January 18, 2012

January 18, 2012

Today was an exciting day as we awoke in the morning to go to some more Mayan ruins in Columbia. The drive was about 20 minutes and we arrived at the muddy destination in our bus. It was so muddy that our bus became instantly stuck on the hill that was the entrance to the archaeological site. The men got out of the bus and the women went to the back of the bus to give it traction. They pushed, they put rocks, wood, and leaves under the wheels, but it was to no avail the bus was stuck. A few of the girls said they wanted to help push, so they jumped out to stand and watch. So, our group carefully walked down the muddy hill and up the next. Only one person, Dr. Skon, slipped in the mud and fell, but many of us were close to falling in the mud. We made it up to the ruins which were not as preserved as the other ruins that we saw before. There was a man who “ran” the ruins and we had hoped that he would help us get the bus out with the truck, but he was very rude and declared that we were stupid to try to drive it onto the road. Anyway, we walked through the Mayan ruins that were close to being piles of rocks because they had not been preserved as well. It was still interesting to be at another Mayan site and imagine what it must have been like thousands of years ago. Some of our group went into the jungle away from the ruins to play in a creek that they found. Brighton found a vine to play on which was hanging over a steep hill of jungle and rocks. Brighton, Cody, Damon, Kyle, Hillary, Erica, Dr. Skon, and I swung on the vine as we took pictures of our “Tarzan reenactment.” Then Kyle and Damon had a bright idea to go two at a time on the vine. Many of us said, “No guys, it's not a good idea,” but they both got on the vine, Kyle at 5 feet above Damon. They went as far out as the vine would go and then it snapped. We all screamed as we watched them fall into the jungle below. They landed on their backs on top of rocks and plants. I was scared to death that they hit their head or spine. Cody scrambled down the rocks to make sure that they were O.K. and they were both able to stand up with help quickly. Damon however was light-headed, so we had him sit before climbing up the rocks. Luckily for Kyle, Damon broke part of his fall as Kyle slightly landed on Damon's left half. They had multiple cuts and scratches with Damon having two deeper cuts around his ankles. We were happy to find that neither one of them showed signs of concussion and we rinsed their cuts off with water, since none of us had antibacterial wipes or band-aids. We started walking back and then “the nurses” ran over all freaked out like it was a major catastrophe. We were unable to get the bus out, so Dwight walked all the way back to our campground to get the other van. He was able to take the majority of our group back to the campground. I walked with the others who decided to walk, and we walked on the muddy road as we sweat from the crazily hot day. Dwight came back to pick us up once we made it to the village, so it wasn't but a mile or two that we had to walk. Damon and Kyle ended up being fine, just as we all knew he would be. We ate spaghetti for supper tonight and I helped the cooks make it because they had never had spaghetti before. I was sad to find out later that there wasn't enough for them to try it, but I was glad that I was able to talk with the cooks for a long time about their lives. I bought a bracelet and two baskets from some women that came to sell their things. We watched “A Class Divided” and now we are relaxing and watching The Big Bang Theory show.