Tulum, Mexico

Photos

Tulum easily has the nicest beach I have ever been to. I was talking to some English girls who said they thought it was nicer than Thailand's. White sand, clear blue water, no trash, no crowds. Very nice. I had been up to Playa del Carmen and Cozumel a few days before hand and they have nothing on Tulum. The town itself, along with the cheapest accomodations, is a little ways away from the beach so I rented a bike to get there. The ruins at Tulum are also right on the coast set up atop some cliffs maybe 30 feet above the water. If it hadn't been for the setting they wouldn't have merited a trip. But with the setting.... wow.

Also around Tulum are some more cenotes. I went snorkeling in one, the Grand Cenote. It gave me a new respect for cave divers. Like most cenotes, this one in just a part of a vast underground water system and it had underwater caverns that extended back into complete darkness. Just swimming near these openings was unnerving, my imagination kept getting the better of me and I'd picture something big and horrible swimming up out of it and pulling me in... shudder.

Visited the ruins at Coba as well. These were very nice. The site is so spread out that it's best to rent a bike to get around. Most don't however, and so some of the more remote ruins were utterly deserted, even at the height of the day. I spent 20 minutes among ruined temples, houses, stelae, and other structures without another soul in sight. Amazing how different the place feels when there's no one else around. So much easier to connect with the past and feel the history of the place when you're not distracted by everyone else climbing all over the place. Met a nice crocodile there as well

Cerca de Merida

Photos at Flickr

Uxmal

Decided at the last minute on the 13^th to stay in Merida and use it as a base for daytrips around this part of the peninsula. I had planned on leaving for Vallalodid in the day after I arrived. Instead I took a bus out to Uxmal, one of the nearby Mayan ruins. The area was heavily forested, but not a jungle like Palenque. The ruins were spread over quite a large area and the crowds were nicely spread out as well. Many of the ancient buildings are now being used by swallows to roost and there were hundreds of them dipping and darting in and out of the doorways to the inner rooms. The ruins are also home to a great many large lizards. Not sure if they are iguanas or not. I guess they must be, but they just don't look quite right for that. Some of the larger ones were well over 2 feet long including tail and had spectacular throat fringes.

Cenotes

The following day, August 14^th, I had an adventurous trip to some cenotes with a few people from the hostel. To get the cenotes we took an hour long bus, a bicycle taxi, and then a horse-drawn rail car. Just getting there was a bit of an adventure. And just being near the horses reminded me of just how allergic I am to them. The cenotes were absolutely worth the trip though. They were not at all what I was expecting. The picture in my mind was of a big hole in the ground filled with water. They ended up being caverns. One in particular was entered by climbing down a wet, slick wooden ladder straight down about 20 feet onto a wooden platform inside a flooded cavern. Like all cenotes, they were collapsed caverns that had been dissolved into the limestone bedrock. Many of cenotes in the area are connected underground through an extensive system of underground rivers flowing through cracks in the bedrock. Supposedly much of the system was created by the impact of the meteoroid the hit the Yucatan and wiped out the dinosaurs. Good job Yucatan, way to kill all the dinosaurs. The swimming was wonderful. In some we were able to climb up the rock walls and in others there were able to grab and even climb tree roots that were hanging down from the roof. The water was crystal clear and enough sunlight penetrated in beams through holes in the roof to illuminate the water.

Chichen Itza

Woke up in time for the 6:30 bus to Chichen Itza. I hadn't expected to so I didn't even bother setting my alarm. I woke up at 5:30 anyway though, very bizarre. Anyway, so that meant that I had very little time to pack, check out, and then rush to the station. Just before I got out to the front desk two other groups of travelers showed up to check in. This is a pretty involved process at the hostel and take a while. Checking out is a bit involved too so I didn't feel ok with just butting in. So I just left without checking out. I'm sure they figured it out before long.

Chichen Itza was impressive. The main temple, El Castillo, dominated the rest of the site, which was very extensive. The place got extremely busy with tour groups around noon though. So it is fortunate that I had caught the early bus and managed to wander around the site before it got too busy or hot.

Trip to Date

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Cerca de Palenque

Photos at Flickr

I was awoken this morning by what must have been a howler monkey. Though my first thought after waking was that some dogs had cornered a jaguar. When I went outside to investigate however, the sound was clearly coming from high up in a neighboring tree. The sound was not at all what I had expected howler monkeys to sound like. It was a rough, and menacing call. One I wouldn't want to experience while alone in the forest. It was a lone monkey and calls went on for perhaps half an hour. It was a surreal experience to be awoken like that.

Misol Ha was everything I had hoped it would be. Thirty five meters is really very high. And the jungle setting made it that much better. Some people were swimming in the pool at the base. I did not. The waterfall was perfect, but the water was very murky. We were headed to Agua Azul next, so I didn't bother getting in here. There is a path that winds around the waterfall and then along the cliff face behind it. At the end is a cave. I went in as far as I could, wading in the knee deep water running out of it. There were no lights and after perhaps 30 feet and a slight bend it was nearly pitch black. I hadn't thought to bring my flashlight, but I went on a little further by taking photos with a flash and then looking at the photo for directions.

I hadn't really known what to expect from Agua Azul. I'd heard it was great, better even than Misol Ha. It was great, though totally different from Misol Ha. While the waterfall had had a sense of the exotic and deep jungle (despite the easy access by bus), Agua Azul had more of a tropical paradise feel. The streambed was mostly exposed limestone into which the water had eroded a great many pools and short falls. The stream (in NM this would be called a river) would pool up and then flow over some some small chutes and founded faces of limestone into the next pool and then over and down some more chutes. In all there were several dozen pools ranging in size from a large bathtub to a very large swimming pool. True to its name, where the waters pooled, they were a deep turquoise color. Quite a stunning sight, and reminded me a lot of Yellowstone in how the water flowed down these rounded faces and chutes. Most of the pools were open for swimming, and lots of people were taking advantage of this. I did as well.

Palenque

Visited the Mayan ruins at Palenque yesterday morning. Gorgeous. A totally different experience from the Aztec ruins at Teotihuacan. Whereas Teotihuacan had been dry, brown, and utterly dominated by two mindblowing temples, the buildings at Palenque are on a smaller scale and, except where excavated, completely taken back by the surrounding jungle. The smaller scale and greater diversity of buildings at Palenque made it easier to imagine the city when it was in its prime. Filled with tens of thousands of people cooking, washing, sacrificing to their gods... Smaller though it may be, the Templo de las Inscriptiones was still huge and magnificent. It didn't take much imagination to see how a city-state that could build such a monument, in such steep and heavily forested an area, could command such a vast region.

The excavated, or partially excavated, buildings and temples were spread across many acres of deep jungle. Each group connected to the others by footpaths and bridges cut into the forest. Several small streams flow past the ruined city and, still within the city perimeter, form beautiful pools and small falls.

Photos

Crossing the border

What a day! Hopped on a bus headed from San Antonio to Brownsville this morning. It made several stops at various gas stations along the way before finally arriving a nice station in Brownsville. At least, I imagine the Brownsville Station is nice. Turns out McAllen, Texas also has a nice station. This is where I got off. So, thinking I was in Brownsville I headed off toward the International Bridge with no map and only a brief description in my guidebook of how to get there. After walking several blocks I decided this wasn't going to work and found my way back to the Station. Still thinking this was Brownsville, I hopped in a cab and asked to be taken to the bridge to Mexico where I would walk across to Matamoros. The cab driver spoke less English than I did Spanish, but before long I realized what had happened and that I wasn't even close to where I should be. McAllen is also a border town with a bridge over the Rio Grande to the city of Reynosa. This was the bridge I was being driven too. Hoy!

So, being a bit flustered, when the cab driver offered to drive me to the Reynosa bus station I agreed. I was expecting to get the required tourist card from immigration as we passed through to Mexico, then hop a bus to Matamoros (which I had been looking forward too). Matamoros was only an hour or so away, so this was going to work out fine. Nope. We managed to get through immigration without stopping at all. Oh well, I had read that I could pick up a tourist card at bus stations in border towns. Well that wasn't true. At least neither I, the cab driver, or several bus ticket agents could locate the place to obtain the card. I wasn't going anywhere outside town without this card. On a previous trip, I'd been asked to present it by soldiers with automatic weapons. So, back in the cab. I asked to be taken back to the immigration office. Did I mention that I spoke better Spanish the the cab driver did English? Yeah, well, he took be to the immigration office. Before I knew it we were stuck in line to get back over the bridge to the US Immigration office. I wasn't sure how it would look on security camera if a gringo got out of a cab and walked down the line of cars back to Mexico. So I stuck it out until we were back on the US side. I had the cab driver drop me off, and I crossed back into Mexico on foot. Past the same US border guards that had rummaged through my bag on the first crossing. They found this bizarre and I'm sure must have thought I had a few screws loose upstairs. But they let me past, and I walked across the river to Mexico. Now it was just a matter of getting that card and then hopping a bus. No luck, after a 15 minute discussion with colleagues the Mexican immigration officer decided that I could indeed buy such a card. 262 pesos. Well I didn't have any pesos yet. No credit cards accepted, no dollars, no ATM... so still no tourist card. They did let me through anyway. Though I think they expected me to return once I had found an ATM and had pesos. I did finally find an ATM but it was getting late and I was in a Mexican border town. So I just found a some quick food and a hotel and crashed. We'll see how thing go in the morning...

Went back to the bus station this morning to look again for the immigration office there. I found it this time, but. But they were out, of course. So, this time with pesos, I went back to the immigration office at the bridge. Different people this time. After another long discussion amongst themselves this group decided that I couldn't get a card there after all. What? They sent me to the car permit office. Different office several blocks away. Finally! 262 pesos later and I got it!

Back to the bus station, ticket to Tampico and I'm out of this city. Seven and a half hours later. Tampico seems like a nice city.

The only photos I took in Reynosa were of this camion.

Of all the places to cut costs, lug nuts would not have been my

first choice.

(note: I crossed on the 1st not the 4th, that is the publish date)