Mayan Ruins, Cenotes, and Sergio

Sunday, April 26th. We (both!) got an early start this morning for a drive out to the Mayan ruins at Coba. We considered Tuumul, but decided we wanted something less touristy. I would of really liked to see Chichen Itza, but the drive was too far. Coba it was. To make things even more interesting, Beth drove. Mexico didn't know what it had coming.

The drive out to Coba was pretty nice. South along the riviera, then inland along a two lane highway passing many small villages along the way. We also passed a number of cenote parks, but more on that later...

Coba is a pretty big Mayan site. In fact, they rent bicycles if you don't want to walk the distance from site to site. Bicycles?! We had to get in on this, Huffy wars commence! The ruins were amazing, we saw Mayan ballcourts, climbed the pyramid Nohuch Mul (139 feet tall!), and eavesdropped on guided tours. If only the guided tours were in english, we would of actually understood them.

The drive back home found us stopping for a bite at a taqueria for a lunch of tortas and tacos. It was here that we decided the weather was warm enough to warrant a refreshing swim in one of the local cenotes. The guide book we had mentioned a cenote park that was featured in National Geographic. It was kind of spendy at $25 apiece; travelling on a budget we decided to go off the beaten path and try one of the other cenote parks we passed on the way in to Coba. And it was only $8 each, what a deal!

The lack of any other tourists at the park should of been a clue that we were stumbling upon a hidden gem. After taking our money, we were appointed a guide, Sergio, that knew less english than I knew spanish. That's pretty rare. Still, Sergio was a competent guide. Bathing suits in our hands, he led us to...not a cenote. First stop was the re-creation of a mayan hut. Supposedly. Inside the hut were many tools used by the ancient mayans. Sergio proceeded to point at tools and say the spanish word for each one. And by tools I mean a rusty wrench, pick axe, sewing machine... these were definitely ancient mayan tools. A rusty wrench?! Beth, with her mucho excellente spanish, asked how old the tools were. "Muchos muchos ano". Thanks Sergio.

Ok, so how about that refreshing swim? Not yet. Next stop: the zoo. The park had quite a farm of animals: rooster, chicken, peacock, monkey, boar. Yes, those were singular. This ain't no Noah's Ark; here they only had one of each animal. Sergio would point to each animal and say it in spanish. That was about the extent of it.

Quite a bit of walking later, we were on to the cenotes. Stairs led us down a big hole in the ground to a cool underworld of, ready for this? About three feet of murky, standing water with bats flying around. What a pleasant place to swim! Sergio seemed surprised we lost our excitement for a swim. Not sure why that would be. We then saw another couple cenotes after this one, all in similar condition. One without water that had dried up. On our way out we got a very unnecessary tour of the horse stable. The $8 was very well spent for the, uh, astonishment of the whole experience. We quickly drove back to Playa.