Above shows the outside of the church and below shows the inside. It is just the one room. The floor was dirt and the walls and ceiling were cinder blocks we cemented and tiled the floor while locals cement-plastered the walls and ceiling to smooth them out. On the right, in the picture above, we built a palapa so members could have a good outside spot for social events.
We went swimming every night to cool down and wash off. We rode in cattle car to get to the various cenotes that we swam in.
Tixbacab is in the Yucatan jungle. To get to the cenotes, we'd have to walk single-file on the path that the person in front was blazing with their machete. We saw a Boa and a couple frogs and the cenotes, but otherwise they were quiet and great places to swim.
The cenotes don't have a bottom (that a person can reach) so the locals can't use them to learn to swim. In fact, since there aren't pools or rivers, the locals can't swim. In the picture below, you can see a few locals that came to watch us swim. A couple got in (with their clothes on) to sit on a little ledge in the water.
Below is a picture taken looking up at our favorite cenote. To get to the cenote, you have to walk into a cave into blackness. You decend a little and then turn a corner and you see the blue water illuminated from above via this hole in the ceiling.
A couple people in the village have beds, but nearly everyone sleeps in hammocks. Hammocks were nice because of the heat and because of the other inhabitants in the houses. In our house, we saw a millipede (3 inches long), a bat, a few lizards, and various bugs. Here's a picture of my room and my hammock.
The villages in the area are built around a town center. We spend a lot of time playing with the kids in the town center. The kids loved the attention and we enjoyed the play time, even though it was H O T.
1 comment:
Great story & pix! I loved the part about the cenotes--aren't they so cool?!
What a blessing you were to those people, but we're all glad you're back safe & sound!
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