Project 365: Day 68

The hot sauce I snuck back into the country. We only brought carry-on bags, so I stuck the hot sauce in my bag with my shampoo and such. It's more than 3oz though, so my bag got flagged going through American security. The security guard looked at it, and looked at me, and said "It's good." And thus I was able to get my hot sauce! I put it on my dinner tonight and it was oh-so spicey and oh-so delicious!

mexico, coming soon

I'm too tired to deal with real blog posts now. But! Photos are up on facebook if you want to look there. If not, come back tomorrow and there should be more photos for you.
To whet your appetite:

Project 365: Day 67

This is my mosquito eaten leg. They devoured me! Damn Mexican mosquitos. So itchy! I woke up the last few nights I woke up in the middle of the night because it itched so badly. It's getting better because a doctor told me to start taking much stronger meds for them.

Project 365: Day 66

Waiting in the Cancun bus station for our bus to the airport. Near the beginning of a very long day of travel after an amazing trip.

Project 365: Day 65

So, when you think of Cancun, this is what you think of. The beach was amazing! The water is the most incredible blue-- really, I thought all of the photos were enhanced or something. But no, it's just that color. The sand was soft and white, and the surf was pretty intense (by my standards, at least). And the flags were red, which meant that technically we shouldn't have been swimming at all. And really, "swimming" isn't quite right. We waded out into the water and played in the waves. The surf was full of sand and seaweed, and it snuck into hair and swimsuits and such. (Ask AJ about a great quote from that one. hehe.)

After we got tired of fighting the waves, we decided to take a walk along the beach. So pretty, but covered in kind of horrible looking resorts. (We were on a public beach, with the rest of the non-resort crowd. It was nice to be on a beach in Mexico with Mexicans.) We decided to try to find some Mayan ruins that I'd read about, but we ended up on the bus again. At a whopping $7.50 mxn (~$0.60), it was a great way to get around the city.

When we got to El Rey (the site), it was closed. We were about to go try to find the bus back when a guy sitting outside started talking to AJ in Spanish. I'm not sure exactly what he said, but he had the keys and led us into the site via a crazy underground passage. We got in, and he pointed at the ticket booth, and asked us for the admission fee. Since it was about $3 each, we gave it to him, and he let us in.

 (That's AJ pointing to an iguana, if you can't tell. They're pretty good at hiding in the scrub, but they were scurrying everywhere on Cancun island.) We had the site completely to ourselves, except for the bajillions of iguanas that have burrowed into every concievable nook and cranny at the site.

Pretty great, even if somewhat dubious. Of course, the site was nestled into the corner of a resort and a big, wild looking golf-course. It's not that often you get to spend some time basically alone with buildings that are nearly 1,000 years old. It was a neat way to spend the evening of our last night in Mexico!

Project 365: Day 64

Naturally, on the 4th of July, what could be more patriotic than visiting ancient Mayan ruins? We sojourned from Merida to Chichen Itza on a second class bus, which was amazing (in hindsight, if not so much when we were on it). Eventually, we made our way back to Cancun to stay the night there.

 

Here we are standing in front of El Castillo, or more properly, the temple of Kukulkan. 

  

And the neat structure at the end of the ball court at Chichen Itza. The court is the largest so far discovered, and it is indeed huge! I have absolutely no idea how anyone could manage to play anything, let alone anything like the descriptions thus far offered for the ancient Mayan game, on a field that huge, especially without shade and in the heat. 

  

We also visited (but alas, did not swim in) the sacred cenote, or sinkhole. The huge sinkholes in the local limestone often hold a lot of fresh water. The Mayans threw offerings to the gods into this one, though not into all cenotes. 

 

This picture was taken before the others, but I felt it belonged down here. I took it from our second class bus between Merida and Chichen Itza. The bus was cheap, but it took forever since we stopped in every village, crossroad, and plenty of times where we saw only scrubby trees. I really liked this one, though, because it combines several of my favorite aspects: the gorgeous trees with bright red flowers, the great colors of the houses, and the well-made shrine to the Virgin outside.

Project 365: Day 63

This photo is a bit more of a candid than it was supposed to be... taken by a local guy handing out coupons for the restaurant in the hotel in the background. We spent Friday wandering around Merida, shopping and sightseeing and meeting interesting people. We met a guy who instructed me on Panama hats, then "guided" us to the "right shop" where another guy told us how they were made and I ended up buying one. It remains unclear to me if I got ripped off.
Eventually, we went the very same restaurant (in the background) for dinner. It was our first taste of the amazing Yucatan cuisine, and we met a Mexican guy named Jean-Luc (yeah... his mother is Italian, he said, as if that made it all obvious). He ended up sitting through most of dinner with us, giving us further pointers on what to see and do and buy, and telling us stories. By far the best was when he began to describe his encounters with aliens. He spoke English well, but sometimes he got excited and slipped back into Spanish-- one such (amazing) moment included a full, leaping pantomime of one very strange encounter with aliens/electricity(?) on light poles in Merida. He advised us to look it up-- he reported it to CNN, the FBI, etc, and best of all, there is a video on YouTube. Not very intelligible, but it does make his jumping around the restaurant make a bit more sense. The video.

More of central Merida. That's a neat, old cathedral. Not the oldest in the Americas, though-- that's a few blocks away.

This one. It's very imposing, and not very pretty. It's built out of the ruins of the Mayan city that stood on the site before the Spanish arrived. But it is old! Jean-Luc informed us that it's a very rich church, because it's old. All the high-society folk get married there, apparently.

Project 365: Day 62

 

AJ and I arrived safely in Cancun, and took the first of many such photos. We ate, and then bought our first bus tickets to get to Merida. Merida is about 4 hours away from Cancun by road-- it's the largest city in the Yucatan, with a population of nearly a million people. It's also the capital of Yucatan state, and not very touristy. 

Here's a map, if you're curious! 

 

And the main square of Merida, as we walked toward our hotel late Thursday evening.

Project 365: Day 60 (part II)

It's been counting down the days until Mexico!

Project 365: Day 60 (filler picture!)

Ok, readers. This picture is a cop-out. I know that. See, what really happened is this: The picture I'd been intending for today has been in my mind for over a week. It's at work, on my desk. It's fitting, if not compositionally striking. So, I brought my camera to work, as I bring it everywhere. But the battery died. So I brought it home at lunch, changed the batteries, and went back to work leaving the working camera on my desk. Oops! Anyway, I will get this picture, though it will not be taken today. Instead, I give you everything I'm taking with me to Mexico.

Which gives me a great segway to this-- I'm going to Mexico! I'm not taking my old crappy camera with me, so I'll be snapping away on AJ's camera. This means that you should not expect any more posts until Tuesday, July 7 at the very earliest, and perhaps later. And Mexico pictures may be somewhat delayed by the minor fact that they'll be on AJ's camera, and headed to Ithaca and not New Haven after we head back stateside. But! The pictures will be great, I promise!