'Erm... No Espanol, Por Farvor'

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Hola Amigos!

Welcome once again avid readers to our first Mexican Blog. There are many, many pictures as Nikki couldn´t stop herself 'attaching' so grab yourselves a tequila shot, or bottle of Corona, and immerse yourselves in the first installment of our Central American adventure.

Following our full-body searches in Fiji airport, multiple trips around LA airport's bus route, a fatty-food binge in Miami airport and utter confusion in Cancun airport, we eventually navigated our exhausted bodies to a brightly decorated room and slept, slept, slept…

With only three weeks to make it to Mexico City in order to meet Nikki's brother, everybody warned us to miss out Cancun, The Concrete Capital of Crap, if only we'd have listened! It's scary how completely ruined the area is with 25miles of ugly high-rise hotels, privatised beaches and an unbelievable amount of shops flogging tat, but this is what they intended when they penned it as the tourist epicentre in the 70's. The less said, the better.

Escaping Cancun and moving quickly on down the coast to Playa del Carmen, we spent three days relaxing on gorgeous while powdery sand, indulging in cocktails and getting to grips with the Mexican cuisine. Unfortunately for Gail, Mexican food is not the same as its English or American equivalent of Tex Mex resulting in much moaning, sickness (again!) and shuffling of food around the plate; Nikki is a trouper and scoffing happily. We have also encountered a little 'problem' which is making things rather difficult: we don't speak Mexican Spanish. This is the first country we've visited where it's not possible to plod along in English. With the help of our trusty phrasebook we are now fluent at ordering two tacos and asking for the toilet. We've also perfected the art of looking confused and bleeting, 'No Espanol. Hablo Ingles.'

During our stay in Playa, a visually more acceptable tourist hub to Cancun, we were lucky enough to observe the traditional celebration of Day of The Dead, their equivalent of Halloween, where spirits come back to visit families. Mexican culture depicts death as a celebration and people consequently treat it light-heartedly by dressing up skeletons in ridiculous outfits, for example. Propping up a bar sipping daquaries, we got to witness thousands of people sporting incredible costumes.

Tulum was our next stop. This place combined beach, Mayan ruins and numerous tourist restaurants. Please note that up to this point, about a week in, we were still feeling rather unsociable (see Fijian Blog) to the extent that we escaped our pumping-party-hostel in order to go and drink beer by ourselves. Are we officially old or just ready to come home?! It was here that we also spent the night sharing our tiny ensuite dorm with a disgusting sick boy who was retching, coughing and shitting every other minute. Luckily, the Mayan ruins, our first of many visits to historical sites, managed to help us forget his germs. The Knitted Characters came with us, complaining so much about the heat that Gail had to use a UV umbrella to shield them, whilst attempting to look 'cool'.

Two days later we hopped back onto a second class bus and headed to Valladolid. This was a quick stop in a scabby room to have a look at the Cenotes (fresh water in an underground cavern) and the most famous ruins of the Yucatan region, the Chitzen Itza (swiftly renamed the Chicken Pizza by us). The Cenotes were pretty amazing with the natural light pouring in from small holes in the roof and, after some persauding, Nikki braved it in the freeeeeeezing water for a dip with the weird black fish. The second Cenote has the huge tree trunks pouring down from the hole in its roof.
The Chicken Pizza ruins were... well, ruin-y. We hate to gloat but we´ve seen A LOT of ruins this year and these Mayan ruins are great yet not as breath-taking as the Angkor Wat ruins we saw in Cambodia. For this reason, we haven't hired any guides and our knowledge of these ruins extends no further than beyond the guide book and Gail's imaginative tales. After a morning spent here, we spent 4 long hours on another bus to our next stop of Mérida.

Mérida is a great city and as with all the Mexican towns and cities, the centers, or Centro Historico as they call them, were very pretty with buildings painted fabulous colours, cobbled street and lively Zocolos (town squares). Every Sunday in all of the places we have visited so far, the Zocolos turn into huge markets and parties and it feels like the whole town comes out for the day. Stages are set up, live music, salsa dancing, clowns and even Michael Jackson impressionists! Even when it isn't Sunday, an afternoon can be eaily spent people watching and soaking up the constant activities. Sadly this also means not giving money to the old, the disabled and children begging.
Our final day in Mérida was spent on a day trip to more ruins of Uxmal and Gail having some Twinings English Breakfast tea- her particular highlight. The tea in Mexico is not up to scratch.

Palenque was the next port of call. This is a town built to cater for the tourists heading to the Palenque ruins and waterfalls. It is not a very pretty place. We seemed to end up in a room that resembled some of the shitholes we stayed in during India. By this point we hadn't showered for three days and the lack of hot water here meant we continued to get smellier. To spend as little time here as possible, we opted to take an organised day tour of the ruins and the two waterfalls. This turned out to be an error and was one of the longest days on record. We had to spend 4 hours at the ruins... we were done after one; an hour at the first waterfall (Misol-há), which was pretty cool as we got to walk behind it; four hours were then dedicated to the next waterfall (Agua Azul). Seriously, who needs four hours to look at a bloody waterfall?! This was all followed by a three hour drive home. Luckily, the day perked up when Gail finally found some actual brown hair dye and was no longer sunkissed ginger (yeah!! from Nikki).


The following day, after an 8 hour bus journey and at a height of 2100 meters above sea level, we arrived shivering in San Christobal. This town is ridiculously cute with pastel painted houses, beautiful wood everywhere and very pretty churches. Our hostel was lovely yet freezing- we had 11 blankets on the bed and we were still cold! There was a great bunch of of people here and, having come out of social reclusiveness, we whole heartedly joined in the tequila drinking games. Poor Nikki drew the 4th king and subsequently had to down a bucket containing red wine, beer, tequila and coke. Her night ended promptly after. The arts and craft markets here are the main draw for the tourists and we delved right in. Luckily for Gail, she spent her birthday here so we treated ourselves to a slap up meal. Gail obviously became instantly 'ill' after eating and, that was the end of her birthday.

At 9pm on Gail's birthday we boarded a 12 hour bus ride. Accidentally we'd booked the Premier service and spent our time sprawled out with free goodies (pen, torch, water, earphones, tea, coffee) watching the only English speaking film 'Precious' whilst ignoring the snoring fat Mexican man. It's at this point that we should inform you all that this may be the unhealthiest nation that we have ever visited. Every meal is either deep-fat fried or covered in copious amounts of cheese. Gail naively ordered a cup of corn only to get half a tub of mayonaise, cheese and ten grains of corn. If you thought we were going to come home skinny, think again.

Anyway, we arrive in our first major city of Oaxaca (pronounced Wha-hak-ka) and loved it. Our four nights here flew by even though we didn't actually do much apart from potter around the Zocolo, visit beautiful churches, watch the live bands in the Zocolo and went to the World's Biggest Tree - possibly. Nikki's facination with trees continues but this one really was bloody massive. The Mexicans think it is 58m in circumference but it's actually closer to 40m. Even so, it's 1500 years old, wow. As ever, Gail's recurring health issue meant another trip to the doctor. It appears her Cambodian infection (9 months later) is still going strong so more antibiotics for her. This visit involved lots of pointing and more bleetings of 'No Espanol'.

It was on our final morning in Oaxaca that Nikki read her emails to check that Chud was still due to arrive that evening in Mexico City. Our saddest moment yet came when his email told us that he had been refused boarding at Manchester airport due to a tatty corner on his passport. Apparently the Mexican authorities are refusing entry to people with damaged passports. This is really hard to stomach as according to Chud, Nikki's parents and the government website, his passport isn't even classified as 'damaged'. This has come as a real blow for us all. We were really looking forward to an injection of energy and playing around in Mexico City for two weeks with him. As we sit here now without him, it all feels a little crap. Luckily for him, he´ll be getting lots of Christmas presents to make up for it!

So then readers, we'll leave you with these few nuggets:

- Mexican public toilets don't have toilet seats despite having to pay 25p for each wee
- We ran through a market which had chicken feet sticking out of one side and dead fish heads on the other
- We were laughed at in a store when asking for a UK size 14 in jeans, despite the assistant being bigger than us!
- Most Mexicans are quite fat and fairly short; Nikki looks stupidly tall and can see over everybody, everywhere
- Our lack of Spanish in Palenque meant that we didn't understand the menu so had to stand pointing at our mouths and bellies to the waitress hoping for food. It worked.

Adios for now amigos,

Sad Nikki & Sad Gail xxx
P.S only 31 days and we'll be home!!!!

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Photos

Waterfall - Mesol-Ha
Palenque

Waterfall Mesol-Ha
Palenque