Coba...

We had the resort booked for 7 days, Sunday to Sunday. But Emily wanted to get back for their Ward conference on the second Sunday and didn't want to miss another day of church, so their flight home was on Saturday morning. Since we had bought our tickets separately, we decided to stay until Sunday and that meant that Friday was our last full day together with our friends. There was one more ruins site that we really wanted to see, one where we could actually climb and walk on the ruins. We decided against a tour guide, but kind of, in the end, got one. :) 

If any of you know Ben, you know that he had been dying to get up and explore the ruins from day one, and was so happy to finally be at a place where he could do just that.

There was that temple and a ball court right when we walked in, but everything else is spread out over lots of land. So, they have bikes you can rent or catamarans that will bike you around. My skin was on fire, so everyone else rented bikes, but I got a guide! :) It was perfect, because he was so nice and would just tell us things as we drove. Ben and I on our catamaran...

The path in front of us getting from ruin to ruin:

One of the many Codex's. They were all carved, and definitely weren't as easy to decipher as the carvings from Chichen Itza:

I just put up my camera and snapped a shot, hoping to get one of all of our friends on their bikes:

We finally made it to the Temple in Coba. The main Temple of that particular city, and one of only 2 in the area that you can still climb up. Although we kept on hearing rumors that this one too, will soon be closed to climbing. You can definitely tell that the foot traffic as worn away at the steps. Chichen Itza and Tulum were also open to climbing until like 2008 or something.

It was definitely a mistake to wear my jean shorts on a day I knew I would be hiking, and hiking with a sunburn, but the pain was definitely worth it!!! :) It was awesome.

The view from the top. I couldn't believe how jungley it was down there. It's hard to believe that there are thousands of ruin sites hidden within this jungle. The one little top you can see on the left, is the watch tower. I guess Coba is a center point between Chichen Itza and Tulum, and had raised roads (just like in the BOM) that lead to both Chichen Itza and Tulum. I think it's really cool that all the cities were connected.

Fry headed down first so he could get a shot of the rest of us at the top:

At the watch tower on our way back down. It was pretty cool for us to think about this as a thriving Metropolis and how it must have been back then. I think it's pretty amazing that all these structures are still around.

On our way there we had to drive through a few little Mayan villages. They were so cool, and I wanted to get out to take some pictures. We passed by the coolest looking cemetery, but didn't get a chance to stop. I kept on hoping we would see another one just as cool, but never did.  We did stop after Coba to do some shopping and I was able to snap a few pics:

When we got home, we decided to eat dinner in that night. We had some food we wanted to finish before they all left the next day. So we made a feast at their place and just hung out. Cary really wanted to do some night swimming, so after dinner, and after it started getting dark, we headed back down to the pool, and enjoyed some night swimming. You can imagine REM was stuck in our head for the rest of the trip!!! :)