The trip to Mexico City

The last of the latin american countries on my travels and what a wonderful country to visit. I had been caught in two minds as to how to tackle Mexico. I flew into Cancun, in the Yucatan Province on the Caribbean Sea side and had only 13 days to get to Mexico City. Thats not a lot of time considering a direct bus is 25 hours and I immediately regretted the dates I had chosen for my flights upon arrival in Cancun. One thought I had was to spend some time on the coast, and then the rest of my time in Mexico City with a stopover in Oaxaca on the way...leave the real exploration of Mexico for another time. The other thought was to try and cram in as much as possible between the two cities, spending two days max in any one place. In the end I decided to go for the second option and Im glad I did, I managed to see some cool places. After arriving in Cancun, I wasted no time in leaving the city and heading to the nearby island, Isla Mujeres, Lady Isle. I had heard mixed stories of Cancun, I mean its undoubtedly a great party but the majority of people told me that it was not the real Mexico and that Isla Mujeres had just as nice beaches with less tourists. Well, they were all right about the beaches...they are gorgeous. I had returned to the turquoise blue colour of the water that I had enjoyed in Colombia and here it was complimented with small horse shoe bays and beaches of volcanic rock on one side and gleaming white sand on the other. The island isnt all that big and most of the attractions seem to be at the northern end so it was there that I spent my entire day, swimming in the Caribbean sea (still pinching myself over that) lying on the beach and drinking...yup Corona!! I spent the day with a French Canadian, Wis, who I had met on the boat over. He lives in Cancun and this was his first time on Mujeres, he loved it so I felt kind of vindicated in my decision to miss the city. That night, i was very lucky to meet an extremely helpful lady, Logan and her son Chris, who both now lived on the island and together we plotted my route across the country as I still didnt have a plan. A fish dish for dinner accompanied by my first tequila in Mexico and I went to bed pretty happy with my first day in this new country. I had decided next to head to the ruins at Tulum, this was instead of the ones at Uxmal near Merida as Tulum is only 2 hours from Cancun and Lonely Planet has them as the No1 thing to do in Mexico (we know how accurate that book is with Otavalo being the No2 thing in all of South America...I dont think so) along with high recommendations from a lot of people. Despite being overrran by tourists on a scale similar to that of Machu Picchu or the Royal Mile on an August day, it is an astonishingly beautiful site. Its not overly grand in scale, the area is not large and the temples and palaces are small in size but they are wonderfully decorated and the site of the ruins, sitting atop cliffs which drop down to the Caribbean sea below is a picture. I think I must have taken over 200 pictures there, I felt like the stereotypical Japanese tourist on speed or something. It was my first taste of Mayan ruins and there pretty cool, different shapes to temples in South America and with more decoration, though some places like Chan Chan in Peru were heavily decorated. Its like a picture postcard, just with a whole load of people in the picture. There is a tiny little beach at the bottom of the ruins but it appears to be nigh on impossible to find any spot of sand on it. The public beach just along the coast is much bigger, with the same Caribbean sea and hourly trips out to the reef just off shore for snorkelling. I couldnt really afford to hang around anywhere if I wanted to see all I had planned so it was straight on to Palenque and the magnificent forest city. Its pretty good that all of the bus stations that I visited had lockers or storage for keeping your bags so I was able to drop off my big bag and enjoy the day not hulking it around with me. The ruins are set deep in the jungle, with some of the smaller temples tucked away hidden in the dense trees. It covers 2kmsq so its a pretty big area but its not the size of the city that catches your attention, its the towering temples and palace rising above you. The palace is the main builiding taking over 300 years to finish and its decorated with thousands of motifs and murals describing the life of the kings who ruled the city, most notably King Jaguar-Serpent II (what a great name) and their design is wonderful. Its not at all like South America, the Mayans had a language which was written down in the form of hyrogliphs and some of the stories, complete with illustration are cool. The Temple of the Cross is the largest with some great views of the city and the surrounding jungle whilst the Temple of the Sun is the most important. On to the small market, but growning tourist destination of San Cristobal that afternoon. I spent a day there with a couple of girls, one from Germany and the other Dutch. San Cris grabbed me instantly, its a pleasant little town with nice colonial (yeah more colonial) architecture set in amongst the mountains. Its the most densley indigenous populated state in Mexico and the surrounding towns are still inhabited with pre-hispanic races who still practice old traditions. The two girls were lots of fun although exploring a maket town with two femaies is...arrrggghh!!! It did have its benefits, there was different food on every corner and they were both keen on trying everything so I ended up trying dates covered in hot powder, lime and salsa (not great) a vegetable, like a radish, covered in flavoured sugar, pure cocoa which was intense and a few different juices. it was a very enjoyable day and I think I would like to spend more time there to explore the surrounding towns and villages. Oaxaca next, the cullinary and mezcal capital of all Mexico. The city lays claim to 7 different kids of Mole, a sauce served with enchiladas and other snacks, which includes a chocolate and almond flavour sauce...not for me though I did like the more spicy flavours. Mezcal is made from the same plant as Tequila, though its not grown in the Jalisco region, kind of like champagne. There was some very nice mezcal being poured and some people told me its far superior to tequila as, like wines from different vintages, the taste from differing years is slightly different whereas a bottle of say El Jimador, widely exported tequila, will always taste the same no matter the year of bottling. If Cuenca is Ecuadors church capital and Popayan, Colombias, then Oaxaca is undoubtledy Mexicos. It has a Basillica, a very impressive Cathedral placed on the very impressive main plaza, Zocalo and perhaps a church or convent every 3 blocks. One convent, of Santo Domingo now contains an excellent museum chronologising the areas history from Zapotecas through the conquistion to todays people. Its a really cool city and I would have been quite happy to spend 5days exploring there and the surrounds icluding Monte Alban which created by the Zapotecs was one of the most sacred city sites in Mesoamerica. There is access to the Pacific Ocean from Oaxaca as well and a trip to the seaside is always fun. Guess it will have to wait till next time...