Adventures South of the Border part three

We got to ticul, checked into a hotel for the night. The next morning, we checked out and they agreed to store our luggage for us, by shoving it underneath the staircase. We figured that would have to be good enough. We got a Taxi out to Uxmal.

Uxmal was amazing. It's right out in the middle of the jungle. It was really hot and humid, but that's kind of to be expected. Unfortunately this was a prime breeding ground for the most enormous, agressive mosquitoes I've ever encountered. My mom had the foresight to bring her 100% deet spray with her, and we all sprayed every exposed patch of skin on us. My mom perhaps over applied to her face. We're sitting there and she says to me, "well, I just put some more deet spray on my face, and now my whole face is just burning." I didn't really know what to say, so I just reassured her that it didn't look like her face was blistering or anything and it would probably subside after a while. I assume it did since that's the last I heard of it. I think you can sweat that stuff off, because I still ended up with bites all over my arms, and a few on my legs and ankles. They bit me through my socks and pants. I looked down and there was one sitting on my knee and it had worked it's little sucker thing through the fibers of my pants and was sucking out blood. I had some on my shoulders too, where they'd bitten through my t-shirt. We saw some scantily clad tourists that appeared to be waging a full on war with them. I'm surprised there were so many really, because in most of the little rooms in the ruins you could see a bunch of bats flying around, or it would smell like bat droppings. Don't bats eat little flying bugs? I was under the impression that they do. Note the bat in the picture.

Moving on. My dad read about some "sound and lights" show that they do at night and tried to talk my mom and I into going out to Uxmal twice in one day to see the ruins all lit up after dark. I think he may have been slightly offended when I told him that it sounded hokey and I wasn't at all interested, and my mom agreed. We went back to Ticul sweaty, tired, & hungry (we'd skipped breakfast because someone in the party, who will remain nameless, wished to be at the ruins as early as possible), got some food, replenished our water supply and caught a bus to Merida.

The hotel we stayed at in Merida was really nice. My favorite part about these really nice hotels in Latin America is that they attempt to translate everything into english. Their translations can be pretty amusing (like the menu in Bolivia that had translated beef as "cow meats"), but I've never seen anything that can top the "What to do in a fire or hurricane" signs they had posted on every floor of that hotel. I know it was on every floor because one trip up to the fourth floor in the elevator was more than enough for me. I felt that it was a safety hazard, and I decided to use the stairs instead of rolling the dice. After hearing that little death box lurching and creaking around inside the elevator shaft the parents decided the stairs were the way to go as well. The parents were a little slower on the stairs than me, so I stopped on one of the floors to let them catch up. That's when I spotted the sign. It caught my attention because the first box of instructions on what to do in a hurricane read "conserve the calm."

That first night in Merida we stopped in a little shop where my mom was looking at a table cloth. At first there was just a guy there in his early twenties. After we'd been there for a while his uncle showed up. My mom and I had quickly determined that they were going to charge us way too much for anything and were ready to go. My dad was still chatting away in spanish with the nephew. Unfortunately the uncle spoke just enough english to bea nuisance. He kept calling my mom and I "amiga," which drives me nuts. He spoke to me a little bit in spanish and used "tu" which I felt was rude. So, I retreated back to the back of the store where my dad was to see if he was ready to go. I found him back there bearing his testimony to the nephew. I could tell we weren't leaving anytime soon so I went back to the front to see how my mother was fairing. Not well. I got out there just as the uncle had forced a cowboy hat on her head, and was heading into a side room looking for a dress or something that he claimed would be perfect for her. She just looked at me and said "tell your dad that we have to get out of here." I interrupted the gospel discussion at the back of the store and told my dad that we were ready to leave RIGHT NOW. Miraculously my dad was able to sense the urgency of that message, and we made a hasty departure, much to the relief of my poor mom.

The next day in Merida we were walking back down to the Cathedrals to check them out when somewhere in there my dad was lagging behind and met a guy that wanted to practice his english with the gringos (no idea how exactly that happened). He followed us around all morning to both cathedrals. It was actually kind of interesting having him along because he knew a little of the history of the cathedrals. He was able to point out the chinese graves in the floor of one of them. I guess he got bored with us after a while and said he had to go.

After a lot of walking around and doing shopping we were all hungry (again, no breakfast) and it was getting hotter by the second. We spent all morning in the cathedrals, and some little shops. My dad wanted to check out a street there with all the mansions from the henequen plantation owners, which was another mile or so down the road. So we headed off and figured we'd stop for food at a restaurant along the way. Turns out there weren't many restaurants along the way. We were just about to eat at a place that I felt was destined to result in some digestive problems for at least one of us, when we spotted a chinese place that was the Mexican equivalent of Panda Express. I never even knew such places existed down there.

We continued on to the Paseo de Montejo. It was kind of interesting, and a little sad since most of these overly elaborate enormous mansions had fallen into a serious state of disrepair, or had been converted into businesses. One of them was converted into a museum of anthropology, so we went in there. Of course my dad had to document the entire experience with his video camera, so my mom and I finished a good 30-45 minutes ahead of him.

We returned to the hotel, retreived our luggage from their janitor's closet where they were holding it and caught a bus to Valla do Lid.