Tulum is an ancient Mayan city. It's a small city, but very cool. It's the only Mayan city to have a cliff. Only about 500 upperclass people lived in the city and about 1000 lowerclass people lived outside the walls. We learned a lot about the Mayan culture and their development. Our guide was very smart. I asked him about his educational background, and he said he has certificates in giving tours in archeological finds, etc. Very interesting. We loved him. He reminded me of Christof, Jessica!! Very nature oriented. Soft spoken, but had a divine energy coming off of him.
He gave us a tour for about an hour, then we were released on the small city to take photos and hang out at the beach. All over the place are iguanas. BIG ONES. We really really liked the iguanas...every one did. A guy that we met from Nebraska commented "Here we are surrounded by all these ruins and everyone is taking photos of the iguanas!" True! We were. Iguana males usually have 5-7 girlfriends. They sit around all day storing up their energy. If they have to oflee, they expend ALOT of energy quickly..which they stored from resting. When they fight, the first they do is attack with their tales. The photo of the single iguana shows his tail growing back. He lost it in a fight. The guide said the growth was about two weeks worth. Gross. But interestsing. I was kind of hoping one would chase up, but that would have been a little scary. They are so dang fast, though! 
We took a ton of photos and I will post a few in a separate entry. Before we left for the adventure park, we had a few minutes to shop around and eat. On our way to the shopping center we saw another creepy animal photo opportunity. Couldn't pass this one up and it didn't pee on me! What a relief!:) 
After holding and pettinig the iguanas, we picked up some food to snack on. I had really bad pizza. Yes--pizza. I forgive myself for beating myself up the other day. Pizza is for sale EVERYWHERE! So I gave in and had some today. yuck. Bland. Hardly any cheese. But it held me over until lunch at the adventure place. When we arrived at the adventure park , the first thing we did was repel from an 80 foot tower. Walking up the stairs was the scariest thing I've done in a long time. My heart was racing and I was feeling a little sick. Not to mention that the entire time I was comparing it to jumping off Macau Tower in Hong Kong in December 2010. After three flights of stairs I had convinced myself that I was not going to be able to jump from 764-ish feet. What in the hell was I ever thinking?????
I had to bring myself back to the present. Repelling is kind of scary at first. The part where you have to strap in to a line, then LEAN BACK, OVER THE GROUND BELOW---took my breath away--each time. My group got to go twice if they wanted, so of course we did. 
The photo with the girl on the right in the red shirt and black shorts is me. The guide had to talk me through each step--I was pretty scared. :) Of course, Mr.Cohen is good at everything he does, and he's repelled before, so he wanted to go upside down. Unfortunately he didn't ask, because after his second repel, a guy did go down head first. Eric really wanted to try it. After repelling we went to the zip lines. Again, the scariest part was climbing the stairs! It was really windy and the stairs were steep. There were three zip lines of increasing heights and distances. We did zip lines in Dominica, so this wasn't extrememly fun. The best part was getting high off of my fear of heights, on the stairs!
the next activity was swimming in a cenote. I think we had a horrible explanation of it on the nature tour, but got a much better description today. Cenotes happened when bazillions of years ago the meteor hit mexico which supposedly killed off the dinosaurs. The impact caused the tectonic plates to move, and the ground to shift. Before the meteor, where the cenotes are now, used to be reefs. The meteor stuck, pushing the reefs above sea water and they died, creating caverns under ground. Then somehow the caverns filled up with fresh water. This caused the limestone from the reefs to drip and make stalactites (sp?) and other cool stuff. It's easier to just show you than explain it. I guess I didn't pay attention well enough. ;) Anyway, we had the chance to swim and snorkel in one, underground, very carefully. 
It was chilly..but what an AWESOME experience. A very cute couple from California took our photo down there and is going to email it us when then can. I'll post it as soon as we get it. Then it was time to eat! OMG. We had chicken, beans, rice, chips and salsa. The food was awesome. The salsa was the best salsa we've had the entire time. I turly do not know what "authentic mexican" food is, but I think it was what we had today. We loved it. :)So that was our day. Eric is in the bedroom watching My Sister's Keeper and I am playing with photos and the blog. I can't watch that movie. Even knowing about it makes me cry. We ate around 3....so later we'll probably order room service, pour ouselves some wine that we bought in Playa Del Carmen a few days ago, and read Percy Jackson books. :) I'm almost done with the second on and Eric is on the fourth. He's going to be stuck in Mexico with no way to get the last one! I told him he should have brought the entire series!
Hope everyone out there is having a good time! We are!
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