Lots of people don´t come today to Chichen Itza......some because they don´t feel well, but many because they love Merida so much that they want to stay there and shop. It is a big modern (sort-of) city with lots of Spanish Colonial architechture. It has traffic almost as bad as Mexico City, and the noise and crowds of people on the streets is hard for me to manage. Still, our new friends go with us out to get sherbert in local fruit flavours, and we have some fun people watching and shopping. Steve and I buy outfits in the traditional Mayan [View Full Entry]

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Another really long day of driving. We head north through the state of Campeche to the coast on the Gulf of Mexico. They grow sugarcane here, and we see trucks full of it along the way. We stop for a mid-morning break at a little place where a guy was busy in the back outside the building cutting up bags of oranges for fresh juice. He had two cages holding green parrots in the same space, but not close to the juice (nothing beats fresh orange juice - so much sweeter than our oranges too). Inside, ladies are busy making fresh [View Full Entry]

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The Mayan ruins at Palenque are amazing! The day is hotter than I can even describe, and the humidity makes it hard to breath by 9 in the morning. We learn to walk really slow, stand in shade whenever possible, and sip water constantly. It is hard to imagine how workers were able to constructed these huge buildings in this heat. And this is winter here - the cool season! This place is really interesting though. I would recommend that anyone interested in Mayan history visit here. The decendents of the original Mayans now are the vendors that are as thick [View Full Entry]

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Up again at 5:30 for a day-long drive to Palenque. We stop at Villa Hermosa's La Venta Park, which is where you can see giant Olmec heads carved from stone. The Olmec were the predecessors of the Maya and Aztec. This is the first time that we needed mosquito repellent - but they didn´t warn us before getting off the bus, and once in the park, we couldn't go back to the bus. Many of us got eaten, but no worse than Regina in the summer. There is also a small zoo there. The neatest thing were the Cotimundi that were [View Full Entry]

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The wake-up call came at 5:30 this morning for a drive to Veracruz. We caught a local bus to go to one of the beaches - which was scarey because we didn´t know where to get off, and nobody speaks English here. My Spanish is not enough to understand their answers - even if they understand my questions. We finally find a beach. Not the one we were looking for, but close enough. The wind and surf is high, and the red flags are out - no swimming! Oh well, we buy some fresh shrimp out of a bucket from a [View Full Entry]

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The second day we went to Teotihuacan - we really had to practice that for a long time before we could say it right - a huge ruins site about 30 miles north of Mexico City. It took about 1 1/2 hours to get there because of the crazy traffic. Then we went to the museum of anthropology and the National Palace where Diego Riviera murals tell about pre-colombian indian history. Beautiful! However, the poverty outside of the main part of downtown is stark. Market stalls are covered with plastic tarps. Houses are cinder block in various stages of disrepair, many [View Full Entry]

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We made it into Cancun on Wednesday after spending the night in toronto airport. It was cloudy and windy, but still warmer than home. Went to Isla Mujeres on Thursday. It was touristy......beaches were white and powdery sand, but was too windy to swim. Had a margerita on the beach. Travelled on a lot of buses - some very scarey! The backpacks are heavier than we expected. Walked off lots of calories, but ate even more. Mexico City is huge and the traffic is absolutely crazy! The taxi drivers and the bus drivers drive with one hand on the horn, and [View Full Entry]

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Planning is half the fun! It is 40 below with wind chill...........soon we will be in the warmth of Mexico! We don't know how often we will find a computer, but will post pictures whenever we can. [View Full Entry]

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Day 7 - We took a tour of the Black Hills today with Golden Circle Tours so that someone else could do the driving for a change. The fellow was very knowledgeable, and made the trip even more interesting. There were 7 of us in total in a van, so not a big group, which was nice. Day 8 - We toured Jewel Cave in the Black Hills. Then, because I didn't see a bear in Yellowstone, we drove through Bear Country, USA, just south of Rapid City, SD. It was a good park, with lots of wildlife in natural habitat [View Full Entry]

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Well, we have a 9 hour drive ahead today, so we get an early start. Another grey day, but perfect for travelling. I try to cover up the tired bags under my eyes with makeup, and Steve jokes "I'll just eat my muffin while you're coloring." I call him a bad name. The park had big forest fires in the 1980's. Lodgepole pine makes up 80 percent of the trees here - they are the ones that have the cones that only burst open to release their seeds in the heat caused by fire. As the charred wood decomposes, it releases [View Full Entry]

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