Just kidding, still in San Cristobal

Woke up nice and early to pack up and wait for the shuttle service that would take us to Guatemala. Just after the driver picked up the last person he got a phone call informing him that there are two road blockades on the interamerican highway in Guatemala. So he turned around and brought us back to our hostel. Luckily it seems like they still have space for us for one more night. Tomorrow we try again! This is travel in Central America I suppose. The traveling has been really easy so far, on modern comfortable Mexican buses and shuttle vans, with the exception of the car sickness. But apparently the transportation outside of Mexico is a lot worse. I was prepared for that, but I didn't think we would be prevented from travel by a blockade! At least we found out before we had left the city. So, one more day in San Crstobal! Its not a bad thing at all. Not sure what we will do today, maybe go to the coffee and chocolate museums. I kind of want to go back to sleep though. 

San Cristobal de las Casas

I have been taking it easy in San Cristobal de las Casas for the past few days. Tomorrow at 6 am we get picked up by a van that will take us to the Guatemala border where we will get another van to Panajachel, on the shores of lake Atitlan. I am not looking forward to the journey. The van trip through the mountains around Palenque was enough to make me really, really car sick. My mom prepared me a great first aid kit with lots of medicines, luckily I have not needed it except for some tylenol once or twice. One drug that I have realized is going to be essential and that I did not have is dramamine for motion sickness. Riding in vans and buses up and down hills  So I bought some here.

San Cristobal is truly a magical place. It was built by the Spanish in the early 1500s and because it has become such a tourist destination the buildings are beautifully maintained. Tourism is the main industry today, but I suppose when it was founded it was the city from which the Spaniards ruled over the local people and extracted the natural resources from the ground. Juan Carlos says that Chiapas is the richest state in Mexico in terms of natural resources, but it has the poorest people. There are a lot of mayan people selling crafts in the market or on the street. Its hard to imagine they make too much money at it when there are at least 50 other market vendors selling the exact same things to the exact same tourists.

San Cristobal has great coffee and chocolate, both of which are grown in this region. We were happy to know that Starbucks does not have an outlet here. Actually there are very few American chains. I saw one Subway and one McDonalds and one Dominos Pizza. We have been eating really well, for really cheap. I was feeling the absense of vegetables though, so one night I made a stir fry of lots of things. One of the best places we found is a shop called Lacteo Maya. They make all these dairy products, and dairy products are my favorite. The yogurt is also excellent. 

We didn't do any trips out of the city except a short ride to San Juan Chamula which is famous for being a Catholic Church where the local people practice a hybrid of christianity and traditional practices. So there are statues of saints all around, but then the floor is covered in pine needles and people are lighting candles and praying in their native language. San Cristobal is a great town to walk around, lots to see. There are two churches on hilltops on either side of the city, so we walked from one to the other and went up to see the views. Each neighbourhood has its own church, and I also learned that each neigbourhood is known for a particular product or occupation. I went to one free museum on the history of the city. It was small, but I learned a bit about the neighbourhoods and the development of it. Also things like bicycles used to be a very popular mode of transportation. This is hard to believe because of how steep the hills are, but bicycles certainly would make more sense on the narrow colonial streets. I am curious to know more about this city. The region has an interesting history with the Zapatista revolutionaries but I didn't get to learn about this.

Holbox to Merida to Palenque

A couple days of whirlwind travel, but now I am settled in for a bit in the charming colonial city of San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, southwest Mexico.

Let me see, I last wrote from Isla Holbox. We sadly had to move on from there on Saturday. We were thinking we could just stay one more night, but every hostel/hotel on the island was fully booked! I guess because of carnaval and also because it was Saturday. We left on the ferry and transferred to the first of 3 buses on our way to Merida. We arrived in Merida at 10 pm, to a fantastic hostel right on the main plaza. The architecture is old colonial spanish, and Merida is a much larger city than I had been in thus far. The hostel was called hostal el zocalo, and it was in one of the old buildings. I really loved this hostel, I think we were spoiled by it. It was like $8 a night for a really comfortable bed, a good shower, and the most amazing breakfast. Usually hostel breakfasts involve bread and coffee, maybe a juice or piece of fruit. Not this one. They had a massive buffet of every kind of fruit, then cereal, bread, yogurt, coffee... and they made us omletes!!! We probably ate $8 worth of food. 

There was another carnaval happening in Merida, and we considered going. It happened on a fairgrounds outside the city, and they had free buses from the centre. We went to the bus stop and saw hundreds of people waiting there. So we decided against it. Apparently the fairgrounds capacity was 50,000! The city was crowded enough for me. But because of the carnaval parts of the city were completely empty, so we had a lovely walk down an avenue lined with massive colonial mansions, and through the colonial centre. 

The next day we took the bus to the ruins of Uxmal, about an hour and a half away. These ruins are about 1500 years old, as opposed to the 3000 year old ruins at Coba, so a lot of the carvings were still visible, and the structures were less crumbling. It was very impressive, because the pyramids and other  buildings were close to one another, so you could climb to the top of one pyramid and see the whole site. We spent the afternoon relaxing in the courtyard of a cafe, and then we prepared for our night bus to Palenque.

Palenque is another ruin site, but it is in the middle of the jungle. We arrived at 4 am to our cabana site near the Palenque park, and we couldn't find anybody so we prepared to sit on a hard bench outside reception for 3 or 4 hours. Then we heard snoring, but we couldnt figure out from where. We looked into the dark reception office and saw someone sleeping on the floor! We woke him up and he got us to our cabana where we slept for 3 hours. Well I probably slept one hour. The birds and howler monkeys started to make a racket around 5. We had breakfast in "El Pachan" which is the collective name for the assortment of hostels and cabanas near the park. There was a tour office there advertising tours to some waterfalls so we went to ask about it. They told us they could take us to some waterfalls and then on to San Cristobal, our next destination. So we decided to do this. The tour left at 12 which gave us 2 1/2 hours to tour the ruins of Palenque, which were the reason we were there. These ruins were even more impressive and picturesque because of the location in the jungle. When you climb the pyramid you can see a great distance because the city was built just at the edge of the mountains. 

From Palenque we visited two waterfalls, one called Agua Azul had very blue water. Hence the name. I am not sure why it is blue, but I intend to look it up. The tour bus met up with a large coach bus and a number of us switched over to get to San Cristobal. The bus ride was supposed to be 5 hours, but in the end it was about 7. The roads are very narrow and very steep, and a trailer had overturned on one curve of the road. So we sat there for almost two hours. We arrived in San Cristobal at 2 am, and rolled into our hostel and fell asleep. Thankfully, no more buses for a few days.

Isla Holbox

This is my new favorite beach place. Well i will probably say that a lot this trip, so it is my favorite thus far. Its a teeny tiny island 3 hours north of Cancun, right off the tip of the Yucatan penninsula. It has about 1000 inhabitants and the tourist industry is not heavily developed so while there is a large presence of tourists they only have small hotels and hostels. Hilton hasn't made it here yet. Although apparently there are plans in the works by some Mexican millionaire to build a huge resort on the island and turn it into another Playa del Carmen. I hated Playa del Carmen. Tulum also is developing really quickly, and as much as I loved Tulum, it doesn't have the magic of this little island.

We are staying in a little cabana hostel/campground establishment. Its incredibly cheap, only 110 pesos a night for the dorm room. And its really beautiful and clean with a nice garden and hammocks and space to do yoga. Last night we went out for dinner at an italian restaurant, and there was a table of really drunk people who were singing along to a guitar player, very loudly and not very well. But it didn't bother me, it was just funny. Juan Carlos joined in with them and then the whole restaurant sang a mexican soccer song together. It was great. Juan Carlos learned that these people are from the same city that he is from! So that was a funny coincidence. We saw them again today, and one of the people who had not been at the restaurant was Juan Carlos's neigbour from home!! Small, small world.

When we arrived we had to take a ferry across the bay from the town of Chiquila, but the boat was full before we managed to get tickets so we climbed in a "lancha", a small boat, with 5 other men. Juan Carlos was talking to them and I was understanding bits and pieces, but they said the were musicians and they come here to perform at a bar called 'Mescalito'. They offered some advice on places to stay and eat on the island, and then we said we would see them later at their show. They played amazing cuban/carribean music, a 6 piece band. The guys we met played the trumpet and trombone.

This morning we went for breakfast and I had these amazing mexican eggs, 'huevos motulenos'. It was like a layer cake with tortilla, beans, egg, cheese and ham. Mmmm. We walked around one end of the island to a protected area where some kind of bird lays its eggs. The beach was deserted, it was only us. Very peaceful and quiet. When we felt like re-joining civilization we walked back to the main beach and passed a lot for sale that had a run down house and an open platform which we decided would be perfect for Juan Carlos to use as a beachfront yoga studio. 

There is a carnival in town tonight, so that should be fun! I guess its that time of the year, all the places I visit are having the pre-lent carnivals.

Leaving Tulum...

Getting ready to go to Playa del Carmen to meet Juan Carlos. I like Tulum, but I am ready to continue my adventures! 

The last two days have been low-key, mostly hanging out around the hostel talking to fellow travelers and getting their advice on other places to go! The hostel I am in is nothing special, but its clean and the people are friendly. I have slept and showered and organized my things. Now my backpack is back in its cage and ready to go!!

I am not sure how to edit my google map from my ipad... It seems there is no editor fuction in the google maps app. Anyway Juan Carlos and I will make our plans together so I am not sure where I will be. All I know is I need to be in Antigua, Guatemala by March 10. Either we will go through Mexico via Campeche, Palenque, and San Cristobal, or we will go south through Belize via Caye Caulker, San Ignacio, and Flores. We will see.

I think my spanish is improving a little bit, its nice that the local people are patient and helpful when I try to communicate in spanish. Unlike French people who immediately discover that you are not a native French speaker and switch to English.

It is really hot. I am ready to head to the highlands in a few days and cool down.

Ruins, turtles, and carnaval!!

The past couple of days in Tulum have been eventful! On Friday (i think) we went to the ruins at Coba. Coba was a mayan city of 50,000 people at its peak. It also was the intersection of a number of mayan "highways" so clearly it was important. I can't believe the maya built roads out of sandstone, one goes from here to Chichen Itza, which is about 200 km away! The archaeological site is huge, apparently they have only uncovered 5% of the city. If you look into the woods and see trees growing out of odd, geometric looking mounds, those are more ruins. Coba has the only pyramid in Mexico that you can climb, so we wanted to do that for sure. It has 120 steps and is very steep. We walked around with a guide in order to actually learn something, as there aren't many plaques that explain what you are looking at.

On Saturday we did a snorkel trip to Akumal, where the sea turtles come really close to shore, and the reef is not far either. I think we probably saw 10 turtles, all different sizes. It was amazing. They just swam around, munching on sea grass, not appearing bothered by all the tourists floating over them. They reminded me of my dad's cows.

Yesterday we had our last day in Zazil Kin, the beach cabana spot. I have been waking up really early due to the sun and the birds, so I went to the beach and did yoga for a while. It was windy, so there were a couple of kite surfers out on the water. We packed up and moved me to a new hostel, because Chris left early this morning. I am really getting a good taste for budget accomodations in Tulum! I could practically write a guidebook! I am going to look at whether I can link from this blog to my trip advisor profile, so if you are interested you can see the places I have stayed. Tulum accomodations are fairly spread out, but we found it was all close enough if you have a bike. We got free bikes from the first hotel, then we rented bikes for 90 pesos ($7.50)/24 hrs one day after that. I would advise people coming here to choose a hostel keeping this in mind. The first hotel advertised dorms for 190 pesos ($16) and they had free bikes. Other hostels are 150 or 160 but the you have to rent a bike for another 90. Taxis from town to the beach are 70 pesos ($6) and the bike ride is probably about 3km from the town to the beach and ruins. In the afternoon we biked to a nearby cenote. A cenote is a sinkhole/cave in the limestone and its filled with beautiful fresh water so its lovely to swim in. There are a lot around Tulum, they were sacred to the Maya because they were considered access points to the underworld. Understandably. Last night there was a carnaval parade and dance show in the main square of the town. Dance groups of all ages dressed in sparkles and feather headdresses put on a great show. The best of it was the young dancers, they were the most enthusiastic and also uncoordinated. It was great fun. I guess the mexicans in this area have borrowed these traditions from their Caribbean neighbours.

Today I am resting, doing laundry, and catching up on my blog! Tomorrow I will have another low-key day in Tulum, maybe go to the beach one last time (though not the last for this trip!), and then Wednesday I am going to meet up with Juan Carlos, my new friend from the yoga ashram, in Playa del Carmen!

Tulum

It is my second full day in Tulum. Chris and I just moved lodgings from a nice-r hotel near town to a cabana on the beach. This is the real Tulum, I have been told. The hotel was great to get our bearings, I had been told that a lot of cabana establishments on the beach cannot be booked online, so we took the free bikes from our hotel and visited a couple of different ones yesterday.

 

Tulum is amazing, full of interesting things. Its a tourist town, so a lot of things seem overpriced (like all touristy beach places) but its still cheap by Canadian standards. Yesterday we visited the mayan ruins that are located on a cliff above the beach. These ruins were cool, but they were also overrun with tourists. We want to go to Coba, a larger ruin that is about half an hour away. I am hoping to go on a snorkel tour of the reef and also to visit some Cenotes (freshwater sinkholes) or the Sian Kaan biosphere reserve, but we havent booked anything yet. I am also ok with just hanging out, because I will have more opportunities to snorkel or see monkeys, but I wont be able to spend time with Chris.

Tulum is a really easy town, its basically just 10 straight blocks along the highway which turns into the main street. Lots of tourists, also lots of expats, so its easy to get by in English although people have also been tolerant of my slow, broken spanish. I think it was a good decision to start my tour of Central America here, because I am generally understood when I speak a mix of spanish and english, because there are a range of amenities for foreigners, and also because it is just a really chill place!! I am really happy to be here.