Down Below

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No! It’s Shupermen! Coming up from the depth of a cenote where his secret hideout is buried among the many limestone caves created millions of years ago by cracks as a result of a huge meteor hitting the earth.

Seriously though, the more cenotes we visit, the more a thought that this is the sort of place monsters dwell in haunts my mind. The first ones we’ve seen were rather open, and, even though divers emerged from their depths like hunchbacked seals, I felt no fear, no tremble of the soul. Here, however, I was all but refusing getting into the water, and in the second cenote (there were three of them here) shot out of the water and shoved the camera into Shurik’s hands saying: “Here. You go. I don’t know what it is, but this place freaks me out.” Shurik wanted to know what was wrong, but I couldn’t explain it myself. These cenotes looked like the rocky earth just collapsed inside itself, cried an inviting pool, and left us a peephole through which sunlight made the water hypnotizing and inviting. Even though I don’t believe it, it felt like a trap. It felt like you were fooled from feeling claustrophobic by the vast amount of space, most of which you could not even see. Here, there was just an overwhelming feeling that something immense was going to materialize out the endless dark of the underwater grotto and drag me within for its next meal.

Not the horse-flies biting, nor the finding out that we were dragging one of our shock absorbers behind us on our way to Merida could take away from this day.

Tags: underwater, us, view
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Rio Lagartos and so much more

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007

A well deserved break from the ruins – seeing something alive for a change. Alligator River was just the spot for that. Well, it actually wasn’t a river, it was an inlet. Apparently, in their day, the Spaniards who came here have mistaken Crocs for Alligators and the long, narrow bay, jam-packed with water fowl, for a river.

Arriving here late, as GreenGo had to visit the doctor yet another time, we risked not seeing much at all, but after a short bargaining bit which sliced the original “set” price nearly in half (I’m getting good at this stuff!) we were on a little boat to see the flamingos. It was alleged we would see them in hundreds, though it must have been said about a different time of year or day, as we only saw groups of no more then a dozen at a time, and getting close enough for a good shot was so hard, I was about to venture out of the boat by swimming up to them with my camera in the underwater housing, when they would fly away to the clicking of Shurik’s Canon.

( Birds, boats, crabs, camping, octopi, and a very proud citizen )

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Chicken-Pizza and Dzitnup

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

Nominated as one of the New Seven Wonders of the world, Chichen-Itza (Chicken-Pizza – as some visitors find it so much easier to remember) was a must-see stop in our nonexistent itinerary, but also one that we approached with dread. You see, I’m not a tall person, and though manage to see over heads of most Mexicans, in sites full of European and North American tourists, I am a mouse in a cornfield. For that reason, we approached Chichen-Itza the way you storm a fortress – early, while all the tall ones sleep, or on their four hour bus ride from Cancun. And if you are tired from seeing the ruins, check out the many blankets full of hand crafts spread out along every walkable surface – they are great representations of the local art and culture. Here, for some reason, I concentrated on masks, and though didn’t buy one, notably padded my craft photo gallery.

( The New Wonder )

Tags: ruins
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Ek Balam

Saturday, September 8th, 2007

I think we are bent on destruction. How many ruins have we seen already? A dozen? More? And we still haven’t tired of them. I guess it is because they are so different from one another. In Peru, for example, after doing the Inca Trail, I got so sick of ruins Shurik had to practically drag me to Pisac to see the Temple of the Sun. Here though, I have grown to trust every site is holding something new and magnificent. We will not visit them all, I assure you. There are hundreds if not thousands of them in Mexico, and we have chosen carefully which ones to visit (not counting of course the ones that we just stumbled upon,) and even though some of their effect on us is due to the imagination of the restorer, it is our window into a mostly extinct culture, so here is another peek.

Ek Balam would be another site we drove by if only not for the extraordinarily restored temple that featured all sorts of figures, masks and a grand altar as if set in a mouth of a jaguar, all to be seen on the biggest pyramid of the site, from which Shurik here is demonstrating the rest of the buildings.

( The ruins of Ek Balam, its inhabitants, and restoration )

Tags: ruins
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Playa del Carmen

Wednesday, September 5th, 2007

Time to move out. Having a hot shower sure was nice, but my mom went back to NY, and we moved on to Playa del Carmen.

Formerly a small fishing village, Playa, as many now call it, has unfortunately lost its small-town charm, and now was, in my opinion, just a beach town with all a tourist might need, like a nudist beach (which I took my time enjoying) and an extensive pedestrian street with endless restaurants and shops where prices are in USD. In one such shop we found the most exquisite examples of Oaxacan crafts (under the cut), but buying them there would burn a crater in our pockets, so I just might try finding the artist when we get back to Oaxaca. (BTW, if you see something in my photo-collection of crafts that you would like to have, we could arrange something :)

To be completely honest, we had another reason for stopping in Playa. GreenGo was leaking oil really badly, and had to be taken to the doctor. A guy in our hostel recommended a mechanic, and first thing in the morning we left GreenGo at the garage for repair. As we were walking back to the hostel, we passed by a barber. “I could use a haircut,” said Shurik tagging at his hair that was really not as bad as he sometimes lets it get, but a somewhat wild looking nonetheless, and we made a sharp turn into the shop where the barber Ricardo, aka Rayo (lightning) to his friends, who was Shurik’s age, after a quick conversation and cut, invited us to go snorkeling with him on Wednesday. “I have a spear-gun. Let’s meet here at ten in the morning,” he said. It was his shop, and apparently on Wednesday there usually were not too many customers, so it was a date.

( Snorkeling in Playa )

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