Yucatan, Yahoo!

Hi all,

Annett and I just returned from the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, where we spent about four days with some other Merced folks as the final Merced President's Club trip before Merced disappears into NICE Systems. It was wonderful, and thanks to Mom and Mary Beth we were able to leave the kids in good hands at home while we had a pseudo-honeymoon!


We stayed in the luxurious Grand Velas Riviera Maya, just south of Cancun. It had great pools, nice restaurants, and a nice beach. The seawater itself ended up being fairly heavily littered, so we mostly stuck to the groomed beach and pool areas.

Main Pool at Grand Velas

Beachfront

We pretty-much ate ourselves silly, starting out with an amazing breakfast buffet that included amazing juice, fruit, seafood, and Mexican fare.

This was actually only about half the juice selection!

This is actually Annett's plate after the first helping...

 On our first full day in the Yucatan, of course we had to go see some Mayan archaeological sites, so we hired a bus with some friends and drove the 2.5 hours out to see Chichen Itza, one of the amazingly restored Mayan sites in Mexico.

We drove through small towns with names like X'Calacoop

We arrived in Chichen Itza, which receives about 3000 visitors/day 

 The site was amazing, with several different areas of restored buildings, and many more areas of unrestored buildings. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichen_Itza.

Highlights were the Temple of Kulkulkan...

...the Royal Ball Court (largest in Mexico)...

 The famous Mayan ball game was especially intriguing - the captain of the winning team was rewarded by being beheaded on the spot! More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame

...here is the hoop, through which warriors shot rubber balls...

...the skull-decorated platform for displaying real enemy skulls...

 

...the Temple of Warriors... 

...so named due to the many hundreds of columns decorated with portraits of warriors.

...the Royal Observatory, with an unusual domed roof for observing astronomical phenomena...

...another lower pyramid conjectured to be a tomb...

...and another temple or palace building of unknown distinction.

 The whole place was just magical, and of course back in its heyday in around 900 A.D., the entire area would have been paved in smooth stone, stucco, and all the buildings would have been painted immaculately with vivid colors and incense would have been burning in the many incense holders.

Now of course it is just partially restored, and many vendors of trinkets crowd the walkways.

After our tour of Chichen Itza, we went for lunch and a swim at Cenote Ik-Kil, a beautiful clear underwater river which was the primary reason for the Mayans to have built a city of 30,000+ on that location. This particular cenote (pronounced "say-NO-tay") was open for swimming to the public, but there are many others that are connected by underground rivers and limestone cave systems. Anyway, an amazing trip well worth it!

On Friday we took a morning snorkel tour out onto a nearby reef, where we saw many fish, starfish, and a sea turtle swimming around. No underwater photos, unfortunately, but beautiful clear blue water.

Saturday and Sunday we stuck around the resort and swam, lounged, read our books, and sipped pina coladas by the pool!

Anyway, it was a wonderful long weekend and we returned last night feeling refreshed and relaxed, ready to get back into the Silicon Valley rat race!!

Hope all is well with you, and lots of love!