Mike in the Wild

Leaving the comfort of a 3,500-passenger cruise ship after two full days at sea can induce a unique anxiety in most passengers.  If you're planning a long day away from the all-you-can eat buffet, ports of call throughout the Caribbean usually forbid visitors to bring any food ashore.  Fortunately, most ports like Cozumel or Belize have plenty of restaurants that are more than happy to sell margaritas and conch fritters as a supplement to the ship's fare.  And lucky for me, the six-hour tour I booked to the Mayan archaeological site of Kohunlich from the Regal Princess during its stop in Mahahual provided a small snack bag. Of course, touring Kohunlich wasn't about the food, it was about the history of the Mayans, the local indigenous population whose civilization dates back more than two thousand years.  The site in Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico was already settled by 200 B.C. and was abandoned almost a thousand years ago after an elaborate array o...