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Published: January 5th 2008
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Well, where to start? I finished work for christmas on the 15th December, and set of with my friend Els on an epic and slightly insane week of visiting ruins, old towns and finally the beach in the Yucatan. I will try and recount the highlights for you, but hope the photos will do more justice to some of the beautiful places i have visited in the last few weeks.
We left Chiapas on the friday night to take an overnight bus to Palenque, a small town but home to some seriously impressive ruins and waterfalls. As we stumbled off the bus at 6am after the most unbelievably cold 8 hour bus journey (seriously is air conditioning really necessary at night?) we were met, conveniently, by a rep from a tour agency offering all manner of trips in the region. Rafa (my trusty spanish teacher and general source of information for the whole of mexico...i swear he memorises bus-timetables) said there would be someone waiting at the bus station and they were pretty good and reliable, so we signed up with them to saved trudging round a million different tour operators who all offer the same thing. I should say
at this point that i know it is incredibly lazy to go on an organised tour, but we were limited on time, and had a mission to see as much as possible, so we plumped for the easy option and sometimes it is worth it. So, our first day in Palenque we headed firstly to the ruins. The jungle scenery in Chiapas is pretty beautiful on its own, but when you add incredible mayan ruins into the pot it becomes pretty magical. Fortunately for us there wasn't a huge amount of tourists there, although just as we were winding up, we were treated to watching about 70 people meditate on the steps of the grand palace. It was a pretty bizarre sight, especially when they started singing and clapping. more bizarre is that the mexicans working there didn't seemed that suprised, so i'm guessing they get quite a lot of spiritual goings on there.
After the ruins we hopped into our mini van and went to to Misol-ha, a big waterfall close-by. It was pretty nice, but the large number of people and restricted space in which to stand and stare had me itching to move on after about
5 minutes. And so we did and 40 minutes later we were at Cascadas de Agua Azul, big in a different way and far more beautiful...the water bright turquoise and good enough to swim in (if only we'd taken our bikinis).
The following day we had booked onto another tour to visit the more remote ruins of Yaxchilan and Bonampak right near the border of Guatemala. For this we got picked up at 6am and after 4 hours of bumpy roads and general countryside gazing we reached the river where we needed to catch a boat to Yaxchilan. Although much smaller, being deep in the jungle and only being able to hear birds and howler monkeys (which incidentally sound a lot like lions), it was much more special and it was fun to walk around the site and look at the ruins and engravings without bumping into anything other than the ocasional spider...oooh and bats (one temple was full of bats, and i believe it was there that i discovered that i don't like creatures that can see in the dark and that can fly and in all probabiilty have rabies). Bonampak was great too, with fascinating murals and
more beautiful views. Needless to say we returned that evening pretty exhausted and hoping that our next bus journey (10 hours to Merida) would be slightly more comfortable than the last.
Well, the bus journey was even worse, as we set out over an hour late after torrential downpours bought the area to a standstill. then we got pulled over at a military checkpoint. the first thing i knew was when a soldier with a big rifle was waking me up asking me to get of the bus so he could search my bag. at 2am. not impressed. especially when they rifled through my dirty clothes, but the guy standing next to me only had to answer the guards questions...´whats in this pocket here'...òh, just some...errrr..books' replied the oh-so-suspicious looking guy. clearly i just have that drug/weapon smuggling look about me.
Anyway arrived in Merida, and got ourselves checked into a pretty nice hostel. After spending the morning eating a huge breakfast we headed out to a little town called Izamal, in which every single building is painted yellow. It was very pretty in a yellowy kind of way. Els and i hired bikes and visited lots of
art and craft workshops, including a house full of papier-mache butterflys. very pretty indeed.
By day 4 we were beginning to flag a little, but we drank some super-strong coffee and headed out to ruins no.4 - Uxmal. We got there super early again to beat the crowds and again pretty much had the place to ourselves. My legs were starting to complain a bit at this point about the number of big stone steps i had to climb, and once i got to the top coming down was doubly bad as my legs felt a lot like jelly (made worse by reading earlier that day about the high number of people who had met grisly deaths falling down the steps of one mayan temple or another). Luckily i wasn't the only one feeling the effects of heights and it felt good to see a girl about my age shuffling down the steps on her bottom.
After Merida (lots of traffic and people) We went to Pisté to visit Chichen-Itza (not chicken itza as one women i met insited on calling it...and she was a teacher...really). In the morning we visited a cenote- a big sinkhole/cave filled with
water which we could swim. We finally made it to Chichen itza at about 4, and because we were so late in the day we didn't have to pay, but had to run round, as the guards were beginning to throw people out. Chichen itza was way too touristy, although the ruins themselves were nice. We stayed in the evening for the sound and light show, and met an American who we went for coffee with afterwards. He was pretty cool although i tire easily of listening to conspiracy theories and pesimistic ramblings about the government, sometimes i need to cling onto a little bit of hope that the people that run this world aren't all bad. naiive maybe, but stops life being quite so depressing.
Ok onto the final leg. Tulum! Essentially beach. But what a beautiful beach. Your typical white sand tuquoise sea kinda place. We stayed in a hostel full of hippies and layabouts who do nothing but smoke pot and lie on the beach. I had an..erm.. enlightening conversation with one guy who informed me that we were infact decesndants of aliens and that they are still amongst us. indeed. certainly puts an end to
the creationists vs evolutionists argument. It was certainly an experience, but definitely not my kind of people to spend more than about 5 minutes humoring. On our final day we went to some more cenotes where the water was crystal clear and turquoise. We went snorkeling amongst the stalagtites and it truely felt like we were in another world. Defitiely one of my highlights of the trip.
So that just about sums up my week before Christmas. Its fair to say we squashed in a lot in 7 days, and you would have thought we would've slept well on our 18 hour bus journey back to tuxtla. haha how wrong we were. 😊
So, stay tuned for part 2...Chritsmas eve/day in Tuxtla and Oaxaca (pronounced wah-ha-ca) for New years, as soon as i summon up the patience to upload some more photos!
Until then, abrazos
xxx
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