's Newsletter of people jumping and diving in. When we had our fill of swimming, we all sat on the side of the cenote with our feet in the water. Our submerged feet transformed into an all you can eat buffet for the little fish inhabiting the cenote. They swarmed to our feet and nibbled relentlessly. But their nibbling looked more like kissing so it was like being wooed by multitudes of tiny fish. And it tickled! Oh did it ever tickle. I could hardly contain myself. Nate was the fishes favorite, however, since he has by far the driest skin on the trip; the fish must have mistook his feet as a feast from the gods.

We also saw this tarantula in the museum at Dzibilchaltún. He was so neat and now that Straub and Chris have wheedled their way into my head, I feel inclined to take macro pictures of every new arthropod I see.



Then we drove to Izamal where we climbed yet another pyramid. This one was much higher and towered over the entire, yellow city of Izamal. It's a beautiful city and all the buildings our painted the same, golden color. However, we didn't stay on the pyramid too long because it was incredibly windy and started to rain so everyone fled pretty quickly down the "stairs" (I say "stairs" because they were more like irregularly shaped protrusions of rock that may have served as stairs in an earlier stage of their life).



Later that night we went out to my first club: Cielo. I only had to pay less than $10 American dollars to get in (100 pesos)and then was able to enjoy an open bar! It was a weird and crowded place though, with lots of screens with odd movies playing (a Victoria's Secret fashion show and a poorly computer animated robot as examples). I have discovered a new love here in the bars of Merida, and that is my love of mojitos. I wonder how this drink had eluded me for so long, but now that we have met I doubt we will ever part.

Today Jenete (my roommate) found a gecko in our bathroom. I think I will name him Sal.