Xcaret

On Friday of our vacation we took the kids to Xcaret.  It's a eco-archaeological park.  They also have water rides and many animal exhibits.  Again, it was really hot, but a lot of the park was covered by trees and had  lots of shade, so that was great.  We got there early at 8:30 right when the park opened.

Hiking down to the river boat ride.

All ready to go...

Some views from the boat (the best I could do without dropping the camera in the water)

Checking out the Tilapia pools.

The kids were obsessed with the map, always asking where we were on it.

At 11:30 we went to see the performance of the "Flying Men"  We weren't too sure what this entailed, but we went to see it.  The men march in while one of the men played a whistle/flute.  They then climbed this massively tall pole (no nets, nothing.)

Waiting to see the "flying"

There they are...all five of them on top of the pole.

here's the video of them "flying" .  basically they tie a rope around their waists and then just fall backwards as they spin around the pole.  Cool...but crazy.

After that, we checked out the jaguars, pumas and panthers.  Then we went to the beach for some lunch and relaxing.

At the beach, they were releasing baby turtles into the waters.  I guess they nurture them until they are ready to be let go.  The twins were invited to help out with this.  They were a bit leery of this, but eventually went up and took turns petting the turtle before we released it and watched it swim off.

Climbing some ruins...

This was a incubator where little chicks were hatching as we stood there....

We also got a chance to swim in an underground river.  We hiked down to the river and everyone jumped in and we swam down the river for about 40 minutes.  Some of it was out in the open, but a lot of it was in caves and absolutely breathtaking.  The twins did great!