Coba etc cont´d

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ok, so here in Valladolid, a bigger town on the way to Chichen Itza, im sitting in a lovely hostel that has been converted out of an old nunnary next to a big colonial church. pretty cool, bright colours everywhere, 2 pet chihuahas (everyone has one!) to play with (its ok mum and pat they´re fine :p) and lots of mexican music blearing. Plus there is an excellent internet connection, my last blog was from somewhere where it took me a whole hour to type that little amount because it would have to load each sentence slowly!

So... after dumoing our gear at the Chalupa hotel, we got up very early and caught a cheap taxi out to the grand cenote! (Dad you´ll love this). It is one of the best cenotes to see in the area, and we got there early enough to have it almost to ourselves! the water is so clear and you can go into a whole lot of caves and caverns that have amazing stalagtites and stalagmites and lots of fish and turtles to swim with! so amazing! unfortunately on this computer i cannot upload pics to this blog but ill try and put some on facebook. We stayed for an hour and a half which is when we´d seen all the parts of it and then the droves of tourists arrived so we split (we´d organised with our lovely cabby to come get us later since normally no cabs stop there). We headed straight for the bike hire shop and hired bikes and rode all the way (18 ks) to the Sian Kaan Biosphere, unfortunately the road after the entry to the park was just dirt with so many potholes that our bums are still sore from all the bumps, but i think mostly its coz the seats were so old. The bikes were old and had no gears either, but luckily it was mostly flat ground. The forest there was nice, surrounded on all sides by walls of green, which occassionally had breaks to one side allowing a beautiful view of the ocean. We made it to the visitors centre where we had a look at the view from the top of a rickety old view tower hwere only 2 ppl are allowed at once - so amazing! because in one direction you see the sea after the forest and in the other its forest then huge lagoons with many birds!
We had lunch on the wharf of the lagoon, and watched as the lazy birds flew by, big pelicans and herons etc as well as small finch type birds that hung about in the mangroves. Lots of butterflies too. We headed back to town because we knew out legs would take us longer to getback, we were already exhausted!

We basically organised the next day from town and collapsed after dinner that night.

Next morning we caught a colectivo (shared taxi) to Coba ruins, about half an hour away, we shared with a mexican couple on holiday- we got there and we had the whole ruins to ourselves!! (we´d been told to do this because droves of people turn up after about 10am, so we got there atjust after 8am). The ruins were amazing! the archaelogoists reckon that there are about 6500 structures hidden in the jungle, but only a handful have been excasvated. we climbed the tallest myan pyramid in the southern yucatan, 42 metres, great view over the jungle from the top, plus you could see the humps in the distance of where other pyramids are waiting to be excavated! so cool! and all to ourselves! plus many birds were around, we saw a very colourful couple of giant peacock type birds and many others!
the ruins actually hire bikes to do the tour of the buidings because some of them are over 2km´s apart, we walked to save money and get a bit more out of the day, we saw squirells too because we were quieter.

After leaving the ruins we headed the 10 min walk back to the town of Coba, on the way you walk past a lake with guess what... CROCODILES! we paid a couple 20 pesos, theyhad a wharf they used as their business, showing tourists the crocodiles by baiting with chicken. <of course i had to see that 😊 very cool, very small though. biggest one i saw was probably 2-2.5m. I was proud of myself though because while Dario had a chatto the lady in spanish i was chatting to the guy out on the wharf about crocodiles all in spanish! yay! We ate lunch after that at the taxi terminal which is also where the buses back to tulum stop,m but we had to keep rejecting offers of taxi drivers who wanted to charge us a lot. Eventually our patience ran pretty thin as we had waited over 2 hours with no bus yet, as luck would have it, i chatted to a cabbywho was heading back to tulum (in spanish yay!) and was a colectivo taxi and we could go back for cheap! lucky huh! especially since we were at maximum budget almost (we guessed becuase we had to include accomodation that night and dinner).

We grabbed our luggage from the Chalupa hotel and said a big thanks coz the ladythere was great, so helpful with free info about anything we asked, and so was the young man, though we never caught their names. We headed to the ADO bus terminal and got the nextbus atr 3.30 to Valladolid, where we are now. WE got there after dark (3ish hours later) and walked a few blocks to where a hostel in lonely planetwas, this one😊 We got a private room coz we wanted to just chillout after a big day. Dinner was in the middle f town where there is a giant square with lots of coloured lights in the trees and over a fountain. very pretty, Its a bustling town lots of people compared to Tulum. We enjoyed dinner, and 2 children came to ous (after a bit of persuasion from the guy who made us dinner) who had ben going to the locals with a big piece of palm leaf and stuck to it was a picture of the virgin mary and lots of tinsle and balloons. These children are doing a very traditional thing in this area, collecting coins from the locals who they sing a christmas carol too. WE saw others doing it to. This money is collected together on the 24th December and they buy things like pinatas and decorations for christmas eve. very cute,but they were petrified of us! so we gave them a coin so theywouldnt have to sing for strange white people 😊

Anyway, we went to the supermarket and bought lunch for today and a few treats... like acheap version of nutella and packaged flan for Dario and had a pigout in our room while watching the weirdest horror films... only things in english.

This morning we are off to Chichen Itza and onto the town of Merida. So hopefully there i can upload pics for those interested. Sorry this was a long blog, ive decided that since im writing a blog, i dont need to write a diary so im putting more details in for my memory as well as whoever decides to read this 😊 Adios

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