Summer, is it just starting?

Wow!!! Summer time is just starting and I feel like is ending. The girls and I just returned yesterday night from our amazing trip to Yucatan and we are exhausted! We traveled - I say to them-, from tip to tip, from one peninsula (BAJA CALIFORNIA) to the other (YUCATAN).

We have so many stories to tell and remember, Yucatan peninsula is just beautiful and we had just a peek of its marvels. Very hot at this time of the year, but I think the heat was just a minus of many, many pluses we found and experienced. As many of you know we traveled as single mamas with kids, very singular because we didn't have any boy in our gang, just girls.

This experience of just girls, was very interesting, made me think how this "travel alone thing" could impact, in the future of our young girls as independent individuals. Made me realize too of the importance of their education.

Let me explain the last part. Yucatan has a big population of Maya people, and when I say "Maya" I mean people that speak this language only or are bilinguals (Maya and Spanish). As we traveled to the places we planned, or just from talking to people, I found out that the more educated the better Spanish they speak, people learn Spanish when they start going to the elementary school. But sadly we saw more women that just spoke Maya, which means they are less educated, with less opportunities. Many of them make beautiful embroidery work, but probably they can not sale their hand crafts in a profitable way because of their less education.

We visited places where women are organized in cooperatives to sale their work, like in Punta Laguna (with the help of a male translator to Spanish). I don't think the mayority of them around the states of the Yucatan peninsula can make it better if they interrupt their school (many reasons to do so, every thing to do with the poverty levels).

I never heard people talking Maya before, is wonderful they preserve their traditions. Talking to the taxi drivers, to our different guides about Maya words made me appreciate the importance of not loosing the traditions and languages of the world, it makes the human culture richer. Also it helps to understand more about the Maya civilization int this part of Mexico, which, let me tell, it comes alive when you stand totally amazed in front of those ruins.