Costa Maya, Mexico

On Tuesday, we ported in Costa Maya Mexico. The port here actually used to have a huge hotel and lots of shops, but a hurricane came a couple of years ago and wiped it out. You'll see in the picture that it looks like some frames from some old shacks and a lot of trees don't have leaves because of the damage from the hurricane. It was still beautiful though. They did have some shops developed, which is where we bought Mya's Mexican dress before we got back on the boat that evening. After getting off the ship, we went to the ruins in Chacchoben about 30-45 minutes away (I'm guessing).
There were a lot of Mayan ruins here. These were temples when they were righteous, but when the people were wicked, they used them as fortresses.
Also, there are tons of trees around these buildings now, but John Lund told us that none of those trees would have been there. The Nephites/Lamanites would have cut them all down out so far away from their temples so they could see if enemies were coming.
While we were standing at one of the temples, I started noticing these bees flying around us and I was getting kind of nervous. I didn't know what kind of bees these were, I didn't want Mya to get stung, and I'm allergic. Just then the guide told us that the bees in this area don't have stingers because the Jaredites would have brought them over. And because of the flood, there was no vegetation so they brought seed and bees to pollinate. But because they brought bees over in a boat, it was important that these bees didn't have stingers. It was kind of cool that these bees were brought over 2000 years before Christ. In fact, the Jaredites are known as the Omecs and lived north of the Mayans.
It was so green and pretty here! The one thing about the land was that it seemed more flat. But it was still just gorgeous.
Another thing I learned is that these used to be very colorful buildings. One of the temples you could see red on it where there used to be paint. It totally made sense to me. Even the houses down there are so colorful (especially in Guatemala). They were painted bright colors: red, green, yellow, even pink houses.
These temples are very similar to our temples. They said when they find these temples, they always find a large bowl shaped around it to wash before they enter the temple, an alter (which we saw at this one) before also, and then once you get in there are two rooms, one of which would be the holy of holies.