El Yucatan

We are officially south of the border in old Mexico (that´s Mejijo for you Glenn Beck listeners out there). We got into Cancun Tuesday about 2 hrs late because they had to change some part on the plane in Denver before we could take off. This made us a bit nervous since we knew we had a reservation for our first night in Cancun at a hostel and we had no way of letting them know that we were going to show up late. We were lucky and they didn´t give our room away before we got there after all that time. Once we dropped our stuff off at the hostel we went out to walk around a bit downtown (not in the tourist part of Cancun but the real down town) to get taste of what it´s going to be like for a while. After looking around at a number of street food stalls we decided to pass them up and eat for the first time in a real restaurant serving Yucatecan food. Michelle already has had stomach problems since Boise anyways so we have to ease her into things slowly here. (The food at that place was not very good and quite possibly the source of Michelle´s first encounter with Montezuma´s revenge...not pretty).

The first thing the next morning we got on a second class bus bound for Valladolid which is a nice little colonial town about 140 kms due west of Cancun. The idea was to get out of Cancun in a hurry and get into the real Mexico right off the bat...Valladolid was it. The town has a central park which is one city block and across the street on the south side is the town cathedral (very typical of a town down here). The cathedral is huge for such a small town...so we think. Here we caught some of the Semana Santa procession which was basically a small parade of catholics carrying candles, signs, flowers and various other Catholic paraphernalia. They circled the square and entered into the cathedral across the street and there held some sort of mass.

The hostel in Valladolid is called Albergue la Candelaria which is an old house (over 200 yrs old) that has gone through probably a dozen changes from originally being a house for a single wealthy family to a nun convent to various other domiciles and now a hostel. The place was very cool and our room was the best in the house with as small balcony overlooking the park and with views of the big church La Candelaria (a different big church--they are all over the place here). It was super cool and the room only cost about US$20 per night!

While based in Valladolid we took a day trip to Chichen Itza which is the most famous, largest and most restored of all the Mayan ruin sites in the Yucatan. It was completely awesome! We will post all our photos and even the video we took of that day once we can find a decent Internet connection somewhere down here. About all we can find is dial-up and it´s not good enough to upload so many large files. Stay posted!

Chichen Itza was absolutely incredible! The stone carvings and architecture were enough to leave you speechless and there were tons of wild Iguanas climbing around on them, sunning themselves. There are also two huge cenotes (sink holes in the limestone bedrock that form large natural wells) in the site as well. These are swarming with lots of interesting birds. Matthew had no problem filling our 1GB camera memory card and wished he had about 3 GB. This is an absolute must-see for anyone that goes to the Yucatan!

The next day we took the 1st class bus (with movies, A/C and on-board toilet) to Merida which is the capital city of the Yucatan (around 1 million people). It is more like being in Europe than in Central America. The main square is surrounded by interesting buildings, especially the huge cathedral which is one of the oldest churches in the Americas. Merida was once the site of a Mayan city called T´ho and at the time of the Spanish conquest they tore down the Mayan temples and buildings and used the stone blocks to build the immense cathedral along with a handful of other churches near the square. One of them about a block north of the square even has a couple of blocks that still show Mayan carvings on them. (Click on the picture at the left to see the two carved stones in detail.) There are also a number of other interesting buildings around the square like the Palacio de Gobierno (Yucatan´s State Capitol bldg.) which has lots of large murals depicting the bloody history of the region. On the south side is the original façade of the Conquistador´s house with it´s statues of Spanish soldiers in armor standing on the heads of some dead Maya Indians. The whole square is very picturesque with many colors and bustling with vendors, street performers and Merida citizens. The vendors really try to push you hard to buy hammocks and other handmade stuff from them...but we´re going to hold off until toward the end of the trip so we don´t have to haul around more weight and bulk in our packs. The weather is very hot and sweltering with high humidity so we try not to carry them any more than we have to.

Today (Sunday) we went to church about 15 blocks from where we´re staying. Then afterwards we toured El Paseo de Montejo which is a famous street with lots of historic bldgs. lining both sides. The cyber infrastructure is somewhat less than desirable down here so we find ourselves spending more time than we´d like just looking for an Internet cafe that has a fast enough connection to load up the cool pics we have taken to share them with you all and to back them up for our own piece of mind. For now words will have to do.