Lazy Ladybug: Show Us Your Life

This was very hard. I'm not a world traveler by any means, but I've been on some cool vacations. Mostly around the state of Texas though. My absolute favorite trip, however, was actually my study abroad trip to the Yucatan.

I did my Master in Landscape Architecture work at Texas Tech. The summer after my first year, one of the professors put together a study abroad design trip around the Yucatan Peninsula. When I say "around the Yucatan" that is almost literal as we were all over the whole peninsula! This trip was four years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy on some of the details. And I had a really hard time going through the pictures!

The trip was also a way for us to study eco-tourism, so we were able to visit a few eco-resorts and lots of ruins.

We started out and Merida and kind of used that as a base that we came back to a few times. One of our first outings was to Celestun on the west coast

We took a little boat ride to an area in a mangrove forest where the fresh water & salt water mix, and we got to take a little dip in the cool water.

And then on the way back, we got to see a huge flock of flamingos!!

We got to see some ancient haciendas.

We climbed and toured lots of ruins. I believe this is Uxmal

I can't remember exactly where this place was, but I believe it was on the outskirts of Celestun. It was an eco-resort that let us hang out for a few hours on their beach.

We went all the way down to the south end of the peninsula to Calakmul, which is about 20 miles from Guatamala. These are the views from the top of the tallest ruin.

We stayed on the patio at Hacienda Tabi in hammocks!

Touring more ruins

The "vacation" part for us came when we got to spend a few days in Playa del Carmen!

Touring Tulum

We also got to take a tour of the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve. It was so cool because we got to float down man made Mayan canals.

The ruins at Chichen Itza.

We also got to go to Xcaret. If you ever get to that area, Xcaret is an awesome place to go!

The main reason for our trip was to redesign two different town squares (zocolos) for the villages of Yaxunah and Yaxachen. This was a really cool and interesting part of the trip. We were able to interact with the locals villagers to learn what they wanted in a zocolo and also to learn more about the culture.

In Yaxachen we were able to make homemade corn tortillas with a few of the villagers.

One of our favorite activities was taking a break to swim in the cenotes. This one was in Yaxunah.

I believe this one was at Ik Kil

The last place we stayed was Kaxil Kiuic Bioreserve. We were the first group to ever stay there!

And just to prove that we did do design work while we were there! When we were in Yaxunah, a storm came through and knocked out the electricity, so we had to finish our work by candlelight and flash light!