Willandclaire’s Travels

Ok, so it began with an overland bus journey from Belize city which was fun. The first Mexican point of call was;

Tulum – Rain rain rain, the beach was perfect white sand the bluest water you have ever seen, but the tail end of some tropical gale was lashing the coast so we managed a half day on it, dodging the rain storms. The Mayan ruins at tulum were very gentrified as I feel is the Mexican way nothing like the rough and ready no roped off areas Guatemalan and Honduran site. The Mayan city of Tulum is right on the cliff and the location is amazing, shame about the tourists and th rain!

Cenote diving – So i decided to delve into the underwater cavern world of the Cenote, I went to Dos Ojos (two eyes), two dives and they were splendid. A cenote is basically a flooded cave system. The water is so clear that when you are in it it seems like you are floating in mid air! it is odd, the cave was full of stalagmites and stalactites, few fish but amazing viewing, it is pretty shallow about 12m max but the environment is sometime closed overhead, the view into a part of the cenote with access to the surface brings amazing light effects. The highlight was when we experienced a Halocline, which being and oceanographer I will bore you with…. a halocline is an area of water with a large salinity gradient i.e two layers of water with different densities that don’t mix (the fresher rainwater and the underground cave water) the effect is a visual shim,mering of water, you can see it as you approach like a heat haze, it was odd, vision was altered and the fish looked odd, very cool experience. There was also a bat cave and a crocodile marking the half way point…. see the pics.

Playa del Carmen – This was a tourist mecca, easily the most touristy place Claire and I had been too in the last 5 months of your travels, just like the Spanish coast, the beach was fantastic and the water warm and many Americans all over (i guess Mexico for them is like France for Britt’s), we wandered miles past the big tourist hotels and you can still find beach front that is backed only by rough fences and few people, it was relaxing here and we just soaked up the sun and went to Wallmart.

Cancun – This was even more touristy than Playa del Carmen although this was only what we heard as we spent one night here, went to the cinema and looked for an SLR camera.

Isla Mujeres – This was a magical little island off the coast of Cancun, we took a boat over there and found a cool little apartment, then basically at on the beach sweated a lot and became more tanned.

Palenque – This was a long 18 hour bus ride from the Yucatan peninsula to the region of Chipas (Mexico’s poorest and more like Guatemala), we arrived in the early hours of the morning. we stayed in the forest in a jungle lodge that was damp and humid. after a couple of hours kip we waled to the Mayan ruins of Palenque – famous for the tomb of K’inich Janaab’ Pakal (Pacal the Great) whihc they found within the bowels of one of the temples. although the site was smaller than tikal and copan it was still very impressive and worth a visit. the Palace structure was very interesting with grafitti from the spanish conquistadors and the Acroplois structures with their intact roof combs were a joy to see! we are know Mayan ruin experts!

San Cristobal de las casa – this was a sleepy little Mexican town famous for it markets and the fact that it was taken over by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation a few years back (they want to be Mexican but still indigenous and to be reckognised and treted as so – they were basically not listened to and told to be quiet). We did some interesting things here ; first we went to the nearby Canyon del Sumidero whihc is a canyon you take a boat into, it was very impressive, at some points the vertical walls rise to over 1km, the views were amazing, the only poor thing was the amount of rubbish especially plastic bottles floating in the river – really bad! Next we went to  Mayan Medicine museum – this was an odd but very informative place, it told the story of mayan healing, candels burnt to make people feel better, how mayab women give birth whic is on their knees infront of a husband that is sitting on a chair with the midwife behind. It told us things like they use skunk uribne to get ride of skin conditions and they pray using candeles incense and bottles of pop that they drink in the shrines (the burps they see as being good for sick peopl). It was a great and bizare place with a 12 minute graphioc video of a mayan lady giving birth to wrap it up…

Oaxaca city – This is historically the home of Zapotec and Mixtec peoples and is a city known for its markets both food and clothes. Here I ate Mole whihc is a traditional choclate suce, I had it in a dirty little market over chicken, i had black mole and it was ok not sweet cadbury’s choc more a little bit like cooking choc. I also ate some bugs – these I paid for they are little grasshopper heavily seasoned and dried they taste like sundried tomatoes and they are nice but strong in flavour and you need a drink to wash them down. also whilst here we went on a day tour to see the Mitla ruins. They were amazing. They were first built in 200 BC and display an interesting mix of Zapotec and Mixtec styles. The walls are covered in mosaics and geometric repeating patterns (see the pics).
Next we went to ‘Hierve El Agua’ a petrified waterfall in the middle of nowhere, it is surrounded my mineral (not hot as i found out) springs that look like you are swimming in pea. the view was amazing and the stone waterfall in the distance.
Finally we went to a Mezcal distillery – mezcal is a drink made from cactus (a specific type of cactus but i can’t rember whihc) Taqueilla is a type of Mezcal. We saw how they dig up the root (shaped like a pineapple) cook it in the ground then mash it to get a paste/glue like mush then they ferment and distill it and then we drank it, ity was ok better than devbil water tequilla and as it was free I tasted a lot.
The next day claire and I went to Monte Alban – it was the largest Zapotec city site in mesoamerica and commands a mountain top position with great views. It had temples tombs and ball courts like Mayan sites but wasn’t quite as impressive in my opinion, although the central plaza was vast and the stones making up the observatory had cool images hacked into them to symbolise the other tribes and people the Zapotecs killed! great.

Mexico city – So we finally made it to Mexico City and it was crap weather for a large amount of time. we strolled around the central square marveled at the giant flag in the middle, rode the best and cheapest metro (about 20p flat fare anywhere), went to the Frida Kahlo museum and read the letter from Rockefeller telling her husband Diego Rivera (the mural painter) to remove the painting of Lennin from his mural at the Rockefeller center in New York. We wandered to the giant Teotihuacan pyramids a few km’s outside Mexico City and went ‘Oh my God they are huge’  -we climed the 300 m Pyramid of the Sun and the pyramid of the moon. When the Aztecs came across the site they thought the huge pyramids had been created by giants, this place was immense although a lot of the site has been poorly recontructed.

thats a wrap!