Random Projects

 Never leave home without it! We’re collecting little bits and bobs on our travels, I’m working on filling one of those fancy Victorian curio cabinets with nik naks from far away lands and Kath is being a bit more girly and going for jewellery and bags. This route almost ended in tears however. The dangers of trying on rings cannot be underestimated. Were it not for a tin of Vaseline, the liberal application of it contents and use of the correct force (ie loads!) we might still be in Mexico with a big blue finger and one expensive unwanted ring!

 With our new found bartering aggression we headed off fresh from Snorkelling to rent some bikes. Cozumel is only a small island and we’d heard there were lovely beaches just up the coast so we toddled off to rent some bikes, knowing the going rate for bikes was $12 a day we weren’t going to take any sh*t. Sure enough the price was $15 but with so many people offering everything you could possibly want we had no qualms in haggling to the death. By this point in the day everyone had disappeared though, their prey would not return until the following morning. Undeterred, we found someone who looked at us as if we were mad wanting push bikes and was immune from haggling. Next and last option, possibly my best haggle and we got bikes for $12. Two seconds later we had a scooter for $20, what were we thinking with pushbikes anyway! Up the road to the office and what should be parked in the front of the lot? The best VW Beetle ever! Bright yellow and open top. We had to have it.

Possibly a highlight of the whole of Mexico was us bombing around in this beauty. The freedom of the open road on deserted roads and deserted beaches. I’d say, if you come to Cozumel this is an absolute must!

Where scuba diving was brought to the masses via the ground breaking TV documentary of Jacques Cousteau. Cozumel is Mexico’s largest island and only Caribbean island and was made famous in the 60’s by the famed French marine biologist.
We booked a snorkel trip from the mainland and caught the ferry over to the island, serenaded on the way by the ship’s house band who were pretty good! Getting off, we instantly realised we’d been done on the snorkel trip tickets we’d bought on the mainland. Lines of eager boat owners and tour touts lined the dock and this would be the place to buy. All in all though, if we were two weeks in, we were the palest white of tourists ever, and this was the first time we’d been ripped off it wasn’t bad! We vowed to get our money back by being the hardest barterers ever from now on though.
 Snorkelling in the legendary crystal clear waters was the idea and the water really was amazing. The clearest and bluest I’d ever seen. Loads of fish and strange things. The island had been ravaged for 72 hours straight, by a huge storm not so long ago though and lots of the reef had been destroyed. It’s returning but the bits we saw were not the best. Kath met some people later who said the scuba diving was the best they’d ever seen. They must have gone a bit out of the way of our standard tourist boat I think.
 One of the ideas of this trip was for us to go Scuba diving together everywhere. Kath had her PADI qualification and I didn’t even think about not being able to do it, even though I’d never even opened my eyes under the water before and didn’t particularly like being anywhere except on top of it. I have to admit that I really didn’t like snorkelling, it freaked me out and I realized why I’d never really pursued it before. It wasn’t a good sign for the scuba diving to come!

http://picasaweb.google.com/tim.minter.pics/Cozumel

.. and the end of our Mexican adventure. This pic looks a bit cold and dark but it was late in the evening. … and finally… our trusty Mexico Beatle – which, for obvious reasons we named Buttercup. We actually went to bargain for a couple of push bikes but HAD to get this when we saw it! No drivers licence and only a couple of worthless ferry tickets for a deposit, what a great place!

Noah and the Whale is one bit of new music we loaded up onto the ipod for this trip (thanks Emma for this one). With a set of trusty and cheap travel speakers it’s well worth the weight. Talking of Noah’s and whales though, on our last day in Palenque with 5 hours to kill until the 23.55 bus to Merida this happened..

it had been raining a bit each day in late afternoon but this was a storm and a half, we were stuck in a cafe watching this almighty flood build and build, as my mum said when they got back from Mexico a few days before we got there “you can see why their curbs are so high”. Pictures speak for themselves I think.

 I’m in no position to offer advice about hammock buying but Nomadas Youth Hostel here has a few signs on the walls about this, first, it says, if someone is offering you a Mexican hammock made of sisal, it isn’t, as they are not made in Mexico anymore, second, you should never pay more than 280 pesos (for a medium one) and third, (quite specifically!) you should look for one with 8 or more strings connecting from the bit you sit on to the support strings…. first place on our hammock buying mission… 500 pesos (3000 if we really want a good one – “Honest guv”) for a “genuine Mexican sisal” specimen! Long story short, and we’re now the proud owner of two lovely bargain, cotton, 8 stringer hammocks for a garden we haven’t got, to put between four trees we don’t have

Today we learnt that November the 16th is the day of the dead, when Mexicans (and I guess quite a lot of other central and South American people) pile into the graveyards and have a big party. If the day of the dead happens on a Sunday there’s no party, even the dead have to have a day off.

The journey to reincarnation takes as many years as that person was alive and as we learnt at San Lorenzo Zinacantan you should not build monuments or anything that encloses the body as they won’t be able to get out! You can’t take pictures of the graveyard but blue crosses are for adults, black crosses for people who died old (older than 52 – the Maya calendar cycles every 52 years) and white crosses for children. There were quite a few white crosses.

Something like this…

The old pre-travel world is still encroaching. A flurry of canceling and rerouting filled the last week in the UK but who would have thought it would be such a problem! A mobile phone I can’t convert to pay as you go until December, a TV license I can’t cancel without a solicitor’s note (or something equally ridiculous) and a broadband company who only now tell me they want the modem box back! A car tax about to run out which you can’t do anything about until you get a notice, a parking permit and car insurance to renew. Leaving the country is not easy. A very helpful couple of house sitters and a good friend (yes that’s you Anna and Matt and Emma!) and a carefully choreographed mail forwarding system to the rescue though hopefully! Now I just need to find out why I couldn’t get any cash out yesterday! Thankfully we stocked up on American Express travelers cheques before we left and one of our cards still works. Everything is great.

 Described as Hum Drum but we are only here in Palenque town for practical reasons as we’re off out again on the five to midnight bus to Marrida tomorrow

Lonely Planet recommends you stay outside Palenque at a place called El Panchin described as a “funky travelers hangout” and I have to say, from the rest of garb LP gives, it sounds amazing… set in dense rain forest, epicenter of Palenque’s alternative scene, bohemian Mexican and foreign types with a smattering of archeologists and anthropologists. If we were staying any length of time I’d have to insist on staying there.

Stepping off the bus from Saint Cristobal to Palenque it was a different world. “Sauna” doesn’t quite do it justice. Anyway, fully briefed from the Lonely Planet map we hitched up our backpacks and sweated our way over to our hostel, Pasada Aguila Real. We stumbled in with another English couple equally inept at Spanish as I still am. Kath however has mastered the language and within no time we’d been shown a room and exploded our stuff all over it. First air conditioner we’d seen and it got a hammering that night!

PS cockroaches are no match for the mighty flip flop. tim 1, cockroaches 0! That was the first cockroach I’ve ever seen believe it or not. He was quite nice but didn’t half make a mess!

Indiana Jones, eat your heart out (there was some kind of heart eating action in the first one wasn’t there?) Palenque Ruins (the reason we came to this fairly boring town) are amazing! We’ve been to two other Maya sites but this is the one to see. Well and truly entangled in proper rain forest. There are all sorts of jungle creatures lurking around apparently but I didn’t see any this time although Kath did get stung by a hornet and carried off and eaten by a giant spider, but she’d much better now.

Top tip here seems to be to go on the 16th September. The day after Mexican Independence day and when most Mexicans are sleeping it off. Visitors can swell from 1600 to 6000 but today we seem to have had it almost to ourselves. Maybe that’s what made it so special.

Mexican Independence Day and we did a real tourist thing today, a trip to see Indigenous Villages San Juanhamula and San Lorenzo Zinacantan (Village of the Bat Man). The church is unlike anything I’ve seen before, Catholic on the outside, a strange and interesting place on the inside. The priest is banished except for baptisms. This is the only time the villages have a use for him. Baptisms are the point a baby becomes a person, before that they are “Monkey Men”! The priest was told in no uncertain terms to get out and watch the door didn’t hit him on his holy ass on the way out a hundred or so years ago. You cannot take pictures inside the church. You are greeted by the smell of pine needles which completely cover the floor making it look initially like growing grass. The needles are cleared in odd circles across the floor where family groups or individuals sit (sometimes with a shaman) and set out a bizarre selection of objects as offerings. Aside from this, the tables around the sides of the church can be covered by hundreds or thousands of candles. I don’t think I’ve seen as many candles in one place before, enough to make the air shimmer and send clouds of smoke rising. The clearings in the pine needles with the people sitting around them and the offerings.. these were usually more candles, eggs and drinks, one man had a bottle of San Migeul complete with a slice of lime in the top. I think the important thing was the symbolism as clearly the San Migel had been drunk and replaced with water previously!

Years ago, when rediscovered, by silly people, the church and people were known as the people who worshipped Coca Cola and sure enough the strangest thing in this scene, possibly, were the little bottles of Coke and Fanta in amongst the offerings.

Statues of the villages saints lined the inside walls all in glass cases and dressed in amazing clothes and ornaments except for a forlorn bunch of about 8 saints all still in glass cases but dressed in plane clothes and decidedly blingless. These saints were the saints from the only other church in the town. This burnt down 100 years ago and they have been in this remaining church being punished for letting the church burn down ever since. The bells from that church, that will never toll again are on the floor in front of them. Altogether a strange sight.