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Published: December 22nd 2013
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Iguana
This fella was the guardian of our pool at our hostel. I am writing this blog in a cabin in the jungle in a place called Palenque, not on the beach as we had planned. This is due to Mexico experiencing an unseasonable amount of rain across most of the country. Being British we are not going to let this put us off but there is not much point lying on a beach in the rain so we decided to follow the sun and headed to the only point on the map without a huge storm cloud over it and went north to Merida.
Merida is a lovely little colonial town and the Spanish influence is obvious as soon as you arrive. It has pretty little squares with restaurants around the sides and lots of churches. As it is the start of the Christmas holidays here there were lots of events happening around the town with music and food on the streets.
We were very lucky with the hostel we booked which has a pool so we’ve got to spend some time chilling out in the sun. The hostel also does free yoga and cooking classes which we took advantage of.
At the hostel we met some Aussies who
were hiring a car to go to the cenotes and Chichen Itza and we were very kindly asked to join them. The cenotes are limestone caves with fresh water pools to swim, snorkel or dive in. As most of them are open with light coming in I did not find this too scary so agreed to go along.
We visited Cazuma which is a group of three cenotes that you get to by going down a mini train track on what I can only describe as a horse drawn tuk-tuk. We seemed to be the only people there and at the first stop were told to walk down a little dirt track and into a clearing with a tree with a hole at the roots. At this point I was glad it was not just me and Steve as I thought we were going to be killed. The guide told us to go inside the tree. I was a little bit dubious to say the least. I hung back and only went down after everyone else had checked that it wasn’t a trap. The tree had a ladder inside which lead to a pitch black cave and a small
pool to swim in.
If you are a keen cave diver then this would probably be quite a boring one to go in but for me it was great as a starter tunnel to swim through. Considering that Steve had also found a spider scorpion (it is a real thing) just before I slid tentatively into the water I think that I did pretty well. I had to face all four of my fears, the dark, enclosed spaces, spiders and water.
The next two cenotes were pretty spectacular with huge, aqua-marine pools with the sunlight reflecting off them. We had them all to ourselves and had a great time.
Next stop on our road trip was Chichen Itza. One of the seven wonders of the modern world, the ruins of Chichen Itza were once the capital of the Mayan empire. The huge pyramid that you see on entering was used for ritual sacrifice and there is a stadium which was used to play a ball game that involved getting balls through stone hoops which you can still see at the ruins. Experts believe that this ball court was the main stadium and if you lost the game
here then you and your team could be sacrificed. No pressure then!
One of our group had been told that admission is free after 4pm so we put our foot down and arrived just in time to have a whistle stop tour before the guards kicked us out. Doing it this way meant that we did not have much time to look around but all of the tour buses had left so we missed the crowds and could even take pictures with no one else in shot.
I’m so glad we did go on this road trip as it meant that we got to see a bit of the countryside and some little villages, even if we did get lost a few times. Stopping to ask directions was fun with limited Spanish but we got there in the end. We also got to meet some really cool people and I faced my fears so I am feeling very proud of myself.
We have been very adventurous with Mexican street food and Merida has a great market with super cheap food. It is similar to the market in Barcelona with little food stands where you can sit at
the counter eat lots of different foods but it is not designed for tourists and is a lot more rustic (it did have scabby cats running around but I’m sure their food hygiene is fine). We got to sit at one counter and as we had the chefs to ourselves we kept pointing to everything and asking ‘come se dice …. on Espanol?’ They must have loved that.
Two things I have learnt so far about Mexico. One – it is really expensive. Two – we need to learn Spanish asap. We were thinking of doing a Spanish course here but have been told that it is cheaper to do it in Guatemala so will head down there after Christmas.
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James H
non-member comment
Glad you got to do the cenotes and Chichen Itza, Chichen Itza was great to explore and we had a nice sunset when we were there which added to the atmosphere. My mum was in Merida this year, she said it was a nice town to explore. Have a great Christmas both wherever you are!