Book of Mormon Ruins at Tulum

Our first port was the island of Cozumel, off the coast of Mexico. Our plan was to search out the Mayan ruins that have ties to the ancient people from the Book of Mormon. The church has not officially recognized Tulum as Book of Mormon ruins, but many LDS scholars and archeaoligists have found some fascinating connections. We were excited to see it all for ourselves. Of course, we chose not to go with the organized tour group from the ship, but instead tried to find our own way in the pouring rain as we got off the boat in Cozumel. Because of the distance involved in getting there, we ended up on the guided tour from the cruise, but we did get a significant discount from Gabriel after we met him around the corner and paid him in cash. So the journey began with a 1/2 hour ferry boat ride to the mainland:

Ryan wanted to get a picture of the ferry boat because he had such a memorable time on it. I would rather forget it ever happened. It was fully enclosed without even a little draft of air blowing through and it was full of about 60 people. It didn't even take five minutes into the ride for people to start feeling sick. Right after the boat left the dock, one of the workers came by handing out plastic bags for everyone. By the time we finally docked, about half of the bags had been used, including mine and Raelene's. We were miserable. And it certainly didn't help that Rob and Ryan were not miserable. They passed their time on the ferry ride of misery making dumb jokes and watching everyone else get sick. Lovely. After the ferry, we had a 45 minute drive on a Mexican bus, which compared to the ferry was a luxurious limo ride. We finally arrived at Tulum, paid extra for our LDS guide and got started:

This was one of the major temple buildings. The three figures carved on the outside are thought by Book of Mormon scholars to represent Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost as three seperate people. The figure in the middle is shown upside-down and is found all over the ruins. They call him the "descending God" and he is thought to be Jesus Christ, shown descending because he came down from the heavens when he appeared to the people in America.

These purple flowers were growing everywhere and I loved the look of them against the rocks.

Unfortunately for me, we were not allowed to climb these ruins. I wanted to so badly.

Can you see the face in the rock? Half the face is happy and half is not. Cool.

It was all so amazing, located right on the shore of the most beautiful beach. The symbolism and information our tour guide gave us was fascinating. The connections to the Book of Mormon were definitely there. Unfortunately, because we were with a large tour and because we were so far from the cruise ship, we were only able to be there for just over an hour. Not nearly enough time to get all the information we wanted. Hopefully some day we'll be able to go back. Oh, and by the way, we all survived the ferry ride back! It was an unforgetable day.