Mexico - Tulum, Palenque, Yaxchilan & Bonampak

23 July 2010

Tulum

We met up again with Scott from LA and the three of us got the bus from Playa del Carmen to the Tulum ruins which are a great set of ruins on the coast.  The site is pretty much a square with massive defensive walls around three sides and the sea on the fourth side.  It was absolutely overrun with people which was quite a surprise as none of the other sites had been particularly busy.  There were some really cool temples and some great carvings, mainly of the "Descending Man" which is possibly though to be homage to the bee which was apparently revered.

Tulum

The Descending Man (Tulum)

Corner or a building at Tulum - would have been amazing when painted

From there the three of us got the night bus up to Palenque, an enormous site much further inland.  Scott (being from the US) was a massive chicken about travelling around Mexico on a bus in the night and hardly slept, but it was fine!

False arches at Palenque

At the Palenque ruins we got a guide which was nice as he explained quite a lot about the construction of the stone false arches which created the ceilings of all rooms.  Each side of the arch will stand independently, but it means they can't really span much of a distance and the maximum room width was therefore about 2m.  It made for some dark small spaces.  Scott found a small clay head in the rubble up the side of one temple and I got in a major huff with him when he refused to put it back or give it in to the museum.  And the guide suggested he keep it too.  I was raging.  So that evening we all drank a large amount of Mezcal (cactus spirit of which tequila is a fancy subset) with chilli salt.  Particularly fun as Lou didn't know what Mezcal was up until that point!

Palenque grand plaza

Carving at Palenque

Scott then finally decided he'd had enough of us and left and Lou and I had a chilled couple of days in Palenque town getting my backpack fixed (again!) and doing laundry etc.

We arranged a tour down to Flores in Guatemala through our hostel which managed to get us to where they said they would take us, but didn't tell us anything along the way so we kept arriving in places with all the wrong stuff and no idea what we were supposed to be doing.

The first stop was at a site called Yaxchilan which involved a trip on a longboat down the river that borders that part of Guatemala & Mexico.  We had no idea where we were being sent (we'd already changed buses a few times by this point) so had our full daypacks (computer etc) to carry, but no bugspray so we were eaten alive.  This didn't improve our moods!

Roofcomb at Yaxchilan

Yaxchilan was a nice wee site though.  You had to enter the main square by walking through pitch black, bat filled tunnels under one temple which was pretty cool.  The howler monkeys were really going for it (we thought the noise they were making was fake for a while as it was so strange) and there was a nice assortment of wee temples and ball courts and the like.  There was also a massive temple with a huge roofcomb on it at the top of a very high, steep hill. Despite the cloying heat and heavy packs we climbed up there for amazing views out over the jungle.

Stela at Bonampak

After lunch we were driven off in a taxi to a site called Bonampak which is famous for its murals.  Lou and I took a leisurely stroll around all the carved stelae and the buildings to finish at the temple with the murals only to find that they'd been closed for the day (our fantastic tour company having failed to mention this).  Lou was in such a huff, refusing to even look through the mesh doors at the murals, that the guards took pity on us and opened the three rooms just for us.  They were absolutely amazing, vividly colourful stucco murals covering all the surface of three smallish rooms.  The style was similar to Egyptian paintings with people in profile.

Murals at Bonampak

We stayed a night in the jungle where the local Lacandon people (recognisable by their long hair, fringes and white smocks - male & female) were having some sort of religious ceremony (complete with Coca-cola to burp out the bad spirits) followed by a massive knees up.  It was quite cross-cultural with some people in Lacandon dress & some in western dress, indigenous religion crossed with catholic, and a pinata (papier mache shape filled with sweeties, hung up and beaten with a baseball bat by someone wearing a blindfold till it bursts and the sweeties fall out) to finish.

The morning had a moment of excitement when I noticed a 3" scorpion on the front of my shorts.  Luckily a local came and swiped it off me and then killed it.

From there we were taken back to the river and carried downstream this time to the Guatemalan border post and on to Flores.....

Mexico - Mayan Riviera

16 July 2010

And then my friend Louisa arrived....

I went to pick her up from Cancun airport in the pouring rain (not a great start to her hols) and took her back to the hostel for rooftop cocktails and food (the rain had abated by that point).

Chichen Itza

The next day we went on a great tour, first to Chichen Itza, a Mayan site and apparently one of the new "great wonders of the world" though I suspect it was chosen more for its proximity to Cancun airport as it wasn't the best of the Mayan sites we ended up seeing.  Nevertheless, it was pretty impressive, with a massive (reconstructed) temple and a huge (reconstructed) ball court.

Me & Lou in a cenote

From there we were driven off to a cenote which is a sinkhole in the limestone rock that is full of freshwater.  It was pretty impressive and the water was crystal clear and quite cool.

Ek Balam

And there to Ek Balam (Black Jaguar), another Mayan site, but this one much, much cooler than Chichen Itza because it's only recently been opened up, is mostly unexcavated, and is totally un-reconstructed (such bad archaeology).  It was a series of buildings round a main square, surrounded by jungle and a series of small hills which were the un-excavated temples.  We climbed a couple of the temples and the views of the jungle all around were amazing.


After a busy day we thought we'd treat ourselves to a day at the beach. Cancun town is actually quite nice, but there is a stretch of offshore beach which is known at the hotel zone and is basically hell on earth - all fancy american hotels, expensive malls and chain restaurants.  We (me, Lou and our new American friend Scott) took ourselves down to the Hilton and confidently walked through the lobby, past the restaurant and pool and out onto "their" stretch of beach.  It was all going so well until the winds picked up and the rain came pouring down!  So we spent the rest of the day at the aquarium and eating in terrible american chain restaurants!

The following day Lou and I got the ferry over to a lovely wee island called Isla Mujeres (Women's island) off the coast of Cancun.  We had a lovely day just chilling on the beach, enjoying the luxury of having cold beer and nice food brought to us.

Bull sharks in a boat at the dock

The next day was one of the best days of my trip.  We were up early with a bunch of other people from our hostel (Scott, Joe & Nisha and Matt, the german bodybuilder) and were picked up and taken to the docks to pick our boat which took us on a whale shark hunt!!  It took us a couple of hours in pretty heavy seas to get out there but we found a massive pod of whale sharks, each up to 45 ft long.

Whale Shark

It was really amazing.  And we were lucky enough to get in the water with them (snorkelling, life jacket on so we couldn't dive beneath them) which was fantastic.  We would be dropped in the water beside one and watch it swim past only to turn around and see another massive mouth heading towards us.  They feed on plankton & fish eggs and are therefore completely harmless, but quite a sight.

Hopefully the video below plays properly so you can see what they look like.

The day was rounded off with a bit of larking around in waist deep warm water, drinking beer and eating prawn ceviche.

We then moved onto the island of Cozumel (bumping into Geordie Rachel & German Matt on the ferry) and had a couple of days of diving which were pretty nice.  Two of the dives were drift dives on top of a reef, but the current was so strong we were whizzing by at such a pace it was hard to see things and even harder to stop and take a proper look.  We did see lots of fish and a turtle though so that was good. On the second dive Lou and I were doing our safety stop at 5m and I looked over and noticed a torch being flashed at us, turns out it was our group miles away as we'd drifted off.  There was quite a comedy moment where we realised there was no way we'd be able to swim back to them, but we were able to swim to the line our divemaster had sent up so that worked out ok in the end!  The other two dives were much more rewarding with really cool coral formations (see photo left) and some cool swim throughs (swimming through tunnels in the reef) in which was saw barracuda just hanging out in the water like missiles and a crab so large the legs looked like a human ribcage.  The water is about 30C here which means we're diving in our bikinis which is fantastic (I HATE wetsuits!).

Me (L) and Lou at about 18m

After all this diving we decided we really should do some more, but diving with a difference.  Cenotes are sinkholes in the limestone bedrock which have filled up with freshwater.  During the last ice age the caverns and caves were dry(ish) and so lots of stalacmites and stalactites were formed.  These have since flooded, creating some amazing diving.  We went (sadly suited up in not one, but 2 wetsuits each) with a local nutter (albeit very professional nutter) called Gerardo to a place called Dos Ojos.  The diving was absolutely amazing; the water is fresh and visibility is about 200m - it's so clear that it feels like you're flying or in space when you're diving.  And you're diving through the caves and round the formations and it's just amazing.  When your bubbles get stuck on the roof of a fully flooded cave they look like puddles of oil.  Gerardo told us when we came up to the surface in the middle of one dive that there were crocs in the water, but that they only liked blondes. During the next section of dive he had us all line up on the edge of this huge boulder and then had us all look down at the same time, only for him to shine his light on a plastic croc eating a blonde barbie.  Oh, the hilarity!!

Nicaragua (again)

16 June 2010

Leon Cathedral

After another epic day on a bus I ended up back in Granada again, enjoying the delights of a really nice hostel, the fantastic breakfasts at Kathy's and the banana-nut-choc-chip muffins at Euro Cafe.  I stayed a couple of days then bussed it up to Leon which was just as hot as Granda but not really quite as attractive.  I then bussed it up to a wee town in the hills (chosen because I thought the hills would be cooler - I was wrong!) called Esteli where I had booked some Spanish classes.

The town was a lot less touristy which was really nice in some ways, but meant it was very hard to find food other than the fried meat on the street.

My Spanish classes were exceedingly frustrating as the teacher didn't really know much about the grammar and didn't speak enough English (nor I enough Spanish) for me to be able to communicate my questions to him. It was a really bad week topped off by a horrible 36 hour bout of food poisoning at the end.

Leon

The highlight was a tour to a cigar factory midweek.  Nicaragua produces cigars which apparently do measure up to the Cuban standard.  The leaves are fermented in big stacks for a while (the smell is a little intense!) before being sorted, rolled and then finished.  It's quite a skilled job.  And the wee store room we went into to marvel at all the different types apparently contained about $6m retail value of cigars.  No wonder they had an ocelot in a cage out front!

Having decided that I couldn't afford to go up to the states to visit everyone I wanted to see so decided to treat myself and booked flights out to the Corn Islands on the caribbean coast of Nicaragua.  I flew out from Managua on a medium sized jet (a little bit of a surprise as they'd weighed all the passengers so I figured it must be a really small plane!), first stopping at Bluefields on the coast and then landing in Big Corn Island.  I had met an American father/daughter Sam and Morgan at the airport and the three of us plus some others got a taxi over to the dock where we loaded up onto a boat for the half our ride over glassy seas to Little Corn Island.  It's very much the Caribbean on the islands - most people speak English and with a caribbean accent and the way of life is laid back.

The view from my balcony - tough times!

It was really lovely on Little Corn.  There are no roads, just muddy paths to walk along and you can cross the island in about 10mins as it's really tiny.

I had planned to do a bit of diving on the islands, but the weather wasn't right in the first few days for the dive I really wanted to do (caves), and then the night dive I booked was cancelled for me by one of the divers after I had a few beers with him at lunchtime celebrating Canada Day (happily he then bought me another beer!)  I eventually managed to do a couple of dives near to the island which were really lovely and chilled out.  We saw lots of nurse sharks amongst other bits and bobs.  And then a group of us went out on my last day to Blowing Rocks which is a pinnacle in the middle of nowhere.  The diving was really great with quite a few reef sharks and lots of rocks etc which made it quite dramatic.
It was a really nice place and I wish I'd booked my return flight for a much later date as I would have loved to stay longer.

But, onwards again, on the boat, on the plane and back to Managua, stopping only to slip in some vanilla icecream in a shop and get it all over myself and my backpack!

The following couple of days and nights were mainly spent on buses - 36 hours worth of travel in just 48 hours.  The first day was from Managua to El Salvador via Honduras, staying the night in San Salvador, and the second day was up to Guatemala City, a change of bus and up to Tapachula in Mexico at which point I changed to a night bus to San Cristobal in Mexico.  The buses were mainly ok apart from the one in Mexico as it was air-conditioned to freezing point and the Mexicans do love their speed bumps.

I stayed in San Cristobal for a couple of days and then got a 20 hour night bus to Cancun.  Cancun was where granny advised me to get to a doctor (which I did, only to be diagnosed with exhaustion and got two shots in the bum for my troubles!) and where I hung out in air conditioned malls waiting for Louisa to arrive........