Sunday, June 17, 2007

Mexico/Belize: Muy bueno/Nice man

To help me with my transition away from student lala-land and into the harsh reality of real work, Maureen organized an amazing trip to Mexico and Belize. After a few days in Mexico City (a really big town!) we flew to Chetumal on the border between Mexico and Belize and rented a car for a few thousand mile road trip through pre-colombian sites in the Yucatan peninsula and Chiapas. Along the way we hit the big guys (Chichen Itza, Tulum, Uxmal, Palenque) and some of the smaller sites (Bonampac, Coba, etc.) At the end of our loop, we were pretty much mayaed-out and ready for a change of scenery. We left the humid, mosquito-laden jungles of the Yucatan and headed for the immaculate coral reef of Belize. There we spend a few days relaxing on a sailboat, and swam around with colorful water creatures (the sharks in the pictures are not dangerous, supposedly). There are a lot of pictures, so I split them into groups: the main set is a chronological selection of shots, the nature album contains a bunch of additional nature/animal shots that I thought were neat (iguanas rock!). Finally, here are a bunch of examples of Toltec/Aztec/Mayan art if you are into that kind of stuff. The guy with the weird nose sticking up or down is rain god Chaac, as you can tell by the frequency of representations he is pretty important.