Traveling the Yucatan
Last week was spent in Mexico. I still can't believe I went! But I'm already back, and unpacked, and dealing with Chicago winter in my usual fashion of holing up inside, cranking the heat, and pretending it is still summer.... Anyway, below are two versions of the trip. The short version is if you don't have some time to spend reading all the details of the trip... if you read my travelogue from this summer's trip to Hawaii, you know I can be long winded. :) I mostly do this for myself so I have a record of everything I want to remember, but you are more than welcome to tackle the long version if you have the time! And if you want to skip the written part and go straight to the pictures, click the thumbnail below:
by lisaz1a
Canzira and I flew off to Cancun on Saturday, Dec. 1. We then took off by bus for Merida, about 3.5 hours away, arriving shortly after dark. This was a great city with lots to see and do, and some fabulous food! We spent one day traveling the Puuc Route with our wonderful tour guide Sergio and driver Carlos, who took us to the caves at Loltun and the ruins at Labna, Kabah, and Uxmal, with a stop to visit a Mayan family along the way. On Tuesday afternoon we headed off to Valladolid, a much smaller city more towards the middle of the peninsula. Wednesday morning we headed to Chichen Itza to view the most famous and best restored ruins in the area, then took another bus to Tulum. Thursday was spent at the Tulum ruins and then the most beautiful beach I have ever been to in my life. LOVED IT!!! Friday we went to the ruins at Coba, a much less restored and jungle-covered complex with its own special feel. And then Saturday we sadly packed up and headed back to Cancun and the airport, arriving back in Chicago via Miami. I had the best time and we really didn't have any major mishaps, except for the part when an ATM swallowed Canzira's card. Fortunately I had enough available to cover the places that didn't take credit cards, and hopefully a new ATM card will be waiting for her when she gets home. The most trouble we had getting anywhere was attempting to get back to the Cancun airport. Everything else went really smoothly, and even the rain turned out to be a blessing as on the days the sun was out, it really was pretty damn hot and steamy! So I think we had a much more comfortable trip, temperature-wise, due to the clouds. I can't wait to go back again!
...And now the long version.
Chicago (specifically the O'Hare area) got hit by a decent amount of snow on Friday and we were a bit worried that our flight would have problems Saturday morning with all the disruption of the day before, but although we did have a short delay in Chicago, we didn't miss the connection in Dallas as there were other people coming in even later than us and they held the plane until everyone could get there. So we left Dallas a bit later than intended, but still made it to Cancun in the early afternoon. After getting through the long lines and slight chaos of the customs/baggage claim area, we shoved our way through the mass of humanity to get to the place where buses left for downtown. And we just missed one. So we had about a half-hour to kill, which we used by finding an ATM and getting our first batch of pesos. Then it was off to Cancun Centro and from there immediately onto another bus to Merida.
The buses in Mexico are pretty excellent, by and large. They have first and second class lines; both are more what you think of as charter buses than the city buses you might be used to. The first class buses had movies (or other programming) and were mostly direct or at least had only a few stops between where they left and where they ended up. However, they didn't necessarily consider the length of the trip in what they showed, so we ended up seeing parts of several movies that I would probably not normally want to watch but now I'm curious what happened at the end.... Anyway, the second class buses did not have the movies and made many stops along the way, so we stuck to first class as much as possible!
We arrived at the north end of Merida around 7 p.m. (the Yucatan is on the same time as US Central, so we didn't have any time change to adjust to) and took a taxi to our hotel, which turned out to be a really lovely and surprisingly large place behind a lavendar painted, somewhat unassuming front. Our second-floor room was really more of an apartment, with a large sleeping area (and cable TV) as well as a kitchenette. We dropped off our stuff and headed out for some dinner. After wandering around a bit and exploring the area, we decided to eat at a place I'd read about called Pancho's. It was a bit touristy as the waiters all wore sombreros and were dressed up with ammo belts and such (fake, of course!), but the book said the food was excellent and even the locals went there for a night out, so we decided to give it a try. And we were not disappointed! It was a really great meal. Canzira got one of the house specialties, steak with a peppery wine sauce that was flambeed tableside. I had shrimp with mango sauce, and we washed it down with mojitos and margaritas. We were seated on one of the upper levels, and it was a really nice night despite the rain that we had driven through earlier on the bus. The patios below were all lit up with white Christmas lights and it was all pretty perfect for a first night!
Sunday we slept in (surprise!). We finally headed out for some food around noonish, and ended up at a place called Bisquets Obregon. I had intended to get just a pastry or something breakfasty, but the menu was pretty appealing so I ended up ordering a cafe con leche (the best of the trip) and chicken sopes. I've had really excellent sopes in Austin and these weren't quite as good, but they were close! After lunch we walked (and walked, and walked) a bit of a ways off to the "centro" bus station to check times for buses to Valladolid and Chichen Itza. We were going to stop by a marketplace for various crafts but it was already closed. So instead we headed back past some banks to get some more cash. And here we hit our first major snag as the ATM proceeded to eat Canzira's card when she attempted to make a balance inquiry. Ack! She did have a cell phone with her and was able to contact her bank the next morning to get a new card in the works, and I didn't have trouble with mine, so we were okay, but it was not the happiest moment of the trip for sure!
Once we did what we could about that situation, we headed back up to the hotel to check out a nearby tour company to find out what we could do about getting to Uxmal and the Ruta Puuc sites the next day. Although the sign in the window there said "open", no one ever seemed to be around and the door was locked, so we went off in search of other options. At the other place we tried, we discovered that most organized tours went *either* to Uxmal and Kabah *or* the other Ruta Puuc sites (Loltun caves, Labna, Sayil, and Xlapak). Well, we really wanted to see the caves and as many of the sites as we could, so we were told that we did have the option of hiring a guide and driver for the day to take us where we wanted to go, for a bit less than it would have cost us to do both tours. So after some deliberation, we signed up for that. We spent the rest of the day wandering around some more, checking out the local crafts and all the people turned out for Sunday in Merida. For most of the day they have several of the major streets closed off to traffic and people go out to meet and mingle, ride bikes, and enjoy the weekend. That night we headed to Restaurante Portico del Peregrino, where we were hoping to try a dish called queso relleno (stuffed cheese), but it wasn't on the menu that night. Instead, I had a Yucatecan dish called pollo pibil (chicken flavored with achiote sauce, then steamed in banana leaves). I think it was here that I had vanilla ice cream with Kahlua sauce for dessert. Yum!
Monday we were up bright and early for our tour. We met up with our guide, Sergio, and our driver, Carlos, at the tour agency and headed out shortly after 9 a.m. for Loltun. At Loltun you have to take one of their guided tours through the caves, so we got there in time for the 11 a.m. tour. We were lucky enough to get there at the same time as a larger tour group with their own English-speaking guide who for whatever reason was allowed to guide them through and we hooked up with their group. The regular English-speaking guide was not there that day and while the other guide did speak some English, his was not quite as good as the tour group guide. So we hung out with them (a group from the UK, I think) and another group of mostly Asian tourists followed behind us with the Spanish guide. The caves were really fascinating and pretty big. The tour took about an hour and involved a good bit of clambering around up and down some slippery rocks. The limestone formations and caverns carved by centuries of water were incredible, and there were also petroglyphs in some parts and handprints and carvings throughout. Nothing was really roped off or out of bounds; you could pretty much wander up to anything you wanted so my guess is that things won't stay very well preserved but it's neat to visit right now when you can still get up close to a lot of these things.
After the caves we met up with Sergio and Carlos again and headed off to Labna. I kind of wish we had visited this area last, after seeing Coba and Chichen Itza, so I would have had a better idea of how much more detail and elaborate the Ruta Puuc sites were. The pictures will give you a better description of what we saw than I can, so I'll just say that the whole visit was really neat and Sergio was an excellent guide and a lot of fun. It sprinkled on us a bit, but it was mostly pretty pleasant and relatively cool; a good day for hiking around and climbing ruins. After our stop at Kabah, Sergio took us to visit some friends of his who lived in a typical Mayan home in Santa Elena. They have a small thatched roof hut at the front of the property where they sleep in hammocks, and then a separate cooking area behind where they were making tortillas from scratch--husking the corn, cutting it off the husk, then pounding it down into cornmeal. They gave us some fruit from the chicle tree (a "chewing gum" tree; the tree secretes a sticky sap that is still used in some natural chewing gums today). I thought it was pretty tasty, although Canzira wasn't a fan. They also gave us some freshly made tortillas, which were delicious with a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lime... mmmmmm. The, um, patriarch? of the family took us out to see the different trees and such that they had in back... they kept chickens and turkeys and a goat, and had a bunch of chicle trees as well as some achiote shrubs, which are used for the red dye that covers the seeds as well as a paste that is made from the seeds and used in the local foods like pollo pibil. I missed much of the conversation as it mostly took place in Spanish, but at some point they were talking about how in traditional Maya families, the couples get married young (like, in their teens), and they were giving Sergio and Carlos (and us, I guess) a hard time about how we were all still single. It was all in good fun and it was really interesting to see how people still live in the traditional way outside the cities.
From there we went to Kabah and finished up at Uxmal, which is the largest of the sites in the area. We then headed back to Merida. We hadn't had lunch other than the tortillas and fruit, so Sergio offered to take us to this restaurant he liked where they had live music and botanas. Botanas are this great happy hour-type tradition at some restaurants where, when you order a beer, they bring you a shitload of food for free. So we went to this place, called Eladio's. It's kind of a local chain; they have them in several places around the Yucatan. This one was kind of away from the center of town so there weren't any other tourists there. They got us Coronas... sadly I don't like beer at all but I managed to drink mine and start on a second, while Canzira didn't even get through one. The food was kind of tapas-style... small plates of a wide variety of dishes and you all just pass the plates around and eat a little bit of each. There was cochinita pibil, poc choc (grilled pork loin), tamales, papadzules (tortillas stuffed with hard boiled eggs in sauce), panuchos and salbutes (basically chicken tacos; one type is fried like a tostada while the other is more like a soft shell taco), and some other things that I didn't catch the name of. They also brought us some breadsticks with some kind of a white sauce to dip them in that had some slightly spicy green oil in it... it was really delicious. Nothing we had in Merida was really at all spicy. The habanero pepper is native to the Yucatan but they didn't seem to use it much in that area. So that was good for me since I don't really do spicy very well. One of my culinary failings. Anyway, it was a really good spread for the price of a few beers! After that they drove us back to the hotel and we sadly parted ways. I have Sergio's contact information if any of you go that way yourselves or know someone who might go--I would highly recommend contacting him for a great day!
It was still fairly early in the evening when we got back but we were pretty wiped out after the long day, so we pretty much just laid around and watched TV for a while before bed. Tuesday morning we went out to do some last looking around Merida, taking pictures around the central plaza and going in search of an early lunch for me. Unfortunately I led us to a restaurant that turned out to be ugly tourist central. I ordered a coffee to start (well, I ordered cafe con leche and got coffee and cream) and when a lady next to me started fretting loudly that she hoped the menu was in English and we were approached by a zillion different vendors trying to sell us hammocks and bizarre chicken toys and woven bracelet thingies, we decided to cut our losses, leave the poor, annoyed-looking waiter a hefty tip for my coffee and find a different place to eat. The next place we tried was much, much better and we had a decent lunch of panuchos (for me) and enchiladas (for Canzira), washed down by limonada and Coke. After lunch we headed back to the hotel to pack up and check out, and were off to the bus station for our next destination... Valladolid.
Valladolid is a smaller colonial city about 40 minutes from Chichen Itza, a little over 2 hours from Merida. We got in after dark, lugged our suitcases the few blocks to the central plaza, and then had a terrible time finding our hotel. It turns out that the name of the hotel is in giant, lit up letters on the roof and is perfectly visible from the plaza, but they don't have a sign over their door at all. So after wandering back and forth a few times, we finally got to the check-in desk and managed to get our room. We tried to ask about getting to Chichen Itza the next day but the clerks were less than helpful, so we headed back to the bus station to check for buses and figure it out ourselves. Then we wandered around to see what we could see, but most of the city seems to close up after dark so we didn't really find much to look at. We finally just went back to the hotel and had dinner in their restaurant. I had a regional specialty called pollo en escabeche, which was chicken and onions in some kind of broth; it was really tasty. Canzira made the mistake of trying the salsa they provided... we hadn't had anything remotely spicy to that point so imagine her surprise when it was hotter than the fires of hell. Apparently they do use habaneros in that part of the region. I ordered flan for dessert but was less than happy with it. All in all we were not very impressed with Valladolid, but I think we maybe didn't get to see the best of it because other people we talked to kept telling us how much they loved it. But we were just there for the night so the first impression was what we had to go on.
Wednesday we left our luggage at the reception desk and headed off to Chichen Itza (on a second class bus, which was not nearly as nice as the first class buses but it was okay). It's a really large site so even after the big tour buses started showing up we didn't feel too crowded. We did some shopping there from the merchants who line all the paths around the site and spent quite a bit of time wandering around, taking some of the less traveled paths and seeing most of what there was to see. Then we got some lunch at the restaurant in the services building, which was pretty darn good. This was where I discovered the grilled cheese. After lunch we did some more shopping in the bookstore and got our bus ticket back to Valladolid. We had a very strange encounter while waiting for the bus. This young American guy walked up to us and asked us what we were all waiting for (there was a fairly good size group waiting for the bus), telling us that he had lost his tour group from Cancun. We told him we were waiting for the bus and he asked if we thought there was one to Cancun, and if we thought it would be more than 500 pesos. Well, most of the bus trips we took were less than 50 pesos so we were like, um, no. Then he started telling us that he didn't have any cash, his credit card was maxed out, and would we be willing to trade him for some comic books. He pulls these comic books out of his bag and starts showing them to us. What the hell would we want with comic books? Fortunately at this point the bus showed up so we were like, try the tourist police inside, they'll help you... and we skedaddled. Very strange.
We stopped in Valladolid just long enough to collect our bags from the hotel and head back to the bus station, where we got another bus to Tulum, another trip of just about 2 hours. We were hoping to get to Tulum before dark, since we didn't know exactly where our hotel was there. Fortunately we got there just before sunset, and we found a guy at the bus station who was able to find us a map and tell us generally where we were headed. After a slight detour down a diagonal street when we should have gone down the perpendicular one, we managed to find the hotel and get ourselves checked in. The hotel owners provided us with their own map and helpfully pointed out some of the better restaurants. Tulum, while still a fairly small beach town, is at the south end of the area called the "Riviera Maya" and seems to cater to a mostly European crowd, so there was an Argentinian steak house in town that sounded very appealing. We got our stuff situated, and headed up that way. I got my empanadas (which I had been looking for the whole trip) as an appetizer and some chicken and beef kabobs for my meal, and Canzira ended up with the biggest steak ever. It was all very yummy, and Christina, I finally got to have a caipirinha!
On Thursday we stopped for breakfast at a little restaurant called Cafe Gaudi, where I got toast with nutella (whee!), juice, and coffee, then we grabbed a taxi and headed off to the Tulum ruins. Compared to the others we visited, the site was fairly small, and it was pretty packed with people, so it wasn't my favorite stop of the trip, but it is a pretty cool location being on a bluff above the ocean. It was cloudy and rainy when we got there but soon the sun came out and then it got downright hot. We wandered around and I waded in the ocean a bit, then we headed off to do our official beach visit. We walked down from the ruins to a resort the hotel owners had recommended called El Paraiso. Unfortunately the walk was a little farther than I had anticipated and my sandals rubbed some really nice blisters onto the sides of my feet, not a good thing when you are spending time in salt water. My own fault though, I should have worn my sneakers. Anyway, at the beach (which I thought was only about half-full, while Canzira had a hard time imagining that there might be beaches with *more* people) we rented these futon thingies for the afternoon and settled in for an afternoon of doing nothing. I have to say, this is now one of my favorite beaches ever. The sand is incredible, very white and powdery, almost like sugar. And the slope is very gradual, so you can get a fair ways out before you can't touch bottom in between waves anymore. And the water was pretty warm, too. There's a natural reef along the coast so although there were decent waves, they weren't all that big, and the water was almost completely free of the seaweed and other stuff that often washes up on shorelines. I didn't see any shells, though. It seems this is a really popular area for snorkeling and diving, although we didn't give it a try.
When we first got to the beach it was sprinkling a bit and then it cleared out again, but around sunset it started raining a bit again and everyone pretty much cleared out. We got our stuff together and wandered down the beach to find an Italian place that we heard had good food. When we located it, we were one of just three groups in the place; maybe everyone eats later there? It was definitely a beachside restaurant, the floor was completely sand and it opened out onto the beach. It had cooled off a lot so we ate inside, and aside from the mosquitos which came out in force, it was a really nice meal. I got pizza with mushrooms, ham, sausage, and artichokes. Interestingly, it came out with each topping on a separate quarter of the pizza. It was really good, though. Canzira had spaghetti carbonara and wasn't quite as impressed. After dinner we flagged down a taxi and headed back to town. Even though you mostly just lie around a lot, a day at the beach always tires me out so after a nice warm shower, we stayed in and watched TV, played card games, and went to bed early.
Friday we headed out for Coba fairly early again. It's about a 40 minute trip; the bus let us off in the little town and then we walked out around the lake to the ruins. Here we hired a guide as the site itself doesn't have much in the way of signs or information. He took us on a 90-minute tour of the major sites. The whole thing is pretty spread out so there's a good bit of walking; many people rent bikes and we often had large groups of bike riders to avoid. But other than all the bikes, it's a pretty remote site and still a lot of it is only marginally restored, so it's kind of neat to see a site in the earlier stages and get an idea of how much work has gone into the other sites. After our tour of Coba, we walked around the lake (which is home to numerous crocodiles) to the Club Med, which the guidebook had recommended for lunch. It's a beautiful hotel, and it was practically deserted; we weren't even sure they were open until we found someone at the restaurant. Canzira got a mozzarella and tomato salad while I was feeling adventurous and ordered an avocado, apple, and chicken combo that also involved bananas. It was surprisingly very good. After lunch, we headed back to the bus station, only to find that the next bus was going to be another 2 hours. Fortunately there was a taxi waiting there, and after a quick discussion we decided it was worth the cab fare to avoid having a long wait with nothing to do!
Back in Tulum we headed to the Internet cafe to finally catch up on email and let people know we were still alive and doing well. We then headed back to the hotel to write some postcards and get them in the mail, then we did some more shopping up and down the main drag, trying to find the perfect souvenirs for everyone on our list. I managed to find something for everyone in my family except my dad. I did get him a stamp for his collection, so maybe that will be okay.... We stopped by a restaurant called Charlie's for our last dinner in Mexico. I had to get one last dish of sopa de lima (an incredibly delicious chicken soup with lime in the broth that is so, so good) and stuffed myself on enchiladas with mole. We then sat and talked for ages until we managed to get someone to bring us the check. In Mexico, they don't care how long you stay; they won't bring you the check until you specifically ask for it. It's nice except for when you want to go and can't get anyone's attention! We then made one last trip up and down the street and then headed back for bed.
Saturday we knew we had a two-hour drive back to Cancun, and we hadn't been able to get a bus schedule ahead of time so we wanted to leave with lots of time just in case we had bad connections or something. So we headed out from the hotel at 8 a.m. I got in the long line at the bus station for tickets, and after three buses to Playa del Carmen came and went, I finally managed to get up to the front (mostly we were waiting on this one Italian guy who was trying to get somewhere complicated, apparently). At which point I learned that there were no buses directly to the Cancun airport from Tulum, but there were some from Playa, and the station agent thought it would be faster for us to get to Playa and from there to the airport. Well, we had just missed a bus, but there are these shared-ride vans (called collectivos) that travel between Tulum and Playa all the time, so we headed out to catch one of those. We squeezed onto a packed one and proceeded to head north. Most of the people on the van from Tulum were locals headed to various resorts along the way for work, so we made several stops and then had room again, so then our driver started waiting at the resorts for tourists to slooooooooooowly make their way down the long driveways out to the highway and then load themselves and their small and whiny children onto the van. It was a long and frustrating ride, and I'm not sure it was any faster than it would have been to wait for the next bus in the long run. Regardless, we eventually ended up in Playa. Here, there are two bus terminals, one for first-class buses and one for second-class buses. I figured the first-class one would be where the airport buses were, so we walked a good 10 blocks, lugging our bags, only to discover that no, the airport buses did not leave from there. However, there was another office nearby where the agent said we could get those buses rather than go all the way to the other side of town to the other terminal. So we walked a few more blocks to this tiny little office and got tickets marked "Cancun". The bus shows up, we get on, and we ride all the way into Cancun, past the airport exit. This bus went to the downtown station. We could have taken a bus direct from Tulum to the downtown Cancun station, making the whole stop in Playa completely unnecessary. *SIGH* So we caught the airport shuttle from the downtown station, which was our original plan, and got to the airport around 12:15 for our 1:45 flight. We then stood in a very long line until the agents came through calling for the stragglers for our flight, which was us, and they moved us up to the front where we got all checked in, walked through security, and then had a half hour before we needed to board our flight. So we finally got to eat something! The choices were pretty limited so I went for Burger King (not any different than in the US) and Canzira got some Domino's pizza. Leaving, we got to walk out onto the tarmac and climb the stairs onto the plane, which was kind of fun, although it was raining again, so that was less fun.
We flew from Cancun to Miami, which we decided is the least helpful airport in the world. You have to get your bags for customs and then drop them off again to be put on your connecting domestic flight, so as we came out of customs we followed the sign that said where to go for American Airlines flights. And when we get there, they tell us they aren't taking any more bags there and we should follow the yellow dots to another baggage place. At the other baggage place, which is marked for all airlines other than American, the young twerp there was all bizarre and wanted to know what I had in a carry on bag I had from the Cancun airport. I have no idea why, as all he needed to worry about was my checked luggage, but then he wanted to see our tickets and all kinds of stuff before he would finally take our bags. Then, we headed upstairs, where we had to go through security yet again. After all that, we still had time to kill before our flight so we went in search of a restaurant. None of the airport maps showed where any restaurants or food stands were, so we wandered our terminal and the next one over and found exactly nothing except a couple of sandwich stands and a Starbucks. So I got a latte and Canzira got a frappuccino and we pouted over how much the airport sucked until our flight left. In Chicago, we were fortunate in that our bags were some of the first out so we didn't have to wait in the cab line, since we didn't have our jackets with us and it was around freezing. And now I am home and depressed because it was such a great vacation and I don't want to go to work tomorrow or deal with winter when three days ago I was on the beach. *cries*
by lisaz1a
Canzira and I flew off to Cancun on Saturday, Dec. 1. We then took off by bus for Merida, about 3.5 hours away, arriving shortly after dark. This was a great city with lots to see and do, and some fabulous food! We spent one day traveling the Puuc Route with our wonderful tour guide Sergio and driver Carlos, who took us to the caves at Loltun and the ruins at Labna, Kabah, and Uxmal, with a stop to visit a Mayan family along the way. On Tuesday afternoon we headed off to Valladolid, a much smaller city more towards the middle of the peninsula. Wednesday morning we headed to Chichen Itza to view the most famous and best restored ruins in the area, then took another bus to Tulum. Thursday was spent at the Tulum ruins and then the most beautiful beach I have ever been to in my life. LOVED IT!!! Friday we went to the ruins at Coba, a much less restored and jungle-covered complex with its own special feel. And then Saturday we sadly packed up and headed back to Cancun and the airport, arriving back in Chicago via Miami. I had the best time and we really didn't have any major mishaps, except for the part when an ATM swallowed Canzira's card. Fortunately I had enough available to cover the places that didn't take credit cards, and hopefully a new ATM card will be waiting for her when she gets home. The most trouble we had getting anywhere was attempting to get back to the Cancun airport. Everything else went really smoothly, and even the rain turned out to be a blessing as on the days the sun was out, it really was pretty damn hot and steamy! So I think we had a much more comfortable trip, temperature-wise, due to the clouds. I can't wait to go back again!
...And now the long version.
Chicago (specifically the O'Hare area) got hit by a decent amount of snow on Friday and we were a bit worried that our flight would have problems Saturday morning with all the disruption of the day before, but although we did have a short delay in Chicago, we didn't miss the connection in Dallas as there were other people coming in even later than us and they held the plane until everyone could get there. So we left Dallas a bit later than intended, but still made it to Cancun in the early afternoon. After getting through the long lines and slight chaos of the customs/baggage claim area, we shoved our way through the mass of humanity to get to the place where buses left for downtown. And we just missed one. So we had about a half-hour to kill, which we used by finding an ATM and getting our first batch of pesos. Then it was off to Cancun Centro and from there immediately onto another bus to Merida.
The buses in Mexico are pretty excellent, by and large. They have first and second class lines; both are more what you think of as charter buses than the city buses you might be used to. The first class buses had movies (or other programming) and were mostly direct or at least had only a few stops between where they left and where they ended up. However, they didn't necessarily consider the length of the trip in what they showed, so we ended up seeing parts of several movies that I would probably not normally want to watch but now I'm curious what happened at the end.... Anyway, the second class buses did not have the movies and made many stops along the way, so we stuck to first class as much as possible!
We arrived at the north end of Merida around 7 p.m. (the Yucatan is on the same time as US Central, so we didn't have any time change to adjust to) and took a taxi to our hotel, which turned out to be a really lovely and surprisingly large place behind a lavendar painted, somewhat unassuming front. Our second-floor room was really more of an apartment, with a large sleeping area (and cable TV) as well as a kitchenette. We dropped off our stuff and headed out for some dinner. After wandering around a bit and exploring the area, we decided to eat at a place I'd read about called Pancho's. It was a bit touristy as the waiters all wore sombreros and were dressed up with ammo belts and such (fake, of course!), but the book said the food was excellent and even the locals went there for a night out, so we decided to give it a try. And we were not disappointed! It was a really great meal. Canzira got one of the house specialties, steak with a peppery wine sauce that was flambeed tableside. I had shrimp with mango sauce, and we washed it down with mojitos and margaritas. We were seated on one of the upper levels, and it was a really nice night despite the rain that we had driven through earlier on the bus. The patios below were all lit up with white Christmas lights and it was all pretty perfect for a first night!
Sunday we slept in (surprise!). We finally headed out for some food around noonish, and ended up at a place called Bisquets Obregon. I had intended to get just a pastry or something breakfasty, but the menu was pretty appealing so I ended up ordering a cafe con leche (the best of the trip) and chicken sopes. I've had really excellent sopes in Austin and these weren't quite as good, but they were close! After lunch we walked (and walked, and walked) a bit of a ways off to the "centro" bus station to check times for buses to Valladolid and Chichen Itza. We were going to stop by a marketplace for various crafts but it was already closed. So instead we headed back past some banks to get some more cash. And here we hit our first major snag as the ATM proceeded to eat Canzira's card when she attempted to make a balance inquiry. Ack! She did have a cell phone with her and was able to contact her bank the next morning to get a new card in the works, and I didn't have trouble with mine, so we were okay, but it was not the happiest moment of the trip for sure!
Once we did what we could about that situation, we headed back up to the hotel to check out a nearby tour company to find out what we could do about getting to Uxmal and the Ruta Puuc sites the next day. Although the sign in the window there said "open", no one ever seemed to be around and the door was locked, so we went off in search of other options. At the other place we tried, we discovered that most organized tours went *either* to Uxmal and Kabah *or* the other Ruta Puuc sites (Loltun caves, Labna, Sayil, and Xlapak). Well, we really wanted to see the caves and as many of the sites as we could, so we were told that we did have the option of hiring a guide and driver for the day to take us where we wanted to go, for a bit less than it would have cost us to do both tours. So after some deliberation, we signed up for that. We spent the rest of the day wandering around some more, checking out the local crafts and all the people turned out for Sunday in Merida. For most of the day they have several of the major streets closed off to traffic and people go out to meet and mingle, ride bikes, and enjoy the weekend. That night we headed to Restaurante Portico del Peregrino, where we were hoping to try a dish called queso relleno (stuffed cheese), but it wasn't on the menu that night. Instead, I had a Yucatecan dish called pollo pibil (chicken flavored with achiote sauce, then steamed in banana leaves). I think it was here that I had vanilla ice cream with Kahlua sauce for dessert. Yum!
Monday we were up bright and early for our tour. We met up with our guide, Sergio, and our driver, Carlos, at the tour agency and headed out shortly after 9 a.m. for Loltun. At Loltun you have to take one of their guided tours through the caves, so we got there in time for the 11 a.m. tour. We were lucky enough to get there at the same time as a larger tour group with their own English-speaking guide who for whatever reason was allowed to guide them through and we hooked up with their group. The regular English-speaking guide was not there that day and while the other guide did speak some English, his was not quite as good as the tour group guide. So we hung out with them (a group from the UK, I think) and another group of mostly Asian tourists followed behind us with the Spanish guide. The caves were really fascinating and pretty big. The tour took about an hour and involved a good bit of clambering around up and down some slippery rocks. The limestone formations and caverns carved by centuries of water were incredible, and there were also petroglyphs in some parts and handprints and carvings throughout. Nothing was really roped off or out of bounds; you could pretty much wander up to anything you wanted so my guess is that things won't stay very well preserved but it's neat to visit right now when you can still get up close to a lot of these things.
After the caves we met up with Sergio and Carlos again and headed off to Labna. I kind of wish we had visited this area last, after seeing Coba and Chichen Itza, so I would have had a better idea of how much more detail and elaborate the Ruta Puuc sites were. The pictures will give you a better description of what we saw than I can, so I'll just say that the whole visit was really neat and Sergio was an excellent guide and a lot of fun. It sprinkled on us a bit, but it was mostly pretty pleasant and relatively cool; a good day for hiking around and climbing ruins. After our stop at Kabah, Sergio took us to visit some friends of his who lived in a typical Mayan home in Santa Elena. They have a small thatched roof hut at the front of the property where they sleep in hammocks, and then a separate cooking area behind where they were making tortillas from scratch--husking the corn, cutting it off the husk, then pounding it down into cornmeal. They gave us some fruit from the chicle tree (a "chewing gum" tree; the tree secretes a sticky sap that is still used in some natural chewing gums today). I thought it was pretty tasty, although Canzira wasn't a fan. They also gave us some freshly made tortillas, which were delicious with a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lime... mmmmmm. The, um, patriarch? of the family took us out to see the different trees and such that they had in back... they kept chickens and turkeys and a goat, and had a bunch of chicle trees as well as some achiote shrubs, which are used for the red dye that covers the seeds as well as a paste that is made from the seeds and used in the local foods like pollo pibil. I missed much of the conversation as it mostly took place in Spanish, but at some point they were talking about how in traditional Maya families, the couples get married young (like, in their teens), and they were giving Sergio and Carlos (and us, I guess) a hard time about how we were all still single. It was all in good fun and it was really interesting to see how people still live in the traditional way outside the cities.
From there we went to Kabah and finished up at Uxmal, which is the largest of the sites in the area. We then headed back to Merida. We hadn't had lunch other than the tortillas and fruit, so Sergio offered to take us to this restaurant he liked where they had live music and botanas. Botanas are this great happy hour-type tradition at some restaurants where, when you order a beer, they bring you a shitload of food for free. So we went to this place, called Eladio's. It's kind of a local chain; they have them in several places around the Yucatan. This one was kind of away from the center of town so there weren't any other tourists there. They got us Coronas... sadly I don't like beer at all but I managed to drink mine and start on a second, while Canzira didn't even get through one. The food was kind of tapas-style... small plates of a wide variety of dishes and you all just pass the plates around and eat a little bit of each. There was cochinita pibil, poc choc (grilled pork loin), tamales, papadzules (tortillas stuffed with hard boiled eggs in sauce), panuchos and salbutes (basically chicken tacos; one type is fried like a tostada while the other is more like a soft shell taco), and some other things that I didn't catch the name of. They also brought us some breadsticks with some kind of a white sauce to dip them in that had some slightly spicy green oil in it... it was really delicious. Nothing we had in Merida was really at all spicy. The habanero pepper is native to the Yucatan but they didn't seem to use it much in that area. So that was good for me since I don't really do spicy very well. One of my culinary failings. Anyway, it was a really good spread for the price of a few beers! After that they drove us back to the hotel and we sadly parted ways. I have Sergio's contact information if any of you go that way yourselves or know someone who might go--I would highly recommend contacting him for a great day!
It was still fairly early in the evening when we got back but we were pretty wiped out after the long day, so we pretty much just laid around and watched TV for a while before bed. Tuesday morning we went out to do some last looking around Merida, taking pictures around the central plaza and going in search of an early lunch for me. Unfortunately I led us to a restaurant that turned out to be ugly tourist central. I ordered a coffee to start (well, I ordered cafe con leche and got coffee and cream) and when a lady next to me started fretting loudly that she hoped the menu was in English and we were approached by a zillion different vendors trying to sell us hammocks and bizarre chicken toys and woven bracelet thingies, we decided to cut our losses, leave the poor, annoyed-looking waiter a hefty tip for my coffee and find a different place to eat. The next place we tried was much, much better and we had a decent lunch of panuchos (for me) and enchiladas (for Canzira), washed down by limonada and Coke. After lunch we headed back to the hotel to pack up and check out, and were off to the bus station for our next destination... Valladolid.
Valladolid is a smaller colonial city about 40 minutes from Chichen Itza, a little over 2 hours from Merida. We got in after dark, lugged our suitcases the few blocks to the central plaza, and then had a terrible time finding our hotel. It turns out that the name of the hotel is in giant, lit up letters on the roof and is perfectly visible from the plaza, but they don't have a sign over their door at all. So after wandering back and forth a few times, we finally got to the check-in desk and managed to get our room. We tried to ask about getting to Chichen Itza the next day but the clerks were less than helpful, so we headed back to the bus station to check for buses and figure it out ourselves. Then we wandered around to see what we could see, but most of the city seems to close up after dark so we didn't really find much to look at. We finally just went back to the hotel and had dinner in their restaurant. I had a regional specialty called pollo en escabeche, which was chicken and onions in some kind of broth; it was really tasty. Canzira made the mistake of trying the salsa they provided... we hadn't had anything remotely spicy to that point so imagine her surprise when it was hotter than the fires of hell. Apparently they do use habaneros in that part of the region. I ordered flan for dessert but was less than happy with it. All in all we were not very impressed with Valladolid, but I think we maybe didn't get to see the best of it because other people we talked to kept telling us how much they loved it. But we were just there for the night so the first impression was what we had to go on.
Wednesday we left our luggage at the reception desk and headed off to Chichen Itza (on a second class bus, which was not nearly as nice as the first class buses but it was okay). It's a really large site so even after the big tour buses started showing up we didn't feel too crowded. We did some shopping there from the merchants who line all the paths around the site and spent quite a bit of time wandering around, taking some of the less traveled paths and seeing most of what there was to see. Then we got some lunch at the restaurant in the services building, which was pretty darn good. This was where I discovered the grilled cheese. After lunch we did some more shopping in the bookstore and got our bus ticket back to Valladolid. We had a very strange encounter while waiting for the bus. This young American guy walked up to us and asked us what we were all waiting for (there was a fairly good size group waiting for the bus), telling us that he had lost his tour group from Cancun. We told him we were waiting for the bus and he asked if we thought there was one to Cancun, and if we thought it would be more than 500 pesos. Well, most of the bus trips we took were less than 50 pesos so we were like, um, no. Then he started telling us that he didn't have any cash, his credit card was maxed out, and would we be willing to trade him for some comic books. He pulls these comic books out of his bag and starts showing them to us. What the hell would we want with comic books? Fortunately at this point the bus showed up so we were like, try the tourist police inside, they'll help you... and we skedaddled. Very strange.
We stopped in Valladolid just long enough to collect our bags from the hotel and head back to the bus station, where we got another bus to Tulum, another trip of just about 2 hours. We were hoping to get to Tulum before dark, since we didn't know exactly where our hotel was there. Fortunately we got there just before sunset, and we found a guy at the bus station who was able to find us a map and tell us generally where we were headed. After a slight detour down a diagonal street when we should have gone down the perpendicular one, we managed to find the hotel and get ourselves checked in. The hotel owners provided us with their own map and helpfully pointed out some of the better restaurants. Tulum, while still a fairly small beach town, is at the south end of the area called the "Riviera Maya" and seems to cater to a mostly European crowd, so there was an Argentinian steak house in town that sounded very appealing. We got our stuff situated, and headed up that way. I got my empanadas (which I had been looking for the whole trip) as an appetizer and some chicken and beef kabobs for my meal, and Canzira ended up with the biggest steak ever. It was all very yummy, and Christina, I finally got to have a caipirinha!
On Thursday we stopped for breakfast at a little restaurant called Cafe Gaudi, where I got toast with nutella (whee!), juice, and coffee, then we grabbed a taxi and headed off to the Tulum ruins. Compared to the others we visited, the site was fairly small, and it was pretty packed with people, so it wasn't my favorite stop of the trip, but it is a pretty cool location being on a bluff above the ocean. It was cloudy and rainy when we got there but soon the sun came out and then it got downright hot. We wandered around and I waded in the ocean a bit, then we headed off to do our official beach visit. We walked down from the ruins to a resort the hotel owners had recommended called El Paraiso. Unfortunately the walk was a little farther than I had anticipated and my sandals rubbed some really nice blisters onto the sides of my feet, not a good thing when you are spending time in salt water. My own fault though, I should have worn my sneakers. Anyway, at the beach (which I thought was only about half-full, while Canzira had a hard time imagining that there might be beaches with *more* people) we rented these futon thingies for the afternoon and settled in for an afternoon of doing nothing. I have to say, this is now one of my favorite beaches ever. The sand is incredible, very white and powdery, almost like sugar. And the slope is very gradual, so you can get a fair ways out before you can't touch bottom in between waves anymore. And the water was pretty warm, too. There's a natural reef along the coast so although there were decent waves, they weren't all that big, and the water was almost completely free of the seaweed and other stuff that often washes up on shorelines. I didn't see any shells, though. It seems this is a really popular area for snorkeling and diving, although we didn't give it a try.
When we first got to the beach it was sprinkling a bit and then it cleared out again, but around sunset it started raining a bit again and everyone pretty much cleared out. We got our stuff together and wandered down the beach to find an Italian place that we heard had good food. When we located it, we were one of just three groups in the place; maybe everyone eats later there? It was definitely a beachside restaurant, the floor was completely sand and it opened out onto the beach. It had cooled off a lot so we ate inside, and aside from the mosquitos which came out in force, it was a really nice meal. I got pizza with mushrooms, ham, sausage, and artichokes. Interestingly, it came out with each topping on a separate quarter of the pizza. It was really good, though. Canzira had spaghetti carbonara and wasn't quite as impressed. After dinner we flagged down a taxi and headed back to town. Even though you mostly just lie around a lot, a day at the beach always tires me out so after a nice warm shower, we stayed in and watched TV, played card games, and went to bed early.
Friday we headed out for Coba fairly early again. It's about a 40 minute trip; the bus let us off in the little town and then we walked out around the lake to the ruins. Here we hired a guide as the site itself doesn't have much in the way of signs or information. He took us on a 90-minute tour of the major sites. The whole thing is pretty spread out so there's a good bit of walking; many people rent bikes and we often had large groups of bike riders to avoid. But other than all the bikes, it's a pretty remote site and still a lot of it is only marginally restored, so it's kind of neat to see a site in the earlier stages and get an idea of how much work has gone into the other sites. After our tour of Coba, we walked around the lake (which is home to numerous crocodiles) to the Club Med, which the guidebook had recommended for lunch. It's a beautiful hotel, and it was practically deserted; we weren't even sure they were open until we found someone at the restaurant. Canzira got a mozzarella and tomato salad while I was feeling adventurous and ordered an avocado, apple, and chicken combo that also involved bananas. It was surprisingly very good. After lunch, we headed back to the bus station, only to find that the next bus was going to be another 2 hours. Fortunately there was a taxi waiting there, and after a quick discussion we decided it was worth the cab fare to avoid having a long wait with nothing to do!
Back in Tulum we headed to the Internet cafe to finally catch up on email and let people know we were still alive and doing well. We then headed back to the hotel to write some postcards and get them in the mail, then we did some more shopping up and down the main drag, trying to find the perfect souvenirs for everyone on our list. I managed to find something for everyone in my family except my dad. I did get him a stamp for his collection, so maybe that will be okay.... We stopped by a restaurant called Charlie's for our last dinner in Mexico. I had to get one last dish of sopa de lima (an incredibly delicious chicken soup with lime in the broth that is so, so good) and stuffed myself on enchiladas with mole. We then sat and talked for ages until we managed to get someone to bring us the check. In Mexico, they don't care how long you stay; they won't bring you the check until you specifically ask for it. It's nice except for when you want to go and can't get anyone's attention! We then made one last trip up and down the street and then headed back for bed.
Saturday we knew we had a two-hour drive back to Cancun, and we hadn't been able to get a bus schedule ahead of time so we wanted to leave with lots of time just in case we had bad connections or something. So we headed out from the hotel at 8 a.m. I got in the long line at the bus station for tickets, and after three buses to Playa del Carmen came and went, I finally managed to get up to the front (mostly we were waiting on this one Italian guy who was trying to get somewhere complicated, apparently). At which point I learned that there were no buses directly to the Cancun airport from Tulum, but there were some from Playa, and the station agent thought it would be faster for us to get to Playa and from there to the airport. Well, we had just missed a bus, but there are these shared-ride vans (called collectivos) that travel between Tulum and Playa all the time, so we headed out to catch one of those. We squeezed onto a packed one and proceeded to head north. Most of the people on the van from Tulum were locals headed to various resorts along the way for work, so we made several stops and then had room again, so then our driver started waiting at the resorts for tourists to slooooooooooowly make their way down the long driveways out to the highway and then load themselves and their small and whiny children onto the van. It was a long and frustrating ride, and I'm not sure it was any faster than it would have been to wait for the next bus in the long run. Regardless, we eventually ended up in Playa. Here, there are two bus terminals, one for first-class buses and one for second-class buses. I figured the first-class one would be where the airport buses were, so we walked a good 10 blocks, lugging our bags, only to discover that no, the airport buses did not leave from there. However, there was another office nearby where the agent said we could get those buses rather than go all the way to the other side of town to the other terminal. So we walked a few more blocks to this tiny little office and got tickets marked "Cancun". The bus shows up, we get on, and we ride all the way into Cancun, past the airport exit. This bus went to the downtown station. We could have taken a bus direct from Tulum to the downtown Cancun station, making the whole stop in Playa completely unnecessary. *SIGH* So we caught the airport shuttle from the downtown station, which was our original plan, and got to the airport around 12:15 for our 1:45 flight. We then stood in a very long line until the agents came through calling for the stragglers for our flight, which was us, and they moved us up to the front where we got all checked in, walked through security, and then had a half hour before we needed to board our flight. So we finally got to eat something! The choices were pretty limited so I went for Burger King (not any different than in the US) and Canzira got some Domino's pizza. Leaving, we got to walk out onto the tarmac and climb the stairs onto the plane, which was kind of fun, although it was raining again, so that was less fun.
We flew from Cancun to Miami, which we decided is the least helpful airport in the world. You have to get your bags for customs and then drop them off again to be put on your connecting domestic flight, so as we came out of customs we followed the sign that said where to go for American Airlines flights. And when we get there, they tell us they aren't taking any more bags there and we should follow the yellow dots to another baggage place. At the other baggage place, which is marked for all airlines other than American, the young twerp there was all bizarre and wanted to know what I had in a carry on bag I had from the Cancun airport. I have no idea why, as all he needed to worry about was my checked luggage, but then he wanted to see our tickets and all kinds of stuff before he would finally take our bags. Then, we headed upstairs, where we had to go through security yet again. After all that, we still had time to kill before our flight so we went in search of a restaurant. None of the airport maps showed where any restaurants or food stands were, so we wandered our terminal and the next one over and found exactly nothing except a couple of sandwich stands and a Starbucks. So I got a latte and Canzira got a frappuccino and we pouted over how much the airport sucked until our flight left. In Chicago, we were fortunate in that our bags were some of the first out so we didn't have to wait in the cab line, since we didn't have our jackets with us and it was around freezing. And now I am home and depressed because it was such a great vacation and I don't want to go to work tomorrow or deal with winter when three days ago I was on the beach. *cries*