Fotografias de Mexico

You know, this trip was not supposed to last this long!  But who knew we would fall in love with yet another place in Mexico - Yucatan!  We are up to our ears in Mayan culture.  everything about being here is simply wondrous.  Again, I have run out of superlatives and am getting repetitive. 

Here are some pictures we took earlier on the trip.  These are pictures of the ruins at Bonampak, which is in Chiapas.  What makes this site so amazing are the intact paintings on the inside of one of the walls.  It is only partially excavated.

 

This is the boat we took to the ruins at Yaxchilan.  I am in the front.  This river separates Mexico from Guatemala.

      

These are the ruins at Yaxchilan as they appear as you head down the river. 

 

And here is one of the large temples.

 

Later we went on a hike through the jungle and stayed at a jungle lodge.  The lodge itself was very simple - a cabin, one bulb, bamboo walls, and not really effective mosquito screening over the top.  We did, however, sleep beautifully.

 

There were wild parrots on the grounds.  This one posed for Mike's camera.

 

Examples of jungle flora and fauna - a huge butterfly and orange mushrooms.

We went swimming in a waterfall at the end of a long hot hike.  It was a perfect ending!

 

 

And although we expected to see interesting things on this jungle hike, we were surprised by the sight of a set of unexcavated ruins. 

 

 

All of this was still in Chiapas.  Here are some of the Mayan women who all wear traditional dress.

 

This is one of the Mayan sun gods.  All of the different Mayan areas have slightly different deities.  The big eyes demonstrate enlightenment.

 

 

Now it is time to move on to Campeche. Campeche is located on the Gulf of Mexico.  It is a beautifully restored old colonial town. It used to be surrounded by walls because of pirates.  And it has a beautiful cathedral.  Here is a view of the city from atop the walls.

 

 

 This is the street where our hotel was located.  In the older cities here in Mexico, the houses and hotels all have big doors that make it look like nothing is open, but when you ring the bell and are invited in, things are beautiful.  Behind these doors are courtyards filled with flowers and incredible gardens. 

 

 

 This is enough to make me want to be a religious person. 

 

 

 Here are the walls of the city with all the old cannons.  Campeche suffered more from pirate attacks than any other place in Mexico.  In fact, at one point all the different pirate groups put aside their differences, united into one big pirate army, and spent an entire month raping and pillaging.  There are quite a few places here named after Henry Morgan and Francis Drake. 

 

And in the town square, here one can find whatever service might be required, including mobile knife sharpening.

  

So that brings us up to date.  Right now we are in a town called Ticul, which is smack in the middle of Yucatan.  We are surrounded by ruins, and tomorrow are planning to drive (we rented a car) to Uxmal, which is supposed to be a large, impressive site.   We want to be able to spend as many hours there as we want to.  We took organized tours to Banampak and Yaxchilan, but you kind of have to because they are remote and hard to get to.  Yaxchilan is only accessible by boat, and Bonampak is miles and miles off the main roads.  Uxmal is right off one of the main highways, and there is plenty of signage.  Then on Thursday we are taking a drive called La Ruta Puuc, which encompasses at least four different smaller sites.  As we have come to learn, it really doesn't matter how large the sites are because each one has something special. 

 But things are not always smooth for us.  For example, this morning we discovered that our rental car cost three times what the internet told us it would be.  Then when we stopped at a store, neither of our credit cards would work.  We had a hard time finding our way out of Merida, and when we got here to Ticul we ended up having to drive around and around and around because of one way streets and blocked off streets.  I was getting frustrated and upset.  But then we got to this great hotel- again very unprepossessing looking from the street.  Inside it was a different story altogether.  We have a great room with a separate living room, hot water, internet, cable TV, and continental breakfast (coffee and pan dulce) - all for the whopping price of $28.00 per night American, not pesos.  The owners are friendly and asked us when we wanted our breakfast served rather than telling us what time to be there.  We had dinner at a great place up on top of a hill, with a view of the entire area.  The food was of course wonderful and very inexpensive.  The owners showed us all these pictures of people who had eaten there, including Oscar de la Hoya and several extremely handsome bullfighters in full regalia.  This is not a tourist town - no souvenir shops and we are the only non-Mexicans here as best as we can tell.  Everyone stops us and wants to know where we are from and all about what we are up to.  My Spanish continues to improve.

So that is it for today.  More to come!

"Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip." 
(Winston Churchill)