Tulum - Where Sheldon Got His Groove Back

On Sunday, February 27, our first leg of the trip had ended and our second leg began in earnest. It started with us meeting around ten in the morning for a bus trip to Tulum, which is only about an hour-and-a-half away from Playa del Carmen. Even though we stayed in a secluded area with no electricity, Tulum turned out to be pretty fun. Mostly, I think, because Tulum is where Sheldon got his grove back as I was finally able to shake the funk that had surrounded me for the better part of the previous week.

It was around noon by the time we got to the “resort” in which we were staying in Tulum. I made it to our cabaña to find that it was breezy, with a good view of the ocean once you stepped out the front door, and had absolutely no electricity. That wasn’t a huge deal since I really didn’t plan to spend any time in there at night until it was time to go to sleep, but it made it so I had to make other plans to recharge all of the electronics that I had brought with me. This planning was made a tad bit more difficult by the fact that Papaya Playa, where we stayed, has absolutely no electricity from 12:20 am to 8:00 am. This turned out to be only a minor problem, however.

When we arrived at Papaya Playa, the weather was gorgeous. It was about 80 degrees with big puffy clouds and a good breezed coming in off the water. After putting my things away and getting settled I came back to the front of the resort to get some lunch before heading to the beach. I ordered quesadillas, which seemed simple enough, but I and the girls that I was eating with all ended up waiting about 90 minutes to get our food. One girl was told about midway into the wait that there was no chicken so she had to change her chicken sandwich order. When the food came, it turned out there was enough chicken for others, just not for her. Odd.

While we waited, the weather started to take a turn for the worse. We had a few brief torrential downpours and the winds from the beach got stronger and stronger. By the time we got our food, which was good but not worth a ninety-minute wait, spending the entire afternoon on the beach stopped sounding like such a great idea.

I ended up farting around for a while, hoping for the weather to break, but it never really did. At around five o’clock, I headed to the little bar with the swing-set seats. After a few drinks, a few friends came over and joined me and I started to feel better and it was around this time that the funk fever started to break. The highlight at the bar was when a snake, maybe a meter long, came crawling under me and the girl who was sitting next to me. While we weren’t in mortal danger, we lifted our feet up to avoid the little bugger while the bartender, who was obviously not a professional snake hander, gradually got rid of the snake.

The group of holdovers from the prior leg of the trip, six of us, went into the city to find someplace for dinner. Problematically, we didn’t know where to get dropped off so we went to the supermarket and decided to walk around that area. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of restaurants around, especially anything Mexican, but we ended up having pizza that was actually quite good at a nearby Italian restaurant. After dinner, we returned to the hotel bar and I had a few drinks with a couple of girls that I am traveling with and ended up talking to a girl from England about soccer for about an hour. I made it to bed just before the electricity went off in the hotel. I’ll get into the second day of the Tulum trip in the next entry.

Chichen Itza / Playa del Carmen

The bus ride from Merida to Playa del Carmen was rather painful but it also included one of the highlights of the trip, including the part that I was looking forward to most in my entire Mexican/Central American adventure – Chichen Itza.

We had a private van from Merida to Playa del Carmen, so that was pretty cool. At least comfort-wise, the trip wasn’t so terrible. On the way to Playa del Carmen, about an hour-and-a-half out of Merida is Chichen Itza. Chichen Itza recently was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World and is the largest archaeological city of the Mayan civilization in the Yucatan Peninsula. It was a pilgrimage site for the Mayans for over 1,000 years and is one of the most visited places in all of Mexico.

The most famous icon of Chichen Itza is the Pyramid of Kukulcan or El Castillo. This is the pyramid/temple near the center of the facility that was built for the feathered, serpent god Kukulcan. It is busiest during the spring and winter solstice when the sunlight plays optical tricks with the pyramid and gives the appearance of a large serpent coming down the pyramid. With the exception of only the Great Pyramid in Egypt, it is the most iconic pyramid in the world.

Another famous icon at Chichen Itza is the Great Ballcourt. I’m still not sure what the game was, but it involved putting a ball through a hoop – a little like the Charlotte Bobcats but presumably with better accuracy. With respect to the game that was played on the court, this is the largest and impressive court of its kind in the entire Mayan archaeological world. I seem to recall hearing/reading that the game was played to the death at Chichen Itza but there currently are other schools of thought on the matter, such as the “death” being metaphorical rather than literal. I guess there is hope for the Bobcats yet.

There are lots of other structures at Chichen Itza such as the Temple of the Jaguars, the Platform of the Skulls, the Platform of Venus and the Sacred Cenote, which isn’t so much a structure as a gigantic sinkhole in which people were sacrificed after being doped up with liquor made from peyote, among other things. Listing these things isn’t so much important as it is a way for me to elongate the paragraph in order to provide enough space to include another photo. I have so many photos from Chichen Itza that it seems wasteful not to include at least three in this entry, so hopefully this paragraph is long enough now.

Leaving Chichen Itza, the rest of the trip to Playa del Carmen was a three-hour painful ride. I won’t go into why because it’s not important. I just write this so I’ll remember it when I look back at this entry. I’ll know what I’m talking about.

I’m not going to waste an entry on Playa del Carmen. I didn’t even bother to take many pictures. It’s got a nice beach, which I strolled for a while, but the town as far as I could tell is just a tacky resort town full of tourists and bars and restaurants and is most useful as a spring break hangout.

There is one thing worth mentioning from here, though. At a restaurant around the corner from my hotel, I stopped for some tacos and beer. I ordered Tacos de Mexicano. I received a bowl filled with a stew of chorizo, beef, onions and other tasty treats and six corn tortillas. It also came with guacamole, hot sauce, pico de gallo with jalapenos and other goodies. Once assembled, they were the best tacos I have ever eaten in my life and I was a big taco fan to begin with. The one pleasure that I’ll leave with from Playa del Carmen will be my memories of those tacos. God bless you tacos!!!

Tomorrow morning, we are off from Playa del Carmen to Tulum for a little more Mayan history and a little more adventure. See you there.

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.

Palenque

Well, the worst part of the Bad Time came to a conclusion just in time because it was time to visit Palenque. Palenque is an ancient Mayan city that was active between 100 b.c. and 800 a.d. Palenque disappeared into the jungle after that but is now being excavated, although, to date, archaeologists estimate that only about five percent of the site has been unearthed.

We hired a local guide at the gate to give us some insight to the site and he was pretty helpful. When you first enter the site, you come upon the Palace and the Temple of the Inscriptions. The buildings sit in a complex with other temples that are in greater states of disrepair. The Palace and Temple of Inscriptions, however, are breathtaking. Palenque is perhaps most notable in that it was the first Mayan site in which archaeologists were able to locate the remains of Mayan rulers. In 1952, Alberto Ruz Lhuillier found a passageway to the sarcophagus of Pakal the Great, who ruled Palenque for 68 years during the seventh century. The sarcophagus was found in the Temple of the Inscriptions and is currently housed in the Palenque museum, which is on-site.

We climbed up to the top of the Palace and continued on our way through the site, past the aqueduct. The other impressive area at Palenque is the Temple of the Cross complex, which includes the Temple of the Cross, Temple of the Sun and Temple of the Foliated Cross. We climbed to the top of each one. I’m not sure exactly why. Nice views, I guess. There were remnants of art in each of the buildings but not enough to justify climbing to the top of a temple in a rainforest in order to see them. Nevertheless, the Bad Time was over and I was enjoying myself.

After visiting a few other structures at Palenque, we made our way over to the museum. It’s not a large museum and there aren’t a lot of pieces in it. The prize piece has to be the sarcophagus of Pakal the Great, which is housed in its own air-conditioned room. There are also various pieces of jewelry, masks, pottery and other items that have been recovered from the site. The museum as a whole is nothing spectacular in its own right, but it’s worth a visit if you’re already there.

After Mayan ruins, it was time for some fútbol. It was Tuesday and the Champions League was in action so a Canadian Chelsea supporter and I went looking for a television on which to watch the match. First, we stopped for the best tacos I’ve ever eaten. Then, I got to use my mad Spanish skills to find a restaurant that had a television and would allow us to watch whatever match was on. It turned out to be Real Madrid and Lyon, which finished 1-1.

That evening, we boarded another overnight bus, this time from Palenque to Merida. Unlike the overnight bus a few nights before, I took my sleeping tablets before the ride. I also took another sleeping tablet that my French Canadian roommate had given me. He is my new hero. I have to say that even though the seats barely reclined on this overnight bus, I had the best sleep I’ve had the entire time I’ve been in Mexico. Thank you, modern science!!!

The Bad Time - Mexican Edition

The Bad Time always comes. It’s cyclical and I never know when it’s going to hit, but I can usually sense it coming within a few days of its arrival. When it first hits me, generally, I can fight it off if I try hard enough and if I can find people with whom I can ride the waves. Eventually, though, the Bad Time becomes too overwhelming to ignore. Usually, it waits until I am having a good time and then it is triggered by something, often something meaningless, and I become debilitatingly depressed.

This time, the Bad Time hit me in San Cristobal. After going to a wine bar and having probably a bottle or so of wine, we went to a club for some dancing and additional drinks. I didn’t drink at this club, but I was still having a good time. Then, the Bad Time came on like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. I was by myself, outside of the club, for about ten minutes and couldn’t overcome the feelings of sadness and loneliness that for some reason choose random moments to appear. This happens to me with less frequency than it used to, and I have a lot of experience with it, but it frightens me when it happens because I know that I’m not functioning with a fully rational mind when it happens. It often hits me while I’m drinking. (I know, right? Alcohol-induced depression. Who would have thought such a thing possible?) As I’ve always done in these situations, I went “Darkman” as a friend of mine used to call it. I just left. Went home. No good-byes. No nothing. I just bolted.

It wasn’t easy to get to sleep but eventually I did. The next day was a free day in San Cristobal, so that made the Bad Time easier. The last thing I want to do during the Bad Time is to be around anybody. I just want to be alone. I walked around San Cristobal and stopped in a couple of shops and restaurants, but I couldn’t eat because there is no appetite during the Bad Time. I took some pictures but eventually went back to the hotel because, for the first time during the entire trip, we had a thunderstorm. Even the weather was going through the Bad Time. (I did get to happen through this random parade, though, going through the Zocalo. I thought that was pretty cool.)

That evening people went out to a Thai restaurant to get some dinner. I blew that off, grabbed a bottle of wine and hung out by myself for a change. I can’t say for sure that it helped at all but it didn’t seem to make anything worse.

The next day we headed to Palenque. On the way, we were going to stop at a couple of waterfalls for some swimming. This was a horrible thing to do during the Bad Time. There was just no way to get away from people and the Bad Time was at its worst. I just listened to my iPod for about four hours until we got to Agua Azul, which was the only waterfall we ended up visiting. I walked with the group until it got to the place where everybody was going to swim. Then, I walked away and avoided the group for the next three-and-a-half hours. The Bad Time was ruining the day and there was no way for me to avoid it.

At night, I tried to come out to dinner with the group. I hadn’t eaten in a few days, and I still wasn’t hungry, but I thought I’d give company a shot. Once again, I had no dinner, but I did have some beer and ended up drinking myself into a better mood. The night didn’t end well, but I felt like I was recovering at least. Anyway, I think the worst part of this episode of the Bad Time has passed.

San Cristobal

After Oaxaca, it was time to head to San Cristobal. This required a thirteen-hour bus ride to which nobody was really looking forward. The trip was made easier by the fact that we were taking a fancified bus with nearly totally reclining seats for our sleeping pleasure and that was supposed to make all of the difference. As a little insurance, I packed along a little happy juice (vodka and pineapple juice) for the trip.

On the bus, we were able to watch movies, television shows, etc. I watched Despicable Me for the third time, and for the second time in Spanish. It’s a good film. Anyway, it was closing in on midnight and I still wasn’t sleepy. The girl sitting next to me and I decided to have a little happy juice. The only problem was that I couldn’t find my happy juice can. My friend got on her hands and knees looking under our seats for the happy juice. (She’s my new hero.) Ultimately, I found it a few rows up in the aisle. I grabbed the can and we shared some happy juice, though not much. It was enough for her as she went right to sleep. I, on the other hand, kept trying until around 2 am, when I finally surrendered to the Tylenol PM. That finally put me out, though only for about four hours. We swung into San Cristobal early in the morning and I was pretty tired.

We stopped for breakfast and then went to a nearby tourist office for options of things to do. The only thing that sounded interesting to me was a trip to Sumidero Canyon, taking place later in the afternoon. I went back to the hotel and got a little sleep before heading back.

The ride to Sumidero Canyon took about 45-minutes, if I remember correctly, and we all hopped on a small boat to get on the river going through the canyon. I don’t remember the name of the river, and the entire tour was in Spanish, so I was only picking up bits and pieces, but it went right through the heart of the ancient Mayan culture and Spanish conquest.

The highlight of the Sumidero Canyon is the scenery, I suppose. Lots of cliffs. We saw some alligators and some monkeys. We saw Catholic shrines. We saw jungle. Yeah, lots of cliffs and jungle. I think that pretty much sums up what we saw.

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the trip through the Sumidero Canyon. I just don’t have the words in me at the moment to describe it very well. Fortunately, pictures are worth a thousand words and all of the photos in this entry are from the Sumidero Canyon.

After the canyon, I hung out at the hotel for a little while and then we headed over to a San Cristobal wine bar. I was excited because the bar had an Argentine malbec wine and those are my favorites. In addition to wine, we received free tapas with every bottle of wine that we bought. We went through a lot of tapas and a lot of wine. Afterwards, we went to a club for some dancing and additional drinking. That is where the bad time started. I’ll talk about the bad time in the next entry.

Oaxaca

Next up after Puebla, we went to Oaxaca. This required a 5-hour bus ride starting at mid-morning and lasting until mid-afternoon in Oaxaca. Of course, 5-hour bus rides suck, but I passed the time talking with one of my new friends and listening to my iPod. All-in-all, I’ve had much worse travel experiences.

Like I said, we arrived about mid-afternoon. We took about a 15-minute chill period and then met back up in the lobby to have a walking tour of the historic district of the town and then get some food. The walk was pretty interesting. Oaxaca City isn’t a tiny town but we were going through a relatively lightly inhabited part of the city. I took a few pictures as we made our way to the zocalo. There we stopped for dinner and I encountered suspect number one of two of what has caused me so much pain ever since. We stopped at a restaurant and I had chile rellenos. They were filled with beef and I downed them with various types of Mexican beers and they were de-licious.

After dinner, a group of us went out to a bar for additional Mexican beers. It was a good time and it lasted until around 1 am. Upon leaving, I stopped at a little street stand and ordered suspect number two of my troubles. It was a hamburger with a piece of beef, a tiny slice of ham, pineapple (yes, pineapple) and an assortment of other toxins. I must say that it was delicious as well and a new friend of mine and I sang Monty Python songs while walking back to the hotel.

Early the next morning, Montezuma had his revenge and he’s been having it ever since (about four days now). I’m just going to leave it at that.

The next day, we had breakfast and went out for an all-day tour of things around Oaxaca City. We first visited a petrified waterfall. This required a thirty-minute bus ride followed by a 45-minute trek up a hill in the back of a pick-up truck through very bumpy terrain. (This, of course, did great things for my stomach.) Once we got to the top of the mountain, we had some great views of the petrified waterfall, something I had never even heard of before, and the surrounding mountains. There were some ponds and a few people went swimming in there, but I just took some photos and negotiated with my sore, sore belly.

Following this, we went to a mezcal factory and saw how the famous Mexican liquor with the worm at the bottom of the bottle is made. We also tried several various types of mezcal and I think this may have helped to kill some of the bacteria in my system.

From the mezcal factory, we went to the Arbol del Tule. This tree, right outside of Oaxaca City, has the largest base of any tree in the world. One local guide told us that it required nineteen people to stretch their arms in order to surround it. Legend has it that the tree is fourteen hundred years old. When it’s all said and done, though, it’s just a huge fucking tree.

At night, we ordered pizza delivery – some of the worst pizza I’ve ever eaten, though the hot sauce was good – and played a card game involving civilians, mafia and policemen. The next day, we remained in Oaxaca, while we waited for our overnight bus to San Cristobal, but I can’t say there’s anything exciting to report. We hung around various markets in Oaxaca and then went back to the hotel to drink beer, buy vodka for the bus ride, and wait to catch the bus. I guess that’ll be an appropriate place to pick up the next entry, so I’ll see you then.