Advertisement
Published: September 4th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Burrito.
First food in Mexico. GREAT, by the way, all of it. Okay - here´s an updated version of the blog entry I wrote earlier, since I have more time today. The cenote-stuff is newly added, as well as a little background info on some other things we did.
First for the time we actually spent in Cancun: all in all, we went to three different beaches, two of them on the Cancùn Hotel-strip and one of them on the beautiful Isla Mujeres, a couple of km off shore.
Isla Mujeres
The island itself is neither as hectic nor as "touristy" as Cancun itself, while still having VERY nice beaches and, as we´re told, great diving opportunities (which we didn´t try out, because we´re headed to belize, caye caulker & playa del carmen later on the trip, which are all famous for diving & snorkelling as well).
In fact, there are quite a few people living on the Isla Mujeres (not only women, btw, haha). The people we met there, some of them on the street, others on the beach, in cabs and in a restaurant we went to, were - as everywhere in these parts - very friendly and very forgiving, when I tried to explain something to them
Turtle
...in the reserve on the isla mujeres. Great animals, those. in a weird mixture of spanish, english and hand & feet. We also visited a turtle farm there, where environmentalists try to up the number of sea turtles in the caribbean. Quite impressive creatures, I can tell you that - even though they obviously only have small ones there. I can totally see Jack Sparrow surfing on them! 😉
The group, Chichen Itza & Co
On that same evening, Sept. 1st, we got to meet our group for the next three weeks for the first time - exciting & very nice people, all of them. Their names (in case I mention them somewhere): Mori (from Canada), Helen & Deb (Schots), Wayne (Brit), Pia & Bernhard (Austrians). And of course our trip leader - his name is Tiago and he´s a great guy, who certainly has a lot to tell (as are & do all of the others).
We all went for dinner after a first briefing and introductions all around - having dinner together is one of the few constants on this trip, since for the rest we move around A LOT! 😉
The next morning we shared a birthday cake for Helen as well as breakfast
Hanna and me
under a palm tree on the Isla Mujeres. All the beaches look like that or better... ;) and then jumped on the bus to Chichen Itza. A lot of chaos on the road - which is quite usual for Mexico - but eventually we got there. Man, those ruins are impressive, and I´m not even sure if the great pyramid and the ballfield, which of course almost anyone knows from pictures, are the most impressive archeological wonders there.
Anyways - took a LOT of pictures there and have uploaded some by now, more will follow, perhaps. They don´t do the reality of the place any justice, though - but it´s that way with almost anything we visit...
Afterwards. it was on to Merida, a beautiful colonnial city in the heart of the Yucatan. Group Dinner again, in the middle of the street, with (Salsa-) dancing couples and live music all around. Something which one would associate with Cuba rather than Mexico - but it sure was a great experience!!
Cenotes
Okay, here´s the promised update on the cenotes.
On Sept. 3rd, we had breakfast at the hotel, walked through the market in Mérida and jumped onto a van, just to spend another one and a half hours on the road on our way to
First group picture
Finally met the GAP-group.
From left to right: Tiago, Mori, Pia, Bernhard, Wayne, Debbie, Helen and Hanna. I took the picture, thus I´m obviously not on there. ;) the cenotes on the countryside. The people in a little village there have set up their own business with horse drawn carriages, which run on old train-tracks and which bring tourists to the Cenotes.
Let me take a minute to explain to you what exactly cenotes are.
A cenote (...) is, in the Yucatán Peninsula, a type of freshwater-filled sinkhole. The term cenote is used generically by the low-land Maya to refer to any location where groundwater is accessible. While the most well-known cenotes are large open water pools measuring 10's of metres in diameter, such as Chichén Itzá, the greatest number of cenotes are smaller sheltered sites and do not necessarily have any surface exposed water. (...)
Cenote water is often very clear and fresh, as the water comes from rain water infiltrating slowly through the ground, and therefore contains very little suspended particulate matter.
(From wikipedia.)
This explanation of course doesn´t do these singularly beautiful caves any justice. They are completely free to enter and to swim in, bats nist on top of your heads and you can see them fluttering around and a good many fish live in there. Some are largely open (like the famous offering pool in Chizen Itza), some almost comepletely closed and accessible only through holes in the roofs.
We went to visit three of them - one more beautiful than the other and all of them worth a swim - very welcome in the Yucatan-heat!
We came back to Mérida in the late afternoon, so we had a little time left to explore the city. Well, in theory - Hanna lost her ATM-card and couldn´t really find it again, so in the end we decided to just cancel it, which cost us most of the afternoon. A
Chichen Itza´s famous pyramid
The pictures just don´t do those ruins justice. I hope you get an idea, though. bummer, that, but we definitely aren´t going to let it spoil our time here!
In the evening we had another group-dinner at a famous restaurant with a lot of Frida-paintings on the walls and very good mole-sauce, Yucatan-style.
We spent the evening with watching some mexican folk-dancing (VERY similar to other kinds of folk-dancing, somehow - not really my kind of thing) and a delicious sorbet each.
The next day it was on to Palenque!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.1s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 54; dbt: 0.045s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb