Mexico & Belize 2022

Hola Guadalajara. Olé! Tequila! 

Now and again something inside the grey-white cloud flickers like a fluorescent lamp behind a curtain, then a streak of lightning shoots sideways across the sky. A vertical bolt flashes directly to the ground. With eastward movement and night time approaching, there is a point where, from the aeroplane window, the orange sunset is reflected in clouds, yet the darkness of dusk is clearly visible further east beyond the colour. As we near Guadalajara, the thunder storm, at roughly the same altitude as the plane, just adds to this unusual scene.

A few delays en route means a late arrival, so it’s morning before we get our first chance to explore Guadalajara, reputed to be the home of most of the things which we all consider to be typically Mexican. Out in the sun drenched city morning, those images are indeed very clear, the low slung maximum two storey buildings, bright colours of every hue, mariachi musicians in the streets, the smell of food and the strains of music filling every corner.

But for every manifest of Mexican imagery there is a sizeable chunk of Spanish colonial influence, and the result is intensely pleasing on the eye. And the ear, come to that. Long straight streets lead to wide leafy plazas where glinting water cascades from ornate fountains, imposingly grand twin-towered churches look down on virtually every square, grand palaces stand proudly at the end of the princely boulevards.

Yes, the Spanish influence is as plain as the Mexican culture: indeed a statue of the symbol of Madrid stands tall in a main street, while the mix of architectural styles is extremely attractive. There is, too, a certain pace about Guadalajara, busy but not manic, bustling but not hurried. Pedestrianised streets stretch between the cathedral at one end of the city centre and the Instituto Cabanas at the other, both beautiful majestic buildings, though Guadalajara is full of other buildings equally worthy of those adjectives.

There’s a fair bit of unusual sculpture work around too….

Twice nightly the cathedral facade changes into something rather spectacular, forming the backdrop to a terrific music and light show taking us through the history of Guadalajara, including amongst other things, occupation by the Spanish, construction of the cathedral itself, and ongoing friendship with Madrid. It’s a great show with spectacular animated graphics set to music which is rather akin to Jean-Michel Jarre or Tangerine Dream but with a bit more bass pedal and a bit more drama.

Music really is everywhere, mariachi groups and other buskers in the streets, music in a variety of Latin styles issuing from shops and bars – you don’t walk through Guadalajara, you jig. The mariachi groups are, of course, dressed fittingly in traditional costume, just to add further to the vibe.

Lurking in the list of Guadalajara’s speciality foods is “tortas ahogada”, which translates as “drowned sandwich”, which we sample in the energetic and lively foodhall at the Mercardo San Juan de Dios, the city’s giant covered market. It’s basically a pork salad sandwich, but what it is drowned in is…chilli-tomato sauce. Once we’ve worked out how to pick it up, it’s delicious!

Jose Clemente Orozco is a favourite son of the Jalisco region in which Guadalajara sits. Orozco (1883-1949) is a daddy of muralist art, commissioned to decorate official buildings and blank walls long before the likes of Banksy were plying their trade. The Instituto Cabanas houses an absorbing museum demonstrating his style and methods, a talent where mathematics and geometry meet inspiration and creativity.

Both the Cabanas building and the Palacio Gobierno still sport the fabulous, and huge, works which Orozco was commissioned to create, mostly depicting the histories of Mexico, Jalisco and Guadalajara. These works are utterly stunning, beautifully created and preserved – and far too big to capture completely in a single photograph. 

And so to another Mexican institution which we haven’t yet mentioned….tequila. With the actual town of Tequila, the very origin of the definitive Mexican tipple, a short distance from Guadalajara, it would be irresponsible of us to fail to visit.

As we near the heart of tequila country in the tour minibus, the agave plant from which the tequila is made is the only crop out in the fields, the whole area for miles around submerged in the smokey blue-green of its pointed leaves. Tequila (the town) is a UNESCO designated “magical town” – we had no idea UNESCO had such an accolade.

It is indeed a charming little town, but is completely consumed by the tequila theme and by the tour groups like ours which clearly swamp the place every single day. Our tour is so much fun, taking in two distilleries and a cantarito, a couple of hours spare time to wander the town and grab lunch, and enough tequila to sink a ship. We can’t give much indication as to the volume we consume, but we do know that we tasted 12 different varieties before the memory banks started to malfunction as the tequila in its various forms started to take the place of blood in our veins.

And it’s on this tour that we meet Arturo and Clara from northern Mexico, holidaying in Guadalajara for a week and, like us, immersing themselves in “tequila day”. The four of us continue the theme of the day, supping Mexican beers in a live music bar until suddenly it’s past midnight and the day’s indulgence is catching up with us all.

Like just about every Latin American, Arturo and Clara are expert dancers, and we spend a good part of the evening taking impromptu salsa (and other) lessons between the tables. Michaela learns quickly but my two left feet and lack of rhythm leave Clara just a little bit exasperated despite her very best efforts and admirable patience.

We bid farewell to our new friends with Clara barefoot in the street having broken her shoe at some point and subsequently dumping them in a rubbish bin.

Arturo hugs Michaela, then shakes my hand warmly.

“You don’t look 65”, he says, “but your hair does”.

Mexico City: CDMX #1 

It’s fascinating how the sounds of a city can be a part of defining its character, it can be a charm or a challenge, a boon or a burden. Earlier this year we were in Cairo, where the constant ear battering of traffic noise and raised voices soon becomes tiresome. Mexico City, in contrast, though just as loud and just as constant, has a soundtrack which is for the most part one of carnival and music.

Chatter and laughter fills the streets, music drifts upward from every corner. It’s the sound of fiesta rather than frustration, joy rather than jams, an immediately exciting and enticing environment where the wall of sound is matched in intensity only by the riot of colour. Underpinning it all is the continuous rhythmic drumbeat of the tribal dance troupes down on the streets, whirling barefoot amongst the appreciative onlookers.

So here we are in one of the largest cities in the world, the largest in North America, the second largest in the western world (all on certain parameters), and the oldest capital city in the Americas, looking out from our room directly above the zocalo with magnificent views of the cathedral and the presidential palace. 

It doesn’t take us long to get a feeling for the size of CDMX, as they like to call it. Magnificent palaces, the largest cathedral in the Americas, huge squares, vibrant streets, but even the ordinary streets are grand – as unceasingly grand as, say, London or Paris, every turn bringing something else to marvel at. Walking the streets of Mexico City is simply a succession of wow moments.

As if that’s not enough, we’re 7,350ft (1.39 miles) above sea level, the air is thin up here and the temperature is a few ratchets down the scale, particularly after sundown. Mountains and volcanoes loom around the city on every side, blurred by the renowned haze of pollution which dogs the whole area. Summer brings rain here too – though it comes in relatively short heavy showers rather than anything constant. We view our first such torrential downpour from our balcony, amused by the scattering of the crowds and the power of the rain. It’s not long before we get our first taste of it and we’re running for cover too, you don’t hang around when the first spots fall here, you get moving.

Standing in the zocalo, one of the largest squares in the world, flanked on every side by majestic buildings, is fabulous: the gigantic cathedral ahead, the Palacio Nacional, home of Il Presidente, to our right, the majestic city hall behind us. Inside the cavernous cathedral, with its gleaming solid gold altar, a Sunday service is in progress, the beautiful choral songs bringing goosebumps to our flesh as we file quietly through behind the congregation.

Outside the cathedral the tribal dancing continues, the throbbing drumbeats echoing off the palace and cathedral walls. Yet beneath our feet is another story, a centuries old story which took a major twist as recently as 1978, a tale of history, legends and wanton destruction.

When the Spanish first arrived on these shores and set about creating the “nueva España”, they did so with a taste for obliteration. Hernan Cortes, working his way across country from Veracruz, razed any Aztec settlement which stood between him and the new vision, successfully destroying city after city in order to impose Spanish rule. The sacred Aztec city of Tenochtitlan disappeared beneath what is now the centre of Mexico City.

If anything, Tenochtitlan was more than sacred – to the Aztec race in that pre-hispanic period, this was, literally, the centre of the universe, home of temples to the Gods. It was on this very spot where, according to legend, a wandering Aztec tribe witnessed an eagle perched on a cactus, a snake in its beak, the very sign they had been seeking as their instruction to build a major city. That cactus-eagle-snake emblem is still the symbol of Mexico today – take a look at the national flag.

But Cortes rampaged through it all, destroyed the history, and buried everything beneath “nueva España”. In 1978, Government electricity workers laying new cables beneath the zocalo came across a statue of an Aztec goddess, beginning the process of uncovering part of the ancient city which sits beneath all the modern day activity. Some colonial buildings were then dismantled, and what is now Templo Mayor was unearthed: a large and enthralling section of the remnants of Tenochtitlan, alongside a fascinating museum housing a great number of artefacts recovered during the excavation.

The rest of Tenochtitlan still lurks somewhere beneath the zocalo, and beneath the cathedral and beneath the presidential palace, and will in all probability remain down there.

All around the city, the majestic buildings of CDMX confuse the eye with crazy angular distortions. Churches, palaces, towers, all lean at a death defying angle – that tower in Pisa has got nothing on these guys. The city, truly, is sinking. Built on unstable ground in the first place and suffering the effects of the water demands of a population of over 20 million for decades, subsidence is a major issue. The locals, though, seem amused by it all and will merrily point out the precariously positioned structure teetering above your head. Even the lopsided cathedral hasn’t been spared.

Away from the centro historico, the Basilica Guadaloupe is a further extreme example, with its leaning towers, sloping floors and chandeliers whose support cables hang on a straight vertical which only serves to enhance that nothing else is upright. Next door to this majestic Basilica is the new version, a source of great pride for locals but for us it feels a bit like a consecrated conference hall, heathens that we obviously are.

Study the sinking effect in these two photos…

This city of “biggest-highest-most” (for instance, the university is the biggest in Latin America with 330,000 students), is also home to one of the world’s biggest and most iconic football stadiums, the Estadio Azteca or Aztec Stadium, site of both the 1970 and 1986 World Cup finals. I try not to be too upset on our tour of the stadium when we are greeted with a giant graphic of Maradona’s goal against England in the ‘86 tournament (no, not the “Hand of God”, the other one). Yep, that happened here – and so did our first sight of the Mexican wave, remember seeing that for the first time?

There are so many wonderful sights here that it’s impossible to do anything like justice to it all in just five days. As well as the magnificent buildings, green parks with striking statuary decorate the city, every spare corner houses music of some kind – walk along Madero and there’s something going on every hundred yards or so. It might be a rock band, a soloist, a folk singer, mountain music or even opera – but, whatever, we are continually entertained and amused.

Madero is a pedestrianised thoroughfare, so busy during the day that it looks a bit like London’s Oxford Street from above – which makes it even funnier to see the crowds running for cover when the first spots of the next downpour start to fall.

It’s impossible to avoid being swept up by this city of verve and colour – the days race by as we try to take in as much as possible. Being in Mexico City is a bit like being on a carousel which never stops.

Too much in fact to embed in just one post, more to follow in our next one.

Mexico City: CDMX #2

Delicious smells from the city’s bakeries fill the air before we’re properly awake. Another day dawns and it’s once again time to climb on to the speeding merry-go-round which is Mexico City, there’s still so much more to see and do.

Hernan Cortes and his cohorts may have taken the 16th century equivalent of a bulldozer to ancient history, but at least the period of Spanish occupation saw the construction of a majestic and beautiful city in its place; you only have to see the Palacio de Belles Artes, the Casa Ajuelos, the churches, even the Post Office, to love the grand architecture of this giant city. Yes, even the Post Office is beautiful – surely one of the most elegant mail buildings in the world, and rather pleasingly it still serves its original purpose to this day.

Like Guadalajara, Mexico City has its centre for mariachi music, in Plaza Garibaldi, where dozens of costumed musicians entertain diners, drinkers and dancers with their particular brand of joyous music. Touristy it may be, but there are plenty of locals here singing along with every word, and the atmosphere is exciting, if a little chaotic with several bands all playing at the same time.

It’s in Garibaldi that we try the ancient Aztec drink of pulque, fermented from the maguey cactus, which feels rather primitive as alcoholic drinks go – the fermentation still fizzing on the tongue and the viscosity somewhere just short of the level of shower gel.

With so much to see in this “city that has everything” according to its own tag line, we feel a little reluctant to embark on even a single excursion out of town, but the opportunity to see Teotihuacan is too good to miss. Once an integral part of Mesoamerica’s greatest city, the remaining site containing the Piramide del Sol and Piramide de la Luna, is mightily impressive and very reminiscent of the site at Monte Alban which we visited a few years ago.

These aren’t true pyramids, having a flat top which originally sported major temples, and in fact there is now some dispute over whether they were indeed dedicated to sun and moon Gods or rather the Gods of rain and water, but viewing these hefty ancient constructions is absorbing, particularly when we consider just what a small section of the giant ancient city this site was.

Archeological studies have established that the buildings of this mighty city were stone built, then covered with adobe and decorated with colourings extracted from plants and insects, including cochineal. In just a few precious places this paintwork has been preserved.

The Aztec tribes were masters of astronomy, creating what is still one of the most accurate calendars ever created by mankind. Much of their study of the sun’s movements was accomplished by using pieces of the volcanic rock obsidian to filter the sun’s rays and make direct observation possible. From this they created the Aztec calendar, facilitating seasonal farming, predictions of daylight hours as well as bringing order to their community.

If Mexico the country is colourful, then Mexico the city takes it to another level. And in a city and country of such rich hues, an artisan market hawking traditional items from all areas is always going to be vivid and radiant. So it is with Cuidadella Market, quite possibly the most vibrantly colourful market we’ve ever wandered through. We’re going to need an extra backpack at this rate, such is the temptation to buy.

A word about Mexico City’s metro system, part of its rather excellent and seriously cheap public transport network. The system is extremely easy to follow thanks to something rather enduring in its design: all lines are colour coded (not unusual) but each of the 100+ stations is identified by a graphic as well as a name. This simple graphic is unrelated to the station name, and may for instance be an apple, or a horse, or an archway. The reason? Illiteracy rates were high when the metro system was built, and the whole network is designed to be easily used by those unable to read. How imaginative.

It’s on that metro system and the “tren ligere” (light railway) that we make our way out to the suburb of Xochimilco south of the centre. Here, in an area nicknamed Mexico’s Venice, a series of canals beneath overhanging trees wend their way around raised plots of land and waterfront houses.

Xochimilco was created by the Aztecs, the raised ground between the waterways was the highly fertile ground on which the ancient tribes grew large quantities of the fruit and vegetables so necessary to feed the population of a major city. Nowadays, it has become a tourist attraction for very different reasons, with literally dozens of brightly painted, multi-coloured gondolas ferrying visitors up and down the canals.

Misguidedly, we think we are in for a peaceful boat ride as a change from the endless verve of the city – but the markedly different reality is that Xochimilco is a little piece of tourist madness. Canals are virtually gridlocked by the boats, some in full party swing, interspersed with boatloads of mariachi musicians belting out numbers, floating shops selling souvenir tat, or selling beer, michelada and pulque, the gondoliers playing a game of waterborne bumper cars rather than avoiding collision. It’s a cacophonous mayhem on this out of season Wednesday afternoon, goodness knows what it’s like when it’s busy.

Five days definitely isn’t enough to do justice to Mexico City. How many more days than five one could spend inside this never ending fiesta of a city with its drumbeats, colour, verve and life, is another question completely. It’s as full on as it gets here.

Whatever, after five days, it’s time for us, at least, to move on. But then again maybe there’s just time for a few more cervezas and a couple of tacos before we go….

Veracruz & Boca del Rio: Baking Sun & Flash Floods 

The very word Veracruz conjures up certain visions – romantic, exotic, dynamic – although maybe I’m swayed a bit by the fact that there’s a Santana song bearing the city’s name as its title which is all about falling in love whilst within the city’s conducive ocean setting. Consequently we venture there with a great sense of anticipation, eager to see it for ourselves. As it happens, we are about to be underwhelmed, and the reality is that Veracruz doesn’t quite meet those expectations.

A near 6-hour bus journey from Mexico City sounds like it could be a bit of a trial but the ADO bus is extremely comfortable and safe and the time passes quickly. Our route to Veracruz on the Caribbean coast takes us past acres of joshua trees, up over the Sierra Madre mountains, through lush green agricultural lands and eventually down into the sunshine by the sea.

Our new base, a private airbnb house close to the seafront, is actually closer to the town of Boca del Rio, just down the coast from Veracruz itself. The sunshine which greets our arrival glints in the large puddles in the roadways, evidence of the typically hot and wet summer weather we can expect here. Morning brings further proof in very real terms: tropical rain lashes down, the sea and the sky turn an angry shade of grey, vivid lightning flashes every few seconds and the crashing thunder rattles the window frames of the house.

Actually the storm is well timed, for two reasons. One, this is Day 45 of this trip, and a single day at my daughter’s house near LA has been our only rest from activities in all those weeks. We need a little chill time. Two, Boca del Rio is as far as our forward planning has taken us so far, so it’s time to get the maps out and start plotting, and booking, where we go next on this adventure.

We’ve mentioned several times before that we tend to get lucky on our travels, and to find that we have arrived here right in the middle of Boca del Rio’s Santa Ana celebrations, one of the town’s two major annual fiestas, is yet another stroke of fortune. On a lesser scale, so is the fact that the collectivo buses stop right outside the house, making sorties to both Boca and Veracruz as easy as pie and about 40p each per ride.

Friday night at the fiesta in Boca del Rio is more than a little crazy; the whole town seems to be squeezed into the modest square to see tonight’s main attraction, a band known as Banda El Recodo. If, like us, this name means nothing to you, then Google them – they are very big and much loved over here. The atmosphere is fanatical and sweaty, the build up palpable, the stage huge, the light show impressive, but the music is (sorry Mexico) so messy to our ears that it’s barely listenable. But the packed crowd sing along with every number, bay for more, love every moment. It’s something approaching hero worship down here in this heaving sweaty mass of people. Fabulous atmosphere though and a large slice of serendipity for us to be here for this experience.

Boca del Rio – literally, “mouth of the river” – is the point where the hefty Jalapa River empties through the mangroves into the Gulf Of Mexico, giving the little town both a riverside and a seafront, although you couldn’t really ever describe Boca as spectacular despite this.

So back to Veracruz, not so much the romantic setting of that Santana song but more an ordinary, slightly gritty port town. Wait a minute though – the seafront boulevard with its excellent selection of seafood restaurants is great, as is the seafood itself which is very worthy of its reputation for high quality. Veracruz’s scaled down zocalo is certainly extremely pretty, but the leafy square with its dainty fountain is an oasis in an otherwise rather ordinary concrete jungle. The seafront is great, but basically there aren’t too many reasons to venture into the city.

The reason is a mixture of history and industry. The port here was the original entry point for the Spanish, it was from here that Cortes rampaged across the country establishing the nueva España, and thus Veracruz became the first of Mexico’s European influenced cities. Subsequently sacked and raided by pirates, looters, Europeans, Americans and even Francis Drake (not in that order!), Veracruz was plundered to the point where most of its architectural treasures were destroyed, with the exception of just a handful of gems clustered mostly around the zocalo and the port.

Since Mexican independence, Veracruz has grown as an industrial port, and now the harbour end of town is dominated by silos, derricks and oil rigs, whilst a long line of waiting freight ships is forever silhouetted towards the horizon. Like most port cities, there is something of an earthy element here which underlies the ubiquitous lively and colourful Mexican character.

This whole stretch of coast from the docks, through the city and along to Boca del Rio, and indeed beyond the river mouth, is beach territory. These aren’t the glorious golden beaches of elsewhere in Mexico, but are certainly nice enough and are clearly a joy for the locals who flock to the shoreline and cram the beaches at every opportunity, bringing their inflatables, their packed lunches and their plastic jugs of michelada with them.

Summer, as we mentioned, means rain – so much so that “summer” means “off season” here. There seems to be an ongoing battle between hot sun, heavy cloud and torrential rain, with the one constant of cloying, sapping humidity. In fact, we get wet from that far more often than we do from the rain. There’s something else in the air too: some kind of invisible insect which, despite evading our sight, has managed to feast on Michaela’s lower legs as if they are a new delicacy. Clearly my flesh doesn’t have the same appeal: it’s about 20-0 in bite marks by the time we get help from the pharmacy.

It’s clear that we are in culturally different territory here from the other parts of Mexico, with Afro-Caribbean and Cuban influences playing a role in everything from personal appearance (even the hats are different) to cuisine. The sellers on the beach and in the zocalo are just as likely to offer you a boxful of fat cigars as they are sunglasses or an ice cream.

The music and dancing is different here in Veracruz state too. Gone are the salsa and mariachi of the previous two cities, replaced by the time honoured Veracruz tradition of “jarocho” music and “danzon” dancing, featuring beautiful costumes and a high tempo foot stomping style of dance which is absolutely enthralling to watch. Like with flamenco dancing, the eye contact between male and female participants is unmissably sensual.

Talking of music, the bell tower in the zocalo chimes every hour, as you would expect. What you wouldn’t expect though is that it chimes the slowest version of “La Bamba” you will ever hear – La Bamba, seriously?!

Our stretch of coast here is so moody. In the baking hot and humid sun, and when the skies are blue, the warm Caribbean washes rapidly on to the greyish sand and it’s easy to picture that paradise beaches are only an hour or so down the coast. When the storm clouds gather and the horizon disappears into a solid greyness where the sea and the sky are indistinguishable, the nondescript concrete nature of Veracruz takes over and dispels all notions of paradise. We’ve certainly seen both extremes.

After a full day of baking sun and cloying humidity, Monday night brings a colossal storm during the small hours, crashing thunder and blinding lightning preventing sleep as much as the roar of the torrential rain. We rise Tuesday morning to find that the downpour has made serious inroads into the house. The whole of the downstairs is under about an inch of rainwater, the toilet (down a couple of steps) submerged under a 12-inch deep pool. Our lovely but horrified host Kelly quickly joins us for a major mopping up exercise!

Veracruz and Boca del Rio have been, and were intended to be, a bit of a pause button on this trip, sandwiched between the 6-week non-stop whirlwind behind us and the level of exploration which will resume as soon as we move on from here.

And it’s worked. We’ve rebooted and refreshed and we’re ready to go again. Even if we did have to mop up a flood.

Mexico By Bus:  Veracruz-Villahermosa-Palenque 

Order a drink called “lechero”. Your waiter will deliver a tall glass with a generous measure of espresso coffee in the bottom. What you must do next is tap loudly on the glass with your spoon, and immediately a different, immaculately uniformed waiter will dash to your table armed with pots filled with hot milk, and flamboyantly pour it into your coffee from a great height, theatrically stopping just as your glass reaches the brim full point.

Welcome to Gran Cafe de la Parroquia, Veracruz, established in 1808 and apparently serving their lechero in this extrovert style for over 200 years. We’d read about it before we arrived here and, sure enough, the large cafe echoes to the sound of locals banging their spoons, as much a part of the theatre as the waiters themselves.

Our already lovely hostess Kelly endears herself still further by coming round at 6.15am to take us to the bus station, she’s been a star one way and another. This time it’s a seven-and-a-half hour bus ride down to Villahermosa, which is for us just a one night stand to break the journey to our next destination. Consequently, we don’t see much of Villahermosa, but in our short time here this feels like a properly Mexican town, off the trail a bit with no nods to tourism, just that joyous, happy feeling of music everywhere and Mexicans having fun in the way that Mexicans do. 

Tonight, this includes Michaela being serenaded by a customer in the bar who steals the busker’s microphone and croons passionately at her side. We don’t understand enough of the Spanish but by his gestures he’s telling Michaela that she’s lovely and me that I’m a lucky man: it all ends in much laughter with his mates ribbing him mercilessly as he returns to his table. Don’t you just love travel moments like this.

Our one night in Villahermosa is a brief call in the state of Tabasco, home of the sauce, before we board our next bus – only 2 hours this time – and cross into Chiapas, famous for its coffee and its Maya ruins. After a few successive cities, we’re looking forward to a run of smaller provincial towns, so as we trudge through the heavily sultry streets of Palenque to our new digs, it feels perfect.

A short collectivo ride out of town finds the wonderful ancient Maya site which bears the town’s name, nestled amongst the intense green of the jungle clad hills. Emerging from the tree cover out into the open area to get that first glimpse of the magnificent temple ruins is spectacular, the first of the many temples towering above us and surging up from the surrounding jungle.

For ease of visitor access, the main central area of temples has been largely cleared of trees, but the jungle is pushing, inching, trying to reclaim, which just adds to the ambience of this stirring place. Nearly two dozen lofty temples loom above the walkways, representing what is just a small section of what was once a giant Maya city. The rest is hidden in, and reclaimed by, the jungle.

It is thought, though not universally, that the great Mayan city was named Lakamha (“Big Water”), though Palenque has become the accepted name for these magnificent ruins. First occupied around 100BC, the city flourished in the 7th and 8th centuries under the mighty ruler Pakal, peaking at around 20,000 inhabitants. Much detail of Mayan society has been learned from deciphering the extensive petroglyphs and drawings within the temples and caves of Palenque.

Now one of Mexico’s national treasures, the site continues to reveal more and more of Maya history, having only been rediscovered in the 1830s and only extensively excavated from 1952 onwards. Palenque was not even seen by a Westerner until 1746, when descendants of the Maya population led a Spanish priest to their “lost city”. It’s incredible to think that these huge structures, and this giant city, were built without the use of metal tooling, pack animals or even the wheel.

Like the Aztec ruins at Teotihuacan, climbing the temples provides good exercise – the steps are individually high, and steep, due to the fact that both Aztec and Maya people were on average well over 6 feet tall. If, like Michaela, you’re only 5 foot nothing, it’s a bit of a challenge! After roaming and climbing the huge temples, we are approached by a guide offering us a trek deeper into the jungle, which is too good an opportunity to turn down.

Our trek takes us through dense jungle, over collapsed temples and even a crawl through a couple of the centuries old tunnels linking the temples and other buildings. There are estimated to be up to 1,500 undiscovered structures in various forms of collapse throughout these jungle clad hills, spread over the 15 square kilometres of what formed the city limits.

As good guides do, Faria (spelling may be wrong) shows us plants used as medicine by the Maya – and tells us that he, and his family, still use these ancient treatments rather than modern medicine, to this day, and that the people of his village still consult their shaman for spiritual guidance. We would love this to be true and not just a “tale for tourists”. 

Meanwhile, back in modern day Palenque, the town goes about its business of part gateway to the site and part ordinary agricultural settlement. And it goes about its business of partying too: we could be forgiven for thinking that life in these provincial towns is just one long fiesta. 

On the first night, the central square with its picturesque yellow-and-blue church is full of townsfolk lapping up a flamboyant and colourful dance show which is again absolutely riveting. As the show ends, we follow the crowds down the hill to what turns out to be a giant fairground, giant outdoor food hall, manically active market stalls and a live band inside a concert tent.

The mood is joyous, the decibel level is high, smiles ubiquitous, chatter incessant – just like everywhere else in this vibrant, colourful country, it seems. We’re beginning to think that the literal translation of “fiesta” is not “party”, it’s “life”. Music, as ever present here as everywhere else in Mexico, continues its joyous soundtrack way beyond our bedtime – in fact, wake up at the right time and you’ll catch the sound of cockerels accompanying the salsa beat.

Oh, and the fiesta mood doesn’t change when the teeming rain arrives – you just get wet and carry on. That rain, torrential when it comes, is a regular occurrence, washing down the hilly streets and pouring from tin roofs. But then, this is summer, and Palenque is, after all, in the wettest part of Mexico.

Tonight, as we prepare to move on from here, a new travel experience awaits: an all-night bus journey. We’ve done overnight trains and flights before, but an overnight bus is a new one. We will see how it goes…

Breakfast With Peacocks, Coca-Cola Burps & Drinking Pox: Tales From San Cristobal  

Emerging somewhat bleary eyed from the overnight bus journey – although we both slept better than we thought we would – and blinking in the morning sun, the crisp freshness of the mountain air strikes us immediately. After several stays in humid locations over the last few weeks, culminating in the cloying air of Palenque, it feels like a completely different climate here. We are some 2,100 metres higher above sea level than we were in Palenque and it is instantly noticeably different.

This is San Cristobal de las Casas, where evenings will be chilly and, if all goes according to plan, virtually the last point at which we feel colder air on this trip. The fresh air feels good, but it’s back to sweatshirts and trousers after dark. So intense was the humidity of Palenque that our clothes feel unpleasantly damp as we unload our backpacks in our new home; clearly it’s time to seek out a laundry.

San Cristobal has been a destination for travellers for several decades, drawn by its reputation as a stronghold for tradition, set in the midst of one of the most deeply rooted indigenous areas of Mexico. Tribal dress is commonplace, not for show but more through custom, as women in particular go about their daily business in traditional finery: sweeping colourful dresses for some, feathery woollen skirts for others. The differences in style are due to differing tribal origins, mostly the tzotzil and tzetzal tribes.

As a consequence of the popularity of travel to here, artisan markets and shops have sprung up all over town. Through the years, “San Cris” has attracted artists, craftsmen and other bohemian travellers who have settled here amongst the indigenous people and created a spiritual, almost hippy-style community. Dreadlocks and floating outfits are nearly as common as tribal wear.

With its colourful low rise buildings facing each other across narrow cobbled streets, San Cristobal is so very attractive, given further character by the tree clad mountains which encircle the town. Its churches are expansive and equally colourful, each seeming to have its own colour scheme distinct from the others. All of the narrow streets in the compact centre are one-way, with just a few car free streets close to the cathedral, all adding up to a beautifully quaint setting.

The churches of the town possess a real individuality beyond their colourful exterior: intricate golden detail adorns the walls of Santo Domingo de Guzman, red white and green neon illuminates the inside of Guadalupe. Jesus is presented in uncharacteristic purple robes, and then in a sparkling silver gown; one church is laden with flowers, another with garlands. 

Bell towers of the churches rise above all other buildings, suburbs creep up the mountainsides, cars by definition can move only slowly across the uneven cobbles and around 90-degree corners, clothes shops shout bright colours and the town smells of coffee and chocolate.

We find ourselves billeted in a ridiculously large house here, tucked hacienda style between streets and completely hidden from view. Thinking we were renting just part of the house, we find ourselves instead with five double bedrooms, four bathrooms, large lounge and kitchen, wooden beamed ceilings and castle-like staircases. All for the price of…for a whole week, less than one night in a San Francisco hotel.

And this is where the peacocks come in. Outside in the sizeable garden there are two males and two females, plus a large unidentified fowl with a fluffy chick in tow. As airbnb stays go, this is one BIG property. We’re not quite sure how we’ve ended up with the whole place to ourselves. I’m not quite sure where Michaela is half the time, either – my calls of “where are you?” being met usually with a distant and echoey “up here”. 

The presence and the influence of the indigenous tribes is powerful and unmissable here, in San Cristobal itself and in the surrounding mountain villages, so much so that this was the birthplace of the Zapatista movement, an organisation which has fought – physically and politically – to protect the rights of those indigenous peoples. 

Ancient mystical beliefs are interwoven with modern day living in strange and intriguing ways, none more so than the influence of Coca-Cola. Incredibly, the tribal peoples of the Chiapas region consume more of it than anyone else on the planet – an astonishing TWO LITRES per person per day, including children! The origins of this date from when the first introduction of Coca-Cola to these parts made it cheaper than clean water.

Even more amazing is the fact that Coke has become completely intertwined with mystical beliefs, forming part of deeply religious ceremonies to the point where the inevitable burping which follows consumption is seen as a method of expelling evil spirits from the body, bizarre as that may seem. Drink cola, burp, and you are cleansed.

The epicentre of this intriguing enclave is the village of San Juan Chemula, our visit there is so full of oddities that the story will appear in our next post.

The longer we are here, the more we come to appreciate that San Cristobal is something of a foodie paradise. As long as you avoid the over touristy restaurants around the zocalo, the town literally teems with great eateries in virtually every neighbourhood, whether it’s traditional comidas, upscale restaurants or simple street food stalls. There’s great food for every budget.

Like so many mountain and remote areas, Chiapas state has its own examples of local delicacies – drinks wise, these are pozol and pox. Pozol is a non-alcoholic drink made from cacao and corn and served cold, a kind of thick and grainy chocolate drink. Pox, meanwhile, is the local firewater. Fortunately, it’s pronounced “posh” – fortunately because it sounds a lot better to say “I’m drinking posh” than it does to say “I’m drinking pox”. Available with a variety of flavourings, it’s a strong alcoholic drink made from a sugarcane base.

An hour or so from San Cristobal is the spectacular Sumidero Canyon where the Rio Grijalva flows between the sides of a gorge up to 800 metres high. Our views from the top of the canyon are unfortunately mostly obscured by the swirling cloud below, but the ride on a “lancha” (a form of elongated motor boat) is more rewarding, ploughing through the choppy waters between those colossal canyon sides to the village of Chiapa de Corzo.

Crocodiles bask in the sunshine at the water’s edge while pelicans plunge headlong into the river to snare their prey and raptors circle overhead. Waterfalls drop from such ridiculous heights that half of the cascading water drifts away on the breeze and never makes it to the foot of the fall.

On board the lancha we are reminded of the good and bad sides of organised tours: without it, we wouldn’t get to ride through this amazing canyon, but at the same time it’s hard not to be irritated by the young girls on board who spend twice as much time posing for selfies as they do admiring the scenery. Oh, this modern world huh.

San Cristobal de las Casas is rapidly endearing itself to us with its unique characteristics. Our next post will see us venture out of town to delve more deeply into some of the tribal mystique and take a peek under the surface of a very different world. 

Into A Spiritual World….And Out Again

Alighting from the collectivo in front of the church in the village of San Juan Chamula is to enter a different world, higher still up the mountains from San Cristobal and deeper still into the world of the indigenous tribes of Chiapas.

This is the village we referred to in our previous post, the spiritual and material home of the tzotzil people and on first viewing alone is still clearly dominated by tradition; the village where ancient beliefs are still held by all, where tribal teachings merge effortlessly with modern society, and the village where Coca-Cola has infiltrated life to the point where it has religious and spiritual significance.

You might recall that in our last post we described the method of expelling evil spirits from the body: drink Coca-Cola, burp, and you are cleansed.

Tribal wisdom, mystical beliefs and esoteric religious ceremonies are deeply interwoven with Catholic principles, creating a unique strand of worship unlike anywhere else. One is permitted to enter the church – and we did, as you will see – for a small fee, but not during any kind of ceremony, which are affairs strictly for the eyes of the tzotzil only.

The secrecy surrounding those ceremonies has given rise to rumour and supposition, with some outsiders believing that animal sacrifices, particularly of chickens, not only take place within the church but on occasion are carried out by children. 

Outside, in the village, almost everybody carries the distinctive facial features of the indigenous tribes, closely resembling the historical image of American Red Indians from the recognisable representations of years ago. Most are very short in height, and virtually all of the women dress in traditional clothing including the wiry, feathery looking black woollen skirts we’ve seen back in town. Every now and again we catch a glimpse of traditional male dress, too: shaggy white woollen cloaks or white shapeless shifts.

If they approach us to speak, or to try to sell their wares to us, they speak to us in Spanish, but to each other, their language is the tribal tongue, much more gutteral and sharp than its flowing European counterpart. Child labour is rife: young girls wander with armfuls of handicrafts for sale and run market stalls single handed, small lads work as shoeshine boys or push handcarts laden with produce.

Photography is difficult here, restricted to crafty zoom shots, this is one of those places where cameras are viewed with deep suspicion and where a stolen photograph is deemed to be a theft of the soul. Warnings are everywhere, not just in the guidebooks but also at the church door. No photos of individuals without permission (which is unlikely to be granted), no photos inside the church. Disobey at your peril, the insult goes much deeper than simple offence.

And so we enter this unique church with all of its tales of mystery and intrigue, to be confronted by nothing we’ve ever witnessed before. The interior, beautifully decorated on its walls and ceilings, is devoid of pews and benches, just a wide open space with no furniture of any kind, the whole area lit only by candles and nothing more.

But there are literally thousands of candles, amassed on the floor in straight lines and symmetrical patterns, all the time being added to by worshippers kneeling on the floor either alone or in groups, sometimes in families, lighting more and more candles as they quietly vocalise their ritual chants. Beneath them, and beneath us, the floor is covered with a layer of pine needles. The darkness is filled with the aroma of scented candles, incense and pine.

Those chanting, whether alone or otherwise, are distant, disengaged, as if lost in a trance while praying. The murmuring of quiet chants, the dim light, the flickering of a thousand candles, the scent in the air….this is something transcendental, something deep and stirring. There is almost a physical presence in the spaces, something tangible about the atmosphere. Our spines tingle. Neither of us have ever felt anything quite like this before.

What is this? What are we feeling? It’s as if there is something bigger, so much bigger than us, lurking in this dimly lit space. All five senses are being challenged at once, maybe even a sixth sense which we don’t know about. It feels…..spiritual.

And then Michaela taps my arm and gestures towards one lady lost in her trance, chanting with her eyes tightly shut, kneeling before her orderly lines of candles. As she chants, she reaches a certain point of her private ceremony, carefully lifting an object and passing it slowly over the candles….. it’s a full bottle of Coca-Cola. 

They weren’t kidding when they said that visiting here would be a new experience. This is a very different church. San Juan Chamula is a very different kind of place.

What brings us back to reality is the rain. We’ve seen plenty of downpours since arriving in Mexico but now San Cristobal delivers the first long period of sustained deluge, through late afternoon and well into the night, forcing us to invest in an umbrella and dart between shop overhangs in order to grab a bite to eat. We don’t go far.

Chamula’s neighbouring village of Zinacantan is nowhere near as mysterious or beguiling, and in truth is nowhere near as interesting either. Although Zinacantan is renowned for its weaving, most of it completed by women’s co-operative movements, we must have called in on “weavers’ day off” because we see none in action, just a smattering of woven products on market stalls.

Its church, like the village itself, is a toned down version of Chamula – still open and devoid of furniture, and completely bedecked in a stunning floral display, but with far fewer candles, no pine needles or incense, and with artificial light. Oh, and you can take photographs; photographs which may give a vague idea of what Chamula was like, if you can stretch the imagination far enough.

To be fair, Zinacantan is sweeping up after a fiesta (one that we missed!) so we may just have caught it on the wrong day, just as everyone is either clearing the streets or clearing their head. Or both. Whatever, it’s a sleepy place on this Friday lunchtime.

Storm clouds gather over the mountains as we head back to San Cristobal, and before long the roads are once again turned into flowing torrents. Earlier this year in Costa Rica, we were lucky with a whole run of clear sunny days in a rainforest location where bright days are uncommon: maybe it’s payback time.

We will leave San Cristobal with so many impressions and memories: colour, food, tribespeople….and rain. But that visit to San Juan Chamula and its church….well, that memory will never leave us. Amazing. 

From Chiapas To The Coast With A Touch Of Tuxtla

Usually the first one we hear is just before 7am, though occasionally we hear an earlier one and sometimes a handful just after midnight. And then at regular intervals throughout the day. We didn’t know what they were at first – somebody shooting rabbits, perhaps, but then, could the louder ones be cannons? 

They’re sky rockets, of course they are. It turns out that in the provincial towns of Mexico (the pueblas), there is an obsession with buying or making fireworks and then lighting them outside the church. Apparently intended to “amplify” prayers and take them closer to God, these rockets don’t light up the sky or provide colourful shows, they simply explode with a bang – the louder the better. Every year dozens die either in individual accidents or fires at factories both legal and illicit, but nothing deters this obsessive ritual which reportedly reaches frenzy point on fiesta days and saints’ days.

As if to taunt us as we say farewell to rainy San Cristobal, we leave on the brightest, warmest morning of our six days here, amid the bluest skies and clearest views. But we needn’t worry, our next destination of Tuxtla Gutierrez is considerably hotter, and just as sunny, as we wander down its main street for the first time.

Our journey from San Cristobal to here is by collectivo, boarding one where only the front seats beside the driver are left and seeing our backpacks rammed inside the footwell of the sliding door. If you know how collectivo drivers drive, then you will know why the front seats are always the last to be taken, but we survive the white knuckle ride and congratulate ourselves on paying only £4 for the whole journey, bags and all.

The main street here, unsurprisingly named Avenida Central, links, amongst other things, Tuxtla’s two main attractions: the gleaming white cathedral in its own plaza and the leafy, cafe lined Jardin de Marimba where ornate benches face the central bandstand. Marimba is to Tuxtla what mariachi was to Guadalajara, its symbolic heritage music, proudly played by its proponents and much loved by all. Based around percussion and the glockenspiel-like marimba itself, it is, inevitably, as joyous and playful as all other Mexican music.

Marimba bands feature a brass section, bongos, and more often than not a bass guitar, but the star of the show is always the marimba, a keyboard so large that it sometimes takes a four, even sometimes as many as six, musicians to play it, standing side by side as they chong out its distinctive sound.

Successive bands fill the bandstand and, as they do so, the plaza fills with dancing couples, swirling and moving with rhythm, loving their tradition. At first glance it’s the older generation, but as we look more closely and scan this open air dance floor, we spy the younger couples, finding romance in just the way that their parents and grandparents did.

Young boys are taught moves by their mothers, teenage romeos watch the experts to learn the steps – there is something so utterly endearing about this, seeing custom and tradition being passed on to the younger generations. By these processes tradition is upheld, and the lines continue. We rue the fact that we come from a country where such things have been lost, long ago.

As the marimba ends for the night, the air is filled with the sound of rock and blues bands in the surrounding bars. Down in the square, well after dark, families chatter, children play, young lovers caress. The dancing is done but the night goes on. Jardin de Marimba is wonderful, so full of life, colour…and love. Anyone who wanders into Marimba and leaves without a smile must have no soul: this place is the definition of the word vibrant.

Sometimes when we read other travel posts we note that people will occasionally mention things they didn’t do – you know, “it was closed”, “it was too expensive”, “we ran out of time”. We tend not to do that and we concentrate on what we DID do, but in the case of Tuxtla Gutierrez we’ll make an exception, because….

The gleaming white cathedral with its 48 – yes, 48 – bells, not only chimes every hour but also has a kitsch display of apostles appearing from behind shutter doors up on the cathedral front and passing by on a revolving platform. We sit in the square as the top of the hour approaches, the bells tinkle and chime and then…nothing else happens. No apostles, no kitsch. But never mind, on weekend nights there’s a spectacular sound and light show projected on to the cathedral facade, like in Guadalajara. So Sunday at 8pm, we sit in the square with bated breath, the bells tinkle and chime and then….nothing else happens.

We could also mention that the “Calzada de las Personas Ilustres” (“corridor of illustrious people”) has no statues of famous people OR fountains, even though our guide book says it has both, and that the top recommended Chiapas restaurant which we head for, is only open during the day and therefore is closed when we bowl up for dinner. But we won’t mention those because that would just be too predictable.

And so inevitably we end our second night in Tuxtla where we ended our first, in the wonderfully vibrant Jardin de Marimba, although it’s considerably quieter on a Monday night than it was the first time. The square is so full of joy that it seems almost churlish to mention its one downside: child labour here is even more evident than in our previous domiciles. 

Youngsters of incredibly tender age roam the square and the streets, selling trinkets, toys, food, clothing, accessories…anything, often carrying heavy loads of goods for sale. Sometimes with pitiful, pleading faces, sometimes smiling, but mostly in a businesslike fashion which is actually even more disconcerting. This is simply their life, part of their responsibility to the family. 

Here’s some examples which probably need few words….

It’s a little hard to witness, but we console ourselves with the thought that at least nobody is exploiting these children for profit, it is just simply a way of family life which is very different from our home. And therefore it’s not our place to be judgmental. 

Tuxtla Gutierrez is by all accounts a fairly ordinary city and, apart from the wonderful Jardin de Marimba we don’t really see anything to contradict that view in our short time here, but have enormous fun nonetheless.

Having seen such a cross section of Mexico and experienced different cultures and history on our current journey, our next stop is to take a peek at another side of this vibrant country’s character. Taking a domestic flight from Tuxtla to Cancun, we head south of the well known overblown resorts and settle in Puerto Morelos, a former fishing village where the seafood is reputed to be among the best in the whole country.

And so again we land in another new kind of place, nothing like our previous calls in Mexico on this trip. The white sand is incredibly soft beneath our feet, there’s a beach bar roughly every one hundred yards or so, fish restaurants cluster around the square where a stage and a mini amphitheatre await the next fiesta. 

Our first ceviche and fish taco lunch is sumptuous; later the sound of a live rock band draws us into a terrace bar above the square. There is absolutely no doubting that Puerto Morelos is a beach town, no doubting that it gets much busier in high season, but it’s tucked away from the bigger, regimented resorts and our first impressions are good.

Temperatures are high here, even after dark. The Caribbean laps quietly on to the white sand, slowed by the reef just offshore, as palm trees sway in the warm breeze. This is a much more peaceful place than we imagine its more famous neighbours to be.

Puerto Morelos & The Seaweed Attack

Puerto Morelos marks a minor milestone on our 2022 travels – it’s our 48th bed of the year, one more than our previous record which we set last year. And it’s only August. Altogether we’ve been travelling for over 180 days so far this year – we’ve only been in our own home for 49.

The pristine white sand beach which is in all the on line photographs has a sargassum seaweed problem just now. Having talked to people here and then researched it ourselves, it seems the current situation is abnormal with unprecedented levels of sargassum growth this year, with a reported 24.2 million tons being pulled from Mexico’s Caribbean beaches in July alone. Incredibly that’s not a typo – 24 million tons!!

Here at Puerto Morelos there’s a floating barrier which doesn’t appear to be stemming the flow, and a tractor which pulls an agricultural looking piece of machinery along the strand line each morning, picking up and depositing large piles of drying weed at various points along the back of the beach. This stuff doesn’t smell too good when it dries either, but they’re doing what they can to keep it clear.

There’s plenty of it darkening the otherwise turquoise sea too, severely restricting the areas suitable for bathing, a bit of a shame given the beautiful colours of the warm waters glinting in the sunshine. No doubt this is all hugely unwelcome to the tourism sector after the last couple of years.

Several things are different here from all other points of our tour of Mexico: far more English is spoken for a start, and we can even pay by card everywhere! Well, almost everywhere. There’s an ATM which dispenses US dollars rather than pesos, information signs are in both languages, people are no longer surprised when we fail to understand their Spanish.

Yet Puerto Morelos is still, happily, a million miles from everything we’ve read about the more popular resorts of Cancun and Playa del Carmen with their all-inclusive complexes. This is a quiet laid back former fishing village where beach yoga is popular and the attractions lie in snorkelling, diving and fishing trips rather than theme parks. 

Michaela heads out on one of those snorkelling trips on our second morning. Unfortunately it’s a bit of a choppy sea day which, together with the sargassum forest and overhead cloud, restricts visibility somewhat. She does see some great stuff, and captures some decent underwater shots, but she reports that although she enjoyed it, it wasn’t as good as the Red Sea earlier this year.

While Michaela is out there (I just can’t master the breathing techniques in order to snorkel!), I find myself confined to barracks with my first dose of this whole trip of…..err, shall we say “travel tummy”. Michaela had a bit of a bout back in San Cristobal so all in all we haven’t fared too badly for such a long trip.

Without this seaweed invasion, Puerto Morelos would be a lovely little beach town stop: plenty of decent restaurants, a well pitched bar and music scene, and the beach and sea would at any other time obviously be gorgeous. Yes it’s a touch touristy – it’s a beach town after all – but it’s nicely low key all round. Close by the main square is the town’s quirky point, the precariously leaning remains of the original lighthouse, knocked sideways by Hurricane Beulah in 1968 and still half sunk into the sands. Its more sturdy replacement suffered a similar fate in 2005 but has been handsomely restored.

Grackles call and squawk in the palm trees which bustle in the breeze with a sound like castanets, overhead the sky is always dotted with pelicans and frigate birds, the slender grace of the latter so different from the heavy artillery look of the former. Yet they’re both beautiful in their own way. 

Each day the sweaty humidity of the morning is dispersed by the afternoon breeze which comes in around 1pm to temper the burning sun, the same breeze which sways the palm fronds in such an attractive way. Unfortunately that lovely breeze has a downside in that it also carries ashore the stench of the drying seaweed, smelling in its worst moments a bit like a mix of rotting eggs and raw sewage. Not nice.

There’s some cursing going on in Puerto Morelos just now. A seaweed attack blighting this beautiful coastline is the last thing anyone needs after two years of COVID. The widespread nature of the problem means we’ll probably meet up with the damned stuff again, but first we’re heading back inland to explore more of Mexico’s ancient history.

Next stop Valladolid.

Valladolid: Gateway To Wonders But So Much More

We leave the lovely little beach town of Puerto Morelos with a real sense of disappointment, an unshakable feeling that we really missed out here. Not so much that the seaweed invasion spoilt both the beach and the sea – though that was disappointment enough – but more the fact that I couldn’t shake off the bout of “travel tummy” enough to enjoy the town’s splendid bars and restaurants. Being a beach town, this is probably the best collection we’ve seen in Mexico, but regrettably I just wasn’t up to making the most of it.

As we walk home on our last night here – a Friday – after eating only salad and drinking only water (yep, I’m even off the beer) while Michaela enjoys a succulent chicken souvlaki for a change of flavours, those bars look even more inviting and sound even more convivial than usual. Just to rub salt in the wound, the live band in one bar is even playing a Midnight Oil track as we pass, meaning the music would have been right up my boulevard.

Yes, we definitely feel we missed out here.

Fortunately the pills kick in early enough for us to enjoy the bus ride to our next destination at Valladolid, and we do mean “enjoy”. Anyone reading this wondering how best to travel around Mexico should definitely not be afraid to do it by ADO bus: they are comfortable, punctual, safe and cheap, which is pretty much everything you want.

Valladolid greets us with a colossal thunderstorm and utterly torrential rain which has rivers running down the streets and half the population of the town, it seems, seeking shelter inside the bus station. It’s starting to feel like the rain/sun equation is just becoming borderline, we knew we were taking a risk coming to Mexico at this time of year but the anticipated short sharp showers are becoming just a bit too long to be called short and sharp.

By morning though the whole world is a better place, the sun is hot before breakfast, the streets have completely dried out and the sky above is clear and blue. Equally good is the fact that the bowl of pasta I dared to take on last night in the hope that it would complete the recovery, has absolutely done the trick and we are both fully back on form.

Like most visitors here we chose Valladolid because of its proximity to three outstanding opportunities for exploration and adventure – two magnificent ancient sites and the remarkable cenotes – but then we read that it would be a mistake to just visit those and miss what Valladolid itself has to offer. Even after one afternoon we are glad we opted to make it a longer stay. Valladolid is an absolutely charming city with a personality which is more a quiet elegance than the pizzazz of our previous stops.

Look out at eye level and you will see the oh so attractive low rise houses in a multitude of colours so typical of provincial Mexican pueblas; look up and you will see decorative artwork, fancy balustrades and ornate porticos giving each building real character; look down as you pass or enter hotels, lodgings and houses and you will spy sumptuous floor tiles of every pattern, design and colour.

The relatively plain cathedral stands proudly over the leafy square, other smaller plazas appear out of nowhere as we wander the back streets, colourful artisan shops and comidas with tempting smells compete for our time, gorgeous old buildings are made only more attractive by their peeling paint and battered rendering. Calzada de los Frailes (effectively Friars Street) ambles prettily down to the handsome Convento de Sisal, built originally in the 16th century but substantially restored in more recent times. 

This convent, often the epicentre of Valladolid’s embattled history, hence the need for restoration, provides the backdrop for another brilliant sound and light show each night, this time with an English commentary version straight after the Spanish one. Here at Valladolid we are in the state of Yucatan and on the peninsula of the same name, major stronghold of the Maya people before the Spanish brought their metaphorical bulldozers and razed, among others, the city of Zaci, and built Valladolid in its place. The light show tells its illustrious story in style. These shows are so very informative and are brilliantly conceived, a place where rock gig concepts meet lessons in history. Every city should have one.

Traditional dress here is again in a different form, the multi coloured patterns of the ladies’ dresses now set on a white background, though once again the traditional styles of dress are a common sight around the streets. Customs die hard here, these robes are worn out of normality, not for a tourist sideshow.

Unlike the coffee scent of San Cristobal, every corner of Valladolid smells of damp earth: this is a tropical climate city in the midst of its rainy season, its flowing deep green foliage which climbs and rambles everywhere again putting us in mind of Costa Rica and giving the city an exotic, enriched flavour. It’s a living tropical garden. Even the convolvulus looks fantastic.

After a few hours exploring the city we are drenched, not by rain this time, but by perspiration, today’s temperature is around 34C/93F but according to websites the outdoor humidity is 100% and likely to remain there all week. Somewhere around 5pm with clouds darkening and thunder starting to vibrate like a funk rock bass line, we know what’s coming and dive in to a bar, from where within minutes we are watching the streets once again become rivers. Hot sultry day followed by a cracking storm which clears in time for evening? Yeah that’s more like what we expected: we can live with that.

And that’s just how the days unfold. By day 4 here the mercury has topped 38C/100F and if it was mathematically possible then we’d be convinced that the humidity has increased from that 100% measurement.

The storms roll in each day, always during the afternoon, the only variants being the precise timing and the size of the storm. We could be here for weeks and still be amused by the depth to which the streets flood, and the speed at which it all clears and dries up. If floods like this hit a town in Surrey just once it would be on the BBC news: here it’s an everyday occurrence and people just get on with it.

During our original planning we really thought Valladolid would be no more than our gateway to those three major excursions, but it’s proved itself to be a delightful and rewarding place. That’s not however to play down just how fabulous those other places are too.

One of the ancient sites is one of the “new” seven wonders of the world, the other a thrilling monument to ancient peoples. And then there’s the remarkable geographical features of the cenotes. If, like us until a short time ago, you don’t know that word, then stick around for our next post…

Ancient Sites & Plunging Cenotes: Our Time In Yucatan

After several hours of walking the ancient sites in soaring temperatures and 100% humidity, jumping from the rock platform down into the cool, cool waters of the cenote is exhilarating and refreshing beyond belief. Swimming in one is a pure joy, but more of that later.

A half hour collectivo ride out of Valladolid is one of the so called “new” seven wonders of the world, the extensive remains of the ancient Maya city of Chechen Itza. Paying our entry fee and ambling towards the first section of the city, the first thing that strikes us is the sheer number of visitors. It’s not even peak time of day yet but buses and coaches from Cancun etc are already lined up in the car park and, inside the site, large groups of people with garishly coloured hats or brollies to identify which herd they belong to are already milling around.

This is the busiest tourist site we’ve seen since before COVID, probably the most tangible evidence so far that the trauma is all but over and people are travelling again. It takes roughly fifteen seconds for us to look past this, forget the crowds, and drop our mutual jaws as the first part of Chechen Itza comes into view.

My God is this site impressive. The very first temple, El Castillo, would be an incredible sight well worth a visit even if it stood isolated: the fact that it is the first taster of what is about to unfold just sets the pulse racing. A giant pyramidal construction rising 25 metres to its summit, El Castillo is more than just a temple – it is, amazingly, also a calendar. Its 18 terraces represent the months of a Maya year, its 365 steps the days in a year, its 52 panels on each facade the number of years in a Maya calendar round.

Best of all, El Castillo was built to create its own wonder show twice per year. On each equinox, the moving sun will cast shadows on the pyramid stairs which mimic the movement of a serpent (a regular feature throughout Chechen Itza) ascending or descending the stairs of the pyramid. Now that would be incredible to witness. Maybe we should stick around for a month or so!

El Castillo is just the start. This giant Maya city was established in the early part of the 7th century AD, then for reasons not yet understood by historians, was abandoned around 200 years later. Mayans seem to have returned in the 10th century and one way or another, possibly by invasion, were joined by the Toltec tribes, after which it seems the two groups lived together in harmony, as the temples bear sculptures of the Gods of each.

Here we have what makes Chechen Itza unique: this is the only place on Earth which demonstrates a fusion of the beliefs and architecture of these two disparate peoples. There are many, many huge and breathtaking temples here, this is an incredible place where once again our minds start drifting along the lines of…..”how did they do this?” and “what was this city actually like in its heyday?”

It’s not all temples, either: within Chechen Itza lies the remains of what may have been Mesoamerica’s largest ball court, and the fabulous El Caracol, unmistakably an ancient observatory. The ball court, El Gran Juego de Pelota, houses sculptures which archeologists believe demonstrate that the losing captain and probably many of his teammates were decapitated as punishment for losing an important match – imagine Harry Maguire’s reaction to that suggestion!

The names here are almost as fabulous as the sights – The Temple Of Jaguars, The Temple Of Warriors, The Platform Of Skulls – the last of these being the site where the skulls of sacrificial victims were displayed to deter detractors and, of course, invaders and enemies. Serpents, jaguars and eagles feature throughout the city’s carvings, often portrayed in the case of the latter two with human hearts in their mouths.

Chechen Itza is stirring, mesmerising and impressively preserved, in part impressively restored. Its place on that list of seven new wonders is highly appropriate. Remarkably, Valladolid has another fabulous site on its doorstep, even closer than Chechen Itza.

Ek’Balam is nowhere near as heavily visited as Chechen Itza, is more compact, but is equally fascinating. Its temples are even taller – the incredibly steep Acropolis rises 32m from the grasses below and looks out across the dense jungle which stretches in every direction. Unlike its more popular neighbour, one can still climb these structures, though the steep incline means it wouldn’t appeal to anyone with vertigo or unsteady feet.

It’s another awe inspiring place, where again the carvings are incredibly well preserved and/or painstakingly restored. Here though, a bit like Palenque, the jungle has made a serious attempt to reclaim the ruins and much of Ek’Balam lies hidden within its grasp – even the accessible structures fight a battle with nature. But then, Ek’Balam was abandoned some 1200 years ago.

Our two days of visiting these incredible places have followed the same format: out on a collectivo or a combi, several hours walking around and studying every structure of those amazing sights until the humidity has soaked our clothing, and then heading to a cenote to take some of the most invigorating, refreshing plunges into water we have ever enjoyed.

Yucatan state has over 6,000 cenotes, so many in fact that the word itself was coined in these parts: a good proportion of the world’s cenotes are to be found here. A cenote is basically a giant sinkhole, essentially a site where the upper limestone has collapsed into an underground water source, the result being an oversized natural well filled with fresh, cool water.

Cenotes were understandably the reason for the location of many Maya cities, providing ample water supplies for even sizeable populations – in fact, the word “Chechen” is derived from the Mayan words for “mouth of the well”. Most remain inaccessibly hidden beneath overhanging sides, but a handful are reachable through stairways down through the limestone down into the deep water pit.

At Ik’Kil Cenote, the surface of the water is 26 metres below ground level, the diameter is 60 metres, the water 40 metres deep. Swimming and playing in its cooling waters, with black fish circling our bodies and bats swooping past our heads even in daylight, is not just fun, it’s absolutely exhilarating. And beautifully cooling in the heat of the day. 

At X’Canche Cenote, only slightly less dramatic, the “pool” has the additional attraction of waterfalls cascading from the sides down into the water, swimming under which just adds to the sense fun and – somehow – freedom. Of course, there’s a commercial aspect to those cenotes which are open for swimming, but this doesn’t detract from the joy of this unusual experience one tiny bit. It’s brilliant.

So, not only is Valladolid a lovely, elegant colonial city, but it does, as we originally envisaged, form the perfect gateway to three amazing experiences. What a great place to spend four or five days.

You will probably know how it goes. He appears like a mirage at the side of the road, machete in hand and a stack of green coconuts at his side, just as you’re thinking the humidity is getting the better of you and you need a refreshing drink like NOW. Machete to coconut, off with its head, in goes the straw, cue total relief and total delight. Coconut milk is fabulous, its sellers always seeming to be in the right place at the right time, no matter where in the world you are.

Talking of drink, we may be in Yucatan now but the stupendous coffee from Chiapas has followed us – as a coffee lover I thought I’d long since decided on my favourites but Cafe de Chiapas is right up there, every single time. 

Valladolid’s local firewater has the almost unpronounceable name of xtabentun, nowhere near as harsh as tequila or mezcal and really quite pleasant. In terms of Mexican firewater then, we’ve sampled those three plus pulque and pox, as well of course as Mexican beers and wines and the non-alcoholic pozol. Of the spirits, our undisputed favourites so far are the coffee tequila and the coconut xtabentun. Both good.

And we shouldn’t leave Valladolid without mentioning Meson del Marques, which is a hotel in the centre of town. We’re not staying there, but it’s home to probably our favourite restaurant so far on this Mexican adventure – sumptuous tasty food in glorious surroundings. What else do you need.

Well, Valladolid delivered on just about every level, even down to the timing of the cracking thunderstorms, which, despite being at different times each day, always seemed to arrive as we were nearing Las Campañas bar, where we took daily refuge. I think the waiters believe Michaela is a rain Goddess.

Out Of Mexico And In To Belize

A dreadlocked guy lazes in a hammock and raises his hand as we alight from the ferry. “Welcome to paradise” he beams. The delicious smell of barbecued seafood drifts across the sandy track, a smiling girl clocks our backpacks and suggests we taste the local rum before we walk any further. We turn right, heading to where our next bed is. The breeze is deliciously warm, the sun incredibly hot.

And everything is different, just a short journey has brought us to a different culture which feels so different that we could call it a different world, let alone a different culture. No longer is there any significant Spanish influence, but instead we are in a disputed territory with a British Commonwealth past; no longer is Spanish the mother tongue, but instead we hear a lilting mix of English and Creole. Infectious laughter seems to decorate every sentence.

Out of Mexico and into Belize – but not mainland Belize, we’re on a beautiful island which is unmistakably Caribbean, where men sport waist length dreadlocks, where the sound of reggae is everywhere, where it’s possible to sip beer or rum punch whilst sitting on a wooden jetty, slide down the wooden chute into the warm sea when the sun gets too hot, then return to our drink. An island where there are no cars, just golf buggies and bicycles. Where the sunshine is kissed by the warm Caribbean trade winds, where the island motto of “go slow” is everybody’s maxim for daily life.

Go slow. This is an island where beach bars have tables out in the water, where palm trees bend in the lusciously warm breeze, where pelicans and frigate birds glide overhead, where people smile first and speak second. But they always, always speak. Laid back beach bars call you in, barbecue smoke drifts across the island, and all the time the turquoise background of the beautiful Caribbean provides its consistent colour. An island where the food is sensational, where fresh lobster is delicious and, wey hey, inexpensive.

An island where giant rays glide past us as we wallow in the warm sea, where seahorses thrive, where the world’s healthiest coral reef sits a few hundred yards offshore. 

Go slow? We feel like we never want to hurry again. Ever.

This is the island of Caye Caulker, backpacker destination, laid back haven, the Caribbean personified. An island where there’s never any need to put on shoes or change out of beachwear, unless you want to. An island where the locals want you to love it, because they love it themselves. Where they want you to…..well….go slow.

Caye Caulker (pronounced “key corker”) is an island split in half since the 1961 Hurricane Hattie created a small divide which has since become a wider channel with 100ft deep water. Our base here on the southern half of the island is close to The Split, as it is known, where a ramshackle ferry looking like a homemade raft carries people back and forth between the two halves across the bobbing turquoise waters.

Just getting here is an adventure. From our last base in Valladolid it is a 6-hour bus ride to the coastal town of Chetumal where we spend a single night before boarding the strange looking ferry which would resemble one of those cruise liner feeder pods if it wasn’t for its four large Yamaha outboard motors. The cramped little capsule of a craft bounces and slams its boneshaking way across the waves first to San Pedro on the island of Ambergris Caye (Belize border control, customs point) almost two hours away and then on to Caye Caulker. Don’t catch this ferry if you have a back problem, it’s not an easy ride!

Once here though, being on Caye Caulker is as easy a ride as you could ever get, every inch the calm, friendly laid back corner which those of us who haven’t yet visited the West Indies picture that place to be. Caribbean first, Central America second.

On the southern tip of the island is a small airstrip suitable only for light aircraft, but is the starting point for another incredible experience to match the flights over San Francisco and the Grand Canyon earlier on this trip. Lying some 70 miles from Caye Caulker is the breathtaking natural phenomenon known as The Great Blue Hole.

Flying out over the extensive coral reefs is spectacular enough, but as we approach, and circle, this incredible sight, it’s almost hard to believe what we are seeing. The Blue Hole is effectively another, giant, sinkhole, formed when the sea level was lower, over 150,000 years ago as the ground fell away to form a cenote. As the seas rose, so this deep hole in the ocean flooded, to create what we see today.

Charted and explored by Jacques Cousteau in the early 1970s, the depth of this amazing phenomenon is thought to be around 410 feet, deep enough to be devoid of life down in its darker depths. Surrounded by coral reef atolls, the Hole itself is almost perfectly circular, 984 feet across, the glorious circle almost as spectacular as the deep blue colour. Cousteau cited it as one of the top five places on Earth for scuba diving. For us, flying over it is rewarding enough – another fabulous experience in our amazing year of fabulous experiences.

After such an amazing trip, surely a wildlife-spotting-cum-snorkelling trip can’t thrill us, but our guide and skipper Valerio has other ideas as he hits the speedboat throttle and takes us out towards the coral reef. First we hunt a sighting of manatees, aka the sea cow, relatively common round these parts – we catch a brief glimpse, but only of one, and only once.

Swimming off the reef though, amongst schools of nurse sharks and various types of stingray is fantastic. The sharks (safe, don’t panic) swim so close to us, the rays happily brush against us as they swim by, happy to let their strange “wings” feel out our human form. As Michaela dives off to take some superb underwater shots, I have a eureka moment and after all these years of trying and failing, I suddenly master the art of snorkelling, joy of joys!

Sure enough, Valerio’s promises are good, and we see large quantities of brilliantly colourful fish, intriguing banks of healthy coral, and a moray eel, before we head back round to the leeward side of the island, away from the reef and into calmer waters. Into, in fact, the territory of the seahorse. We see a few – they are of course very tiny and very heavily camouflaged- but seeing them in their natural environment is a first for us, and is yet another thrill.

Our last sighting is a shoal of tarpon, large fish agile enough to leap out of the water and claim a fish from our fingers – tourist trap stuff but hey it’s fun.

Caye Caulker is a certain kind of paradise. Beautiful, peaceful, happy, so deeply the Caribbean vibe, and visually stunning – yet at the same time we can see that it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea. There are no real beaches here, but the beautiful sea is so calm and colourful that swimming in its warmth is rewarding even without any troublesome sand. Yes the beach bars play their reggae and dance music, but with a couple of exceptions it’s at an acceptable decibel level – and this isn’t a late night party island, the beach bars close at sunset and all is quiet by 7pm, replaced by cool guys with guitars in the bars strung along the sandy roads.

Don’t expect the lap of luxury on Caye Caulker, this is a proper place, not a 5-star hiding place – though there is plenty of perfectly acceptable accommodation. The southern half, south of the Split, is where to stay to be part of it all – unless isolated self-contained sites are your thing (apparently there’s a few on the other half – for us, stay in one of those and you won’t feel the joy of Caye Caulker).

When we first stepped off the ferry on to this island, we were delighted to see that the seaweed invasion, so awful back in Puerto Morelos, was nowhere near as bad here – but each day has brought a little more and the invasion has undoubtedly begun. Still not as bad, but it’s on its way.

“It’s de wind”, Valerio explains in his alluring Creole English, “when dose east winds blow, den in come de weed. Dat norf wind it take away de weed. Norf wind come October time”. He does, though, subscribe to the widely held theory that Brazil is responsible, through allowing fertilisers to run off into the ocean. “It tru it be globe-al warmin”, he says, “but al-zo tru dat Brazil don’t care”.

If Caye Caulker is even the smallest indication of what Belize and its people are like, then we want to come back. Moreover, Caye Caulker is, after Puerto Viejo in Costa Rica, our second little taste of the Caribbean lifestyle, people, and food. 

We both know we want some more.

Nearing The End & Back Into Mexico – Or Are We?

Only on our last night on the island do we discover Caye Caulker’s best bar, where the superb soul/blues band named, perhaps predictably, Andrew & The Go Slows, are playing live. These guys are so good – Andrew, if that’s really his name – has a voice so soulful that he gives us goosebumps. Anything and everything from Lynyrd Skynyrd (Sweet Home Alabama) to Tom Petty (Mary Jane’s Last Dance) to Bill Withers, Otis Redding and Kings Of Leon, given THE most soulful, bluesy treatment. This guy is GOOD.

Time to go. As we pack up our backpacks once again and prepare to walk the short distance to the “water taxi”, so we enter the final week of this epic trip which started in Los Angeles back in the middle of June. From here we turn north, effectively starting the journey home. At the same time we close in on 200 days travelling this year, 500 days since the beginning of 2020.

We’re finding ourselves looking back over this amazing year, and this trip in particular, with real affection: so many different places, so much variety and so many once-in-a-lifetime experiences. This is what we retired for. We are truly living our dream.

As we leave Caye Caulker with its abundance of puns –  “seeing is Belize-ing”, “you better Belize it”, “un-Belize-able prices” – the literal winds of change are blowing in, dragging heavy cloud across the island and blowing away most of the humidity to give the perfect setting for the live music, sitting beneath the palm trees swaying in the balmy breeze.

One last Belizian breakfast with fry jacks (what a delightful texture they are!), one last look back. The guy at breakfast smiles. “You guys will be back”, he says, “ain’t nobody come to Caye Caulker only one time”. Maybe.

But now we retrace our steps, slamming back in the boneshaking water taxi across to Mexico, where once again we have a one night stay in the coastal town of Chetumal. This time we find two great restaurants (one for dinner, one for breakfast) and take time to study a rather fabulous statue near our hotel. Actually it’s a fountain, but one which isn’t operational just now. Nevertheless the statue is a powerful one, commemorating the devastating hurricane of 1955 and featuring floating corpses, broken houses, an uprooted palm tree – and a heroic lady rescuing a baby from the floodwater. It’s an impressive piece of work.

Our penultimate Mexican bus journey of almost four hours to our final destination is notable only for ADO’s now familiar punctuality and the one other constant of the journey – rain. Rather than the customary short downpours, we’re pretty much in teeming rain for the whole time and it’s still falling as we check in to our next digs in the town of Tulum on the Caribbean coast.

And the theme carries on into Friday morning. Our first night’s sleep is regularly interrupted by the roaring sound of torrential rain, first light and breakfast time brings an onslaught like you wouldn’t Belize (sorry). Thunder crashes, electricity keeps dropping out and the streets are flooded. It’s several hours before we can even venture out through the front door.

Tulum is a town of two halves: on the one hand the hotel zone down by the beach and on the other the main town strung along the highway some three or four kilometres inland. We’ve chosen to stay in the town, where we are surprised by the large number of backpacker/traveller/visitor type bars strung along the main street. Not so much a Mexican town as a succession of tour operators and bars where the decibel level of the music would render conversation impossible. Tulum obviously gets more visitors than we thought – a fact very clearly reflected in the price of everything. Coming from provincial Mexico into the Riviera Maya is a bit like going from northern England into London, the pricing is simply on a different level.

Faced with limited local options and prices ripping holes in our pockets in a most un-Mexican way, we pick up a hire car for our last four days here, the first time we’ve hired in Mexico. Driving between Tulum’s two halves of pueblo and beach is to drive through a giant construction site – it’s very obvious that from the sheer number of hotels pushing skyward that Tulum will be the next part of the boom which has already hit large sections of this riviera coastline.

Our first hire-car foray out of town is to the ruins of ancient Tulum and next on to a pair of cenotes known as Dos Ojos (Two Eyes). The ancient city is less spectacular than the other Mayan cities we’ve recently visited, but trumps them in terms of location as it sits right on the rugged clifftop above the turquoise Caribbean seas. It’s a setting which must have looked so exotic to the first Spanish invaders as they brought their ships closer to shore. 

Built probably during the 12th century, Tulum enjoyed a 300+ year history as a major Mayan port city, facilitating trade with other peoples along the coast. Such, seemingly, was its splendour that it was even spared the usual razing by the Spanish and wasn’t finally abandoned until 75 years after occupation. The ruins today sit impressively on that clifftop, but clearly too close to the busloads of day trippers from Cancun and Playa del Carmen – more of that in a minute.

Dos Ojos cenotes turn out to be a different experience from those cenotes nearer to Valladolid, as these are set within caves rather than in an open sinkhole. Consequently the water is considerably colder, the gloom deeper, and the number of bats circling above our heads as we swim is considerably greater. Nevertheless it’s still invigorating and rewarding to give some of our time to wallowing in the depths.

Tulum and its environs are, as we’ve said, our final stop on this 13-week tour: and, we have to say, it feels like we are no longer in Mexico. Somehow we’ve been teleported from the vibrancy and excitement of Mexico to a chunk of Touristland which could be just about anywhere on the planet.

The astonishing hike in price is just one thing. Pass through the gates of Tulum ancient city and you are initially in what is for all intents and purposes a shopping mall. There’s giant tat souvenir shops the size of supermarkets, cafes and restaurants galore – a Subway, a Starbucks and a Haagen Dazs. More people are walking the site than anywhere else we’ve been, their coloured wristbands betraying their position as a Group member, a bit like branded sheep. No, a lot like branded sheep.

Ancient Tulum overlooks the glorious Caribbean, but is nowadays also home all day to people wandering the site in bikinis or speedos, posing for stupidly positioned photos and selfies (“jump in the air, make a V with your fingers”), people in conversations on their mobile with the device on “speaker phone” with a shouter at the other end, people unsuspectingly paying £20 for something that costs £2 in the rest of the country.

Tulum the town meanwhile has more than its fair share of loud bars, clothes shops, tat shops, and taxi drivers raking in obscenely overpriced fares. Food which we know is Tex-Mex and not genuine Mexican is here (fajitas, chilli con carne) even though we’ve never seen it anywhere else in Mexico. In fact it’s as easy to find pizza, pasta and Chinese takeaway here as it is tacos or tamales. There’s shoppers walking the aisles of the supermarkets wearing only skimpy beachwear, which – sorry – is just WRONG. Especially when it is THAT skimpy. What with me being shortsighted, it’s a good job I wasn’t buying coconuts, I tell you that much.

With the huge amount of hotel construction work in progress, things are only going to get more extreme. We may still be a few days from flying home, but we sure feel like we’ve left Mexico.

Tales Of Smut, Keys & Turtles: Last Days In Mexico 

We described Tulum in our last post as being too over developed, too touristy and very much too over priced for our liking, with an enormous amount of further development in the midst of construction, but, you know, everywhere has redeeming features – it’s just that in places like Tulum you have to look a bit deeper to find them.

The music in some of the bars in the main street is simply too loud to hold a conversation, so loud in fact that I’m reminded of what my Dad used to say. “I do detest pubs which are so loud that I can’t hear myself drink”. But as we gravitate down the side streets, past some delicious smelling street food trolleys, so the more friendly bars with attractive lighting and music at a sensible level start to reveal themselves. We even find one with a local draught beer.

Those side streets are also home to better places to eat than the plethora of burger/pizza/pasta/springroll places along the main drag – sometimes the street vendors and, now and again, a local speciality. One such local delicacy is huitlacoxe. Now, does anyone know what corn smut is? Would you be put off eating something with that name? Because that’s what huitlacoxe is.

A healthy, protein packed food eaten on the Yucatan peninsula since Mayan times, huitlacoxe or corn smut is a black fungus which grows on the heads of diseased maize crop, caused by a fungus which infects the whole plant and forms black tumours on the yellow corn. It has, perhaps not surprisingly, a deep mushroom-like flavour, and is great as a tortilla filling with cheese, coriander and salsa. Amusingly, some American chefs have tried to increase its popularity there by renaming it “Mexican truffle” – well, we guess that does sound more appetising than “corn smut”.

With Tulum being what it is, our newly acquired hire car is a real boon, enabling us to discover the pretty bay at Akumal, 30-odd kilometres north. Despite sounding like a computer program for finance departments, Akumal is an attractive series of half moon bays with turquoise waters, white sands, palm trees and……turtles. Even though Akumal was artificially created in the 1950s as a tourist destination, major development has been kept away, meaning that in its entirety it is just a handful of shops and a series of modest sized beachfront resort hotels hidden in the palm trees, where the main attraction is the turtle breeding ground.

Whilst obviously therefore a holiday spot, and still part of the over popular Riviera Maya, it is decidedly more sedate than the bigger towns and is a perfectly fine beach location at which to wile away a few hours. Plus there’s a veritable army of guys removing the sargassum as soon as it rolls up on the sand. We’re still in Touristland rather than Mexico of course, but at least it’s a few notches down the scale.

Snorkelling and diving are the main reasons people come here, this place presents an ideal opportunity to observe turtles in their natural habitat. Before we enter the water we receive strict instructions: float and don’t walk, stay horizontal, do not move towards the turtles, don’t touch anything, including the weed and coral as well as the creatures. Don’t go in the water with sun screen or insect repellent on your body. There are also heavy fines for anyone littering the beach.

Swimming above and amongst the turtles and seeing rays, colourful fish and a large starfish all adds up to another terrific experience, well worth the fairly steep fee. Our guide even places a large sea urchin into Michaela’s hand at one point. It’s all rather thrilling, and all without swimming any great distance from the shore.

We’re left reflecting on the delicate balance of ethics here though. Clearly there are a lot of strict well enforced rules in place to protect the wildlife, and despite Akumal’s popularity the turtle young still hatch on the beaches. Laudable as it all is, nevertheless the turtles’ habitat is still invaded daily by large numbers of gawping humans (like us). Akumal claims to be inflicting no harm on these beautiful creatures and their environment. We sincerely hope that is an honest claim.

It’s on a trip to Akumal that we have a little “incident”. Driving along the main road, I start to worry that I don’t know where the room keys are – not so good when we also have a key to the main always-locked gate which opens out to the public highway. Sure enough, a thorough search of car and bags finds nothing. The more we look, the more they aren’t there, as Winnie The Pooh would have said. Somehow between house and car and gas station I’ve parted company with the damn things. In all of our travels, in all of our rooms, all over the world, we have never before lost any keys. There is indeed a first time for everything it seems, and I have to sheepishly admit my folly after ringing the doorbell to get back in later in the day.

“How much I have to pay for new key?”

“Eh?”

“Mi pagado par nuevo”, I say, pointing to his spare set and getting as close as I can to a coherent sentence in Spanish.

“Ah. Mañana”, he says, motioning towards the manager’s office. I think I’m in trouble.

And so we reach the very last day of this long trip which has brought us so many great experiences. Venturing a few miles out of Tulum we make one last great discovery to provide a fitting end to this great adventure: Laguna Kaan Luum. Just a few hundred metres down a potholed track off the highway, this absolutely sumptuous lake lies in splendour within its mangrove tree boundaries.

It’s a beautifully peaceful place – music, smoking, pets and alcohol are all banned – where just modest numbers of respectful people wallow in its silent waters. A deep blue cenote sits centrally in the otherwise turquoise lake, two wooden jetties providing the easy platform for gliding into the warm still waters. It’s an unbelievably serene way to end our time here, all the better for how unexpected this haven of tranquility is just a short drive from Tulum. 

All this and sunshine too: the rains of our final three days have conveniently fallen either overnight or just after breakfast, leaving the rest of the day clear for hours of glorious, scorching sun.

“Buenos dias, you OK?”

“Si, gracias. But I still have to pay for the lost key”.

He consults what I presume is his rule book, and looks up, a matter-of-fact expression on his face.

“I’m sorry, you have to pay 300 pesos”.

No, my friend, it’s me that’s sorry. I feel rather stupid. Despite my contrition he is both apologetic and friendly and does nothing at all to add to my feelings of guilt, bless him.

Three lovely, relaxed days to say goodbye to Mexico. Not a bad way to bow out.