Mexico & Guatemala

Part 4:

Yucatan

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January 22nd (day 14): Cancun

We started the day by looking around for a rental car to make a tour of the Yucatan with. This was an idea we got during the trip when we'd decided going to lake Atitlan in southern Guatemala - as was our initial plan - wasn't worth the two transit days it would require. We wanted to rent an old Beetle - still the most common car in Mexico - but settled for an Opel Corsa 1.8 with airco which was actually cheaper.

Cancun is the most popular beach resort in America, so we first drove to the beach. Now this is not your average stretch of coastline, it's a 20km long U-shaped strip of land that encloses a laguna. This picture (taken from our plane to Chicago a week later) gives a good idea. The place turned out to be horrible. The endless but narrow beach is divided into little sections, one per hotel, and are full of Americans who probably spend their entire holiday trapped in one little rectangle. I'd rather stay home and work than go on vacation here.

January 23rd (day 15): Coba & Tulum

Tulum

From Cancun we drove south to Tulum, the site of an ancient Mayan city at the coast, and fortunately this place turned out to be the exact opposite of Cancun: the beach is wide and open, instead of ugly hotels there are a series of camps with wooden cabins, and instead of fat old Americans there's a fun young crowd. Our camp was a bit like a tropical smurf village, just lovely If I ever want a beach vacation, I think I'll go back to Tulum! In the morning we first visited the ancient city. It is small and not very spectacular compared to the other ancient cities we saw, but the setting was just gorgeous and made it well worth visiting.

Coba

In the morning we also made an unscheduled trip to Coba, yet another ancient Mayan city at about an hour's driving from Tulum.
After spending the afternoon on the beach in Tulum, we drove all evening to the south of the Yucatan and stayed in Xpuhil, the town nearest Calakmul.

January 24th (day 16): Calakmul

Calakmul was one of the major Mayan cities during the Classic Period, ruling a vast area known as the Kingdom of the Serpent's Head until it was defeated by its archrival Tikal in 695. Despite its huge monuments it wasn't rediscovered until as recently as 1931. Nowadays it lies in the middle of a huge rainforest which is a protected national reserve called the Calakmul Biosphere. Since it is so remote it does not get visited by package tourists, which makes it all the more enticing.

From Xpuhil, the nearest town, we had to drive two hours to get there. Calakmul lies at the end of a 60km road through the rainforest. The last 30km of the road was very narrow and winding. The maximum speed was 30km/h, but we took turns racing through it rally-style at up to 130km/h, lotsa fun!

We didn't have a map of Calakmul so we first wandered around through the rainforest looking for the monuments, and saw some cool trees. After one and a half hours we still hadn`t found any major monuments. We were starting to worry that Calakmul was going to be a disappointment, but when I climbed on top of a smaller temple I could look out over the trees and got sight of exactly what I was looking for...
After racing back to the highway we drove on to Campeche to spend the night.

January 25th (day 17): Campeche & Uxmal

Campeche

Campeche, a colonial town by the Mexican Gulf, was founded by the Spanish in 1540 and soon flourished, making it a favourite target of pirates who committed a particularly gruesome massacre here in 1663. Nowadays it's on Unesco's list of World Heritage Sites so we expected a lot of it, but it turned out to be a thirteen in a dozen colonial Spanish town, though nicely cleaned up.

Uxmal

Uxmal is an ancient Mayan city with a distinct architectural style that features elaborate ornamentation. Many consider it to be the height of Mayan architecture, and I think it was the second best of the nine ancient cities we visited, after Tikal. To us the highlight of Uxmal was the 38m high temple which the Spanish called Casa del Adivino (the Magician's house) with its unusual rounded base. While we liked the Magician's House the most, Uxmal is especially famous for the so-called Governor's Palace (these are all names invented by the Spanish who just made guesses about the buildings' functions). The Palace has façades nearly a 100m long, intricately decorated with geometrical patterns and Chac-Mool masks. We ended the day in Merida.

January 26th (day 18): Merida, Chichen Itza & Valladolid

This was an action-packed day, the busiest of this trip!

Merida

Merida is, you guessed it, an old colonial town. It is the main city in the Yucatan region, with 700.000 inhabitants. We checked it out in the morning and liked it a lot, but I don't have many pictures worth showing. We stayed in a special hotel, Hotel Trinidad Galeria, owned by an artist who uses it as a gallery for his collection. Before leaving we took a dive in the hotel's swimming pool.

Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza was one of the last Mayan cities to flourish. It was actually a mixed Mayan/Toltec city after the latter conquered the town in the 9th or 10th century. It was abandoned in the 14th century. Nowadays it is Mexico's biggest tourist traps as it draws masses of tourists from nearby Cancun.

The main monument is the pyramid called El Castillo by the Spanish, a true architectural masterpiece that is also a stone reflection of the complicated Mayan calendar. Each side has 91 steps, which combined with the platform on top makes for 365 steps. There are 18 terraces to match the 18 months of the Mayan calendar, and 52 sections in the façades - not for the weeks in a year but to reflect a Mayan calendar round which consisted of 52 years.

To top it off a long stone serpent has been carved along one of the stairways in such a way that the movement of the sun throws shadows on the stairs that make the snake seem to creep upwards during the spring equinoxe (21st March), and downwards during the autumn equinoxe (21st September).

Valladolid

From Chichen Itza we drove to Valladolid and went swimming in an underground cave.

Cancun

And from Valladolid we drove on to Cancun to complete our road trip. We had made this whole tour (1700km) without any other map than the tiny one in the LP (10x10cm) - Mexican roads are excellently signposted.

What a long day this had been! But it wasn't over yet. Since we still had the car, we decided this was the best time to check out one of the mega dancings in the resort area. We picked the biggest one, called Coco Bongo. That name sounds stupid but the place was superb (click here to get a taste).

For just 25$ (10$ off the normal price since we were still hesitating) we got a ticket with free drinks all night. Dancers were putting up great shows - doing acrobatics while hanging on ropes from the ceiling and stuff - but most of all the music was just great. Now I'm someone who is already glad if not all the music sucks when I go out, especially in a commercial place, but here somehow all the music seemed right, even the occasional house music.

We had such a good time that we stayed until they kicked us out at 6am. At the end when the bar was closed and they started cleaning up, the DJ started playing good rock music, which just topped off the night for us. This was quite simply the best night out ever. If only there were places like this in Belgium instead of all the crappy commercial house joints.

While driving home we got stopped by a cop who wanted to give me a ticket for drunk driving. This was the second time this evening - earlier we had already been stopped for speeding (just when we were actually not racing :) ). We bribed the cop then - this is the whole reason why they stop you; Cancun cops prey on tourists to get bribes out of them - but I didn't feel like doing it again. I felt sober enough from all the dancing so I was stubborn and kept telling this cop to test me, and in the end he just let us go. So in the end that was another fun experience :)

January 27th-28th (days 19-20): Isla de Mujeres

After returning our car we took a boat to Isla de Mujeres, a small island near Cancun where we spent the last two days of our vacation just relaxing. It is supposed to be a less commercial place, but we didn't notice much difference. Still, the beach was a lot better here. The first evening we found some Mexican hash (in a souvenir shop, no kidding) and finally fulfilled our dream of getting high on a beach - that was one crazy night :)

January 29th (day 21): Back home

Our flight home included a long stop-over in Chicago again, but not long enough to make it worth going to the center again. So we just took these pictures at the airport.

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