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Published: August 4th 2009
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Awoke suddenly, feeling like was being pulled up through water, sudedn sunlight breaking the surface. Sudden realisation was in a hammock, in a garden, sun high in the sky and music playing somewhere. Merida. Ahh, right. And it must be nearly time to check in.
Nursing the bites sustained in the hammock in the hours we had slumped there, we now slumped in the Reception, waiting for our room. When the owner, a big, jolly man, came back from buying coffee (Starbucks, Damn) and found us still waiting he laid into his Reception staff who were blithely chatting away and had them take us directly there. Really quite annoyingly, the room had obviously been empty for hours. As we'd been given sheets for the bed, and there was a sign inside asking you to clean it out yourself, we couldn't really understand why all the wait.
No matter, there was the more important matter of showers to attend to, and we took turns revelling in the cool water on what was, yet again, a stiflingly hot day.
Then, disaster: coming back from my shower, I found Jas agitated.
"Lau, all my stuff's gone," she said in an odd
tone. "What stuff?" I asked, dripping on the floor. "All my gifts, all the stuff I bought in San Cristobal."
She was right. It had gone. Jas had packed her bag in toto before we went to bed for the last time in San cristobal. I knew she couldn't have left the black plastic bag of gifts, the only good thing about the place, there, because we had both checked under beds in the small room in the half light of 5.45am the morning we left, and brought everything with us. Plus, it had been inside her rucksack. The penny dropped and we realised we must have been robbed.
"But who steals
gifts" jas moaned.
On our way out to see something of the town, I emailed Francisco, the owner of the hostel. To be honest, he's seemed really nice, it was just the people (HIPPIES!!!) he allowed to stay there that had ruined it for us. I told him what was missing, and asked that he contact us in case such items had been found. Most notably missing was the gift from Adelina at Quinta Lili, the little ceramic gecko with the hostel name painted on the
bottom. We left the hostel with heavy brows, hoping for a reply by our return.
Drinking a couple of banana milkshakes in the first nice cafe we came across on the Zocalo, we were starting to feel a little better. A nice man who saw we spoke English came and told us all about the maya craft workshop nearby that we should visit, and buy stuff from. Lots of stuff. Visiting that it was extremely interesting to see a whole collection of every craft we'd seen so far. A further inspection showed us an air-conditioned back room. we gasped as we entered, not just because the room was so cold, but because it was stuffed with colourful wall paintings, museum-worthy replicas of tomb burial jewlery and artefacts, and...crystal skulls! beautiful stuff, all moodily lit and kept ice-cool. it was rather more like a museum than a shop. i suspected it was almost as expensive.
Next we had a look for the 'City Tour'bus that Sergio had suggested we take if we only had a day to visit. This was pretty difficult, as although everyone we aksed had told us it left from outside the cathedral, there weren't any
signs. my feet felt like they were burning even as we sat and waited. Just as we were about to leave however, it suddenly arrived. you know the type: big, red, open-topped and full of tourists with earphones in.
Clambering aboard, we were subjected, for an hour, to branches snapping our faces, extremely low electric wires almost cutting our heads off, and the headphones blaring out an American-accented and extremely perky woman's voice saying banal things about the 'sights' l.ike "To your left, you will see a building, that has significance", and "The road, on which you are travelling, was built, at the time of Merida" and so forth. Not brilliant really. Finally coming back into town and seeing the bits of actual historical significance we were told "There is so much to say about these places that we can't fit it all here. So we won't". Not much educated, we got off, and went to the Italian Coffee Company (yay!) for a commiseratory Oreo Moka Frappe.
We were kind of giving up. Heading back to the hostel though, Jas saw in an Artesania shop a bag...exactly like the one she'd lost when her gifts were stolen. She
haggled with the 10-year-old shop keeper and bought it. "If my other one turns up I can give it as a gift to someone" she reasoned. Obviously, this must have twisted fate's arm a bit, because on checking my email again when we got back, we had an email from Francisco. He was searching everyone's bags, and only had one left to ckeck: Regina, the nice, friendly Mexican tourism student who'd had the bed opposite Jas', who had left her bag in the safe (they had a safe?!) and gone out. He would search it and get back to us. it all started to fall into place. She had, of course, been the nicest person in the place, but then her bed wasn´t slept in in the mornings, and she had said she was studying tourism...maybe just tourists...?
Things generally perked up, and after a nice swim in the completely unexpected pool, hammocks all round it, a nice chat with two English physiotherapy students about their trip - they were just starting, going the opposite way to us with Bamba - and a free Salsa lesson, we headed out for dinner. Just beforehand, we checked the email again. Result.
"Please check these photos: are theses your things?" Fransisco had photographed everything he had found in Regina's bag, and among her clothes were all of Jasmine's missing items, including, most tellingly, the Quinta Lili gecko.
We emailed our thanks, then went out for dinner to celebrate. Where we got free beer. Another result.
Later, in the hours spent completely failing to sleep in the intense heat, I pondered the last few days, and the days ahead. Especially tomorrow: 1st August 2009. in some other reality, this would have been my wedding day. Instead I would be seeing our last site, Chichen Itza, and getting to the Caribbean coast and drinking cocktails. I think I preferred this plan.
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Bobbie
non-member comment
purchase
were can they be purchased