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Teepee
Allan - 10/03/04
This mail is coming sooner than expected because I have reached
the end of Mexico sooner than expected and will be crossing into
Belize tomorrow. The reasons are two-fold, firstly the Yucatan
peninsular bored me a little and was not the highlight of Mexico
I anticipated, though some parts were nice, and therefore I cut
my time at some places and missed others entirely, and secondly
Mexico was just getting more and more expensive and I realised I
had to make a break for the border.
So after Palenque I took the bus to Campeche. I was wholly
unimpressed with Campeche, it was just like any other Mexican
town/city with a cathedral and town square but they weren't as
nice as many others. The main attraction that draws visitors to
Campeche is the city walls and bulwarks. This is OK but I have
lived in a city with walls and bulwarks most of my life and
don't intend to pay good money to see any, Mexican or otherwise.
Also I had spent a couple of hours walking 3.5km out of town to
a youth hostel in the midday sun only to find it was
"full" I couldn't see anyone in sight but it was one
of those hostels set in schools for sports teams so maybe the
owner was trying to save me. Anyway I was in a bad mood so I got
an incredibly cheap and nasty hotel for one night, walked around
the town for an hour or so, indulged in the local specialty, pan
de calzon - dogfish (a kind of shark) in tortillas with mole
(sauce).
The next day I fled early on and rode a local bus to Merida. I
had heard lots of good things about Merida, that it was a lovely
colonial town in the heart of the Yucatan, blah, blah, blah. It
was hot dusty and full of traffic. The zocalo (square) was OK as
long as you ignore the honking, bouncing trucks using it as a
rat-run through town. The surrounding urban sprawl (similar to
Athens or Macau) can only be described as a smog-donut. I had a
wander around and bought a hammock for 100 pesos (about 5
pounds) as I had heard that the cheapest places to sleep in
Tulum required your own hammock (this proved untrue and now I
have to carry a hammock around, its not too bad its only about a
foot by 4 inches rolled up and about 3 pounds in weight). I did
try some good Yucatan foods in Merida so all was not lost.
One positive moment in Merida came at the hostel where I started
talking to this English couple who had been on the bus to
Campeche a couple of days before and it turned out that the guy,
Luke, used to live with my ex in University. I am not sure what
made me speak to them but I think it was divine intervention,
similar to in Vietnam last year when something made me
walk off the beach when Brendan from ebookers was walking by!
Feeling slightly more optimistic I took the bus to Valladolid.
This was everything Merida was supposed to be. A quiet little
town, no industrial mess, no traffic and not as many tourists.
The hostel was great and I met some really friendly people
(hello James and Claire) and there is quite a lot to see in the
surrounding area. The only real reason I had come to Valladolid
was to meet up with my friend Willard who was moving in. Alas we
did not figure for the Mexico involvement and ended up missing
each other by a day or two which was disappointing.
The main trip from Valladolid is to Chichen Itza, the daddy of
the Mayan temples. I got there early to avoid the Cancun
daytrippers in their hordes but unfortunately it was the hardest
to infiltrate without paying so by the time I had spent 2 hours
scrambling through dense forest the place was teeming. At one
point a chopper came over the forest and I thought I was a goner
but I dived for cover in the trees and remained undetected.
Chichen Itza was slightly disappointing (I was glad to have
avoided the 88 pesos entrance fee, double that of the other
sights) as it is quite spread out and as a result you cannot get
an image of how it worked in the Mayan age. The Castille is
still pretty awe-inspiring though.
After a heavy night on the Superior cervezas the only thing the
next day was to walk out to the cenotes, 7km out of town. These
are limestone sinkholes, full of turquoise water that, after you
have marveled at the view, you can swim in. These were a
definite highlight and I was lucky enough to get the second
cenote all to myself.
Cenotes near Valladolid
All good things come to an end
though and after three nights I decided to move on. I had to
make a brief one-night stop in Cancun (its Spring Break in the
US so Cancun is awash with college kids, you can understand why
I didn't want to hang around) because I wanted to stock up on
some books. There was a bookstore in Old Cancun, the town just
inland that apparently used to be really nice, but they didn't
have what I wanted (the only English books they had were the
usual formula shite - Grisham, Clancy, you know the ones) but no
matter there is one down along the hotel strip. 13 kms later
(its at the other end of the strip) and I have passed the groups
of drunk teenagers (at about 2:00 pm), tattoo parlours,
McDonalds, etc and got to the plaza where the bookstore is
supposed to be. Guess what? They have closed the second floor
for refurbishments. I went to Cancun for nothing! To cheer
myself up I had an All-You-Can-Eat buffet for dinner. I hadn't
seen any of the food in Mexico that the Swiss Cottage or Belsize
Park All-You-Can-Eat Mexicans used to have so I thought
they were fake, until here, I think in Mexico there are specific
foods (those that are most slop-like) that are only used for
AYCE´s. (A note for Messrs English and Ham-Howes - I haven´t
seen Beef Durango anywhere and last time I was in Chiquitos it
was off the menu there too!)
The next day I went down to Tulum along the coast. There are
ruins actually on the coastline that aren't spectacular but the
view is amazing. The cheapest place I could find to stay was a
Teepee for 100 pesos. It was one of those places where you write
down what you eat and drink and pay at the end (a ploy you see
in backpacker places to trick you to spend more!). So for the
next two days I was known as ´Teepee Allan´, a moniker I
kind-of like. Getting into the ruins was pretty easy, I just
climbed along the rocks and hopped over the wall into a crowd of
bemused Germans. Tulum was even more packed than Chichen Itza,
again I had left early but I got enticed by fruit, yoghurt and
muesli enroute! There were groups of loud, fat Americans,
ridiculous looking Germans, Dutch and French (surely the French
are the only nationality that still wear those stupid
colonial-style Toppee hats, popular only in Somerset maugham
stories?), swarms of the ant-like Japanese and Koreans that run
around in their little groups, all take the same picture and
then scurry to the next site. Of course there are also the
machismo Spanish and Italians with their lycra, slick-back hair,
chests out and their arm-candy. I have missed out the
Brits, luckily there weren't too many Union Jack tee-shirts,
cries of "I like it hot, but not this hot, its
sticky", or groups fighting! There was a prevalence of
video cameras. What are these people filming? When do they watch
them? I have become so fascinated I have been trying to get in
the background making rude gestures, can you imagine the
commotion at the home video parties!
Ruins of Tulum on the Caribbean Sea
Running out of money I have
now come down to Chetumal on the border with Belize. After
walking through a fairly shaky part of town (guys went past
shouting ´fuck you, fuck you´) in their car. Also I am staying
in one of those Youth Hostels on sports grounds full of school
kids. I am not anticipating much sleep tonight!
Although I have enjoyed Mexico and there is a list of places I
still want to go, it suffers from the same problem as Thailand.
I like Thailand as well but neither Mexico nor Thailand have had
the same impact on me as say India or Myanmar, Vietnam or Sri
Lanka. I think it is due to the homogeneity of both Thailand and
Mexico brought about by globalisation and the spread of
Americanisation. Mexico because of its proximity and Thailand
because of its position as a travel and tourism hub in South
East Asia. Of course hand in hand with this come the effect that
tourism and foreign intervention have on the locals and their
attitude to visitors. This diluted culture numbs the cultural
impact that these countries have on the tourist. I liked
Thailand but I probably preferred Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos as
well as Vietnam and Myanmar to it. Of course Malaysia suffers in
the same way but the strong culture of the Malaya and the
Islamic interest have created a more balanced culture.
Oh well, I am off to Belize tomorrow. Singular outpost of the
British Empire in Latin America. For this we can thank the
British pirates (and not those stupid Hollywood ones that turn
into ghosts) as they used the protection of the reef (2nd
largest in the world), the weak-ass Spaniards didn't dare brave
it, as a base whilst they plundered all along the Spanish Main.
"We'll set sail again, we're heading for the Spanish
Main". |
