This past weekend was the best (and longest) by far.

The entirety of Friday was spent exploring the expansive ruins of Chichen Itza, one of the more famous Maya ruins. So famous, in fact, that it's full of tourists (like me!) You'd think I'd enjoy being surrounded by my own kind, but rather I found it very distracting. The entire site was far too "commercial" for my taste, complete with food and souvenir vendors, school field trips with herds of noisy children, and clapping tour guides (apparently it's a pretty big deal in Mexico when two buildings are placed close to each other that the sound bounces off the structures - it's the coolest sound trick since the echo!) But it was still a very impressive sight. The Castillo (seen below with me standing in full triumph in the foreground) is a pretty impressive pyramid and it was just one of the many large, ornate structures that comprise Chichen Itza.

Unfortunately it did rain on us. We took shelter under a fabric-based umbrella - in hindsight, not the best choice of shelter.

It turns out that I lied. Because after Chichen we actually drove to another cenote! You didn't think I'd go through a weekend without going to a cenote, did you? This past weekend featured the cenote of Valladolid, one of the first cities to fall to the Maya during the Caste War (fun fact of the day since the Dawley's insist on me learning something about the region's history).



It was pretty cool and had some great places for diving. It was the perfect stage upon which to teach sweet Ellen Aikens how to dive. Channeling the time-tested lessons passed on to me from my father, I went through the motions with Ellen. It was easy because she's a natural; once she figured it out, you couldn't stop her from getting back up and diving again! My lessons were apparently quite impressive, because even Robert Dawley swam over to get some pointers on his form.

Friday night was terrible. I was hit with my first wave of spontaneous Mexico sickness. First I was achey, which I attributed to my long day, but the aching became increasingly unbearable through dinner; it felt like I had been hit by a truck. Towards the end of dinner I started to get cold, which simply doesn't make sense in 70 degree weather. By the time I got back to my room I was visibly shaking, with teeth clattering and goosebumps to boot. I was in bed at 9, shaking under the covers and aching for the entire night.

But don't worry! I'm fine now and I was fine the next day (apart from some dull aching in the evening again). And it was so lucky that I recovered so quickly because Saturday was the best excursion of the whole trip: Rio Lagartos.

I can't describe how amazing Rio Lagartos was. It was a day of bird watching in a boat that cruised around a river flanked by beautiful mangroves. We saw so many types of birds from herons and egrets to flamingos to every osprey and peregrine falcons! Scroll down for photographic evidence!!



We also lounged in Rio Lagartos' own Dead Sea (a water body of extremely high salinity) and Nate was able to experience the sensation of floating for the first time in his life. It was as touching a moment as we've seen here in the Yucatan.

Following the salty floating, we decided the best thing to do was to cover our bodies with mud! Granted it was special Mayan mud. What's special Mayan mud? It's mud that exfoliates. I mean, it's still mud but now I can justify purposefully covering my body in it. We washed it off later, or at least tried to. It's apparently a very persistent substance that requires two dips in a cenote, a shower, and vigorous sink scrubbing - who knew?

Sunday I went to a bull fight, but I don't really want to talk about that. Let's just say, the French matador who looked a lot like Smedberg was not very good at his job (the apparently didn't train him very well in France) and what has been described to me as an exquisite and structured art form turned into a gory, blood bath that I could not endure. There were tears and laughing Mexicans. And we'll leave it at that.

So that was my busy three-day weekend. I'm clearly still feeling its effects since it's only 9:43 here and I'm ready to pass out (in my defense, today we visited three more sites/cities). But it should be noted that located smack-dab in the middle of my tremendous weekend was my 8-month "monthiversary" with Chris and since I miss him and am feeling particularly schmaltzy I decided to include a little shout-out.

Did I mention this is my last week in Merida? Oh yeah. There's that too.

Friday was my last day of Spanish classes! And there was much rejoicing in the streets (and in the school as we gorged on a buffet of delicious, Mexican delights). For the next two weeks in Merida I will be taking an anthropology course called The Maya: Ancient and Modern and a Biology lecture with Ellen Dawley.

Saturday we hit the rode again to check out the Mayan ruins of Oxintok!

We weren't allowed to climb on the ruins so the first part of the day was filled with birdwatching. Aided by our trusted guide Hugo, we traveled all over Oxintok pointing and marveling at all the pretty birdies. The best sighting of the day was an Turquoise-Browed Motmot. It is really a stunningly colorful and beautiful bird. This is the best picture I could get of it.



After a delicious lunch tucked away in the recesses of some small town, we headed to our next cenote! But we didn't drive all the way to the cenote, because it is located in a more remote area. Instead, we had to ride bikes! It was about a 5 mile trek, one half by paved road the other half by rocky trail. And in the middle of our adventure, the sky filled up with clouds and we were swallowed up by a storm. It was a blast, biking through the dry scrub of the Yucatan, surrounded by trees, with the rain falling all around us. We finally reached the cenote, a big hole in the ground and the only way to enter the pool was to climb down a rickety, ladder (actually, two ladders tied together) that had been slicked down by the rainstorm. It was just a pinch of danger to make the entire excursion delicious.



The cenote was as gorgeous as the last and there was an area where we could jump and dive (so much of our time there was spent doing just that). I don't think I will ever get tired or stop being amazed by the cenote trips. Never.

During the bike ride I got stung by something. I don't know what though. One minute I'm biking along, minding my own business, and the next there's this terrible stinging in my leg. I tried to keep going thinking a rock had just been spun up into my leg but when the pain persisted and got worse I pulled over to investigate. There, right above my knee on the back, right side of my leg was someone's stinger who had so kindly left it behind as a token to remember it by. I noticed that it's fleshy guts were left behind as well, so it was a suicide mission. I don't know what I did to disturb this insect so much that it felt the need to punish me in such a way that it too would perish. I guess he had the last laugh though, because I woke up yesterday with a red, bumpy rash all down both my legs (which is perplexing because my legs were the only body parts affected and I can't figure out how the rash got to the other leg...)A large red welt had also formed around the sting area. I've never had an allergic reaction to a bee sting before so I bet that sucker was combined his kamikaze attack with bio-warfare! I must have really pissed this thing off! Oh well he's dead and I'm a little itchy so we'll call it even.