What a day

Jaeson asked if Mayan ruins are in the middle of town like the Parthenon.
Not hardly. And the ruins at Calakmul must be the extreme. We stayed at the closest hotel to the ruins and even that is nearly 1-1/2 hours of driving to the entrance of the park. Then about ½ hour walking to Structure II which is the tallest Mayan pyramid in the Yucatan. So round trip from the hotel, through just part of the ruins and back again to the hotel took 5 hours.
Have a traveling friend, though. The night before, after we were settled in our beds, we heard someone calling from outside our little hut. Tracy is traveling alone for a couple of weeks since finishing her master's at GWU inTrade Relations. There is no bus to the ruins so she would have had to rent
a taxi to take her up for $100US which is an enormous sum in these parts. So we agreed to take her with us. Given that we were the only tourist there when we arrived at 8:30A and when we left only 8-10 more had arrived, it probably would have been a bit creepy for her to be there alone. Plus, I had someone to climb to the top of that tallest pyramid with rather than doing it myself. Sadly, the photos of the pyramid are taken from the sky. You cannot appreciate its entirety from the ground but I'll post of picture
taken from the top looking at Structure III above the canopy.
Sadly no jaguar spotting. Lots of wild turkeys and we were startled by the eerie sound of howler monkeys on our walk through the Calakmul ruins, but no jaguar. At one point we must have been right under the monkey but just could not see him.
Tracy was also headed to Campeche so we brought her along on the 4 hour drive and dropped her off at her hostel before settling into our hotel. She's going on to Merida today, too, so we'll transport here there as well. Torrential rains engulfed us during the last hour or so of our drive here. And it was still raining lightly last night so we visited the plaza and had dinner and then crashed.
This morning we strolled along the water, had tacos for breakfast at a roadside cart and then some Mexican hot chocolate to top it off.
Just getting ready to head out now.