Day 1: Sun, meet two white girls

• Amandanlauren's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Mérida

Trip Start Jun 14, 2009 Trip End Aug 01, 2009 Next
Entry

  Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico
Monday, June 15, 2009

Amanda speaking.

Last night we arrived safe and sound. Our hostel is so cute and cozy, and the owner, Edwin, is the nicest most helpful guy we´ve met so far. Check it out: http://www.lacasadeltiodach.com.mx/lang1/index.html

THe hostel has beautiful Maya art covereing nearly every inch of wall in the place. Sadly, it does not have aire conditioning, but Edwin hooked us up with an extra fan in addition to the ceiling fan. Right now, there only four people staying there: Lauren, me, a Spainiard, and an Italian guy. We haven´t met the others yet, but Edwin told us they were there. He also told us about how badly the swine flu had killed his business. He said that Mexico is now so gung-ho about public health that they passed a new law. Anyone who is feeling sick (Mexican or not) can go to any hospital and be tested for flu and receive free medicine if the test is positive. I thought that was pretty neat.

So today Edwin called us a cab at 7:20 in the morning so we could make our journey to the bus station. There, we bought our tickets to ride through la Ruta Puuc (The Puuc Route). It´s basically a trail of different ruins. The bus stops at the first four sites for 30 minutes and the last one for 2 hours because it is much larger and more spectacular. Lauren, me, and two other Americans were the only ones on the bus, so we pretty much had the archeological sites to ourselves. It was really cool. These sites all have characteristic Puuc architecture which is really really pretty.

The first one we went to was Labna. There was a large pyramid, but what intrigued us most was the wild iguanas that roamed about freely. They were HUGE! There was also a really neat archway. Then, we went to Xlapac. It was smaller, but it had a cool stelea. Then, came Sayil. It had some neat heiroglypics around one of the door ways. After that was Kabah which had a huge structure with beautiful stone work. Last, was Uxmal, which is a large tourist destination unlike the other sites. It was very well kept, and there was a lot more to look at. The iguanas there didn´t seem to be afraid of humans at all. Uxmal had several cool structures including a large pyramid (that we weren´t allowed to climb :-(  ), and a quadrangle of cool buildings. There was even one building that had turtles carved into it, and another that had a huge mask of the water diety that used his mouth as the door.

After all of that ruin hopping, we made it to the interent cafe back in Merida. We are now both hot, exhausted, and significantly more tan. Tomorrow, we adventure to some cool caves. Fortunatly, the bus doesn´t leave until 10:15 so we have a total excuse to sleep in. So, stay tuned......

Slideshow Share

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

The grand pyramid at Uxmal.

One of the Iguanas

Next Entry