Sensory Adventure

One of the offerings here at Tres Rios Resort is called a sensory adventure. We were too busy to try it for the first few days, but decided to give it a go yesterday. This turned out for us to be one of the best things we’ve done here.

The tour started right outside the front door, on an unnoticed trail at the edge of the jungle. Our guide took us into the jungle and gave us eyeshades to remind us to keep our eyes closed. He encouraged us not to try to figure out what is going on around us, but just to experience it wordlessly. Promising our safety, he said that we needed only to trust him and his two assistants.

I won’t try to describe this adventure in detail because I’d rather not dilute the discovery should any of my readers have an opportunity to take the tour. I’ll just say that it involved herbs, spices, rocks, shells, music, a tiny planetarium where we were invited to lift our eyeshades, music, dancing, scented candles, water, and lots of lentils. Some of the water was not scripted, as we experienced a passing rain shower, but I think they would have gotten us wet anyway. I suspect that they wouldn’t have gotten every guest wet but since we were already wet and obviously didn’t mind, after pouring water onto my hands they ran the stream right up my arms.

My favorite part was the lentils. I saw the lentil area as we left, and there were enough seeds there to fill a child-size sandbox. They seated us on the floor and poured them onto our hands, arms, torsos, over our heads, everywhere. By the time they guided me to stand up, I was sitting in several inches of the stuff, still puzzled about what it was but confident I’d be able to find out because I had them in my hair and underwear.

At the conclusion they seated us once again and told us that we were facing a mirror and that we should look at ourselves with new eyes. Then we removed our eyeshades and discovered that we were looking at a little pool of water (or cenote) with jungle behind. We found it completely delightful.