Sunday – Cozumel, Mexico

The weather continues to be good – mostly sunny but very hot and humid. It’s not like our Arizona hot but the humidity can be oppressive. The seas have been pretty calm.

This morning we docked in Cozumel, Mexico. Also docking here today – the Disney Magic, full, I’m sure, of screaming children. It’s on a five day cruise in the Gulf of MEXICO from Galveston, Texas. We love Viking’s “no children” policy. The Magic holds 2700 passengers; the Sky holds 980.

After breakfast we headed ashore for our excursion for the day.

Our excursion today is to El Pueblo del Maiz, a Mayan village. Cozumel’s heritage is Mayan. We learned all about the Mayans and met many of them. We were treated to several Mayan cultural shows. It was a good excursion.

We had our faces painted with traditional Mayan symbols.

And we created some Mayan painting using the traditional Mayan paper and paints, all produced naturally from natural materials. Nal is corn. Ajk’ot is carving (I think).

Mayan dance was next including fire rituals.

It’s hard to upload videos on the ship’s wi-fi but here’s a link to one that I managed to upload during the night:

Mayan Fire Ceremony

I posed with some of the performers. Do I look Mayan?

We also learned a lot about Mayan traditions and way of life. It was a fun experience. The last picture below is not upside down. The first two pictures are of two Mayan beauties.

At the end of the excursion there was one more not so traditional Mayan custom to observe. We participated willingly given our satisfaction with the whole tour. Elaine also bought some Mayan earrings from the Mayan artist who made them. Perhaps a future picture will display them (when she wears them and if I remember).

Want to know more about the Maya civilization? – visit Wikipedia here.

Then it was back to the ship for lunch and a quiet afternoon. Dinner was in the World Cafe with a new friend – an Australian woman we met at the Living Room bar at cocktail hour.