Mexico - Part 1

We would recommend backpacking to just about anyone. The two backpacking trips that we have made together have been horizon-expanding (and Verizon-expanding in this more recent trip), bonding, and more fun than Redboxing.

On January 10th the Mrs. and I left 30 degree Chicago for 80 degree Mexico. This is our blog post.

The Start:

We left on a Saturday afternoon. I had purchased a large hiking backpack (not too huge, 40L or so) and Mrs. was taking her old school backpack that was a good sized day-pack. Because we didn't want to be carrying around our Chicago-essential coats and layers, we didn't take any. I was wearing a long pair of khakis that would double as church pants and fancy restaurants pants (if we found or frequented any). I also wore my guayabera from the DR and a sweatshirt.

The Mrs. had a pair of leggings, for warmth, under a skirt (also being used for church) and a t-shirt and hoodie.

Luckily we live very close to the train that would take us directly to the airport. We didn't have to spend more than a few cold minutes on the train platform before we were in the warm train and on our way.

Our flight was delayed a couple hours and I started a book called The Lazarus Project and Mrs. busied herself with her cell phone. Waiting in airports is kind of cold.

Our flight took off a little after 8 pm and we landed in a dark but warm Cancun. It reminded me of the Strip in Las Vegas. We hadn't come for this so we immediately grabbed a colectivo to the bus terminal to get us away from the party scene. We were chatting up some Irish travelers that were looking for a hostel in Cancun when I went to pull out my cell phone to pass them the names of a few places we had considered boarding. Alas, my phone was missing. Probably left on the plane as we had only been on the ground for less than an hour.

Merida

Anyway, we purchased tickets for a 4-hour bus ride that would take us to Merida, the capital of the Yucatan. I promptly fell asleep (it's about 2am at this point, conveniently the same time zone as Chicago). One thing about Mexican bus systems: the air conditioning works really well. And the chauffeurs love to crank it. Mrs. Bluth fell asleep a couple hours later after tossing and turning in the seat next to me.

We arrived in Merida a few minutes before the sun. Stumbling out of the bus terminal, a little bleary eyed and disoriented, we asked how to get to the main plaza. I wasn't completely sure if there was a main plaza in Merida, but Mrs. Bluth had done some research and most Mexican cities have main plazas (you know, with a park, cathedral, and government buildings or museum).

Several taxi drivers offered us a ride, it was still dark out, but we were ready to try out our sandals. Mrs. Bluth has a trusty pair of Chacos that she has used for a lot of our outings and her previous internship in the DR. I was breaking in a pair of Tevas like I was river-rafting tour guide. So off we hoofed it in search of the main plaza.

Merida is a colonial city with beautiful, paved streets and short buildings. Everything is built all the way to the sidewalk and so the streets feel really narrow. We followed the path of the colectivos until we burst into an opening that contained a park and a cathedral. The sun was into the sky at this point and we had heard there was a church nearby (the Catholic mass would surely have been neat, but we also like visiting our foreign Mormon congregations when abroad) that was starting at 9.

I don't recall how we knew how to get there. We knew that it shared a plot with the Merida temple, so we just asked if anyone knew where was the giant iglesia Mormona. Most temples are built in very visible places and allegedly they cause recurring car crashes (Washington DC, San Diego). But because Merida has that colonial style going for it, where all of the buildings reach the sidewalks, the Merida temple was almost hidden inside of a city block. Instead of being able to see Moroni from blocks away, we didn't notice it until we were about a block away. And we had to walk around the whole city block to find the hidden entrance to the property.

We received a warm, over-the-pulpit welcome (visiting us from the state of Chicago!) and happened to be attending the same meeting as a General Authority who spoke.

We said hi to a lot of members and a gaggle of missionaries. We also met the assistants (both Americans but apparently only knew Spanish) and office missionaries.

We wandered the grounds for a few minutes and took some pictures. Temples are just so photogenic.

Then we wandered towards downtown. Apparently that first park and cathedral hadn't been the main plaza because we soon found the main plaza. And we had chosen the right week to come. We were right in the middle of Merida Fest!

There was also some running race, we couldn’t quite tell what distance. 5k? Marathon? Coca-Cola was a prominent sponsor.

They were closing off the streets to cars around the main plaza so that the citizens and visitors could ride their bikes around the plaza and other festivities could commence. One entire side of the park was being set up as little cafeterias, taco stands, and antojito stops. We sat and watched a clown (this would not be the only clown that we saw in on our trip, apparently clowns are quite popular in Southern Mexico), ate cochinita pibil, and explored a museum full of exhibits on Mexican and global architecture.

By noon the plaza was hopping. As we were snapping a couple pictures of the scene a man dodged our camera and started explaining to us why this was the best time to visit. Thus we learned about Merida Fest. He worked for the government and they had been preparing for a long time for this event. He was friendly and we asked him for a couple of recommendations on where we should stay that night. He disapproved of one hostel we had heard of (bedbugs) but recommended a B&B that was right there on the main plaza.

We decided to search out the hostel with good reviews online but our only directions were "North of Main Square". After an hour or so we ended up finding it only to find out that it was full. Plausibly because of the Festival and in spite of the bedbugs. We hustled back to the Main Plaza to inquire after a room in the B&B that had been recommended to us. All they had was a private room which, of course, worked great for us. Finally we were able to shed our backpacks (which had sat on the floor in church like two reverent children) and leave them in our room. Of course, we promptly fell asleep for a quick Sunday nap.

That evening we continued walking around the festival downtown. We found places to find Mayan-crafted hammocks. I thought all of the guayaberas looked nice, too. We found some tasty gorditas to dine on.

Because it was a festival to celebrate Merida they had invited the one and only Yuri Buenaventura to perform. We were in our seats an hour early but were still 2/3 of the way to the back after about 3 songs it started to rain lightly. And so we took to the middle of the street to salsa dance with all of the other young folks. The Mrs. has much better rhythm than I do. After another song it was really starting to come down and everyone scattered and sought cover. Because our hostel was right on the plaza we were able to go in and still could hear the music.

Even though we danced with the young people there, we are, in fact, old. I was definitely ready for bed before his set list was over. Even the rain didn’t shorten the concert.

Valladolid

We awoke fairly early and pretty well-rested. Having explored enough of Merida in the 24 hours we had been there we decided to take the bus to Valladolid. A few hours to the east of us. By late morning we were winding our way into a pretty small, colonial city.

Upon exiting the bus terminal we asked about a hostel that someone had recommended in Merida. As we were wandering towards the hostel we ran into a couple more missionaries. They weren’t quite helpful in finding the hostel. Mrs. Bluth noticed that they’re pants were rather well-used. They reminded me a lot of my mission pants

The hostel we wanted had a couple spots in the dormitory. Having lucked out and gotten a private room the night before, we decided to keep looking around in case somewhere else had a better accommodation.

Valladolid also had that narrow-street, colonial feel but was quite a bit smaller. We stumbled onto the main square with the cathedral. Eventually we headed down the street of the 5 Frailes. As we were walking past a building, Mrs. Bluth noticed it said “hostel”. We asked about prices and he showed us a dormitory room with 3 bunk beds that he would give us as a private room for only 20 bucks. We said we’d come back.

We wandered to another hostel but the beds had plastic sheets. No thanks. We took the bunk beds.

We dropped off the backpacks and asked how to get to Ek Balam. Turns out it is only a short colectivo ride away. All of the ruins in Mexico are cheaper if you are a Mexican citizen. Wish we had dual citizenship.

Ek Balam had this family of puppies living right in the entrance. The tourists thought they were adorable. We thought they were sad looking and mangy.

One thing we really liked about Ek Balam was that they still allow people to climb on the pyramids. (Not sure about the archaeological implications of that). There were a couple of smaller structures and a couple of rooms that we could walk into. Then we walked around the corner and saw the big chalupa. Somehow it had been hidden by the forest and other structures, but I’m not sure how we couldn’t see it from a mile away.

Ek Balam is a relatively new site. It was “discovered” in the 1700’s but they only began excavating it in the early 1990’s. It had a couple of terraces on the side of the main pyramid that contained some incredibly detailed murals and statues. The view from the top of the pyramid was pretty impressive. You could see for miles over the Mayan forest.

After taking pictures on and of the ruins, we caught the last coletivo back to civilization. Apparently a lot of tour buses go to some of the big Mayan Ruins (like Chicen Itza) for the day and on their way back they stop in Valladolid so that the tourists can see what a “typical Mexican town” looks like. In the main plaza of Valladolid we found a couple of tour buses and several gringos and Europeans walking around.

We wandered away from the tourists in search of some food. Eventually we found a whole in the wall place that was running out of food. Always a good sign. We ate a half dozen panuchos before heading back to the plaza. We walked around the plaza and people-watched for an hour before heading back to our hostel to turn in.

Our private room’s walls didn’t quite reach the ceiling and no one was trying to go to bed early. So, we spent our anniversary in separate beds tossing and turning while listening to the backpackers discuss the intricacies of hitch hiking through Thailand and Belize.

Happy Anniversary, Boo!

We awoke pretty early because we were headed to probably the most famous and touristy destination of our trip--Chichen Itza! Chichen Itza is an enormous ruins site that has one of the largest pyramids in Mexico.  There was an Ado bus that took us right to the site. We arrived shortly after it opened and before most of the tourists from the resorts and cruise lines had arrived.

The site was pretty incredible. Of particular interest to Mr. Bluth was the ball court. The effort that it must have taken to build this structures was monumental. So of course, a ball court must have been a priority (If you’ve seen this clip, you know what is the ball game).

The pictures probably show it best:

By the afternoon we were tuckered out and ready to head back to our hostel. We got back to Valladolid and decided to eat at a place called Casona. As we had eaten at different places throughout the trip, we had noticed that most had a “sopa de limon” on the menu. We decided to try it at this place and it might have been Mrs. Bluth’s favorite dish of the trip. Good call.

Replenished and re energized from our meal we rented a couple bikes (10 pesos an hour) and rode a couple of miles out to a pair of cenotes. Cenotes are sinkholes or pools in caverns located in the Yucatan peninsula. The peninsula basically has no rivers, instead most of the water seeps into the ground and travels in underground caves and streams. At places, they form very still, very clear pools. These sinkholes are crystal clear for a couple of reasons. No debris ever falls into the water because they are underground. Also, the water has been filtered through layers of rock.

These were two very impressive cenotes. The first was mostly dark, like the cave in “The Hobbit” where Gollum and Bilbo riddle each other. There were these little black fish that would swim right up to your feet and nibble on your dead skin cells. How refreshing! (Mrs. Bluth disagrees). Some of the stalactites were 20 feet long and reached into the water and we could swim around them.

We dallied in the first cenote for a little while before heading to the second. This second one had a window in the roof of the cavern that a tree had tried to grow down. It’s roots were hanging 20 feet down towards the water. Pretty neat.

We stayed until it was almost sunset and rode the couple miles back to Valladolid. That evening we went to a little puesto that served cochinita pibil. I think that it is pork that has been cooked in an underground oven. At the puesto, it came in three options. On a torta, taco, or polcan. I tried all three. A torta is a like a pulled pork sandwich (not BBQ flavor though). A taco is a taco. And a polcan is a little piece of dough that they fry and then cut it open and fill with cochinita. I loved all 3 of them.

We then spent the rest of the evening walking around Valladolid and ended up at the plaza again where we tried a “Mayan” crepe. I got cheese and Nutella. The fusion was flawless.

On our way back to the hostel, we purchased a pair of ear plugs so that I could better sleep through the musings of our hostel-mates.

Valladolid was incredible. Everything was relatively close, the city was beautiful, and the food was delicious.