Guess who’s back. Back Again. Jenna’s Back. Tell a friend.
If you followed my blog previously I’m sorry for the super long hiatus and not finishing telling the story about my African adventures. I fell into a pretty deep depression when I moved back to Canada and updating the blog fell off of my list of things to do. I’m still struggling with depression but finally reached out for help last year and am doing better. I’m currently in Mexico for a mini adventure so I thought I’d give this a shot again. I can’t promise the writing will be any good or that I’ll update every day but something is better than nothing right?
Driving on the 400 gives me anxiety at the best of times, doing it in the dark in the winter is just a recipe for disaster so I took a bus to the airport. Well technically I took 4 buses and got very little sleep but it was fairly stress free and I didn’t have a seat partner on any of the busses so I’ll chalk that up as a win.
The flight went pretty smooth but my luggage took forever to make its way on to the belt and I was starting to panic that my bag got left in Toronto. I was also worried that because I was taking so long to get out of the airport my prearranged shuttle was going to leave without me. Thankfully neither of those things happened and both me and my luggage made it to Playa del Carmen safely yesterday afternoon.
I met my roommate Dina as soon as I arrived and it’s a good thing I did because there was only one key to our shared hotel room. The three storey hotel didn’t have an elevator so I had to carry my suitcase (of course I decided to use a suitcase instead of backpack for the first time ever) up a flight of tiled stairs, which were outside and it had been raining. I’m still amazed I survived the trip up the stairs.
I convinced Dina to venture out with me to find food and we made our way to a 50’s diner around the corner. We were meeting with the rest of the group for dinner in a couple of hours so I just ordered fries and a drink. The drink I ordered was called orangeade and I thought I was going to get something resembling a Fanta. Boy was I wrong! I got the pulpiest fresh squeezed orange juice ever to grace this earth. It was like 95% pulp and 5% juice. I was not impresses. I also saw the server lick his hand while making a milkshake and continue working. Needless to say I won’t be returning to that restaurant when we go back to Play del Carmen at the end of the trip.
After eating we went back to the hotel and I had a short nap before meeting up with group for a briefing on our trip. Our very attractive guide (I will try to post a snap a picture before the tour is over) Manfredo (Mani) broke down how we would be spending the next several days then invited us all to join him for dinner. We walked a few minutes to a local restaurant where everyone but me ordered traditional Mexican dishes. I expect this will be a trend for the remainder of the trip.
After dinner it was back to the hotel and into bed to get ready for today’s big adventures. We loaded up the van fairly early and made our way to Chichen Itza. The ruin site was far more expansive than I imagined it to be and we spent serval hours exploring and learning about the Mayans. I’m not going to lie our guide was super long winded and I remember very little of what he told us. One thing I do remember is that the water God is named Chaahk and the Mayans believed he lived at the bottom of the cenote on their grounds. This particular group relied on the farming of corn in order to survive and would make sacrifices to Chaahk to ensure they would get enough rain to grow a successful crop. The human sacrifices volunteered to be sacrificed and spent their whole lives preparing for this duty where they would be drugged, dehydrated in a sauna, weighted down, and then drowned.. There was another group of people who would make sacrifices to the sun God and they seemed much more violent. They would capture warriors, rip their hearts out of their chests and then set the hearts on fire while they were still beating. Sounds like a pretty good way to go right?
Although I don’t remember many specifics, I remember thinking there were a lot of similarities between the way settlers treated they Mayans and the way they treated the Indigenous community in Canada. When the settlers came the brought small pox which ended up killing a lot of Mayans. Around this time there were also droughts and famines. This lead many of the Mayans to believe that their Gods had abandoned them and in order to survive they must convert to the settlers ways and that is how christianity came to Mexico. I have been participating in meetings with some Indigenous leaders recently at work so I found this really fascinating.
Ooo maybe I absorbed more than I thought because now I’m remembering more about the sun God. He is a serpent but when the night falls he must face many demons so when the night comes he transforms into a jaguar able to defeat anything that comes his way and then when it is time for the sun to rise he transforms into a bird. He is referred to as the feathered serpent or Quetzalcoatl and was depicted in many forms throughout the ruins.
After what felt like the longest tour ever we finally left the ruins to carry on with our day. We went to a buffet for lunch and I was a bit worried I was going to starve to death but I managed to find something to eat. I ate a lot of rice but I also tried a real Mexican dish called chicharron de something something. Okay so maybe that’s not the official name but I can’t remember what it is and my google search wasn’t very fruitful. It was pork marinated in oranges and something else. I only had a tiny piece but guess what…I didn’t die! If it isn’t a buffet I probably wouldn’t have tried it but I did and I’m proud of myself. Others in the group scoffed at my plate but I thought it was impressive I didn’t just load up on pasta salad. Someone even said the said the pasta salad was sweet so I bet they used Miracle Whip and that’s one of my four basic food groups!
Once everyone had finished eating we loaded back into the van and drove another 3 hours to Merida. We are supposed to be on an orientation walk of the city but it is raining cats and dogs so it got postponed until tomorrow afternoon. I don’t have much desire to wander around in the rain so now I’m just relaxing until we meet up for dinner at 7:30. Fingers crossed there is something on the menu I can eat!
I had planned on adding pictures to this post but the internet here is absolutely terrible...I can't even get the upload screen to load so unfortunately you'll have to use your imagination. If I remember I will try to add pictures if our next hotel has better wifi.
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