on the road to mérida, yucatan

¡buenos días! estoy en mérida. we left isla mujeres after a visit to el banco to cambiar un cheque de viajero. we took the same ferry back to cancún and caught a little "bus" towards the town center. it was no bigger than a japanese mini van. there is available sitting for probably a dozen people though. it only cost 45 pesos ($.45) but then dropped us off not exactly where we wanted to be. so we looked confused for about 5 minutes, tried to figure out where we were and walked in the direction we thought we needed to walk. when we walked for probably 10 minutes and didn´t see anything we recognized we turned around. we got back to the intersection we were dropped at and consulted our book. then this cute little (i mean really tiny!) guy comes up to us and asked where we were going. we said autobus terminál. so of course he rattles off a bunch of directions in spanish, none of which i understood. we probably looked flabbergasted (however you spell that). he told us again with hand signals and a little slower and it turns out we were going the right way, just not far enough. so we took another bus to the bus station. thank god for nice people!

getting our bus ticket to mérida was another test in the patience of the friendly mexican people. the bus ticket lady was busy making some little dolls that looked like they were wrapped in tortillas. serious. she had a glue gun and everything. we asked her for dos boletos a mérida. then of course she answered with a long sentence spoken too fast. after several tries i asked her if she could write it down and we figured out we were being asked if we wanted 2 tickets, 2nd class at $162 pesos each, to leave at 11:30. enthusiastic YES! turns out it´s a 6 hour bus ride. 1st class was about double the price and 2 hours less. i wondered what a 2nd class ticket meant. after the bus started going i figured it out. this bus stops EVERYWHERE and for EVERYONE. while we got numbered assigned seats, people who randomly got on just filled in the seats and eventually had to just stand in the aisle. there were hombres, mujeres, abuelos, abuelas, niños y niñas. the bus was a huge tour bus and con aire acondicionado. so it was a comfortable-ish ride. only it was 6.5 hours. very long. the bus driver made a couple random personal stops and we must have gone through a hundred towns that looked exactly the same! okay, there were two types of towns we passed through. the first was an actual town with a parque centro y iglesia. these mostly all look the same. some churches bigger, different colors, different layouts of the park but similar. also all towns have a cemetary. these cementarios are so cool! they are mostly católico and are so colorful. headstones and graves are yellow, blue, red, green, white and are clean too. we passed one close up in isla mujeres and there were lots of flowers as well. the second type of town was more a long row of houses/dwellings than a town. perhaps their town center was away from the main road but it was like you´re driving through trees and then all of a sudden, houses on either side of the road.

most of these houses were no more than a 10x10 structure of either cement or sticks. the roof ranged from sticks/thatched leaf to actual shingles in the bigger towns. they were very simple houses and i believe the whole family lives in these rooms. they put up their hammocks or all sleep in one bed. the floor is probably dirt in many. most people would say this is ghetto or they are impoverished. i am sure they don´t make much money and i´ve heard survive on less than US$3000/year. while i can´t imagine living like that now, they seemed to all be smiling and enjoying life. i guess it´s simpler.

driving for 6.5 hours i saw a lot of plants. it totally reminds me of hawaii. i saw coconut trees, mango, papaya, palm trees, hibiscus, bouganvilia, kirei kiroi ki (these trees in mililani that have beautiful yellow flowers), another tree along meheula blvd with the red/orange flowers (forgot what they´re called), and a protea looking plant. i guess the weather is a lot like hawaii, only hotter and more humid.

well eventually we got off the bus at mérida and called my friend jose. he used to go to PSU and i met him through work. anyway it took awhile to figure out the phone, first i had to get a tarjeta telefónica at this shop next to the bus station. so we met up with jose after finding our hostel and he took us around to several important places. we got our bus tickets to chetumal (connecting stop to flores, guatemala), got bus tickets to chichén itzá (mayan ruins) and told us where to buy quetzales (guatemalan money). he took us to this place to eat nachos, but they weren´t any ole nachos. it was chips with cheese and then a HUGE pile of meat. i got a 1/2 order of pastor (pork) nachos for 55 pesos and it was DELICIOUS!! there was an assortment of things to put on the nachos - two salsas, sauteed onions (yum!), limes and this garlic cream sauce. let´s just say it was good to eat nachos with the garlic cream sauce. mmmm.....

i am being eaten alive by mosquitos right now so i better go put some bug spray on. free internet at this hostel so i´ll probably write again soon. i realized i forgot my camera-computer cord so unless i can find one here (which is possible because there are 4 wal-marts, office depot, and all kinds of american stores) no pictures on the road. i am taking plenty of good stuff and seeing many things. eventually i will share them. time to go practice some español.