On Saturday, no official wedding events were planned. Except for the wedding itself, of course. The assumption was that people would roll out of bed around noon, mildly hungover, and begin coiffing and primping--- in anticipation of the evening's opportunity to get severely hungover.
We didn't follow that schedule. We were awake at 6:45. Elliot was excited to be in a new place, so he couldn't wait for his customary 7:30 rising hour. As a result, we were downstairs finishing breakfast a little after 8am, many many hours before the wedding. How were we going to fill this day?
We decided to check out the fabled Mayan ruins which have attracted so many generations of spring breakers to Cancun. We got in our teeny red death mobile and headed a few hours South to the town of Tulum, which we heard had great ruins.
Elliot got a little hot along the way.
It turned out that several hundred other tourists had also heard of Tulum, which is a less than ideal way to immerse yourself in another culture. There's something about camera-heavy swarms that prevents the mental time travel necessary to enjoy ruins.
Nonetheless, we did manage to shoo the other tourists away long enough to get a few photos that make the place seem relatively unDisneylandish.
We were all getting hot (there were almost no trees, I guess to recreate the Mayans' hatred of botany), and we were told that there was some shade on the beach, which was down a cliff behind the largest Mayan temple.
This ended up redeeming the entire experience. Here's the view from the top of the cliff:
At the bottom we managed to snag a choice piece of shade from another set of tourists who were leaving (we ruthlessly edged out some locals to get it).
There seemed to be a calm area behind those rocks, which we thought was a good place to introduce Elliot to the ocean (again).
We think of the ocean tide as a binary, in-out kind of process. But when I crouched down with Elliot I realized that it's much more complex. There are all kinds of little eddies and ripples moving left and right, mini-waves rushing in and out. When you're barely two feet tall, it doesn't take much of a splash to feel like you're close to drowning.
To the little bugger's credit, he didn't freak out or start crying. He just got very focused, concentrating intensely on the motion of the water swirling about his calves. I tried to get him to look at me but he had far more important things to do.
It was around this time that we noticed that Elliot was developed a slight sunburn on his forearm. We had applied copious quantities of sunscreen, of course, and he'd only been in the sun for an hour or two. But apparently when it comes to skin, Elliot is embracing his Scottish heritage. Bad luck for him.
So we skedaddled back to the car. Along the way we chanced upon an ancient Mayan tradition made new:
It was actually pretty awesome. And it actually is an ancient ritual of the Mesoamerican Totonac tribe. Although I think there was some technology involved, like ball bearings, that the Totonacans didn't have. (feel free to read that wikipedia article closely and correct me on this)
That's it for the first half of the day. Next up: Danielle and Damien Get Married.
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