Category: Yucatán

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VALLADOLID – Yucatán, MEX

After yesterdays shemozzle with shitting through the eye of a needle, I was looking forward to the new day bringing change of luck.

As we were leaving at 7AM, I was up at 4AM as per normal, packed up my gear, grabbed the laptop and headed out to the 24-hour Café La Habana for spot of breakfast and to update my Blog.

Not two blocks from the café, a garbage truck pulls up & loads up and then starts compacting its load as I walk past. You wouldn’t read about, but something exploded and I got covered with the foulest smelling liquid you’d ever have the misfortune of being sprayed with. What can you do other than grin and bear it? I get to the café, order a coffee and head to the men’s room to try and clean most of the crap off before eating.

We arrived at the world renowned Chichén Itzá site just on 9AM and my first impression was –  wow there’s a shit ton of people here. We were met by a very knowledgeable local guide, who lost my interest after taking ½ an hour just to explain the Mayan’s time-line in history, so I simply wandered off to explore on my own.

I ended up with most of the site information by listening to the various English speaking guides delivering their presentations to their respective groups, a trick I learnt years ago when not wanting to pay exorbitant guide costs in Bali.

I was done and dusted with the site in an hour and a half, then waited another two hours for the rest of the group to be done and arrive back at the bus. In speaking with our group, it looks as if they missed out on seeing the back 1/3 of the site due to time constraints.

Our departure corresponded with a huge influx of tour buses loaded with cruise ship passengers from the resort towns of Cancún (2½ hour drive) and Playa del Carmen (2¼ hour drive), which turned the joint into an absolute zoo.

My impressions of the site??? If it was the first pyramid, I’d have been impressed, but after 4 previous sites, Chichén Itzá would be way down on the list. Unlike the previous sites, you cannot go exploring in & around the site as you are kept well away from everything. The experience is also lessened by all the trinket and souvenir vendors that virtually encircle the entire interior of the site. The management and official facilities of the site seems to be somewhere in the Gordon Gecko “Greed Is Good” and government corruption mantras of “Give ‘em nothing, Take ‘em nowhere and Make ‘em pay for the lot”.

We got into the adjacent town of Valladolid and our accommodations at La Aurora Hotel Colonial around 2PM, which left the rest of the day to explore the town of approximately 50,000 in which I enjoyed strolling the colonial facades of the Calzada de los Frailes.

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MÉRIDA – Yucatán, MEX

Its only taken 3 weeks and a chicken enchilada meal, at the Menta Deli Rest in Campeche city, for me to start destroying the thunderbox with the squirts from 3AM this morning.

As much as I’d like to say I spent the day exploring Mérida like the conquistadors’ rather than Don Quixote, it was more like hopping from baños to baños, shitting through a flyscreen door without hitting the wire. The worst part was after about a dozen sit down orchestra performances, my freckle started playing Johnny Cash’s “Burning Ring Of Fire” with a fair amount of vigor.

After dropping of my dirty laundry at a local lavandaria I spent an entertaining ½ hour in a pharmacy explaining that I need something to “detener el fuego” (stop the fire) and pointing to my arse. God bless the poor lady assisting me and thankfully with her patience and Google Translate, we came up with a solution after discussing the merits of anti-bacterial gel, Preparation H hemorrhoid cream and several other tubes of undefined liquids. For all I know, the solution she provided could be infant teething cream, but it does the job with near immediate relief.

I caught up with a couple of the tour group for lunch at the Bistro Apoala for an amazing Snapper fillet with gnocchi, which was one of the best dishes I’ve had in a long while.

The rest of the afternoon was spent either in bed or on the throne, with the exception of picking up my laundry, which came in at 5.5 kilograms (12 pounds) and for for 70 Pesos ($5.18 AUD) it was professionally washed, dried and folded – talk about being a bargain.

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MÉRIDA – Yucatán, MEX

With today being Sunday, which marks the beginning of the daylight savings season here in Mexico, we lost an hour of sleep to begin the day.

Around 8AM all 16 of us piled into the Mercedes Sprinter van, filling all available seats and spaces and headed northeast to our first stop of the day, the Restaurant el Crucero in Campeche state, nearly 3 hours from Palenque.

From there it was the long haul portion of the drive – 3½ hours and 174 kilometres (108 miles) into Campeche city, where we had 90 minutes to grab some lunch, stretch our legs and hit the road again for Mérida.

We arrived at our accommodations at the Hotel Santa Maria just on 5PM and had an hour to freshen up, before heading out on an orientation walk. I used this time to simply fall into the hotels pool and then managed to go arse-up on the slick tiles surrounding the pool, smashing a decorative planter in the process. Talk about a bull in a taco shop!

The walks lasted nearly two hours as the town was full of locals and family’s, which added to a vibrant and fun atmosphere. Dinner was held at the locally renowned Restaurante Trovo Amaro, in which I was impressed with the pulled pork dish – Cochinita Pibil, consisting of Pork loin marinated in achiote, wrapped in banana leaf and accompanied with purple onion and sour orange sauce.

From there it was down to the Pipiripau Bar where I found their signature drink of the same name was very “more-ish” and totally dangerous as it was so smooth and refreshing.

Comment of the day came at dinner when paying the bill. One of the tour members, a Hungarian female teacher, who’s been living & working just outside of London for the past twenty years. She was scratching around for some change to pay the tip and as I had a heap of coins on me, I offer them up to her saying “I’ve got a pocket full of shrapnel if you want it”.

She looks at me and goes “You what?” I tell her that I have a heap of coins in my pocket she can use if she wants. She says “I’m glad you cleared that up – I thought you said you had a strap-on in your pocket” Ahhh, the English language – a lot of people speak it, not a lot understand it.