Never a dull moment in México

Well hello there…

So here I am, post vacation, back to good ol’ Xalapa…a little wiser, a bit better traveled, and of course, a shade or two tanner… :) I don’t want to mislead you though; things aren’t quite back to normal here. As I’m sure you’ve heard, the swine flu epidemic is scarily present. The majority of the cases are in México City, but as a precaution because cases are occurring in other states, classes have been cancelled in all of México until May 6…today is the 26th….that’s a lot of days. The thing is we aren’t really supposed to travel cuz we are supposed to avoid buses, enclosed areas, and large crowds. So who knows what sort of adventures this next week will bring…and I hope everything gets under control soonish cuz it’s kinda scary seeing people walking around with facemasks on the streets…

Ok, but back to vacation station…traveling the Yucatán was quite the experience, really fun (to say the least), plus I learned quite a few things… for example…

1. 95% of the population thinks that I am German…even Germans were asking me if I was German
2. You should never assume that museums will be open…especially on Sundays and Mondays…
3. Buses don’t leave Chixchulub for the mangroves after 3 pm

I’ll start from the beginning…Héctor and I started the vacation in Mérida, a pretty town inland on the western side of the peninsula. Back in the day it had a lot of wealth so the town has mansions and pretty architecture from the 1900’s. We spent 2 days here, walking about and melting under the sun. It is probably the hottest place…ever…just a very thick, intense heat, with zero wind. This is where we attempted to go to some museums (key word: ATTEMPTED), the Picasso museum was closed on Sunday when we tried to go and the anthropology museum closed on Monday…but what can you do? lesson learned, check times…twice. Really though, there were lots of enjoyable moments thrown in here in Mérida.

We then headed to Progresso, a nearby beach to the north. It was nice, I mean, I’ll take any ocean I can get, but in all reality is rather unimpressive when compared to the beautiful beaches of the Caribbean that were to come in my near future…but this is besides the point, we went to Progresso so we could go to a nearby town and see the mangroves…and here’s how that went down: we started by asking some of the local people how one would get to the nearby mangroves, the consensus being that we first needed to take a bus to Chixchulub and then take another from there to the final destination. Excellent, simple enough. Arriving in Chixchulub we again asked about bus stops and mangroves, it was 2:30 pm. We were told that around 3 the last bus to the mangroves would come by, so we waited…and waited, I bought a bottle of water…and we waited some more…. at 3:30 we said to hell with it and headed back to Progresso. Moral of the story, if you need some water and want to waste 50 pesos in transportation, head to Chixchulub.

The next day we went to Chichen-Itzá. The ruins were totally impressive, but completely infested with tourists. We successfully robbed information from various guided tour groups walking around and managed to survive the heat, so all in all a success. That night we bused it to Cancun. In the morning we set out with plans to dedicate the day to the beach :) Me, being the sheltered girl from Eden Prairie that I am (ha), had never seen the Caribbean Ocean before…and good god, it is so ridiculously impressive.

Here’s the rest of the trip really quick—
Isla Mujeres- I loved it, totally relaxed atmosphere with beautiful beaches, plus we rented a scooter thingy to go around the island, soo fun. The hostel we stayed at was awesome and served a delicious mango daiquiri.
Playa del Carmen- We met up with Elena here, becoming a trio. The town, really touristy…but pretty… less overridden with Hotels than Cancun. It only merited staying one night. Big purchase…snorkel gear :)
Tulúm=love. We ended up spending 4 nights here and met up with Tina. It had everything: Mayan ruins on the beach, GORGEUOS beaches without big, ugly, hotels, nearby cenotes (sinkholes/underground rivers…great for snorkeling), and lagunas. It was here where Elena and I narrowly avoided death by coconut... free palmtree shade comes with risks…seriously scary. It was also here the guide book (aka THE ORACLE) totally lied to us about kayak rentals and we ended up walking way too far at high noon...i'm still a bit bitter, let's not talk about it.

And that was it, more or less...Not to mention getting to know/hang out with people from all around the world...we spent time with people from Argentina, Denmark, Hong Kong, Isreal, Germany, Australia, Spain....cool, huh? Then it was just a 23 hour bus ride sitting DIRECTLY in front of the bathrooms (sooo stinky) and we were home. I actually can’t complain though, I managed to sleep 18 of the 23 hours, not bad, eh? Ha.

Traveling with Héctor was really fun. I learned he has a lot of patience and can deal well with a crabby Laura…which tends to happen in the mornings or when I’m hungry. And I learned that he is like a 7 year old child when it comes to food and found myself picking off the onions of his pizza for him, haha.

here are a few photos, just for fun :)

Héctor and I at Chichen-Itzá. I´m not sure how we managed it, but it totally looks like we are the only people here...sooo not even true.

Cancun...beatiful Caribbean.

Elena, Tina, Héctor and I at the ruins in Tulúm.

Photo shoot on the beach in Tulúm, haha.

my life.

LOVING IT. I think I could leave my blog post at that and you would get the picture of how I’m feeling right about now…but just for the hell of it I’ll divulge a few more details.

Right now I find myself at the beginning of a 2 week long school break…where the premise is Semana Santa (holy week), but the practiced idea is more Spring Break :) My plans involve a trip that brings me in a loop around the Yucatán—it looks something like: Mérida, Chichen-Itza, Playa del Carmen, and Tulum. I’m really excited! I’m going the first week with my boyfriend Héctor and then for week two we are meeting up with Elena.

Ok, enough about the future, time for a little bit about the past. Many weeks ago now…like 3 or 4 (?!) I hiked a mountain called Cofre de Perote, just outside of Xalapa with 5 friends. It was fun; it had been a long time since I’d gone on a good, solid hike…7 hours in total, ha. We made it a little harder on ourselves because we decided to skip out on the provided switchback trail and head, more or less, straight up. I think it’s good we did this hike then because it just keeps getting hotter and hotter here…this past week it’s been hovering around 90 degrees, sometimes less, mostly a little more. Sidenote: people keep telling me Mérida will be at least 40* Celsius…104* Fahrenheit… so if I don’t return, I’m definitely melted somewhere on the sidewalk…

The next weekend Héctor, Elena, Jacob, Copi and I planned a trip to Catemaco, where Héctor’s family has a house/cabin. The place is absolutely precious. The landscape is gorgeous hilly green-ness mixed with a little jungle and a big lake… not to mention that the atmosphere of the actual cabin itself, it reminds me a lot of my own, it’s a place to spend time with friends and family, to relax, enjoy, reflect…hands down one of my favorite places in México. So back to the trip…the 5 of us quickly turned into a group of 14 (somehow the cabin has beds for 15—sound familiar ?! I told you it was like my cabin!) the weekend was amazing. We went swimming in the lake, enjoyed a couple beers, and had a dance party on Friday night. Saturday we went to a neighboring town and had a guided tour of a little jungle area, went on a boat ride to see an island with ugly monkeys, and had a bbq at the cabin. Sun we left and stopped at a waterfall on our way out of town. All in all a great weeked :)

The next weekend I stayed in Xalapa, relaxing and hanging out with friends. We played a little ultimate Frisbee and drank a few mojitos.

On to the good stuff…the boyfriend…Héctor and I met my first weekend here, but due to my inability to type numbers into my phone, didn’t hang out until a few weeks after that. Since then things have progressed and we hang out everyday, and I love it. Sometimes we just walk around the park eating ice cream, other times we are having coffee with Nominjin, a Mongolian pop singer (Héctor accompanied her with guitar here in Xalapa for a performance in a conference), or sometimes he even talks me into going to his marketing class with him, haha.

Last weekend I went back to Catemaco with Héctor, but this time with his mom, aunt and 4 of the aunt’s friends. It was another great experience, though really different from the first. We took out the boat and the jet ski, sat around and listened to stories from the friends (who, by the way, smoke like chimneys and aren’t too bad for a glass of tequila or 4…ha, it was fun), enjoyed a private concert compliments of Héctor, stargazed…another really solid weekend.

I returned from that weekend back to a reality check at school… I had 2 tests, a paper, and a presentation waiting for me…but I finished them all and now its vacation time, I leave tomorrow afternoon, Yucatan bound! I’m going to go pack my backpack right now (no worries mom, I’m packing LOTS of sunscreen) !

Much love and I hope this finds everyone doing well!