Tulum Adventures

As mentioned previously, the third day of our trip to Playa del Carmen we spent on a Tulum Extreme Adventure tour.  Basically, it was a tour of the Mayan ruins in Tulum but also we got to rappel, zip line, and cave snorkel.  We had to be up bright and early as the ruins are about an hour from Playa.  First we headed to the "adventure" portion of the tour.  We drove way back into the jungle near Tulum and were shown a cenote and a chicle tree.  A cenote is basically an underground sink hole (kind of like a cave) with fresh water inside.  A chicle tree is what most chewing gum used to be made out of (hence the name - Chiclets).  Here Ryan is standing in front of a chicle tree that had been tapped in the past as you can see all the diagonal gashes on the trees.  Gum would seep from those gashes and would be collected in small bags.

Our first activity was rappelling.

Here's happy me during my second rappel where they let me go much faster than the first time.

Here's less happy me still trying to smile after they slowed me wwayyyy down and it made me slam my shin into the wooden structure.  Hmpf.

Next we had zip lining.

Our last adventure was cave snorkeling (or cenote snorkeling).  It was so beautiful!  I didn't see any critters down there like you might expect with snorkeling, but the stalactites and stalagmites were so pretty!  I'm glad this was our last and not first activity as it was quite a chilly shock to get in the water!  Thankfully we were getting a little hot outside during our prior activities so it was a nice cool off.

Then we had a yummy lunch in the jungle before heading to the ruins.

I'll write about the ruins in my next post but I will leave you with a picture of what I call my "gangrenous wound" from rappelling.

Here Ryan doctors me.  Yes, he did have an entire first aid kit with him.  That's my husband...