Whirlwind Tour of Yucatan

After our first trip to the baseball stadium (see last post) Paul and I worked extra hard to get ready for our Whirlwind Tour of the Yucatan with our good friends Maggi and Fer. We (read: I) decided we should go to the beach and de-stress for a couple of days before they arrived so we stopped in Playa del Carmen for 2 days waiting for Fer and Maggi to FINALLY get to Mexico. It was a great time. Very relaxing, great hotel (Luna Blue) and weather and I got to wear my new bathing suit with matching bag. Excellent. Here are my toes, eat your heart out…
On Friday we went to the airport and waited for Fer and Maggi. We waited in the airport café for what seemed like a long time because we were so excited. Finally Fer and Maggi arrived in Cancun. They were the best guests ever letting us shuttle them in a literal circle around the peninsula showing them interesting (to us) sites and towns all the while babbling at top speed about, well, everything (Paul and Fer discussed baseball, real and fantasy, A LOT and Maggi and I planned all sorts of fun activities for the summer including knitting club (read: women’s wine club), gardening club (read: women’s outdoor wine club), and home improvement club (read: Melissa-and-Maggi-make-lists-of-chores-for-Paul-and-Fer-while-drinking-wine club). So the summer is pretty much set!

Saturday at Chichen we babbled some more, saw some ruins, and went to check on our pups. The Worley’s will remember pregnant Mama who had had pups when we went to Chichen for the Equinox. Here they are 3 weeks later. Super-cute!






After Chichen we hung out in Merida for a couple of days for touring and shopping. Here’s Paul on the tour bus. Not sure why he looks like he wants to kill me, but we had a good time ducking the tree limbs and low-hanging power lines! Look out! Then we were off to Dzibilchaltun where Paul and Fer discussed more baseball under the guise of ruin-climbing (can we say insider trading?) It should be noted that on day 4 Fer and Maggi still like each other, yay!


After touring Merida, we took a break and went to Celestun to the flamingo reserve. This was a special treat because Paul and I had wanted to visit but had never gotten around to it. We took an hour boat ride around the lagoon to see the flamingoes, mangroves, and a natural spring, which was gorgeous and then came back to Merida to relax in the evening. Although I took about a million photos of flying flamingoes, I have several photos of just sky (they fly faster than you think and on a moving boat, it was hard to catch them in the air!) Here is a photo of an actual flamingo, not just blue sky!


The next leg of the trip was the highlight of the Yucatan. We went to Santa Elena where Mariano and Fidelina Bonilla live and had lunch there. We stayed at Chel House at the Flycatcher Inn (amazing), ate a FABULOUS dinner at the brand new restaurant The Pickled Onion, and an AMAZING lunch with hand made tortilla at the Bonillas. We also visited Uxmal before heading back to Merida one last time. Here is Maggi making tortillas! Doesn't she make a great Mayan woman?!

That evening Maggi and I went shopping and Paul and Fer went to Trompos to have tacos al pastor (never mind they play baseball on ESPN there) and then it was off to Cancun the next morning. We stayed at a nice hotel in Cancun and Maggi and I checked out the pool after getting thrashed around in the big ocean waves. The water was lovely but the old men circling around us like vultures talking about "business" got old quick. Gross! Old men! Ew! Luckily Fer had his "old men are circling around my wife" radar on and came and rescued us. We decided to move to the hot tub where the old men promptly followed us. The first old man in the hottub said (and sadly I'm not kidding) "Stop all that farting! Look at all the bubbles!" Oh Cancun... oh old men...

The next day we dropped Fer and Maggi off at the airport with two bags full of our stuff to take back with them and then headed back to Merida. Vacation is over, classes begin again tomorrow, need to pack for Costa Rica. Stay tuned for Costa Rica photos!


M

Happy April Fool’s Day!

and to you baseball fans, Happy Opening Day!
Paul got his baseball fix on Friday night when we went to a Leones game here in Merida. The Leones are the defending champions! We watched them win last season (on TV) when we had just arrived in Mexico. Friday night we finally made the trek out to the stadium and sat right behind home plate. The game was great! The Leones were socking it to the Pirates of Campeche (local rivally even!). The food was worth mentioning since we had a very eclectic smorgasbord of snacks including: french fries, pizza, popcorn, tacos al pastor, and the best deal of the night, $1.25 Corona. It was the closest to nickel beer night we’ll ever know! ha! The game was fun to watch and the breeze was great but the innings went by super slow. It started at 8pm and at 10pm we were in the 4th. We didn’t stay for the whole game because we had to take a taxi back to the apartment but it was a fun time. We are hoping to go back this week or next when F and M are here.

NCAA Tourney: Noah the Gnat and Grandpa Oden
Baseball has been a good replacement to the NCAA tourney. My bracket is so messed up I can’t even check my standings anymore and I do not give a crappy crap which team wins. I think Noah is an annoying freak and I think Oden is a really good basketball player for being 38. I guess I want Ohio State to win only because a Florida repeat might mean that Noah stays another year to do it again, and I really don’t want that. (that’s a joke)

The Good Shepherd: D+/C-
Yesterday, seeing as it is getting brutally hot here, we decided to go to a movie in the air conditioning. We saw The Good Shepherd with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. Paul’s comments, “It wasn’t like Munich, I didn’t feel like hours of my life had been stolen…” Paul gives it a D. If you ask me, it seems like the movie made sense at some point and then the editor got high or something and went a little crazy with snipping clips. I give it a C. It was okaaaay, but nothing to hop off the couch and rush to the movie theatre to see. One annoying aspect of the movie was that I had read on Yahoo a while back that Jolie was having trouble getting a visa to the Congo for filming. Well, I kept waiting for her to end up there because I had read about it online, but in the movie it doesn’t make sense how she would end up there at first, so that was distracting and misleading. That’s what I get for reading way too much “news” on Yahoo.

For real news, I consult this guy.

We are off to the beach on Wednesday for some relax time and to wait for F and M to get here (hurry up!). We’ll have lots of adventures to relate then!

Much Love

M

Synopsis of the Equinox Tour:

Dzibilchaltun A+
Chichen Itza B-

Paul woke up a *very* cranky Melissa at 4:00 am. We got ourselves together and drove to Dzibilchaltun (a 20 minute drive). We arrived quite early but there were already many people there and there was a short line to get in. Once in the archaeological zone we walked the white road to the Temple of the Seven Dolls and waited in the lovely chilliness and darkness for the sun to rise in the temple door.

As expected, the hippie-gringos were there, but not in any really annoying way. One guy up front did yell "The suns are flashing in our eyes, turn off your camera flash!" Which was weird, because it was dark and everyone wanted a "before" photo to go with the "during" and "after" photos, yours truly included. Whatever. Snap. *Flash* Then the sun started to come up and Paul started filming. This was particularly funny when a woman standing next to Paul said "Perdon" so he moved over a bit and she stood RIGHT in front of him. Luckily for her, she was short and he could film over her. There was another guy who got in the way, but this was no surprise. I hate crowds and I was reminded why. This is pretty though:

We had a fabulous time watching the sunrise. We headed out of the ruins and to the car, which Paul promptly got stuck on a big rock in the parking lot. To his credit, the parking lot is 4 wheel drive terrain, the whole continent is rocky, and the "getting stuck" didn't damage the car as we then drove it 2 hours to Chichen later in the day. It was one of those times that you laugh about when it is over but at the time it is NOT funny.

We drove off the rock, thanks to Paul's excellent maneuvering (sp?) and had breakfast at Sanborns. Yum! Then we went home, took showers, and packed up for round 2: Chichen.

We arrived without incident in Piste around noon and actually parked a lot closer to the ruins than we had expected. We walked a bit to the park, waited maybe 20 minutes in line to get tickets and then went to have some lunch. The serpent slithers down the side of the Castillo from 4:00-4:15 so we had PLENTY of time. After lunch we walked around A LOT and saw these puppies. The Worleys might remember the momma dog which was pregnant when they were there. The puppies were SOOOO cute! It was all I could do to keep Paul from bringing one back to Merida.

We walked around in the sun and heat and finally it was time to see the shadow. We got our seats on the grass kind of early so we could see and sat in the sun and waited. At 3:57 you could see the shadows starting to form. At 4:02 a BIG rain cloud covered up the sun and sprinkled on us a bit - but it was so hot and the rain was so cold, it felt wonderful. Well, at 4:27 when the cloud still hadn't passed I convinced Paul to get up and move around. At 4:35 we left, having seen NOTHING.

Oh well, I'm so glad we went to Dzibilchaltun and saw the sunrise. Also, we briefly met up with our friends Melissa and John. It was great to see them for a bit especially since we didn't see the serpent. Argh! We drove back bummed and tired and got back to Merida just in time for some Law and Order. We fell asleep by 9:30pm.

Well, Paul is back, W is gone, and the house is a mess. Why? Because we are watching ALL the NCAA games online. Woohoo! The best part is, it's free! So there's no time to mop between the Dook loss *Yay!*, the Carolina win *Yipee!*, and whatever is going on with Wisconsin!? Paul has a theory, but I'll let him post it if he wants to.

We found a new restaurant that is near our house, so the Yucatecan options have expanded, which is good because (I can't believe I'm saying this) but I am seriously tired of tacos al pastor. I know I will regret that come July or August, but really, I am. The new place, Susana, has wonderful, HUGE panuchos, a good sopa de lima, and so far that's all we've had but they also offer poc-chuc tacos and tortas, etc, too. Lots of yummy (and cheap) choices. Grocery shopping in the US is going to give me a heart attack. Oh, but Target, whenever I "need" a new bag/container/organizer something, ooooh.

This weekend we hung out downtown since we hadn't done that in a while. We go at night because it is getting hot here. (95 right now) and we are using the a/c more and more. Then we are off on our Equinox Tour Wednesday, which should be cool (see below for details).

I suppose that is all the details on us. Here is a*nother* photo of spoiled pups: from left to right Ellie, Luke, Sutton. Don't worry, Masha is on the couch next to this one, she's just not in the photo. What I'd like to know is: Where do the people sit?! Apparently Miss Ellie and Mr. Lucas are in LOVE, which is a bit gross if you ask me. They ARE cousins after all. But whatever, if Mash can behave enough to have 3 other dogs in "her" space, Lucas and Ellie can do whatever they like!

What the ...?

I am really beside myself. ALL this CRAZY *hand waving* talk about the "early" Daylight Savings Time and how airlines are gonna be confused, your toaster is going to attack you, Y2K nightmares all over again, like your computer might swallow you up so that you become a cyber person. In all of the rot that I have been reading (it's like a train wreck, you know, you, well, I, can't look away) I never read anywhere that this whole "early" thing was for the US only!!! JHC!

Correct me if I am wrong, and clearly I am wrong, but I always conceptualized Daylight Savings as a UN of sorts, but about Time. Either you are in or you are out, and "we, the UN" really don't care which, just decide. (Decide Indiana! For the love of God, Decide!) But I am stone wrong! Apparently we - meaning USers (I refuse to say Americans, don't even get me started there, that is another rant for another night) - can pick when OUR Daylight Savings begins and ends and everyone else stays the same. Well this little tidbit would have been oh, so helpful, BEFORE I ran around like a crazy person changing clocks ahead and mourning the hour of my life that was lost. alas! I got it back! Do you know why? Because Mexico don't play like that, yo. They aren't having any of this people-will-spend-more-in-daylight-and-we'll-make-it-look-like-it-saves-energy-BULL-CRAP-smorgasbord. Oh, no!

So, I have no IDEA what time it is where you are, but it is 10pm here and time keeps rolling on. I didn't lose an hour (yet), I am not going to be that stupid jerk who shows up to class an hour early tomorrow (phew!), and Paul was right (darnet anyhow!). Daylight Savings for the rest of the world is still on for the first weekend of April. I hope George W. sets his watch to the right time tomorrow when he shows up in good ol' Merida. Paul joked that he left for Santa Elena this week because he refuses to be in the same zip code as W, but the joke is on Paul because Calderon and W are visiting Uxmal, a mere 5 miles from Santa Elena!

BTW: I'll let you know if my toaster tries to attack me. Keep an eye on yours. ja ja ja!

M