Mayan Area – Spider Monkey Reserve and Mayan Family Visit

This is one of our favorite tours in which you travel to a very special place in the heart of the Mayan jungle where you will find that communities are presently living sustainably and cooking their meals by fire, living with little or no electricity, in palapas or huts, growing their own herbs and fruits and vegetables, pulling up water from their natural wells to drink, sharing their land with Spider Monkeys and Howling monkeys as well as many other endemic wild animals of the region, hunting when necessary and permitted, carrying out ceremonies and rituals as their ancestors taught them, and now they have opened their homes and land for sustainable tourism, in order to make a living, as well as raise money to continue conservation, these Mayan communities have made it possible for us to now experience a world very distinct from our own, where we are hand in hand with nature and grounded in our roots.

First we arrive from your hotel (about a 1.5 hour drive) to Punta Laguna, Spider Monkey Reserve and Natural Protected Area.  

The activities here include:  A Mayan Purification and Blessing.  Next we cruise over to the lagoon or lake where we canoe over to a zip-line which crosses over the lagoon.  Usually after but sometimes before the zip-line we are taken by a local guide on a walk through the jungle to observe spider monkeys, possibly the lesser-social howler monkeys and bird species and whatever might grace us with their presence in the lush emerald green tropical forest.    Before departing Punta Laguna, if you like, we can jump off this really cool dock into the lagoon where we can refresh before heading to the next location.

A few villages up the road, we head over to visit a family with a privately owned Cenote called Esmeralda. This cenote has the possibility to jump from the top. Quite an adventure.

Finally we drive a couple of minutes back to where a Mayan family lives next to a lagoon, to have traditional food and see how this traditional family lives.  The Cahum family have been very good friends of ours for years.  They will give us a tour of  their land, taste homemade traditional Mayan cuisine, and they will teach us how to make corn tortillas from scratch as well as allow us to make one for ourselves.  Each time I visit this magical spot, I am reminded what a good feeling you can get from living with less material and just how much nature can provide an entire family to live comfortably and happily.

**Private Exclusive Experiences**

Pick-up at your lodging, drive to Punta Laguna (about 1:15 min) to be part of a Mayan ceremony, visit a hidden archaeological site, look for monkeys in the wild, canoe in a lagoon, zip-line across the lagoon. Drive 5 min. to Laguna Chabela to eat a traditional Mayan lunch and make handmade tortillas with the Cahum’s, who will show us their food forest gardens and their Mayan huts. We finish the tour with a visit to Cenote Esmeralda. A Mayan-owned private cenote, a place to embrace nature just 10 minutes away from the Cahum’s.