Notable Times: FamBam 2018, Part 4: Tulum

Friday morning, August 10, 2018, we went up on deck to find that the towel animals had been up all night watching a movie! (Or so it seemed).

We arrived that morning in Cozumel, Mexico, which is an island east of Playa del Carmen (which in turn is south of Cancun).

Our plan was to visit the seaside Mayan ruins of Tulum. To do this, we had to walk off the ship at 10am, catch a taxi to the ferry station, take a ferry to Playa del Carmen on the mainland, meet our driver and drive down to Tulum and then reverse the trip, catching the 4pm ferry. It was a tight schedule, and I was a tad worried about missing the ferry and then our ship. I brought a credit card and our passports with us just in case...

We thought the 11am ferry would be the first one we could catch, but we made it on one at 10:30, so that added a little padding that made the schedule more comfortable.

A guy played the guitar and sang and played a flute on the ferry. He played Cielito Lindo along with some English songs.

Linette and I had been to Tulum before, and remembered the beach there being beautiful and inviting, but we didn't have time to swim that time. So we wore swim suits this time, just in case.

However, our taxi driver told us that the entire coastline from Cancun and on south was being bombarded with seaweed washing in from the ocean. Here you can see piles that have been scooped up by a bulldozer, and the water is still brown and gross. It sounds like they need a hurricane or something to clear it out.

César our driver met us with an appropriate sign. (I asked him to spell it that way. He didn't actually know what it meant).

We had a 45 minute drive down to Tulum, and had fun seeing iguanas all over the area.

We also saw several of these animals, called Tejón in Mexico (officially "Coati").

The tour began when we walked through one of the narrow tunnels through the surrounding wall.

Our guide told us a little about the history of Tulum, some of their customs (like sacrificing the youngest child. Sorry, Sienna. :/ ), and a couple of Mayan words.

It was a hot, humid day. Adam wore long sleeves because he had sunburn, but his all-black outfit got pretty toasty, so I poured water on him at one point. (He also had a cold that was slowing him down that day).

Tulum appears to have been built between 1200 and 1450 A.D. It avoided destruction by the Spanish for a while because the Spanish were busy trying to steal gold from the Aztecs and there wasn't much of that here.

Tulum is unique among Mayan sites in that it is right on the coast. It was used as a trading port, and has walls around it on the land, and cliffs towards the sea, making it easy to defend.

Tulum in 2018

In contrast to the brown water and seaweed on the beach in the photo above, here is a picture from 2010 when Linette and I were there before:

Tulum in 2010 (bluer water, clean beach)

Our guide spent a little too much time joking around, and not enough time telling us about the actual structures, so when he was done, we had only seen about 1/3 of the site, so then we went off to explore on our own.

Here is the back of the largest structure in Tulum (El Castillo).

This structure has a face carved into the corner of it.

Zooming in on the right, you can see some of the original red paint. These buildings look like plain stone now, but were typically brightly colored back in the day.

Looking between pillars on this building there are some ancient drawings just barely visible.

In a jungle path, I had the kids all pretend to be holding a machete. Then I photoshopped one into each of their hands. (Not sure what Kelsi was doing, so I threw a feather crown on her).

There was another tunnel that led out of the wall on the other side.

Tulum was an interesting site. It was a toasty day, though, and we were all pretty sweaty.

Our driver was great. He showed us pictures of his daughters and Erika talked to him about the Book of Mormon.

And the best part was that we made it to the ferry and back to the ship in time!

Adam got a little annoyed at so many family pictures ("We shouldn't take more than one family photo per fun thing!" he requested).

Now that all our tricky excursions were done, and we didn't miss our ship, I felt like I could fully relax. We played Nertz and stuff that night.

Saturday everyone slept in as long as they wanted, and it was a beautiful day with amazingly blue, smooth water. As I walked along the deck on level 5, I saw rings in the water, like someone had thrown a stone, which I knew wasn't possible, so I looked closer to see what was going on. Then I suddenly saw a flying fish! I had never seen one before. Soon I realized that they were flying away from the ship every minute or so, sometimes in groups of up to 20.

They would flit along the surface, flapping their "wings", and then glide for up to 200 feet. It was so cool!

There was a guy from The Netherlands watching with me at first. Then Sienna joined me when I sent her a message to come look. I kept telling people about it all day as they passed by, and sure enough, the flying fish were still going at it, and the people were always really excited to see them.

Here's a collection of short video clips I captured, to the tune of "Flight of the Bumblebee". (Be sure to do full screen on this one. I didn't have a zoom lens, so the fish are kind of tiny.)

Sienna and I took a few minutes to view the art in the art gallery.

Speaking of works of art, I got ice cream in a cream puff shell that looked like a swan!

I hadn't seen a sunrise (due to laziness) nor sunset (perhaps because we were always at dinner then) all week long, so on our last evening at sea, I vowed to watch the sun set.

I spoke with a very nice fellow from Missouri as we both watched the sun set (and the flying fish continuing to glide over the water). We could tell we were nearing New Orleans because we started seeing oil refineries in the ocean.

Unfortunately, the hazy air caused the sun to fizzle unceremoniously behind a shroud of grey, so I guess I wouldn't have missed much anyway. (There was some indication that the haze came from the wildfire smoke all the way from California).

That evening I wasn't sure whether to get the prime rib or the flat iron steak, so I got them both (may as well), topped off by "baked Alaska" (Neapolitan ice cream with a flamed meringue top).

After dinner we noticed a Mardi Gras celebration going on, where they were throwing beads and stuff down to people. A band went by playing "When the Saints Go Marching In".

I'm not sure how tall anyone expected someone to be, but this chair has them covered...

That night after playing a last round of games, we sat out on the balcony in the cool breeze and talked and laughed until after 1am, and it was great.