The End

Of our round-the-world trip at least.

We’re back in the UK, though not back in London as our tenants have the house until next month (when we were supposed to be getting home).

After five very pleasant days in Toronto with Fran’s old chum Sara, and a day in groovy Montreal (where, as an aside, we did a terrible vox pop for Japanese TV about nuclear power. How random is that?), we got a BA night flight home. Even being back on BA was funny – after so long away from Britain, even the crew’s attitude seemed almost caricaturish. Are all Brits just caricatures of Brits? Or just BA crew? Not that that was a bad thing – they were great, especially compared to the unnerving inarticulacy of the crew on our previous, American Airlines, flight.

The real shock of being back in Britain occured, inevitably, when we tried to do anything with public transport. National Express (like all the British Rail companies) are an embarassment, a national shame. Why oh why oh why can we not run public transport in this country? Compared to the marvel of Mexico’s ADOs, National Express is just poor, in terms of how they handle your booking (no seat allocation), how they handle your luggage (they don’t check it in, label its destination, or exactly load it themselves), and timing (we were half an hour late). Even the Heathrow bus station was crap compared to most of the coach stations we’d used in Mexico (right down the the announcer who kept giving the wrong information). Hi ho.

Anyways, so I don’t just moan on this blog, here’s a list of reasons why it’s Great to Be Back in Britain:

1. I can speak the language.
2. I can readily buy a decent newspaper in said language.
3. I can (or will be able to) communicate (again, in said language) in the flesh with friends and family.
4. Toilet cubicles doors actually fill the frame, unlike in much of North America where there’s a one inch gap all the way around.
5. Texting friends and family is cheaper.
6. I have the potential to both earn and spend money, rather than just the latter. (Although I will need to find work that doesn’t use breadcrumbs as currency.)
7. I’ll be able to get stuck into some the many projects I’ve been ruminating over the past several months (and, hey, some of them might even give me some income).
8. I will be able to eat more vegetables.
9. I will be able to eat salad in restaurants without worrying quite so much about the microbial communities contained therein.
10. Likewise most of the food, tap water, etc etc I’m faced with.
11. I’ll be able to cook what I fancy (though, sheesh, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t going to miss all that eating out of all those amazing different national cuisines, especially as we can’t get, say, proper Mexican food in London).
12. I’ll be able to get my bike back. Yay! (Er, though my knee is still buggered and might not be too happy about that.)
13. I’ll be able to see a GP who, while looking in the other direction and rushing me out the door, might be able to recommend a knee specialist.
14. I won’t have to lift a backpack weighing between 16kg and 25kg (35lb and 55lb) every few days. Or two at that weight, when I’ve tried to be a gent with Fran’s bag.
15. I’ll be able to put more effort into not using the word “myriad” any more.
16. Lots of other reasons I’ll add as they present themselves….

Or not…

We’re trying to move onwards, but seem to be somewhat stuck in Toronto. Tried to change our BA flight home, but they told us to ring QANTAS. Couldn’t reach them, their number just took us to an eternal limbo of hold music and exasperation. Half hour in: “please, just answer…”; hour in: “damn you, there must be a human in your call centre”; hour and a half in: “you ****ing *******s, answer the ****ing phone, how ****ing hard can it be?”. Suffice to say, we gave up and instead decided to go to the office, as listed in the Yellow Pages.

We went there this morning. It was a residential apartment builing, with not an office in sight. Tomorrow – we venture forth once more into that chilly purgatory of lost souls seeking the comfort of a modicum of customer service.

Onwards

Travelodge LAX

I’ve always been intrigued by the notion of staying in an airport hotel. This life-long fascination (which has its origins in the same period of my childhood when the idea of going to a Little Chef seemed thrilling) was satisfied by a night at the remarkably pleasant LAX Travelodge. Heck, you could almost spend a few days there, with its surprisingly peaceful courtyard where a good-sized pool was surrounded by myriad international flora species, all helpfully labelled.

Sir Sean

Going through LAX security, we were queuing alongside Sir Thomas Sean Connery, who suffered exactly the same indignities as us mere mortals. Although I don’t think he was dubbed a “male quad S” and ordered into a short perspex corridor, then on into a little side area where his shoes were swabbed, the swams then tested for god knows what on a special paranoia device.

I love flying

Of course I bloody don’t. Honestly, to think international aviation was once steeped in romance.

For Fran, it’s the anxiety, that whole “we could drop out of the sky at any moment” thing. For me it’s just the profound discomfort of being shoehorned into a space that would be meagre for even an anorexic midget, then sustained by the vague home of something with sufficient flavour to distract being plonked in front of you intermittently. Or not if you’re on the piss-poor American Airlines. It was the first flight where you were expected to pay extra for a meal and pay extra for headphones to plug into a broken socket to watch aged sitcoms and a lame movie. You even had to plead more than usual just for some water, a situation made even more wretched by the new rules that prevent you from bringing your own water onboard. Gah.

Still, AA’s piece de resistance was the semi-articulate nature of the captain’s tannoy annoucements. Even while we were on course, he seemed barely amount to remember our destination, but when we hit “weather” over Toronto his stumbling, bumbling stop-start utterances about running out of fuel and having to turn back to Detroit weren’t reassuring. Surely, given the nerve-wracking, or at least discomforting, nature of flying (especially post 9/11), one key area of the captain’s role is reassurance. This guy really needed to go back to captain school and learn how to make annoucements.

Toronto

Anyway, we made it to Toronto, eventually. Had a pleasant day wandering around, and sitting by the lake and eating the biggest portions of Japanese food I’ve ever encountered.

Birds and palm trees

It’s our final night in Mexico, tomorrow night we’ll be staying in a McHotel at LAX.

It’s been great here, and this past week it’s been kinda nice to be sitting around in environments where there are birds soaring over palm trees. We started our trip with amazing numbers of hawks soaring over the palms of Kovalam, Kerala, and now we’re ending it with frigate birds and pelicans soaring over the palms of Tulum and Isla Mujeres. Well, I thought it was a nifty bit of book-ending.

Not that it’s all over quite yet. Off to see Fran’s friend Sara in Toronto, which should be cool, then a few days in Montreal.

La playa y el pescado

I’ve just been swimming in the Caribbean, and watching the sunset, accompanied by Fran and a few 15 pesos Dos Equis beers. Can’t complain about that. Heck, even the crazy weather of the past week or so seems to have calmed down slightly.

It’ll all be over soon though. We’re leaving Mexico in a few days, flying up to LA, where we have one lovely night at LAX in an overpriced travellers’ hotel, then resume our round-the-world flights with a leg taking us to Toronto.

It’s been great though, and it’s mighty pleasant to start winding things up with some quality time on la playa. The rainy season was a bit of a worry, as we’ve been experiencing some huge storms just as we were psyched to go and get a nauseating tan. (Hey, how can we go away for seven months and not come home with a nauseating tan? It would have just been wrong.) It was fine while we were hanging out in the great wee town of Valladolid, checking out more ruinas (like the frustrating and over-subscribed Chichen Itza and the intriguing and thankfully deserted Ek Balam) and swimming the amazing cenote Dzitnup.

But heading for the beach, you know, you get greedy and desperate and want SUN. We headed for Tulum to hook up with Claire and Stuart, some folk we met in Oaxaca. We had a great few days hanging out with them, the rain blowing over for the most part. Which was a relief, as the place we were staying (Zahra – avoid) was a bit cruddy in its maintenance, and despite charging hefty prices neglected such basic matters as roofs. And plumbing that actually worked – the toilet got blocked by, er, natural waste, every flippin’  day.

In fact, Tulum generally seemed a bit cruddy. The ruinas there were inevitably picturesque, backed by the Caribbea, but as Dr Russell had said, they’ve been turned into something that looks like a golf course. Or even a mini-golf course. You know, put the ball through the doorway of the temple and it goes down a spiral onto the beach below….

The Tulum hotel zone seemed stupidly overpriced – beer is always a good marker, and here anything more than 20 pesos is getting daft. Tulum went straight for the 30 peso beer… Be serious. Even more daffy, this was a seaside resort where many places didn’t even serve any seafood. Considering I don’t really eat mamal and fowl meat, and love fish and crustacean meat, I was gutted.

Still, that issue has now been resolved. We shifted on up the coast, avoiding Playa Del Carmen on the ardent advice of Rach, and aliting at Isla Mujeres. Islands often have that unique vibe, or being laid-back and doing things at their own pace, and that holds true here, despite the monstrosity of Cancun being just 15 mins across the water.

Isla Mujeres is essentially just an 8km sandbar, but it’s got real character – scruffy, unpretentious charm. And as it’s still full of fisherfolk, you can get great seafood. Genuine, reasonably priced Mexican seafood. Tacos de pescado? Yes, please. Camarones? Si, señor, muy bien. Bliss. Seriously, when I’m backpacking around the world, eating is a cornerstone of the experience. And being able to eat really good, reasonably priced food just makes me a happy man. Especially when it’s seafood. And the beer is cheap. And the sun shines.

Valladolid and more ruinas

Merida grew on us eventually, but we were glad to arrive in the consumately mellow town of Valladolid. It’s Yucatan state’s second city, but is considerably smaller than Merida and has considerably less bustle. The zocalo is a nice wee place with funny little fountain in the middle of a Mayan lady surrounded by frogs. Or maybe toads. I’ve been informed frogs/toads were important to the Maya as they seemed to move between here and the underworld. The funny thing is, the ceramic frogs/toads you see in roadside stalls and around this fountain are colourful, cartoony and decidedly cheesey. Very at odds with the remarkable Mayan friezes and wotnot we’ve been seeing in the area’s ruinas.

Yesterday, we went to Chichen Itza (sorry, I can’t be bothered to find all the necessary special characters for these words. I’ll just cut and paste this one for now Chichén Itzá). This is perhaps the most famous of the Mayan ruinas, and has a commensurate number of visitors. It’s the low season (the flipping rainy season; don’t we just know it) but the place was inundated with coach loads of American and Italian tourists from Cancun (sorry, Cancún). Gazillions of them. I thought the Brits were supposed to be the yobs of Europe, but those Italians certainly know how to make themselves heard. Which must have been confusing for Fran, who’s been doing an amazing job summonsing up Spanish language abilities, but who has a few glitches when her Italian creeps in.

Anyway, I was disappointed when we arrived at Chichén Itzá as I’d read about the amazing crypt of ‘El Castillo’, the main postcard pyramid. It showed how the Maya used to build new temples on top of the old, a literal example of how Mesoamerican culture was all about overlays and hybridity even before the Spanish arrived. However, it’s now closed off, as are the steps to the summit. This is a shame, but probably fair enough given the cumulative erosion of 5,000 pairs of tourist feet every day. There’s also a rumour that an 80-year-old tourist died after slipping down the steps, which brought about the closure.

Luckily, we decided to stump up for a taxi to the Ek Balam ruinas today. Some folks in our hotel were enthusing about them, so we decided we had to go. This place is marvellous. After yesterday it was a real treat to find no more than half a dozen other tourists there. It’s surprising it’s not on the coach tour route, as the government has been doing a lot of remarkable restoration work and it has some unique features. It’s not as grand as Chichen Itza, it’s far more compact, but around the central plaza it has three large structures, one of which has been extensively rebuilt. This building, Le Torre, is 200m long at its base and has a remarkable doorway, the stucco of which has been thoroughly restored/recreated. It takes the form of a huge mouth, with teeth over the top and along a jutting lower jaw. Very striking, and unlike anything we’ve seen at the other ruinas. The theory is that it was the entrance to the tomb of one of the city’s leaders from the 9th century AD.

This afty we managed a quick swim before the heavens opened (have I mentioned it’s the rainy season? Doh, just when we were heading for the beach!), then had a stroll round Valladolid. Heading southwest of the centre of we found an even more charming, mellow area of this already charming, mellow town, around the church and monastery (convent?) of San Bernadino. It was almost like a whole different country – except for the quintessentially Mexico combo of an antique building, a mangy mutt and couple of awnings emblazoned with the logos of that ubiqutious muck Coke.

Merida and misc.

Iguanas

Uxmal temple complex is home to literally dozens of iguanas, many of them a good half metre in length. Fran was perturbed.

Tamarind sorbet

Is very nice indeed, as is aqua de tamarind, a nice cool drink (alongside agua de jamaica, which is made of hibiscus flowers). We had sorbets on the Merida zocalo the other night, watched the world go by. And sweated.

Sweat

Yep, it’s very hot here. Our room has no air movement whatsoever, which may in part explain my crouchiness. I’ve been sleeping, after a fashion, but it’s not exactly been refreshing. I’m so looking forward to a cold winter night and a duvet, perversely. Won’t get that for a while though.

“Hammock?!”

Merida is famous for its hammocks. The town used to be the centre of a trade in ropes and whatnot, before the advent of synthetic materials. That doesn’t mean, however, that I want a hammock. Walk the streets here and dozens of blokes leap out shouting “Hammock?!” at you. My “No, gracias” is very well practised.

Hats

The other key touristy local souvenir item here is a hat. They casually call them Panamas, but they’re not Panamas as they’re from here, they’re actually ‘jipi japis’ or something like that. Touts insist they’re the local Mayan hat of choice, but I only ever see tourists wearing them. A tout got me into a “Artesans market” yesterday as I need a new hat. My dear old cap has bitten the dust. The chap explained about the sisal / agave hats, better than the coconut fibre tat sold on many stalls. They can be rolled. They are indeed quite nice. I finally said “How much?” and he said “1200 pesos” (60 quid ish). Ouch. Even the nice fairly flash cowboy hats I’d seen in shops seemed to cost only around $500 (confusingly, they use the dollar sign for pesos). I said, “No, sorry, find yourself a rich American.” He chased us down the street waving his calculator, finally getting down to $200, saying it’d be enough to at least cover his Coca-Cola. It was a bit emotional, it felt morally odd to even consider paying that much if it was worth $1200. But then, him being willing to drop the price so much called into question the very quality he’d been so emphatic about. Haggling is fun, but it’s a minefield.

What Britain could learn from Mexico

Mexicans go for family strolls. Sure our climate is very different, but our summers are getting hotter and drier thanks to climate change, so we could do this a bit more. Turn off the TV on an evening and go for a stroll in the park with your family.

Of course, our parks are a bit skanky too. So fix them up. Fix up the band stands and use them for music. People like music. Brits might not be as mad for musak as Mexicans, but we still like music. Sure the council would have to employ someone full time to keep painting over the grafitti, but it’d be worth it. Could for community cohesion and all that. (Talking of grafitti, Merida has hardly any compared to Oaxaca and San Cristobal. Less local political ferment presumably.)

Oh, and their long-distance coach services are excellent (despite the hammering you may receive from dubbed Hollywood movies). They put ‘British Rail’ and National Express to shame.

Armish  Mennonites

Saw a bunch of folks on one coach the other day who looked like Armish, or some other religion-based rustic society. All very Scandinavian looking, but sunned, with big working hands, hats, dungarees and wotnot. Are they Armish living in Mexico?

EDIT: Dr Russell has just informed me they are Mennonites. I thought they didn’t look quite like Armish, but I couldn’t remember the name of the other similar groups. Mennonites. Armish are a bit more dapper I think. And Hutterites, like in the Powell & Pressburger film 49th Parallel are something else again. Not really my specialist area.

A not quite so appealing aspect of Mexico

Most toilets have a sign saying, “Don’t throw paper in the toilet, put it in the bin”. Meaning toilet paper. Meaning used toilet paper. Uch. Come on, I realise that maybe the plumbing and sewerage systems maybe don’t handle the paper so well, but there must be a better way. Uch.

“Mi corazon”

Do any Mexican pop songs not include the words “Mi corazon” (My heart)? Doubtful.

Gringos

Are Brits gringos? Or is it just Americans? Our emotionally manipulative hat vendor suggested it was just Yanks, but Dictionary.com begs to differ. It also denies that the word arose from the song “Green Grow the Lilacs,” popular during US-Mexican War.

Instead it has this to say: Word History: In Latin America the word gringo is an offensive term for a foreigner, particularly an American or English person. But the word existed in Spanish before this particular sense came into being. In fact, gringo may be an alteration of the word griego, the Spanish development of Latin Graecus, “Greek.” Griego first meant “Greek, Grecian,” as an adjective and “Greek, Greek language,” as a noun. The saying “It’s Greek to me” exists in Spanish, as it does in English, and helps us understand why griego came to mean “unintelligible language” and perhaps, by further extension of this idea, “stranger, that is, one who speaks a foreign language.” The altered form gringo lost touch with Greek but has the senses “unintelligible language,” “foreigner, especially an English person,” and in Latin America, “North American or Britisher.” Its first recorded English use (1849) is in John Woodhouse Audubon’s Western Journal: “We were hooted and shouted at as we passed through, and called ‘Gringoes.’”

Welder

Got to love the Mexican word for a welder – vulcanizadora.

Merida again

It’s not like I’m obsessing over this place, I’m just getting a bit more of a chance to blog at the moment is all.

Anyway, I feel I might be doing Merida, the Yucatan’s main city, a disservice. Can I just say not, it’s probably a really cool city. We’ve just not been having a great time there. It’s us, not the city. Sorry Merida!

Today we went out to see more Mayan ruinas, this time Uxmal (that’s “ushmal”). Marvellous place, with incredible ornate friezes and a unique curve-sided pyramid (built by a magic dwarf, according to the legend). The woman at the Merida bus station telling us the wrong times for the return trip didn’t help the day though. Two hours by the roadside. Hi ho. Minor irritations and all that.

Still, we’ve found a few more shops selling nice-looking cowboy boots, so that’s exciting….

Miserable in Merida

Despite the post by some random Merida tourism PR person after my last blog entry, we’re still not exactly having a good time in Merida. It’s the first place in Mexico we’re found a bit much. We only stayed in the overwhelming El DF three days, but the first two of those were great; we felt out of sorts right away here.

It’s just really full-on. The traffic is grim, and I don’t just mean on the roads. Even the pedestrian traffic is hard work. We seem to be going through one of those phases where everything’s just a bit stressy. Mexico’s pavements are generally awful, pitted and slippery, but here we don’t seem to be able to navigate the people, let alone the physical hazards. It’s one of those places where you move one way to pass someone, and they swerve the same way right into your path, so you swerve the other way, etc etc etc.

And we can’t find anywhere decent to eat too. All the touristy place seem really expensive; a tout/waiter got us into one place on our first day – we ordered some Yucatan cuisine as we’d heard good things about it. It was bland as heck. The bill was huge. I got my first does of Moctezuma’s revenge. All the other cities we’ve visited have offered great comida corrida, and menu del dia (well-priced fixed meals), but they seem scarce here. How can the city support so many overpriced restaurants?

Food is muy importante for us, we know this very clearly. If we don’t eat, we get snippy and stressed. And argumentative. Here, we just seem to spend hours wandering around stressed and arguing, unable to find anywhere decent to eat. Not that I really should be eating anything other than rehydration salts of course.

Even shopping is stressful here, due to the crowds and the inevitable overenthusiasm of vendors faced with some gringo dinairo. I want to buy one of the classic local embroidered shirts (guayaberas) but vendors shouting at me is never a good start. And when I just wanted a look at a few, the guy went mad running around getting me loads to look at and try on. Thing is, me, I like to think before buying. I’m very rarely an impulse buyer. I hate clothes shopping generally, but having vendors dashing round trying to please me is even worse, it was excruciating – I just want to look, see what’s what, but I felt terrible to say, “thanks, I’ll think about it, maybe later” (in my terrible Spanish) to this poor dude who was so desperate to please and make the sale.

Still, we moved hotels today into a much cheaper place, one of those places where the scruffiness is part of the charm. It’s packed with art and oddments. Oh, and it’s got a pool too, very handy amid all the heat and stress. It’s probably not entirely sanitary, but hey, it’s cool (literally, it aids one in cooling off).

Amid all this negativity and stress (yes, largely self-induced probably, but it’s still there), one highlight today was a visit to the Anthropology Museum. The Rough Guide was sniffy about this place, for its small collection and its lack of English texts. In fact, it has plenty of English (albeit that weird Mexglish that really shouldn’t exist in a context full of academics) and a great collection, that’s informative and interesting without being too much to take in (as in the Mexico City Anthropology Museum).

Best of all, we learned about how the Mayans like to warp the shape of their skulls by strapping poor infants into wood vices while their heads were still tender. Weirder still, being cross-eyed was considered desirable, so they also fitted the poor wee bairns with funny head-mounted mobile thingies – a dongle dangling on a string to focus those young eyes and tweak their young muscles.

Planning our next moves now. More ruinas tomorrow. There are just too many of them in this area, so we reckon we’ll just focus on Uxmal, then visit Chichen Itza from Valladolid, our next stop in a few days. As for Merida, we’re looking forward to sunday when they apparently stop traffic from entering the central square (thank heavens) and place is full of music, dancing and, um, more vendors to shout at passing gringos.

Overlaps and hybridisations

Onwards we go, traversing Mexico on the backpacker conveyor belt, or thereabouts. Amazing country, a place of overlapping cultures, layers of history, crazy hybridisations. On a relatively benign level, this hyrdisation takes the form of stuff like me and Fran, being tired and hungry and not feeling like navigating another Mexican menu, instead going to get a pizza. In a place with a totally over the top Parisian theme. In the city of San Cristobal de las Casas. This town is itself a place of heavy hybrisation. This mountain area held out against the Spanish for a long time, and, in effect, much of the ancient indigenous culture lived on.

In time, however, some weird blendings took place. One of the most famous places thereabouts is the town of San Juan Chamula. Fran’s written eloquently about the cultural traditions there, which heavily oppress the local women. The town itself is very defensive about outsiders, even kicking out thousands of locals who they deemed ‘Protestant’, not followers of the unique local religion. This is a hybrid of ancient Mayan beliefs with a goodly dose of Spanish catholicism. The central church is chock-full of freaky effigies of catholic saints, but the main tenets of the local religon don’t involve mass or Christian scripture. Instead, they involve people lighting candles amid the pine needles that litter the floor and chanting in the local language to whichever deity in their blended Mayan-Catholic pantheon will heed them.

It’s a deeply bizarre place. And there’s a heavy irony to their contempt for outsiders when you consider their religion is the result of outside influences, as is their social structure, which involves polygamy – something introduced by the Spanish, who in days of yore brought down women from Mexico City and Oaxaca, taking them as concubines to build up a population with Spanish blood. (Though you don’t actually see that many European-looking people thereabouts, it’s strongly Indian still.)

Oh, and they also drink lots of Coca-Cola, which surely couldn’t be more alien. Our guide said the dark drink replaced a drink made from blue corn. Its function is to bring about burps; the belching is supposed to release sins.

All utterly fascinating. And San Cristobal was also utterly pleasant for the simple fact that it was cool. We left there for Palenque, a place of swelting heat down in the lowlands. I swear it was 38C and about three thousand per cent humidity. Still, it was great. A totally unpretentious little one-horse town, it’s only visited by tourists interested in the nearby Mayan ruinas. An amazing place, despite me feeling almost sick from the humidity.

We’re now in Merida, a town called the “White City”, which our Rough Guide talks about in glowing terms, for its colonial grace and tranquil air. So far it just strikes me as a bit scruffy and hectic, with absurdly overpriced stuff (like beer twice the price of everywhere else we’ve been, or internet at absurd prices. We’ve been paying 5 pesos an hour, but the hotel we’ve had a night at charges 5 pesos to get online, then 1 peso a minute thereafter! Weird place – only hotel we’ve stayed at so far where they won’t negotiate on price, despite the fact this 95 room establishment only seems to have half a dozen guests.)

Anyway, I’m ranting now. Think we need to cool off by the pool, before we move out tomorrow to another weird (but cheaper) hotel.