> I really would like to see the rainforests before they are chopped to bits for wood or land or whatever. I'd also like to visit the Mayan and Aztec ruins and the Roman temples and...well basically any ruins of any kind are simply fascinating to me!
>

Last November, I had the chance to visit both the rainforest and some ruling Mayan ruins in one shot. :) My family and I took a trip to Cancun, Mexico, and got to see all that stuff when we were there. The fly-in over the Yucatan peninsula was absolutely incredible... the plane came out of the clouds just off of the coast, and the water changed from deep blue to this incredible azure/aqua before running into the most brilliant green land I've ever seen from the air. The rainforest. Miles and miles of it. It looked so vibrant and... alive. I don't think I've ever seen land that looked so emphatically and intensely alive. The small towns and roadways barely made a mark on the forest. It was so beautiful I started crying. (I do that sometimes.) I did get to peek in the forests from ground level a little bit, but what I will always remember is the view from above.

The ruins I got to see were the famous ruins of Chichen Itza. That was something to see, let me tell you. The main (famous) pyramid/temple of El Castille (sp?) was so cool. You could climb up it, but the stairs were REALLY steep. And there were no guardrails there or at the top, but there WERE ambulances on call nearby lest someone fall off and die or something. (How reassuring.) The ruins didn't have the sense of intense age as Roman ruins I've seen did, but it was definetely very, very cool. I should scan in some of the pictures from then. We also stopped at a cenote poll (a pool in a sinkhole) that was amazingly beautiful and made me almost cry again. :)

Oh, and while I was there, I poked around and checked on the historical accuracy of the second Journeyman Project game, Buried In Time, which has a segment in Chichen Itza. Turns out it was really really accurate, and the High Priest's Grave Temple (the one you explore in the game) is a real temple AND it has real tunnels beneath it. Very cool for this Sosiqui. ;)

Sosi"running from other green-eyed monsters now"qui