Mexico (Yucatan)

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My journey from Belize to Mexico turned out to be pretty awful. The bus decided to show up at 11.30am, an hour late, and despite having paid a first class price it turned out to be a cramped little minibus with no air-conditioning so not very pleasant with the sun beating down on us. Still, it "only" took four and a half hours to get to Chetumal in Mexico and I chatted with a guy from Birmingham and a Dutch couple on the way. At the border we had to wait outside in the heat while everyone on the bus came through customs. The money changers on the Belizean side had a bad attitude and had all fixed their rates so I decided not to deal with them. This backfired on me because when we crossed into Mexico there weren´t any money changers so I ended up having to get a taxi from the bus station in Chetumal to an exchange house in the centre!

Back in Mexico, it was a bit of a shock to the system at first not to be scowled at or scammed by everyone I tried talking to! I think I must have become used to that in Guatemala and Belize because I was so pleasantly surprised at how friendly the Mexicans were. Even when I forgot to speak Spanish at the border no one looked at me as though I was something they´d trodden in. And a smile and a "buenos dias" gets a similar response! Soon after crossing the border I was in a really good mood and realised that I hadn´t felt so good since I´d been in Costa Rica!

I arrived in Chetumal at about 4.30pm and from there I got a bus north to Tulum. After the horrible journey from Belize I decided to pay for a first class bus. I swear I´ll never complain about the prices of Mexican buses again because at least you get what you pay for! Ironically, I was freezing cold by the time I got to Tulum because the air-conditioning was so effective.

In Tulum I went to one of the hostels listed in the Lonely Planet but decided it wasn´t really my scene (probably because it seemed far too sociable, haha!) but the guy outside recommended another down the road. That turned out to be excellent - cheap, friendly and not too crowded. The sort of place that should be in the Lonely Planet but then if it was it would probably be spoilt. I stayed in a dorm with two German guys and an American who were really friendly. The place itself was in a lovely setting and there was also hot water in the showers, a decent book exchange and a free breakfast of pancakes and coffee in the morning!

The next day I got up early and caught a bus to Coba which was only 45 minutes away. I managed to find somewhere to leave my backpack and then caught a taxi with an American couple for all of the 2 minute drive to the ruins! I had a good time at Coba - the ruins aren´t anything to shout about but I rented a bike there (without gears or brakes!) and it was great fun whizzing down the paths through the jungle. It wasn´t too crowded either so there were opportunities to wander about alone amongst the ruins. Climbing the Great Pyramid was hard because of the heat and the stairs were pretty dangerous but the view from the top was great.

I spent a few hours at Coba and then walked back to the village and caught a bus onwards to Piste which is 2km from Chichen Itza. I found somewhere to stay which was a nice little cabin but unfortunately it felt like a furnace inside! I had a shower, read for a bit, had another shower then went to get some dinner in the village. In the evening I walked to Chichen Itza to watch the sound and light show. It was in Spanish so I didn´t understand all of it but the light show was very pretty. Though I found myself looking forward to seeing the ruins without them being lit up like Christmas trees!

I barely slept that night because of the heat and finally decided to get up at 6am just to escape from my room! I ended up getting to the ruins at 7am and having to wait an hour for them to open. Still, it was definitely worth getting there early because I ended up being the first person in the ruins so for a while I had the place almost to myself. Chichen Itza was absolutely wonderful - I loved it. The architecture was amazing and I especially loved El Castillo and the serpent heads at its base. For the first few hours I had a peaceful time wandering around the ruins and because there were so few people around I managed to sneak through the ropes a few times to explore places I wasn´t supposed to be in! By the time I´d finished my first trip round, the tour groups were starting to arrive but I wasn´t ready to leave so I had another walk around. In the ball court I got chatting to a guy who worked for the Mexican tourist board. He ended up giving me a free mini tour of part of the site which was actually quite interesting though half the time I had to pretend I understood what he was telling me! In the early afternoon the ruins were starting to get really crowded and more tour groups were pouring in so I decided to call it a day and went to find a bus to Cancun and then on from there to Playa del Carmen.

I´d decided to spend my last few days in Mexico at Playa del Carmen on the advice of Denise and Rene, the couple who I met in Costa Rica at Volcan Poas who are getting married here next year. It was the best advice anyone could have given me! I realised when I arrived in Cancun that staying there would have been pretty awful because I wouldn´t have been able to afford to stay anywhere near the beaches so I´d have had to have stayed in the city itself and got a bus out to the beach every time I wanted to go there. And from what I saw of the city it didn´t seem particularly inspiring! So I have Denise and Rene to thank for the fact that I´m able to stay somewhere within walking distance of a lovely beach!

It took 4 hours to get to Cancun from Chichen Itza and another hour from Cancun to Playa del Carmen. As soon as I left the bus station in Playa, I was caught by an eccentric American who told me he´d lived in Playa for 36 years. Anyway he decided he was going to help me find a hostel which I wasn´t particularly pleased about because he was quite odd and I´m pretty sure he was an alcoholic too. But I had no choice and he ended up tagging along with me while I went to find somewhere to stay. I told him I wanted somewhere with air conditioning for under $30 and he said that was "unreasonable" so he decided to show me something for $30 that had a pathetic little fan in it. But he seemed to think that because it was a big room it was worth it. But what do I care how big the room is?! He also tried bargaining in a few places for me. In the end the manager of one of the hotels sent me off with his friend Angel who said I could stay in his house for $25 a night. I agreed to this because I was desperate to be away from the American. The room in Angel´s house wasn´t bad and the bathroom was lovely but there was no air conditioning so I had another bad night ahead of me! When I left to get some food in the evening the American was waiting for me. He wanted me to buy him a beer which I did to shut him up and then he insisted on showing me where I should eat. Thankfully he left me alone after that. I decided to eat at the restaurant where he´d left me but the food was horrible. I´ve seen the American guy hanging around the bus station quite a few times since, sometimes following some other poor backpackers around and once I walked past him and overheard him arguing with a hotel manager about how he´d brought some tourists to them so he´s obviously working for commission or, more likely, free beer.

I spent one night at Angel´s house and then left to do a bit of hotel-hunting in peace. That American guy may have lived in Playa for 36 years but there are some things I´ve learnt from my 4 months of travels in Latin America that he´ll never learn. One of these things is that if you really want to negotiate better rates in hotels, the best thing to do is to be a young single female tourist with the sort of pathetic Spanish skills that make people feel a bit sorry for you. In the first hotel I tried, I ended up with a room for $30 a night with air conditioning, cable TV, private bathroom with hot water and two double beds. So I really don´t think I need a crazy expat giving me advice on what´s "reasonable"!

I spent my first morning in Playa relaxing on the beach which was lovely. I found a nice shaded (not too shaded, I´m still working on my tan!) spot under a palm tree which I´ve been using ever since. The water here is lovely - clear and cool - and the waves aren´t too strong to enjoy a swim. In the afternoon I did some souvenir shopping and bumped into the Dutch couple I´d met on the journey from Belize into Mexico. I then had a pleasant evening sitting on the beach... such a hard life.

Yesterday morning (after a lovely night´s sleep in my air conditioned room!) I caught a bus from Playa back to Cancun because I wanted to see what the famed beaches are really like. In Cancun I had to catch another bus out to the hotel zone and I got off near Playa Marlin. I didn´t dare trying to sneak through the lobby of a hotel so I ended up wandering up the "strip" trying to find a public access point to the beach. It was a bit sad really! I found an access point eventually though and managed to finally get a glimpse of that beautiful turquoise water. It was quite stunning - I didn´t know water could be that colour! And the sand was lovely and white. Unfortunately (and as you´d expect) the part of the beach I was on was where all the other poor souls who can´t afford to stay there have to go, including the drunkards and weirdos! I didn´t want to go wandering down the beach to find a nicer spot in front of one of the resorts in case I ended up stuck somewhere in the heat away from the access point and not daring to go through one of the hotels to get out! So I had to settle for finding a spot as far away from the weirdos as possible! I tried (and failed) to get into the water twice for a swim without being knocked down by the waves. It was after the second attempt that I noticed that the bit of beach I was on was the only bit that had a yellow flag rather than a red flag! Perhaps they´d run out of red ones and decided to let us commoners figure it out for ourselves!

I spent about an hour at the beach at Cancun and then returned to Playa. On the way back from the hotel zone to the bus terminal in Cancun I saw a KPMG office which was very exciting!

Yesterday evening I got chatting to a Mexican guy called Julio in the street and then went and drank a few too many Margaritas! This would have been fine except that when I crawled out of bed at 8.30am with the intention of going to lie on the beach for a bit, I didn´t realise that within half an hour I´d be sitting on a little boat heading out to the reef in pretty rough water! I´d gone into a dive shop to sign up for a couple of dives in the afternoon, thinking I´d have time to let my stomach settle, but they told me there was no dive in the afternoon but I could go right then on the morning dives. So the next thing I knew I was struggling into a wet suit and running down to the beach where the boat was waiting for me! There were six other people on the dive, including the divemaster, Andre, who was very friendly.

The ride out to the first sight, Tortugas, wasn´t too bad and the dive itself was great. There was a really strong current which was a new experience and the boat followed us so all we had to do was let the current carry us along! The best thing about that dive was seeing the turtles which were absolutely *huge*. Some of them were bigger than a fully grown man - I never knew things like that existed! One of the guys on the dive had a camera so I asked him to send me some photos so hopefully I´ll be able to get them on here because I can´t really give a proper idea about the size of those things. We also saw huge puffer fish and snappers.

Back in the boat I really started to feel the effects of too much tequila and the rough sea. I managed to make it to the next dive site, Barracudas, without throwing up though! I felt awful but there was no way I was going to miss out on the next dive and I reasoned that I´d feel better underwater than sitting on a rocking boat for an hour waiting for the others to finish. One of the guys on the boat was supposed to have sorted everyone´s tanks and BCDs out between the two dives but when I got into the water I realised that my tank wasn´t secured to my BCD properly! That was pretty scary but I managed to climb onto the back of the boat. When they´d secured the tank I had no choice but to go forwards into the water and in the process the tank slammed into the back of my head so not exactly a good start to that dive! The dive itself was pretty decent - we saw some more huge turtles, loads of fish and some fire coral. I was still feeling sick and was really hoping I wouldn´t have to vomit underwater because that wasn´t one of the skills we practiced when I did the PADI certification! Apparently you have to vomit into your regulator mouthpiece and then carry on breathing as normal... sounds nice. Fortunately I got through the dive without having to find out how its done and waited until the journey back to shore to throw up over the side of the boat! Charming, eh?

This afternoon I went down to the beach and had a bit of a swim. There was a lovely breeze and a few clouds so it wasn´t too hot. I then went to have dinner in a Mexican restaurant - Yucatan style fish fillet.

Tomorrow I fly back to Phoenix from Cancun so I´m now at the end of my second adventure to Latin America. It´ll be really sad to leave but I´m glad I´ve ended this part of my trip in such a wonderful place and such an amazing country so I can go away with some great memories fresh in my mind. And to think that I was wanting to escape back to Phoenix after only my first few days in Mexico two months ago...!

Still, my trip isn´t quite over yet as I still have a few weeks in Arizona to look forward to. So I´m afraid this won´t be the last blog entry you´ll be subjected to!

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Photos

Coba - Vine
For anyone who´s seen or read "The Ruins"!

Chichen Itza - Carvings
The eagles are eating human hearts.