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Our flight back to Cancun arrived late in the afternoon and it took a little longer than anticipated to get through immigration, customs and pick up our rental car. Welcome back, we might as well get used to it as crossing land borders with the truck will probably take longer, much longer.

Back in Mexico

Dbg
2005-11-04 19:32:09

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the website. Unfortunately we found that our Info-request page was not functioning. We don't have an email link on the website because spammers use "bots" and "spiders" that search out email addresses, then they send tons of unwanted spam to that address. So we get around this by using a form for first time visitors to send comments to us. Well, with the form malfunctioning we are likely missing out on many emails. We're working to get this straightened out and hope to have it all running by the time we enter Belize.

We continued back on the road, driving through a few cloudbursts, until we reached the Laguna Bacalar. The drive was pretty boring, just two lanes bordered by jungle and very few towns. Bacalar is a small town on the shore of a huge freshwater lagoon that is fed by a series of cenotes, one of which is just offshore in front of the campground.

Feb 26

We relaxed for the day either swimming or paddling our inflatable kayak around the lagoon. The cenote nearby drops to a depth of nearly 90 meters. When we paddled across it, the water depth went from from a few inches to a sheer drop off where we couldn't see the bottom. The drop off had several old dead trees that had fallen from shore and tipped into the cenote. They looked really strange, they appeared to be growing downward into the depths of the cenote.

Feb 27

This morning before breakfast, we took the kayak out for another spin. This time we turned north and followed the coastline a little ways. We also crossed over the lagoon to explore a small island. Surprisingly though the water was crystal clear, we didn't see any fish larger than a couple of inches long. That might explain why we never saw any fishing boats on the lagoon.

Leaving Bacalar later in the morning, we drove to a Maya ruin called Kohunlich. We had lunch in the parking lot then went in to explore the ruins.

The buildings and pyramids, although not on a scale with places like Palenque or Uxmal, are very interesting. The builders here rounded off the corners and used false columns around the doors. The most interesting feature was the Pyramid of the Masks.

The masks are 3mts (9ft) tall and flank the central staircase up the front. The masks were preserved as a later ruler enlarged the pyramid covering up the masks under an additional layer of rocks.

We spent our last night in Mexico at a campground on the shore of Chetumal Bay where we met up with a couple we met in Bacalar. They are traveling the world with their two young children.