Advertisement
Published: August 5th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Merida Merida is a nice enough town but when you´ve seen a few nice towns (or, as in my case, many) there really isn´t that much there. Luckily I met up again with Gale and Sara, who I met in the youth hostel in Cancún and some of their enthusiasm for all things new managed to rub off on me as we wondered the streets exploring more cathedrals, murals and plazas. Thanks guys! - it was realy nice to catch up with you again, enjoy the rest of your holiday!
In the evening the three of us braved the pushing and shoving of Mexican elboes as we watched a dance show by local children which included a most remarkable display of balence - spinning round on a box with a tray of beer balenced on your head! The argument for free chairs was also quite entertaining.
Chichen Itza These Mayan ruins marked about my 10th Mexican and 20th pre-hispanic American ruins and unfortunately they felt like it. Probably exasperated by the heat, I only spent an hour at the huge and actually quite impressive site. The trip did manage to fill most of the day though
as there was a 5 hour round trip bus ride involved! This would have seemed like a long trip a year ago, but after countless 8-12 hour bus rides it really doesn´t seem long at all now.
The Castillo pyramid is the most impressive of the buildings there - all the more so I think for the lack of swarms of people running like ants all over it, this was the first high-profile Mexican ruin for climbing to be banned, in March this year. The site also has some beautifully preserved stone work and one of the earliest round-buildings to ever be discovered. Unfortunately it also has more than its fair share of tat-sellers to whom quite honestly I´ve lost the will to even say "No Gracias".
Vera Cruz My penultimate stop before my fourth and final return to Mexico City. The home run is well under way. Vera Cruz also felt like familiar turf - it is, primarily, a port and looks and feels much like ports the world over. Kind of like a Spanish-speaking Southampton. The city was Cortés´s first major city landing-point and has along and intersteding naval history, told in the Nval
Museum which fell into my favouriste museum category of "little art and free". It also has many Mexican naval buildings including a lovely light-house building now used for ceremonies. The fort of San Juan de Ulúa, built to protect the colonial city from pirates and the French, was also in my favourite museum category, but did involve an expensive taxi ride to get there after 2 bus drivers failed to tell me where to get-off and I ended up on a 10 peso, half hour tour to the suburbs and back.
According to one guide book I read the Aquarium at Vera Cruz is the best in Latin America. Well, maybe it has an excellent variety of fish or something (I couldn´t tell as there were so many children running, sitting, squeeling and being sick in front of the information boards) but I thought it was a rip-off. It takes about 30 minutes maximum to see the whole thing and cost 60 pesos - more than any other site or museum I´ve been to. The Wax museum is worth 40 pesos just to laugh at the poor replcas of Elton John, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Radcliffe and Brad Pitt, to
Cathedral, Merida
One of the ealiest churches in Mexico be able to appreciate the dis-likeness of the other characters you need a firm grasp of Mexican tradition and popular culture as most of them seemed to be made up of famous singers, footballers, dancers and mariache.
I did actually really like Vera Cruz. The cafes in the main square are lovely dispite the over-abundance of hair in one of my tacos, and there is plenty to see wondering about in the evening with all the Mexican families here on holiday. The city wins the prize for both the cheapest, tackiest tack and for the smallest number of people trying to flog it to you - the perfect combination. And when there´s nothing left to do you can retire to the dockside and watch the cranes filling the container ships with the big boxes and try to guess their contents.
Xalapa And finally to Xalapa, or Jalapa, to which the spelling changes at seemingly random - much like many of the other words I type then.
My only real reasons for coming here were to see the giant Olmec heads in the archeology museum which were, as I had hoped, pretty amazing. 1500 year old heads
almost twice as tall as me and much wider (even afer all my icecream and Corona). The only other reason was that I didn't want to spend ages in Mexico city before by flight and this was were the first person I met in Mexico had come from. It is actually the capital of Veracruz state but the centre itself is pretty small.
I tried to go to the science museum but the taxi driver took me to the transport museum - which was actually a children's playground with climbing frames in the shape of planes with a real plane, train and car thrown in to justify the name. Lone adults hanging around childrens' playgrounds is no less suspicious here than at home so I left. Then when I did get to the real science museum it was pretty pathetic really. I was the only person not there with at least 3 kids and all the parents were monopolising the interactive games so I showed a couple of 6 year old Mexicans how to make bubbles in the surface tension display and left there too.
The best bit about Jalapa/Xalapa is the climate. It was drizzling most of the
day but was the perfect temperature with a light jumper. A relief after the humidity of the coast and practice for coming home where I here summer has ened just in time for my return - typical.
Back on Tuesday!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.129s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 10; qc: 59; dbt: 0.0787s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Mary Doris
non-member comment
Good luck!
Hey Char, Lol, great blog entry... look forward to seeing you when you get back, and hope you're not as overweight as feared (baggage I mean :p) Mxx