Chichen Itza (One of the world wonders)

Chichen Itza-one of the newly designated wonders of the world

Town of Merida at night

Friday, March 16 2012

Early this morning I woke up and walked around the city of Campache, Mexico to try to find an appliance repairman.  Again I walked out without a map of the city and ended up wishing I had brought one.  I did not find someone to fix the fridge but I got really sweaty walking around in the morning heat. 

So we packed up and drove northeast to Merida the capital of the Yucatan state of Mexico, where we got a poolside room at a hostel.  We walked around a little in the big city market and ate some tacos al pastor.  Marcie left her bathroom bag somewhere so it was like a Mexican Mercado Toiletries Shopping Spree.  There is a whole lot of hustle and bustle in this town.  It is not picturesque like Campeche.  Tomorrow to Chichen Itza.

• I am not very happy about losing my toiletry bag because it was a monogrammed bag from my mother-in-law and it was filled with my favorite American products, my special Chinese powder from the famous Acupuncturist Mrs. Luo and accumulated travel needs.  Now, I have to make do with weird Mexican products that aren’t necessarily what I want and a few items were not replaceable!

Saturday, March 17 2012

We left Merida this morning driving east with Marcie behind the wheel.  It’s a big city (pop. 750,000) but we navigated our way out with no problems.  2hrs later we are at the most famous of all ancient Maya sites, Chichen Itza.  It was wicked hot out, at least 90 f and the line to get in was already running out of the entranceway onto the sidewalk.  I knew in advance that this would be one of the more expensive sites but I was still surprised that it cost us 374 pesos ($33 US).  It seems like all kind of government agencies and nature groups were piggy backing to get their cut from admission to this “must see” modern wonder of the world. 

It was really impressive, but Marcie and I both thought that the ruins at Palenque were more fun and a much cooler scene.  That said, at Chichen Itza the amount of carvings of gods, kings, animals and human sacrifices that covered their structures and still survive today blows you away.  The center of the site is a large, well preserved pyramid.  We watched “Apoctolypto” last night and we think that it is the same pyramid where the crazy Mayan priest sacrifices the captives from the main character’s tribe, rips their hearts out, and rolls their decapitated heads down the stairs to the frenzied crowd, On the autumnal and vernal equinox’s (in a couple of days) there is a display of a shadow projected onto the side of the pyramid in the form of a serpent ascending (in the morning) and descending (in the evening) the pyramid steps.  It was built by the Toltecs. They did a lot of building on what had been originally a Mayan site.  It was so dang hot though that I’ll be danged if Marcie and I were going to wait until sunset to see it today (you can kind of see it a few days before and after the equinox), so we left. 

I drove while Marcie slept, wiped out from the hot sun.  We decided to head south and skip Cancun because it seems like it would be a lot of high-end resorts, traffic and thousands of cruise ship passengers on shore leave.  So instead we drove further south down the Quintana Roo coast to Tulum.  Things are more expensive around here and it is high tourist season because it is American and European Spring Break, so we walked in and walked out of a few nice places before we found something affordable. 

It seems like palm-thatched roofs, bare concrete floors, ceiling fans and mosquito nets are always the cheapest rooms in any beach town in Mexico.  This works well for us because these are the types of rooms that we prefer.  So here we are again in a cabana on the beach eating shrimp tacos. I found a new way to get the coconut water out of the nut.  I have to admit that I got the idea from watching an old lady do something similar.  Before I was taking a machete and hacking off the top until I got the whole husk off and then poking a hole into the soft spot on the hard inner shell.  This time I took a wine corkscrew, drilled a hole into the side, scraped the pulp out of the hole and poured it right out.  The new way is a lot faster and requires much less effort.  There seems to be an endless supply of free coconuts around.  I’m thinking about going into the cocos frios business.  Tomorrow off to the ruins of Tulum.