Counting my blessings: Mexican Carribean Cruise Part 2

Here are more pictures from our visit to the amazing Uxmal ruins in the Yucatan peninsula.

We went up even more narrow, steep stairs to get to the top of another tall pyramid (we weren't allowed to climb the really big one we saw at the beginning of our tour).

Here is the view from the top, including Ryan being king of the pyramid.

After climbing down from the pyramid we posed for family pictures in front of it. You can see in the pictures that a lot of the pyramid is surrounded by (actually covered by) a hill. They were still in the process of excavating it. It made me wonder how they knew, or if they knew what it really looked like originally so they could rebuild it. A lot of the other ruins were still being rebuilt as well.

Here is a family picture that I took, which is why I'm not in it. Supposedly I was going to be photo-shopped in... Maybe someone already did that, but I don't have that picture. I think it looks good this way. You can see the giant pyramid in the background.

At the very end we got to explore some ruins that were not yet rebuilt. It was neat to think about what these smaller building might have been used for and what it was like to live in this part of the world when people were living there. It was hot and humid, but beautiful.

Back on the ship, we found this monkey hanging from the ceiling of our room. Every night the room service would leave us a towel creation. This was our favorite. Jessica and Ryan came back to find a life-size towel man sitting in their room one night. It was fun.

Here is cute Annie in our room with a tissue in her hand. (Which reminds me, I went through a lot of tissues on our cruise. I thought I had allergies but it turned out to be a cold. That combined with the rocking of the ship didn't feel too good for my head.)

On the next day, Thanksgiving day, we stopped in Cozumel. And though we didn't end up going where we had hoped (maybe because it didn't exist or maybe because the horde of taxi drivers waiting for tourists from the cruise ships pretended that it didn't), the sand was white, the water was beautiful and we found a spot that wasn't too crowded. And we got to do some snorkeling. Hyrum had fun trying the snorkel gear in the resort pool.
Here are some of us heading out to port, next to our ship.

On the beach

On the way back to the ship we found a photo opportunity in front of the ship from one view and a familiar scene with a plethora of piñatas on the other (it was a building based on the scene from The Three Amigos).

On our last day we tried a few activities on the ship, including miniature golf (fun except for the wind), a few arcade games for the kids, exploring the ship, board games with the family, and "research" with grandpa. Unfortunately, Adam had caught my cold by then. That day, we went all the way across the Gulf of Mexico and the ship was rocking quite a bit in the evening. Luckily it was the last day, because we really felt it. I had to keep lying down in between packing suitcases to keep from feeling too sick. But we had a lot of fun, especially in being all together.