Mexico- Ek Balam and Cenote

We were referred to this tour guide because he specialized in LDS history.  His name is Lemuel.  He was fabulous and told us a lot about the history of Mexico and the ruins.  He talked the whole two hour drive to our destination.  He showed us pictures on his ipad (which Ryan navigated and held up for us).  This large color version is a copy of something smaller found in the ruins face down.  But it seems to show Nephi's vision of the tree of life, including 12 roots.  Along with his brothers and sister.  He told us about the stories people have passed down about the light skinned man that visited here (Christ).

We chose Ek Balam as the ruins we wanted to visit because we are allowed to go inside some of it, and climb to the top.  The other ruins are closed to people climbing, and they are crowded.  We saw inside some of the buildings.  Dylan and Kaden were sitting on a "bed" in one of the pics.  We also saw mounds of dirt and earth and trees that are uncovered ruins.  There are so many still uncovered!  

He said this was an arena for sports.

There's a small pictures in the door frame of the light skinned man among the other dark skinned people.  There are lots of engravings that have meaning in the church.

Kaden got a little nervous at the top because he was worried about going down these steep steps.  It was steep!  But I held his hand and he did great.

Lemuel told us this was a baptismal font.  Who knows.

In the Mayan language, Ek Balam means black jaguar.  These were the paintings on the wall at the entry.

After the ruins, we went to a nearby Cenote to eat lunch and to swim.  Lunch was a buffet again.  There were not many people in the restaurant and there were lots of workers holding signs about how tips are appreciated.  It was weird.  They wouldn't let us serve ourselves either, we had to point and they would dish it up.  I'm not sure if this was a covid thing or if they were just trying to give people jobs to do.  After we ate we were still sitting at our table.  Some of us went to the bathroom, including Kaden.  Then I started passing out swimsuits so we could go to the locker room and change.  I was giving the boys their suits to take to the boys locker room.  Then we started to leave the seating area (it was covered but still open) we realized we didn't have Kaden.  We couldn't figure out where he would've gone.  It's not like him to take off in front of us even if he thinks he knows where we are going.  I started panicking and asked Lemuel to help us find him.  He was very calm and told me, it's okay, it's okay, we will find him.  He asked the workers in Spanish and they said they thought they saw him go down the stairs (one of the exits).  We looked around everywhere close and sent Dylan back to the restaurant to look again.  He found him, he had gone back to the same bathrooms to change into his swimsuit.  None of us realized he had headed that way and he hadn't realized we were going somewhere else to change.  That was scary!  But it was fine.  We rented a life jacket for Kaden because this Cenote is really deep, no clue how deep because we can't see the bottom.  And Kaden wanted a life jacket.  It was so beautiful!!  The pictures can't even capture it because of the contrast between the bright sunlight and the darker underground/cave.  It was chilly!  But it was really fun.

If you don't know what a Cenote is: