Kevin's Life

On Thursday, Feb. 22 I woke up early, just before dawn. I decided to get up and watch the sun rise over the ocean in front of my room. I walked down to the beach and got some great pictures of the sun coming up.

From there I went to the Yucatan dining room for breakfast, then met Trevor's family at 7:40 for the Coba Adventure Tour. This is a tour put on by AllTourNative www.alltournative.com. This company specializes in tours for people who want to get out into the back country and be a bit more adventurous.

The tour started with about a ten minute drive to the company's main office so the gude could get some coffee. The real reason was so we could buy souveniers. I forgot to bring my swim trunks, so bought a pair there.

Next, off for a 45 minute ride with a crazy driver down back roads until we came to a little myan village. A family was there selling souveneirs. They had a couple pigs and other animals tied up out front to pet. Here's Braedon about to pet a pig.

We all pile back into the van, then off to the lake for the first part of our tour. This starts with us piling into canoes and then canoeing across the lake to a point about 500 yards out. From there, we hike about half way back to the top of a 30 foot cliff. Along the way we saw a mother and chid monkey in the trees.

At the top of the cliff they hook us into harnesses, attach us to a 200 yard cable called a "zip line", then we slide down this cable to where the canoe landing point was. Very cool. The picture below is taken from the top of the zip line. You can see the line going off to the point in the discance in the middle of the picture.

Next we hike back to the same place again, and using the same harness we rappel down the side of the cliff (with a lot of help from the staff). Here's a video of Kevin rappelling.

From there, we hike back to where the canoe dock is, then back into the bush on the other side where we meet a myan shaman (wearing the tour company's T-shirt). He does some stuff with incense and praying to the spirits of the forest. Here's a picture of the shaman with the entire family. From left to right, Logan, Tammy, me, Trevor, Braedon, and Gregory.

We then hike some more, pointing out the plant and animal life. We got to taste some wild chiles and saw a tree with thorns that ants lived in. These thorns were used by Myans as sewing needles, for piercings, and to do tattoos.

More hiking back to the base camp where we have lunch, go to another souvenier shop to look at pictures of us doing our rapel and using the zip line, etc.

The kids were quite bored with this, and were ready to leave. Like they said, they can go canoeing and walking through the bush at home. They liked the zip line though.

Next we pile back into the van for another 30 minutes or so until we get to a cave system with sink holes (or in Spanish "Cenote". We get out, shower, change, then go down about 3 stories underground into a big sink hole cave. Here we can swim in the water at the bottom. A few of us jumped off the 30 foot high platform they had on the stairs. Unfortunately, Trevor was slow with the camera so we didn't get a picture of me jumping. (He'll say I was fast with the jump and didn't wait for him to get set up).

After this we pile in the van again for another 15 minutes or so until we get to the ruins at Coba. This is a set of Mayan ruins with the tallest pyramid in Mexico. It's also the only pyramid tourists are still allowed to climb. This was excellent.

From the main entrance, the main pyramid was about 2 km away. I decided to walk there. But we also had the option of renting bicycles, or getting rides on special passenger bicycles. Here's a picture of the kids getting a ride, with Trevor on a bike in the background.

Along the way I saw two Myan ball game courts, a few smaller pyramids, and the main large pyramid. Here's a picture of a smaller pyramid.

Even though I was walking, I managed to beat the others to the large pyramid. Here's a picture of this pyramid.

I walked to the top of this pyramid with the kids. It was a couple hundred feet high. We could see for miles above the treetops of the jungle. Off in the disatance you could see other pyramids, and of course cell phone towers. Here's a picture from the top looking down. That's Logan in the foreground.

To put things in perspective, here's a picture taken from the top of the big pyramid of the first pyramid picture shown above. The other pyramid is right in the middle of the picture.

One word of advice is ditch the tour guide after he tells you when to get back and explore on your own. They only give you an hour there so you don't want to waste it listening to the guide.

From there we went back to the hotel. Got there about 4:30. Along the way, we passed many Mayan villages. Here's an example of a typical Mayan home. A series of vertical poles tied together, with a thatched roof. By our standards, it may look pretty primitive. However, they don't need houses with foot thick insulated walls. It's always room temperature there. So for that environment, these strutures are perfect.

Later that evening we went to the Hacienda Dona Isabel for a Mexican Fiesta Party. $16 to enter. Another show about Mexican history and culture. I won a bottle of tequila and a free caricature. Here's the caricature.

Unfortunately, no towel buddy today.