Semana Santa Part 1

Well, it's been quite a little bit here, sorry. I'd been really busy sorting out the semester at Purdue and then doing as much of nothing as possible at home. I finished my semester at Purdue by taking similar courses and I had to make up a month and a half of material in one class. I had to stay on campus for a week extra, but I think it all worked out (still don't have grades yet). This update will probably be two pages (got a lot of photos) and will cover my jaunt with a French-Canadian by the name of Danny through various Mayan ruins and stomach illnesses.

We started by flying into Cancun, which has the highest theme restaurant coverage per captia in the world. It was pretty scary really. We really only used Cancun for the hotel, which was very nice. Day two began with a short bus trip out to Tulum, which were a set of very pretty ruins on the side of the ocean. Unfortunately it was there that I got the call from the GEARE office at Purdue saying I'd have to come home, but other than that we had a great day. The beachfront was open for swimming and what-have-you and we stayed to enjoy the sun and sand for an hour or so. Here is a picture of the ocean (there may also be an iguana):

And here is a photo of the ocean and some ruins:
The next day we bussed out with all of our belongings to Chichen Itza, home of the tallest surviving Mayan pyramid (I think). The site was really large, and had a lot of buildings of various size and purpose. Here's some cool carvings on a random building.

We saw Chichen Itza with a guide, which was kinda expensive but probably worth it in the end. Here's an observatory, they used rooms with little tiny windows to see stars and stuff with surprising accuracy.
And here's the main attraction, the pyramid itself. It's kinda hard to miss as it's right in the middle of the site and is really quite big. Apparently there's another little pyramid inside, but you can't see it anymore.
It really was very impressive. We had a good day there. After Chichen Itza we took a whole lot of busses down to Palenque, home of some more ruins. Here's what the bus ride looked like, it was very nice.
The bus system in Mexico worked pretty well really. We took a lot of first class busses between towns and they were all clean and on time. All of them showed movies too which was especially nice on some of our all-day trips. In Palenque we saw the lovely ruins, which were pretty expansive again. The main draw there was the jungle setting. While it may seem a bit boring to see so many Mayan ruins in four days or so they all seemed unique enough to justify the visit, I can't really think of one of the three I'd like to skip in retrospect. Here's two pictures of the Palenque ruins:

(click for bigger) After the ruins our tour took us past an enormous waterfall whose name escapes me and probably will forever. It was quite impressive.
After the waterfall we saw "Aquas azules" which were supposed to be a beautiful blue but in our case more of a brownish shade. Oh well. It was still pretty cool as there were dozens of little waterfalls across a mile stretch of river, and it was a lovely way to end the day (although we didn't swim).
That's the end of part 1, STAY TUNED.