Merida

We arrived early in Merida and arrived at the hotel at around 7:00. Fortunately, most of the rooms were ready and we got to put our things up and get some breakfast at the hotel, which for me meant coffee.

We were out early on a tour of the area surrounding Merida. First up was stopping by and seeing some churches and other stuff. Then we went to a place where we were put onto little horse-drawn carriages (I’ll call it a carriage for lack of a better word. Actually, it was more like a palette with slightly-padded seats that were run on tracks) to go to various cenotes in the area. These were fresh-water swimming holes that were pretty deep, so I didn’t go in, and were pretty crowded with tourists. My favorite part was at one of them when we ran into some young American girls who tried to have the following conversation with us:

American Girl 1: Are you guys from Europe?

American Girl 2: Isn’t the Loch Ness Monster in Europe?

American Girl 1: Yeah, like Sweden?

American tourists. God, you gotta love them.

After the swimming we returned to where we hopped on the Carriages of Doom because there also was a restaurant there. I ordered a steak and waited. And waited. And waited. About 75 minutes after I ordered the steak, it arrived. It was good, especially with the hot sauce that I added, and everybody got to watch me eat it. Good times.

After lunch, we went on a little driving tour around the city of Merida. I didn’t take pictures because I thought that I might get out on my own to see the city and would take some better pictures that way but that was never to happen. Also, the back of the van was particularly warm and we were starting to have a mutiny, so the van ride ended a bit prematurely.

When we returned, a girl on the trip and I went out and grabbed some beers and came back to the hotel to shoot some pool. Returning to old form, I sucked until around the third beer, improved, and probably would have started sucking again around beer six, but we were cut short before reaching that point in order to go to dinner. I don’t want to brag, but I was pretty impressive. So impressive that the girl I was playing with ended up sleeping with somebody else. But, then, that’s pretty much the story of my life.

The next day was pretty much a waste and I don’t want to do a whole entry on it so I’ll try to sum it up here. We took a two-hour bus ride to a beach on the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn’t an ugly beach, but it was more of a fisherman’s beach than a tourist beach. From there, we went on a 2.5-hour tour to see flamingos in the wild. We saw about 30. We also had a five-minute stop to see a petrified forest and a ten-minute stop to go swimming in another cenote. Afterwards, we returned to the beach for lunch, which I skipped, and there was more swimming while we staggered our returns to the city on the two-hour buses. Had I known what the day had in store, I would have just stayed in the city and roamed around on my own. Poor due diligence on my part. Oh, well. Traveling in groups has some good days and some bad days. This was one of the bad ones.

Dinner ended up being Burger King as a substantial part of the group had eaten enough corn/bean products for a week and decided to do something beefy. This leg of the trip ends on Saturday and we will be inundated with new blood as several people on the current leg leave and several new members join. I’ve liked the group that I’m with, overall, but I’m ready for a little change, as well.

That’s where I’m at now, as I write this on Friday morning. In an hour or so, we are taking off for Playa del Carmen with a stop at Chichen Itza on the way. That’s what I’ve been looking forward to most on this trip so hopefully the tone of these entries will improve shortly.