It took well over an hour to get yesterday’s entry to post because the internet here is so terrible. At some point I got frustrated and gave up and decided to go have a shower Boy was that an adventure! I wish the internet was better so I could post a picture of our spacious bathroom but alas I will just describe it. It is so small that you have to turn sideways to get through the door and past the sink to the toilet which is pretty much touching the sink. About two inches away from the toilet is the shower curtain for the tiny shower. Having all of this room comes in really handy when you’re sharing a room with a stranger and need to get dressed/changed in the bathroom but that’s not the point of this story. The faucets are labeled ‘F’ and ‘C’ and in my head I think froid is cold and chaud is hot in french so the Spanish must be similar I’ve got this. I turn on the shower and take a step back to avoid the spray until I can make sure it’s the right temperature but this shower head is bananas it starts spraying in about 16 different directions. There is no avoiding this water and I’m feeling confident that my clothes are now soaked despite the shower curtain. I’m also freezing. Maybe I was wrong. I think fuego means hot so I turn off the c faucet and turn the f faucet all the way on. Ice. Ok that obviously didn’t work lets try the opposite. Ice. There is no way I’m washing my hair in this frigid water so I quickly rinse my body and give up. Thankfully my clothes and towel were pretty much the only things in the bathroom that didn’t get soaked so things could have been worse. Why does showering in other countries have to be so difficult? I’m really hoping for better luck at the hotel we’re staying at tomorrow but I think it is a lodge in the middle of the jungle so I don’t have high hopes. Please keep your fingers crossed for me!
After the failed shower attempt and finally getting my blog entry to post it was finally time to meet up with the group for family dinner. We went to a cute restaurant called Coyote Maya. The rain had cleared so we sat in their back room that has a retractable roof and we had the place to ourselves. Once again everyone was trying new and exciting things and I ordered the fettuccini alfredo. The pasta was not cooked all the way through and it was lukewarm but I guess that’s what you get when you order Italian food in Mexico. We left for dinner at 7:30 and at 10:00 people were still eating their desserts which was super frustrating. A bunch of us ended up leaving the group early and I came back to the hotel and went to bed.
This morning we got up early and piled into the van for our trip to the cenotes. At this point I’m thinking ‘I just paid $60 to go swimming, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking’ and driver is playing spanish dance music really loudly at 8am and I’m wishing I had picked a different activity.
The drive was a little over an hour and despite the fact that my motion sickness has progressively been getting worse I figured an hour isn’t that long and I could handle it. About 15 minutes in it became clear that I could not in fact handle it. I took a gravol and it seemed to take forever to start working. I was starting to worry that maybe it wasn’t motion sickness and it was actually Montezuma's revenge but thankfully that wasn’t the case.
We stopped along the way in the parking lot of a church that was built next to an indigenous site. Apparently this is something that settlers liked to do and sometimes even destroyed the indigenous sites and built churches in their place. I think the main reason we made this stop though was so Mani could pick up a watermelon. We also passed a traditional haceinda. Before today I thought a hacienda was a guest house because I thought that’s what Gina from Real Housewives of Orange County moved into when she and her husband separated but apparently I’m mistaken because it’s actually a farm. The haciendas in this area were used to grow a crop that I can’t remember the name of but it looks like an aloe vera plant and was used to make rope once upon a time. They were owned by rich people who had slaves do their manual labour for them. Our guide told us they weren’t technically slaves because they were free to leave any time they wanted but if they did no one else would hire them and they would eventually starve to death. I’m pretty sure that’s a slave. He also told us that the indigenous people used to grow this crop before they were forced out of their territory by the colonizers.
After the motion sickness scare and the history lesson we finally arrived at our destination. Before we arrived we were given the option of taking a horse carriage or a bicycle to the cenotes. I just paid $60 to go swimming so you better believe I’m not putting in anymore work than I have to to get where I’m going so I picked the horse option. I was expecting a horse with a carriage that holds 2 to 4 people like the ones you would find in Central Park in New York, the Blackpool Promenade, or even here in Merida but that is not at all what it was. Instead it was a wooden platform that was on wheels that fit a train track that 6 people plus the driver sat on and hung on to a piece of rope for dear life while this tiny little horse pulled us down the track in protest. I’m not describing this well and will try to post a picture later but it was definitely a unique experience.
The horses brought us to the first of three cenotes. We reached a cave with a tree growing directly above the opening and made our way down the wooden steps while ducking under the rock formations. I guess this would be a good time to explain what a cenote is. There is a lot of limestone in Mexico and overtime the rain has eroded the limestone creating underground rivers. So basically a cenote is a swimming hole inside a cave. As soon as we made it far enough into that first cave to see the waterI was no longer upset about spending so much money just to go swimming. The water was so clear and so blue and the were stalactites and trees roots coming down from the ceiling. There was a platform in the middle where we were able to leave our bags and I took a slow lap around it and felt refreshed. Before long we were off to our second cenote just a few meters away. The second cenote was even more impressive than the first. The cave itself was more interesting and the water was deeper so you could jump off the platform and into the water. I was too busy thinking about keeping my life jacket from choking me out when I jumped in that I wasn’t thinking about anything else and ended up doing a pin drop and went way deeper than I anticipated and ended up with a nose full of water. Next time, if there is a next time, I’ll be sure to do a cannon ball instead. Once we were finished at the second cenote we had a watermelon break before head to the third. The third cenote was different from the first two as it was completely open at the top. It was also much much deeper than the first two. Knowing that our adventure was coming to an end I think we ended up spending the most time at this cenote.
We eventually all made our way out of the cave and caught are horse buggy train track thingy back to our starting point where we had lunch then made our way back to Merida. Shortly after returning we departed for our orientation walk that was cancelled due to weather yesterday. We started by going to the house of the person who founded the city only to find that it was closed. We then went to City Hall which must be the old one that was turned into a museum because it certainly doesn’t look like any municipal office I’ve been in. Because our first stop was a bust Mani decided to take us to the local market. I was originally super on board with this plan because I love local markets but take a busy mall on Christmas Eve and multiply that by about a thousand times and that’s how crowded the walk to the market was. There were so many people everywhere and Mani was weaving in between them making it difficult for a group of 16 people to keep track of him but some how we managed to make it work. I kept having flash backs of losing my group in Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia and was practically glued to Mani making sure that didn’t happen again. We did a quick walk through the market so he could show us how meet is sold in the market. It is hung on hooks or left in trays in the room that had to be at least 90 degrees. Absolutely disgusting. From there we made our way back to the town square and ended the walk.
We didn’t really get to explore City Hall when we were there so I went back to check it out on my own. There was a lot of art work hanging all around the building and at first I thought it was cool but eventually it started to remind me of the really inappropriate artwork hanging in Pawnee City Hall in ‘Parks and Recreation’. As soon as I saw a picture of settlers torturing the indigenous people I was done. I understand that we need to learn from history but proudly displaying that scene in your City Hall seemed super inappropriate to me.
I wandered around the square a little bit then made my way back to the hotel for a bit of a rest. Most of the group is going out for street meat at 7:30 but I won’t be joining them. Partly because I don’t want to be up until the end of time, partly because I don’t want to deal with huge crowds of people again, but mostly because I don’t think I will find anything I like. Don’t get me wrong street meat can be great but I’m just not into the cuisine here.
Tomorrow we have a 10 hour bus ride to Palenque so I might not update because there might not be anything to report but watch this space.
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