Here's to bad Mexican Beer!

We are having a blast with Banana here in Merida - and lots of bad Mexican beer. Sometimes we don't even know what we've ordered but the most popular for me is XX Lager. We tried to order "yardas" of beer thinking yards (and the guys at the table next to us had really tall yard glasses) but it turns out that just means really big margarita glasses of beer. Those guys must have gotten theirs from the Carnival(e).

Surprisingly we haven't seen all that much of Carnival(e) but we did catch some concerts (where we got free bandanas) and everyone is dressed up - for adults (women, anyway) they look like showgirls and for kids it's like Halloween. For some reason a ton of little boys are wearing outfits I thought only dragqueens wore - long sleeve, shiny tops that stop just below their pecks - open tummy - and shiny bell bottom pants. Very strange. Tonight we're going to the parade, so that should be fun. More pictures to come.

What we do have pictures of (on photobucket as of today) is our trip with Banana to the Cenotes! Cenotes are like sink holes or caves full of water and are beautiful - but kinda scary in that the water gets dark and there are little fishes I don't want to touch me. However, they were a blast to swim in and Banana has an underwater camera so the pictures are hysterical.

In order to get to the Cenotes we took a bus and then had to take a bicycle rick-shaw. THEN you had to take these cart things that use the old mining tracks. The carts are pulled by horses and there's only one track so whenever we run into a cart headed towards us one of us has to get off the tracks and let the other pass. Not sure how they decide who, but it ran pretty smoothly. We visited 3 different Cenotes on the tracks and each one was different but fun. The first Cenote was beautiful but the moment we got there everyone left so it was a tad creepy - the back part of the cave was really dark so we didn't swim all the way back.

The second Cenote was awesome because it had a platform to jump about 10 feet into the water - so Banana and I swapped spots and kept trying to get pictures of ourselves jumping into the water (but I suck at timing the photos and missed her every time - my bad). The second Cenote also had these tree roots hanging down which I grabbed a hold of until I heard Jeff say he saw big spiders on them - and then I swam away from them for good. We had a picnic lunch and visited the last Cenote, but only Banana swam there since we were running out of time. The underwater pictures of us are hysterical - so check those out. On the way back, Jeff decided to tell the rick-shaw driver that he wanted to try out driving so the driver and I rode in the front while Jeff drove. He did a great job, but I believe it was tiring. We passed some adorable Mexican suburb type houses - just like the USA where each house is exactly the same but in alternating colors. Only difference is that their colors are much more vibrant (see pics).

PS. Don't keep your wallet in your pocket when you jump into a Cenote - because then you have to dry out all of your money while traveling back on the carts. DO, however, keep your watch on - because if you watch happens to be annoyingly broken and won't stop beeping every hour, this will fix it to it no longer beeps every hour (even if you lose the face of your watch...somehow).

Tomorrow we're headed to the ruins of Uxmal (ooosh mall), so more pictures to come. Tooodles!

They were all naked

Well, not all of them, but a lot of them anyway. So, Jeff and I went to the beach yesterday. Very eventful. Most people take a taxi or a collectivo (shared ride) since it´s a few miles to get to the beach - but we didn´t feel like paying and thought the walk would be nice so we found our own way. In order to get to the beach you have to go through one of the hundreds of resorts - so we did. Wrong resort. I guess the private beach we found doubles as a nudey beach - not the pretty kind.

Who cares about naked people since we got to have a corona on the beach! Not in hammocks but in swing chairs - close enough. I´ll get that commercial perfect corona moment soon, I know it!

We´re in Tulum, Mexico - where punch buggies come to die. We´ve been here for a few days relaxing and today we´re on our way to Merida to visit Anna-Banana (my roommate from college). This weekend is Carnival so it should be one heck of a good time.

We´re staying in a nice Cabana with lots of little geckos running around making funny cherping noises. Kinda cute. The huge roach that dropped into the bathroom to keep me company after my shower yesterday was not so cute, but he kept his distance and respected my close personal space so that´s ok.

You may not believe this - but the pastey sticks I call legs got some pigment here in Tulum. And I´m going to try for even more. Can you imagine? Wish me luck!

Tikal!

Finally! It was everything I wanted it to be - and we got to leave right when it started getting blazing hot so it was perfect. Who cares if our camera died near the end - we took plenty of pictures of all the good stuff (they're posted now).

My favorite was Temple V because it was fun to climb (albeit I nearly wet my pants getting up the steep ladder and found out I may be a tad afraid of heights with no safety railings), the views were nice, I was up on it all alone at one point, and the pictures make it look like I was going to slide down it! FUN. I wanted to tumble Domo down the slide part and act like he was a human sacrafice - which I'm sure they did way back when - but Jeff said he may get stuck in the middle and there's no way to get him back of that happens. Not worth the risk, although the photo op would have been awesome.

Only disappointing - though safety conscious - thing was that you can't take the real Mayan stairs on any of the big/major temples. They built modern safe ones instead (but at the top you can sit on the alter/top parts and could easily fall down the old Mayan stairs if you wanted).

There are a bunch of signs when you are first driving up to Tikal - snake crossing, jaguar crossing, deer crossing - but my two favorite, and the two that turned out to be true for us - were:
1 - Ant Eater Crossing (SCARY! Those things could claw you! but it was up in a tree so I was ok) and
2 - Turkey Crossing. I don't want to say the turkeys were pretty - but they were the most colorful turkeys I've ever seen. If a turkey had to be pretty, this would be it. But they were still kinda ugly.

On a separate note, I just want to say this: I am having the time of my life and I heart 1st world countries. I want a bumper sticker that says so (if I ever own a car again) - and then just to show that I've done a decent amount of research to come to this conclusion, I can surround that bumper sticker with the flags of all the non-1st world countries I've been to. I like good plumbing (which includes flushing and hot water), Chipoodles, water you're allowed to drink, toilet paper, fewer bugs, sandwiches, shopping, text messaging, Target, OSHA standards - you name it.

And yet I love this trip and can't wait to see where we go next. Also can't wait to have Chipoodles again. :)

19 Mosquito

That is my newly adopted Mayan Name. It was going to be 18 Mosquito (so I could be a close relative to 18 Rabbit), but then I got bit again. The name stems from all of the fabulous mosquito bites I've gotten since we arrived in the glorious tropics. I must be delicious. Good thing we pop malaria pills weekly.

Ok, let's talk about sounds. First, I hear this adorable chirping on the bus. Where is that coming from? Oh, it's the old lady over there holding a trashbag full of baby chicks. That was confirmed when she grabbed one out and then shoved it back in - must have been an ill behaved chick. On the same lines, I woke up to chirping at our Rio Dulce hostel and thought - annoying but sweet of the little birdies to wake me up each morning - even if they sound alarmingly close. I just hoped they didn't poop on me. Since I wasn't wearing glasses until the last day I didn't realize they were actually bats. Everywhere. Very close to me. Jeff said he knew and didn't want to say anything because he feared my reaction. I was calm, I swear (but only because we were leaving that day.

Strangest yet, we woke up at Finca Ixobel in our tree house like room to a crunching/munching noise. When we went out to see what it was I found a horse under our room. It's a tall structure so he was just munching away at the grass at the bottom of our staircase. It was all well and good until I was walking back from the restroom and gave the horse a little finger wave hello and he took that as a signal to run at me. I was half asleep and had visions of being bitten and stampeded so I ran equally fast and beat him to the staircase which I lumbered up as fast as my legs would take me. Take THAT, horse.

Ok, now I want sympathy. While lying in bed I saw a strange object on our mosquito netting just above me. Weird, so I got out and looked closer - it was the biggest freaking spider I have ever seen live! There's a picture on photobucket - look at it - disgusting! Ugh. No one thought it was as gross as I did, but that just means they are all crazy. RIght?

We liked Finca Ixobel and got to go on a fun horseride. It only rained a bit during the ride and otherwise was peaceful. If not for being really sore in spots, I would have liked it a tad more. The food there was awesome and we met some great people from Norway, England and Israel and hung our with them for a few days.

We are now in the lovely little island type thing of Flores, Guatemala. It's a tiny peninsula jutting out into the lake Peten Itza - I think. Very cute, pretty darn hot, and only an hour and a half from Tikal. YES! I'm pumped about that - which we'll go to tomorrow and Monday. For now, we are celebrating Valentines Day by Jeff taking me to a lovely lunch at Burger King (BOOBOO JANG!). Very romantic.

Copan, Honduras

We finally exited Guatemala for a short time to visit Copan, Honduras and see the Mayan Ruins there. We also had a fantastic tour guide in the form of some new found friends from Holland. And Austin Powers doesn´t like the Dutch! Crazy talk, these people were tons of fun.

Lots of pictures up on Photobucket (see link in posts below). It was our first trip to any ruins and won´t be our last, but I really enjoyed it. I also only know half there is to know about Copan´s ruins since our ¨Tour Guide¨ took the liberty of making a lot of it up - which I think made it a ton more fun. What we do know is the coolest ruler in all of Mayan history is 18 Rabbit. He´s so cool there´s a card game named after him. Well, one in the works, anyway.

I had another run in with mangy dog poo, but I´m really trying to watch my step these days and hope that will be the last. I won´t count on it, though.

Now we´re back in Guatemala and for the first time in a hot area. It´s muggy and I´m sweating a ton - makes me kinda miss the highlands. But in a few days we´ll finally visit Tikal so the mosquitos and damp everything is worth it for now.

We´re in Rio Dulce and staying at a river front hostel so we have to take a boat to get anywhere. Kinda fun - and we contemplated taking one of the free ¨canoes¨ out onto the river, but I really don´t want to fall in that merky water and the free canoes look pretty ancient. We´re off tomorrow for a place called Finca Ixobel on our way to Flores. Should be a fun stop. Toodles!

Goodbye Pana, Hello Antigua

We´ve finally left Panajachal. Actually, I´ll kind of miss it. Since we spent so much time there we found the best restaurants and cafes to hang out at and met some really cool people. So if you´re ever in Pana, ask us for recommendations. :)

Now we´re in Antigua and I´m not entirely sold on it yet. It´s a bigger town and very touristy, which has it´s good and bad parts. It´s kinda dirty in a way and yet they´ve hidden away all the mangy dogs. Sad. This time I was lucky enough to step in little boy pee - who knew I had to watch my step when walking down the sidewalk. Toddlers will be toddlers, I guess. Ew.

We were going to go up Volcano Pacaya because it has real lava flowing!! But the guide said there´s not much to see right now and it´s better to wait until there´s more flowing lava. Too bad too - because they have zero safety features and we could walk right up to real lava. Oh yeah! Next time. So we´re being lazy for a day and then heading up to another village with has a hotel called Earth Lodge. They supposedly have tree house cabins! FUN. I´m excited about that.

Then we´ll make our way up to see my roommate from college, Anna Banana. No idea what route we´ll take yet - Mexico, Belize to Mexico, etc. - but we´ll figure it out on the way and let you know how it all goes with pictures to boot!