Merida - Mexico

OK, back to the usual travel rants... After a few wasted (both temporal and sobrietal) days in Cancun spent waiting for my sand-filled digital camera to be fixed, I pushed into the Yucatan interior, leaving the touristed beach towns for the more authentic, and less traveled, inland communities. Traveling between the two, there was a noticeable transition, and not just in town aesthetics (transforming from high-rise hotels and four-lane highways to classic Spanish colonial architecture and winding cobble stoned allies) but something deeper, something embedded within the culture itself; a down shift from the howty-towty tourist trap to the slower pace of real community life. A life where cowboys still ride in the streets on horse back, Mayan women still wear their traditional colorful attire, and there are still municipal markets packed with local farmers selling fresh produce and meats.

I made a layover in Vallaolid (a.k.a, Gay Perri) to see the fantastic Mayan ruins of Chichén Itza (pronounced, Chic-ken Pizza.. no, not really), who's high-rising pyramids and astrological observatories are rivaled only by Guatemala's Tikal in terms of grandeur. Then I pressed on to Merida. I'm not sure why I chose Merida, it is, after all, just a big city, the capital of the Yucantan. But, I needed to keep moving and it seemed like the next logical place to visit. Plus, a good friend from college, now a Gap Adventure tour guide, had some time off from work and said he'd meet me there.

With Merida, you either love or hate it right away, and I loved it. Maybe it was just because I needed a change from beach life (never thought I'd say that) but I liked the feel of this sprawling center for arts and education. It had a host of Universities, which in turn, lead to a host of bars, cafes, bookstores, and other youth-oriented services. It had more than a few museums and art galleries and, although I must admit I'm not much for either, they were fantastic, and most of them were free. I spent a very pleasent day simply wandering the leafy side streets, drinking espressos in a brassiere by the Zocolo (town square), and browsing through bookshops and art museums. It was great!

Ben Younkmen, my tour guide friend, arrived a few days later and I pushed aside my intellectual inclinations for the more seedy and debaucherous attractions that the city had to offer. Ben and I, being old lacrosse buddies, fell back into a very similar pattern that we shared when at UCSB, which goes a little something like this: Wake up late, have a bite, think about drinking, start drinking, have lunch, drink some more, then have a break to jump in the pool, start drinking again, play pool or watch movies at his hotel, then start drinking before we go out to drink. Only thing was, I was not in college anymore, or playing lax everyday to burn off the hangovers, so I couldn't really keep up like I used too, while Ben, still fresh from his scholastic youth, didn't seem to have a problem.

I did manage to do a few other things other than drink while we were together, one of which was visiting the nearby underground limestone lagoons, or Cenotes. Being friends with a gap tour guide does have it's advantages and Ben was able to hooked me up with another gap tour group heading out that way and the leader treated me like I was one of his group members. It was like sneaking into Disneyland and getting to play all day for free. I got a knowledgeable guide to take me through the city, get me on the right bus to the right village, get me on a horse-drawn rail car to take us out into the outback, and show me three of the best Centones in the Yucatan, with ladders descending into dark fresh-water caverns with piercing beams of blue sunlight illuminating the interior from cracks in the ceiling. And, all for a group discount. It ended up costing me about $8.50 with the gap group, if I had done it alone it would have cost me well over $30, and that's if I could have done it alone. Thanks for that Ben.

After another night of heavy drinking- where I was supposed to take a night bus to Palenque, but got drunk, decided that Ben and I were going to do it right and faked a sickness to exchange my ticket for the following night, then started drinking more, played pool, drank, ate McDonalds, had gut pains for an hour, drank more, and finished the night at an open-bar disco- I knew it was time to move on. Ben, swamped with work and content to stay in Merida on the cheap, wished me well and I was off on my own again, heading west along the narrow isthmus that straddles the boarder with Guatemala and the Gulf of Mexico for the mountains and the mysterious jungle-clad ruins of Palenque, and I all I could think about was my hang over.