Indiana Jones and the Mexican carnival
Trip Start
Mar 07, 2011
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Trip End
Mar 25, 2011
Valladolid, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
Monday, March 7, 2011
Leaving Cancun was a relief. We drove for miles along the coast heading south with hundreds (literally) resorts and hotels on the side of the road. All of them 5-star ones obviously with spa facilities, golf clubs and private beaches. If you would take the words: villa, paradise, oasis, royal, palace, spa and golf club, you would be able to invent all the names of the places we were passing by. Coming back to the private beaches - actually there is no such thing. The whole coast is public, thus noone has any right of closing a part of it. Actually you can turn up at every hotel entry and tell the staff that you'll be using "their" beach today. Therefore - do not believe the adverts and descriptions of the hotels inviting you to use their exclusive facilities...
Once turning towards the continent and leaving the coast behind the surroundings changed. Driving in Europe, you can see dozens of signs and billboard, whereas in Mexico this is a whole different story. The commercials are painted on the shops and fences. The same applies to... political campaigns, while the slogans are written on the walls with the name of the candidate. You can also easily see how popular there is the competition between Pepsi and Coke. In overall this was something completely new for us...
We then kept driving and driving with GPS showing 100 kilometers of a straight road. And by straight I mean - literally, as in Yucatan there are almost no turns! The main roads are designed in a way you do not have to use the steering wheel at all. This can be quite dangerous, especially if you're driving through the plains or a jungle with the same surroundings all the time - as you're getting tired and bored quickly (especially with the idiot automatic transmission). Actually you could block the gas pedal with a rock, block the steering wheel and go to sleep for half an hour to arrive at the next inhabited place (as the roads are also almost empty and you do not have to worry to much about overtaking anyone). The good thing about driving in Mexico is the price of petrol (especially if you're European) as it would be like 6 times cheaper. You could easily fill up for about 15 Euros... Fortunately, our rental agency allowed us to tank whatever petrol we wanted, so the cheapest one sounded just fine.
Before coming to Mexico, we had been warned about multiple police and army check points on national roads. This is true actually, as we were encountering those before entering and leaving each city area, as well as every district of Yucatan. A few kilometers after Cancun we had our first and the last (as it turned out) detailed control by the army patrol. They checked our documents, asked to open the trunk and sniffed a little bit inside the car. Aga did not feel too comfortable with that, but the guys turned out to be professionals. When they confirmed everything was alright, they wished us a good trip. And somehow, later, on each and every checkpoint along our way around Yucatan (and there were dozens of them), the guards were just waving to us and showing to drive through (as if the ones in Cancun let everyone know, we were harmless...). I guess they were just surprised to see tourists traveling alone in a rented car - because this was an unusual site.
It took us an hour or so, to get to Coba, which was the first stop on our Yucatan adventure. Before we went to see the ruins of the city we noticed a sign inviting us to see the crocodiles from a tiny quay nearby. Curious, as we had never seen those animals outside of a zoo, we went to take a look. There was nothing there, but then the owner came and asked for a small fee. Then he threw several chunks of meet (chickens I suppose) to the lake. Apart from one crocodile that was lurking from a distance, we did not see any more. What we saw though were dozens of pieces of meat floating on the water's surface. No wonder the crocodiles did not come, as most likely they were already stuffed with whatever was thrown into the lake and did not really care for more. Disappointed we demanded half of the fee given back to us, which the guy had to sadly comply to...
Coba is spread around a jungle and you have to walk a bit from one structure to another. Otherwise - you can hire a guide with a bike who can take you around the place. We did not do that at first and took a walk around the forest. What's written in the Lonely Planet guide - that Coba feels like Indiana Jones is entirely true. Jungle surrounding the ruins is dense and adds to the mysterious atmosphere of this place. You can actually feel like an explorer, especially that visitors are scarce. After an hour walk, we finally decided to trust one of the guides - a Maya, to show us around and it was a great thing to do. We learned lots of interesting facts about the place. One of them was the road connections between the ancient Maya cities. It is hard to believe but all the cities of Yucatan were connected by thousands of kilometers of stone roads! I can only imagine how the constructions were done to accomplish that. Amazing! The parts of the roads could still be found in Coba.
Walking around the structures built by the mighty Maya made us thinking about how advanced this civilization was. From the common living quarters, to the temples, sky observatories and even sports centers (Maya played "pelota" - a curious mix of football, basketball and... gymnastics). An amazing sight was The Great Pyramid (Nohoch Mul), as tall as 42 meters and apparently the 2nd tallest Maya structure on the Yucatan Peninsula, which we obviously climbed. You gotta know that climbing the structures is a very important part of the sightseeing. You would never see the best views and experience the real thrill if you're not doing just that. That's especially advised in Calakmul, but we'll come to that. There are signs everywhere thought that "you are climbing at your own risk". Well, once you come to Yucatan - you will discover it is so...
Exploring Coba, we noticed that not the whole area is yet excavated. There are dozens of structures still hidden among the trees, some of them quite impressive. It was truly inspirational to see the difference between the restored pyramids and the ones still waiting for some cash injection to get this chance. Though the area was off limits, we could not resist but to go deeper into the jungle to have a look.
This was also the first time to encounter iguanas, the animals so common to the area, there won't be a single place free of them. They especially love to sit high on the rocks (mostly at the very top of the structures), enjoying the sun and warmth, and mysteriously waving their heads up and down. The Maya say they are hosts to the souls of the people that once lived here. And judging by the iguana population - that seems quite right.
After a few hours of playing Indiana, we went to eat something in a nearby place of El Bocadito. And this was the first time, we were able to try traditional Yucatan dishes - Mole (a chocolate sauce) and "Poc Chuc" which basically constitutes chicken and rice. A good home meal that was. I also instantly fell in love with tortillas, which are always added extra, held in a straw container (often with a lid resembling a Mexican hat). These are made from cornmeal and you will never be able to eat the same in Poland unfortunately. We do can buy cornmeal, but it just tastes completely different. In the restaurant we meet a couple of Polish tourists on a short trip outside the Cancun resort.
Next on our itinerary was Valladolid, where we had booked a hostel - "La Candelaria" (seems not to have a website of its own), comfortably situated a few blocks from the main square. And it was a sight on its own! Apart from the nice and cozy rooms, there was a huge garden with hammocks. The hammocks became such a common thing during our journey and such a desired one (nothing can compare to a long rest under the palm trees) that we bought a family one and took it home. The hostel owners also had a two Chihuahua dogs, which were adorable. One was brave and the other one not so much, but they both welcomed as warmly - licking and making a lots of noise when we came out the next morning to have breakfast.
The day ended quite unexpectedly. It turned out that Valladolid was hosting a carnival at the time we were there, so everyone showed up on the streets and the main square, there were dances, a concert from a rock band and lots of local beer - Sol. The entire show hosted around 50 dancers with make-up and carnival costumes, which they were exchanging several times during the performance. All in all - a rainbow of colors around. There was also a queen, a king, a princess and a prince of the carnival. I even got the queen to make a photo with me and what I can remember - she was all wet and sweaty from the dancing ;) It was a great thing to see young and old people having fun together - while the young were dancing and singing together with the band and the old sitting on chairs around the stage and clapping hands, to the music that my grandparents would describe as devilish at least :) As you can imagine, the day ended pretty late for us while we went to well earned sleep much after midnight... and the party... the party was still ongoing... coming back from the square we had a chance to look at the prince of the carnival yet again... sleeping on the park bench outside our hostel ;)
