Movin' On Up...To Mexico!

Entry by Donna

Saludos de Mexico! Yes, we’re already in Mexico…more specifically, we’re in Mexico City, our last stop before we fly back to the States next Tuesday. We apologize for the major delay of this blog entry, but lots of moving around, lots of sightseeing, and most recently, dreaded food poisoning (who would have thought delivery pizza could give such a gruesome Montezuma’s Revenge?) have prevented us from writing. We’d like to catch you up on what we’ve been up to through some pictures, pictures that we’re lucky to have as our moody Nicaragua-bought camera has died and come back to life twice now. Always something when you’re on the road…all part of the adventure of traveling : )

During our last couple of days in Guatemala, we made two stops. We first went to Semuc Champey, a beautiful nature reserve that has crystal-clear natural pools of varying shades of blue and green

and a ridiculously cool underwater cave system

through which we took an intense candle-lit tour, where we had to climb up and down ladders, swim, battle waterfalls, and watch out for sharp rocks the entire time! As frustrating as it got at points, it was definitely worth it. Steve and I made it through to the end rocking our tennis shoes, headlamps, and string tying our glasses to our heads,

while everyone else in our group went barefoot, glasses free, and carried around a candle. We were clearly the cool kids of the group : )

After finally emerging from the super remote grounds of Semuc Champey, we headed 9 hours north to TIKAL,

one of the most famous and impressive Mayan ruins sites in Central America, a ruins site that I have been looking forward to seeing since first hearing about it in my high school world history class. And being the already admitted ruins nerd that I am, I loved Tikal, placing it number two on my favorite ruins site list (with Macchu Picchu in Peru still being number one in my heart!).

From Tikal, we said goodbye to Guatemala and started our 15 hour bus trek (involving three different buses and two border crossings!) to Mexico, cutting through Belize en route. Our first week in Mexico was nothing less than a Ruins Adventure. Up until that point we had only visited two ruins sites in three weeks, but in that one week alone, we visited FOUR! Needless to say, I was in my glory (and Steve, respecting my ruins-nerdiness, yet not completely partaking in it, also enjoyed them). Our first stop in Mexico was Tulum,

an important Mayan port town back in the day and now a popular tourist destination. From Tulum, we started our journey through the Yucatan Peninsula, stopping at Chichén Itzá, seeing the famous pyramid

and being surprised at how much more there was to the ruins than just the pyramid you see in all the pictures. Some highlights include the Plaza of 1000 Columns,

which is indeed rightfully named, and the Skull Pyramid,

where prisoners were sacrificed to the gods. From Chichén Itzá, we made our way to the nearby colonial town of Mérida to spend the night, hopping on a nine hour bus to Palenque the next morning, to get our next Mayan ruins fix. Up until that point, we had lucked out with the weather, but it was rainy and cold the day we visited the Palenque ruins. However, the rain turned out to have some benefits – we practically had the place to ourselves (a real treat after the HOARDS of people at almost all of the other sites, especially Chichén Itzá!), allowing us to enjoy the ruins in peace. We had a great tour guide named Arturo who captured this rainy scene on camera when we first entered the park

and who taught us a lot about Palenque, including where the toilets once were,

demonstrating his point by squatting. After our tour, we headed to the site museum,

but were sad to find it closed because the power was out (“Are we back in Nicaragua??” we asked ourselves).

Later that afternoon, we took a five and a half hour bus to another colonial town called San Cristobal de Las Casas, where we had a three hour-ish layover before our 11 hour overnight bus to Oaxaca. We thoroughly enjoyed our short couple of hours in cute, chilly San Cristobal and almost immediately regretted not penciling it into our itinerary. Hopefully we can go back on a future trip!

We arrived in Oaxaca around 11am. We had both really been looking forward to seeing this arty, cool city, but we ended up having a weird experience there. Our visit was immediately off to a great start with a vegetarian restaurant refusing to make us food and a bum punching me in the arm (what the heck?!). I was fine, just surprised, but my mood did not improve when we headed to the Zócalo (main plaza) to eat and were surrounded by vendors and begging men, women, and children throughout our whole meal. Having traveled around quite a bit in poor areas, we thought we were used to this (or as much used to it as a compassionate human being can get), but it was just too much. For the rest of our time in Oaxaca, we steered clear of eating on the plaza, instead choosing restaurants with indoor seating or balconies, where we could escape the chaos a bit more.

In between the disappointing food experiences, bum arm-punching, and the eventual pizza food poisoning fiasco, we did find some cool things to do. First, we took a cooking class at our hostel

where we learned how to make chilaquiles, chiles rellenos, guacamole, tortillas, and té de Jamaica

and were able to enjoy our creations afterwards. We visited a slightly boring cultural museum housed inside beautiful Santo Domingo,

a former monastery. We also went on a tour where we got to see one of the oldest and largest trees in the world,

located in front of a church in a town called El Tule. It was indeed the biggest tree we had ever seen! On that same tour, we also saw a natural dye/weaving demonstration,

a mezcal factory

(where we sampled some of this strong Oaxacan-made liquor similar to tequila), and some more ruins

called Mitla. This time, instead of Mayan ruins, they were Zapotec ruins, notably different with their use of geometric shapes of squares and triangles in their architectural designs.

Slightly relieved (ok, very relieved) to get out of Oaxaca, we headed to Puerto Escondido (“Hidden Port”), a small beach town on the Pacific coast. We believe it is called the “Hidden Port” because in order to get there, we had to travel through a nauseatingly curvy mountain range for six hours before magically arriving to the town…not so much fun as our stomachs were still in recovery mode. However, our efforts to make it to Puerto Escondido paid off as this beautiful site welcomed us

after our roller coaster of a bus ride. Wishing we had more time to linger on the beach, we headed to the teeny tiny airport of Puerto Escondido where we took a teeny tiny airplane to Mexico City, where we are now. As luxurious as the Mexican public bus system is (no sarcasm intended, I’m completely serious), we decided to treat ourselves to a plane ride after all of the collective hours we had spent on buses over the past four weeks. We arrived to Mexico City in a mere hour and a half and are currently staying at the same hostel I stayed at when I studied abroad here in 2006. More to come on our adventures in Mexico City…hasta pronto!

P.S. If you're interested, here are the links for the last of our Guatemala pictures of Semuc Champey: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.614009383442.2090377.33102005&type=1&l=685dc64285

Tikal: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.617824328262.2090865.33102005&type=1&l=05cf1a08d1

and all of our Mexico pictures from Tulum through Palenque: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10101445819857234.3383091.2301314&type=1&l=2d44937813