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Mexico City Too

mcdog — Wed, 30 May 2007 21:34:46 +0000

We were out of bed early, this was our final day in Mexico City, and we needed to be out of our room by 1400hrs. Not a problem, we were assured that we would be back from our tour of the city long before that time. So the bags were packed and left inside the room and we went down to the lobby to meet our guide/driver. We had booked the tour of the city but somehow we were on a trip to the Frida Kahlo house and then the Floating Gardens, it was too late to change tours. Other people were collected from their hotels, a Mexican couple living in the States, a doctor and his wife from San Diego and an American couple who seemed to know a great deal about Trotsky and the Socialist Party of America.
When we arrived at the Blue House those of us who had visited previously waited outside with the guide. He had a theory that Trotsky may have been killed because of his supposed affair with Frida rather than by Joe Stalin’s hit squad, a little extreme especially considering the husband had been caught in flagrente delicto with her sister.
The Floating Gardens were all that a crap tourist trap should be, garish and designed purely to remove money from your wallet and provide nothing of any value in return. We had managed to avoid this kind of non-experience for weeks and to be caught out our last day in Mexico was galling.
Back at the hotel, an hour after we should have checked-out, we had to wait till they let us into the room to collect our bags. Then it was straight into a taxi and back into the traffic for the drive to the airport. It was four hours before our flight and the time passed slowly in that airless place. I had removed the knife from my hand luggage but missed the screwdrivers, as this was a flight to the States the security pantomime was more rigorous than usual and my screwdrivers were found and thrown into a bin.
A few hours later we arrived at Los Angeles World Airport (for inter-planetary arrivals perhaps) and after a drive to Santa Clarita went gratefully to bed. It was 1am, to our body-clocks it was 6am.

Mexico City

mcdog — Sun, 20 May 2007 16:19:14 +0000

There is nothing small or dainty about a club sandwich at Cancun Airport. We had bought one each as belated breakfasts and had struggled to finish them. The waiter asked with a big grin if we wanted anything else and affected surprise when we declined. He wandered off, probably looking for other customers who had rashly ordered the same. We wandered outside to stand in the morning sunshine and saw the Australian couple we first met in Mahahual, and then in Tulum. They had spent the last few days in a little fishing village on the west coast of the Yucatan peninsular. We swapped stories of boat journeys, buses and hotels to pass the time.
Before the security checks I remembered I still had my penknife in my bag. The choices were throw it away or attempt to get it through security. I took a chance and Herself, I and the knife passed quietly through all the checks and onto our plane for Mexico City.
The City was a culture-shock after the Yucatan. A taxi took us through the traffic jams and fumes to a hotel near the centre of town, where we eventually got a room with a half-decent net connection and a mini-bar. This was another world. High rise buildings, lifts, traffic jams, traffic lights, riot police. There was a demonstration about pensions and another about political corruption, both had been ongoing for weeks, but all we saw were groups of riot police loitering with intent. We took a walk through this strange landscape and found what looked like an ancient wall with a waterfall cascading off it in the middle of a busy road junction.
The next morning the bellboy told us where to catch a microbus to the Frida Kahlo museum. It cost 3 pesos, a taxi would have cost about 150 pesos. We jumped off before the terminus, a mistake that would cause us lots of confusion and walking later in the day. We wandered through the wide tree-lined streets of this obviously affluent area of town admiring the security features of the homes. The Kahlo museum, The Blue House, was well worth the walk and the headphones providing an explanation of each room ( yes, we had our passports this time ) added to our appreciation of her life and home. From here we set off to the Leon Trotsky house, stopping to photo a house with a room on the roof built from stained-glass. From the Trotsky House we walked back to the large park and sat on a bench watching the black, red and grey squirrels cavorting amongst the trees and the wooden statues before wandering out into the streets again.
We had walked out of the park on the wrong side and it was a small hike to get back to the street where we had jumped off the bus. What we thought was the Museum of Popular Culture turned out to be some kind of town hall, complete with the usual armed guards. They told us the museum was around a couple of corners but we still didn’t find it. A third set of instructions and then we gave up and decided to catch a bus back to the hotel. After jumping off the first bus we turned the corner and met a Mexican who persuaded us to take the metro train. A good way later, all uphill, and we found the metro station. All tickets were 2 pesos and it all seemed similar to the Underground except few of the trains were crowded even thought this was the busy time of day . We exited the metro straight into a busy street market and then crossed the Avenue of the Reformas, the police directing traffic with very energetic and exaggerated arm movements.
Back at the hotel we had dinner eleven stories up with an electrical storm over the city as a background.

Valladolid

mcdog — Wed, 09 May 2007 17:08:24 +0000

We were up early after sleeping in the what was definitely the worst room we had stayed in since starting this trip. The room looked good but the fan, though it turned, didn’t actually move any air around. Hold a lighter about six inches beneath the fan blades and the flame wouldn’t even flicker. It was warm. I fell asleep holding the curtain open to catch as much of the weak breeze as possible. I had also killed a cockroach that crawled from the drain while I was having a shower, another crawled from the drain when I showered in the morning but I left that one as an exercise for the room’s next lucky inhabitant, what did I care, I was leaving in a few minutes.
We lugged the bags down Tulum’s main street to the bus stop to buy tickets before breakfast at Charlie’s. As usual, the guide book didn’t quite match reality, and there was not enough time for breakfast. Our bus to Valladolid was due in ten minutes. This was the only bus journey we made in Quintana Roo that wasn’t on an ADO bus, it was Oriente, not quite as smart but still comfortable and cool.
A couple of hours later and we’ve checked into the Hotel Valladolid, just across the road from the bus station, a very clean looking place with an attached cafe, and no net access. We dump the bags and head out to look at the town carrying the map they gave us at the hotel. It’s only a short walk to the main square which is surrounded by cafes, internet cafes, hotels and the town’s cathedral and there are street stalls on the south side. The small park in the centre of the square is shaded by large trees, there’s a fountain in the centre and benches under the trees. There are also some strange concrete seats, where two people can sit facing each other. We visited the cathedral and viewed the murals of the history of the town in the town hall and then sat and people-watched from an old cafe on the north side of the square, before going for a swim in Cenote Zaci.
After breakfast in the square the next morning we took a taxi to the cenotes outside town. A planned trip to the ruins at Chichen Itza was dropped but we decided to go in the evening to see the sound and light show. The shared buses for Chichen Itza have their stand just outside the Hotel Valladolid and soon we were driving through the countryside with a bunch of Mexicans on their way home from work and the market. The bus dropped us right at the entrance to the ruins but tickets for the show weren’t on sale until shortly before the start at 2000hrs. Because we didn’t have a passport or driving licence with us (I wasn’t willing to leave my credit card) we weren’t allowed to hire the earphone translators for the show, they would not accept money as a ‘deposit’. We all sat in a group of neatly laid out chairs much like a school event and watched the projections onto the old Mayan structures. there was also an explanation in Spanish which we did our best to follow. Not having the translators was a definite disadvantage and we left shortly before the end. This allowed us to grab the only taxi in the car park, and we were dropped in the local town, Piste. The driver left us on a street corner, telling us that the community bus would stop here for us. It looked to be a big night in Piste, there was incredibly loud music coming from a nearby building and some kind of rally in the town square. Eventually a bus appeared and collected us for the journey to Valladolid. This bus was fast, very fast, and what was the driver drinking from that bottle, but we arrived at our hotel safe and sound and possibly in record time.
The next morning, without seeing the cockroach that had appeared in our room the night before ( don’t get a room near the kitchens!), after breakfast in the square we caught the ADO bus for Playa del Carmen on the coast, a real contrast to Valladolid where we had not been hassled by anyone for any reason.

Driving Miss Rosie

mcdog — Fri, 04 May 2007 04:09:24 +0000

You can’t get close to the ferry pier in Playa del Carmen without being hassled by ticket sellers. The first to approach us used the ‘conversational’ method, big mistake, we were looking to buy tickets for a ferry, not a tour. We moved on before he finished, the ferry was leaving soon and so we gave our money to another seller. The tickets are a fixed price and the same for both companies, the timetables are the same also. Long live the competitive spirit.
The trip to Cozumel was all a ferry trip should be, uninteresting and uneventful. So both boats arrived at the same time and we all poured off and along the jetty and into the town. Herself and I walked one block inland and turned left. stopped at the ATM to fill our pockets and walked a few more yards to Rentadora Isis and hired a convertible VW Bug for the day, or was it a semi-convertible, there was a cover over the two front seats.
Finding our way out of town was easy using the map and instructions provided by the hire shop. Turn left at the second junction and left again at the next. Soon we were threading our way through the pedestrians from the ferries and cruise ships that visit the island. In no time we were out off town and driving in very light traffic on the west coast road. We passed two cruise ships moored at the south end of the town but there was not much else to see until we stopped at the Money Bar at Dzul-Ha.
The Money Bar is just a few tables and chairs under parasols at the side of the road just above the beach. Herself waited for the breakfasts to arrive while I donned mask, fins and snorkel, not forgetting shorts, and flapped off to look for a fish and a reef. I never found the reef but did see lots of fish of many colours. The ground was rock with boulders strewn across it and the fish, as fish do, congregated at the rocks. At one point I thought I was looking at a brain coral but realised it was a dense shoal of mustard-coloured fish. There was a party of about ten novice snorkellers in the water at the same time and I followed them, presuming that their guide knew the location of the good spots. I got back to the beach just after breakfast arrived on the table. A very satisfying few minutes in the water. Another party of novices were entering the water just as we drove off on our journey south.
The old road runs alongside the new road on this section of the coast and somehow we found ourselves on the old road. Most other vehicles were on the old road too, I don’t know why as there were many potholes.
At the southern tip of the island we came to a collection of buildings painted in Rasta colours were we had a drink, though we didn’t see any Rastas. After paying our US$10 entrance fee we drove into the National Park at Punta Sur. We parked beside an old building that we were told was a Mayan lighthouse. I presume that the dune blocking the view of the sea formed after the Mayans abandoned the lighthouse. Nearby was an observation tower occupied by half-a-dozen vultures who flew away as we climbed the steps. There were a few crocodiles lazing in the water below it, probably waiting to be fed by the wardens. A ‘crocodile’ of green ATVs stopped by the lighthouse and we stayed to listen to their guides explanation of the structure.
We moved further into the park and parked beside a more modern lighthouse. This was the nautical museum and there were displays of a maritime nature from Mayan to modern times, including the pirates, of course. Our entrance fee included a a ride in the back of a 4wd truck from the museum to what was probably the nicest beach we had seen in the whole of our journey in central america, possibly because it was the most deserted. After spending a couple of hours lounging in hammocks, snorkelling and exploring along the beach we caught the truck back to the museum and then headed on around the island.
The sea state changes dramatically at Punta Sur, the calm waters of the west coast replaced by the surf of the east coast. We managed to drive a flying pelican for hundred yards or more and made an attempt to video it, it was only fifteen to twenty feet away, but soon it swung away down the beach and away from the road.
We came across an American couple who had managed to get their hired 4wd jeep lodged on top of a rock and stopped to render assistance. It was one of the ‘crippled’ jeeps with the 4wd disconnected. With the help of some locals transporting a motorbike in a truck and some others they called from fishing on the beach we managed to get the jeep back on the tarmac.
Drove north as far as possible without an off-road vehicle and turned west towards the town. There are some Mayan ruins north of this road but the gates were being locked for the day as we arrived, so we fuelled the Bug and returned it, unharmed, to Rentadora Isis.
A great day out on Cozumel.

Mahahual

mcdog — Thu, 03 May 2007 13:33:53 +0000

Mahahual looked like a ghost town when we arrived on the bus. There were lots of bars on the beach, places to hire jet-skis and kayaks and buy snorkelling and diving trips and souvenirs aplenty but where were the people to provide the money to justify all this effort? They arrive in the morning. From cruise ships, and the place is transformed, almost in minutes. However, though the place provides lots of things to buy there seemed to be a paucity of places to sleep. There’s a hotel alongside the bus station and I had to walk a few hundred yards along the sand road before I noticed another, though we were accosted by a man later in the evening offering us rooms in the back of a restaurant.
We stayed at the Mahahual Hotel by the bus station, partly because it was a lot cheaper than the only alterative we had seen and partly because it was only a few yards to carry the bags. It had what we needed, except for net access as usual, and was reasonably clean, and the price was right. We wandered down the road for a while and then got some food at a cafe on the beach. Most places had closed by now and a lot of the workers/owners of the bars were living in tents on the beach or even in the shops/bars. There was a feeling that most of the town could be packed onto trucks and vanish completely in a few hours.
The next morning people were setting out their wares, seats and tables appeared and were set out neatly under palapas and canvas awnings. It was all done quite leisurely and there was a relaxed feel to the town. A cruise ship appeared on the horizon and approached the specially built jetty a mile north of town. The police put barriers across the road and the first taxis arrived and discharged their passengers before the roadblock. A ‘pirate’ appeared and was offering his services for photos on his pirate island, a few palm trees at the head of the beach, I thought his denim clothes a bit odd though. A lot of the people from the ships had coloured wristbands and they congregated at various bars, talking to one guy he told us he’d paid US$20 on the ship for all he could drink and a snack or two. This was a different town, now it was all hustle and bustle, emphasise on the hustle.
We repaired unto a bar on the beach at the north end of town for a day of snorkelling, swimming and soaking up a few rays. This bar had only opened a few days before and had’nt managed to get on the cruise ship radar yet though we met some of the staff from the ships. One girl was from Dumfries. In the late afternoon we walked about a mile to an internet cafe to make a few calls. On the walk back to town we met a lot of the ’shippers’ as they headed back to the ships. It was a drunken parade of taxis, golf carts and dune buggies. It looked as though a good time had been had by all.
Mahahual soon returned to it’s ghost town mode again.

Swimming in Cenotes

mcdog — Wed, 02 May 2007 23:21:08 +0000

We were introduced to the gentle art of cenote swimming at Cenote Azul, near Bacalar. We caught a taxi from Bacalar to the cenote. There is a well-ventilated restaurant, the biggest we had seen at that point on our trip, at the side of the cenote where swimmers can refresh themselves after a leisurely back-stroke or crippling crawl. However, it’s the cenote itself that is important in this hot and dusty country. A quick dip into the cool waters is very refreshing and allows you to exchange beads of sweat for beads of water. Cenote Azul is basically a large round pool about 600 feet across and about 200 deep surrounded by a dense wall of trees. There’s a rope from one side to the other, but I was happy with a few minutes splashing about in the cool and very dark water.

The next day, at the end of a very satisfying and educational trip across the lake and into the ‘canal de las piratas’ with Jim, a biologist now living in Bacalar, we sailed over a cenote at the edge of the lake. The switch from water about 3-4 feet deep to a depth of hundreds of feet was quite dramatic. He told us that there was a young crocodile living on/in this cenote that was as reluctant to meet swimmers as they were to meet it. Jim had collected us from the jetty at the ungodly hour of 0800. We were unaware that Mexico had a different summer time from Belize and were a little shocked/upset/distraught to be awoken at what to us was 0700hrs but the boat trip amongst the mangroves and ’sand’ banks was worth the early start. The ’sand’ is calcium carbonate deposited from the lime saturated water and covers large parts of the bottom of the lake and forms huge exposed banks when the water level drops. We crossed the lake and entered the ‘canals’ near someone’s abandoned attempt to build a bar in the shape of a ship, and saw several types of fish and various birds.

A few days later we arrived in the inland town of Valladolid, the proud host of not one, but three cenotes and after only a few hours we were swimming in the clear waters of Cenote Zaci. This was just a short walk from our hotel, six blocks. We paid our 15 pesos each and set off down the steps into what is a big hole in the ground with trees and plants growing beside the steps. There were only about half-a-dozen people down in the bottom of the pit. About half the roof of the cenote still hangs over the pool and stalactites and tree roots hang from the limestone towards the leaf strewn water. There is a walled path which goes right around the pool at about thirty feet above the water.

By this time we were getting hooked on cenote swimming and were looking forward to visiting Cenotes de Dzitnup, a few miles out of town, the next day.

The taxi dropped us outside Xkeken, the more popular of the two cenotes at Dzitnup, but as there were a couple of tourist buses in the car park we decided to walk the few hundred yards to Sakamu’ul-ja for a quieter swim. We paid the man in the little wooden hut and climbed down the steep and wet steps in a small cave until we emerged in a large cavern. This cenote is beautiful, a mass of roots hang from the small opening in the roof down to a small ‘island’ just breaking the surface of the crystal clear and still water. Red, blue, green, black and off-white stalactites hang from the roof and walls of the chamber and we could see black catfish swimming in the pool. This was definitely a new experience, swimming with catfish in a cave pool lit by just a shaft of sunlight. We swam for a while and then just sat there marvelling at the beauty of the place and watching the swallows fly about the chamber.

Cenote Xkenen is much bigger, with many roots hanging from the roof. The buses had gone by the time we arrived and there were only a couple of families there. Though they did seem to have about fifteen kids between them, splashing happily about in the shallow water and occasionally swimming out to where the sunlight hit the pool in the deeper water. There were also other caves leading off the main chamber. We swam here amongst the kids, ropes and catfish until what looked to be the arrival of another bus party, when we climbed into one of the side caves to get changed into ’street gear’.

There are hundreds of cenotes, we have swum in four and sailed over another, it’s a start.

For more information on Cenotes…