Month: September 2019

This is another adventure brought to you by my sixteenth birthday cruise. This time we are in the glorious country of Mexico. The original stop for the cruise was Cozumel but my family booked an excursion unbeknownst to us on mainland Mexico. While mostly all passangers got off onto dock people that were going to mainland Mexico were given a specific time to get to the other side of the boat. At this point, I was unsure of what our excursion intailed but assumed nothing of being told where to meet. We were then loaded onto this rinkydink boat and whisked away to Mexico.

Terror struck and it started pouring. There was a little cover over our heads but that did nothing to stop the torrential onslaught caused by the rain and wind. The plastic cover was flying all over and people were trying to keep it down. Nothing worked so by the end of this twenty-five minute boat ride we were soaked. When we got off of the boat, the ground was covered in rain. The excursion to the ruins was already canceled and I was worried that our trip to swim in caves would be canceled. However, it was not canceled and we were carted to a van with two other families. The ground was flooded and we could not see out of the windshield. I was terrified of driving in this rain and of having the van get stuck in the water. The van jerked and was able to pull through the water.

We drove for about thirty minutes and finally got dropped off in the middle of the woods. We were each given a life jacket and a helmet with a light on it. We were told specifically to not get the light in the water. Of course that means right away, I get this helmet soaked. I never got yelled at for this and the light still worked so I guess that it was fine. Now in this cave, there were bats flying around us and honestly at first I had no idea what they were and I wish that I never found out. My little sister asked what was on the ceiling and the tour guide said ‘You don’t want to know’. See the issue with that response is that it just makes you even more curious. After pestering him, he finally answered with bats. These bats honestly were not that scary but that didn’t matter, they were still bats. Every time one flew by I shrunk away.

Even though the bats were terrifying, the rest of the cave was so cool. It was so pretty. There were stalactites and stalagmites. There was a stalagmites getting formed right in front of us. There was water dripping down from the ceiling onto it. We explored this cave for over an hour. Afterwards, we were dropped off on a street with a bunch of giftshops and I was able to get my snow globe. It turned out where we were in Mexico was Playa del Carmen. Obviously, it was an unexpected change of events when we were boarded onto a boat from the back of the ship but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Have you ever been blood sacrificed at Mayan ruins? Yeah, well neither have I but I like to pretend that I have. I went on a cruise for my sixteenth birthday and one of the excursions that we decided to do was go to Xunantunich, which is Mayan ruins in Belize. I was so excited for this trip because I thought that it would be so much fun. So, once the tour guide mentioned that Belize was not a third world nation but a developing third world nation I knew it was going to be an adventure. We got to the ruins after an hour bus ride and a twenty minute walk up a mountain after having to get off the bus onto a platform that moved across the river. Once we got there, we climbed these steps that were about a foot each in height. I was so proud of finally getting to the top of this pyramid. The view from the top was so beautiful, we were able to see the whole landscape of this old city. There was so many other building that were their that we were able to explore. But that is not the reason for this story. The true story has just begun.

After climbing down this huge pyramid, having to be really careful not to fall we got to the gift shop. I walked in and didn’t really see anything that I liked so I was a little upset because up to that point I got a snow globe from each of the previous locations from the cruise. My little sister wanted a doll so we waited for her to get this doll, that I don’t think she looked at ever again but that’s besides the point. We were walking out of the store and there was a little step down, no more than 2 inches, I didn’t realize and I fell down and scrapped my knee. It was horrible, my knee was banged up so bad and then everyone was staring at me. Of course, it stung and I sat down on a bench and stared at my knee wondering what to do now. A really nice lady came up and asked, “Are you ok?” Of course being an embarrassed sixteen year old that just made it worse. At that point, I burst into tears and couldn’t believe that was happening. Then the tour guide came up to me and questioned what was wrong. I just looked at them like are you serious. The tour guide than went into the forest and brought back a leaf.

What would you do with a leaf? Probably not what this tour guide did. She squeezed it onto my knee. She physically smushed this leaf onto my leg and my knee became orange. Not just a little orange but it was stained for the rest of the cruise. At this point, I thought I was poisoned because that is what any rational person would think. In mid panic, we were loaded back onto the bus and they approached my mom with an incident report. It had a ton of questions but it was more like you are not allowed to sue us. They filled out most of the form for us but the one thing I remember was that a question was ‘What could have prevented this incident?’, they wrote ‘She could watch her step’. And that was how I was part of a blood ritual at the Mayan ruins and was sacrificed to the gods.