Ola!

Mexico, the home of plenty of alive-and-kicking Mayas, the otherworldly Miami-copycat Cancun, the beachbuns of the Riviera Maya, the golfcarts of Isla Mujeres, the circus called Chichen Itza, the Manhattan-like Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, rustic yellow colonial towns like Izamal, the famous green Volkswagen Beetle- taxis that are all painted red and gold nowadays (...), shopping bags with friendly skulls and of course the famous and always fast-as-lightning Speedy Gonzales (arriba, arriba!). You see; Mexico has it all... and we are just talking about a small bite from this big cheese....

From Belize we prolonged our 'chillaxed' way of getting around and continued our beachbunny-adventure along the Riviera Maya (original name, isn't it?). First stop on the 'Ruta de los Beachbuns' was Tulum. Although famous for its Maya ruins it is nothing more then a rather ugly town with a paradise-like-but-almost-unreachable-white-sand-beach. The beach is separated from town by dense bushes and there is only one access road about 4 km from town... duh, very user friendly... It turned out that the easiest way to get to the beach is via the ruins. So.... early to the ruins with our swinwear on. The ruins itself were pretty disappointing after what we have seen already, but its location is definitely unique: high on the cliffs of a white sandy beach and a blue, I mean blue, really blue, sea. For the rest Tulum has nothing to offer except a mainstreet with a lot of (almost empty) bars and restaurants... where are the people? Is it the H1V1- virus?

Puerto Morelos is our next stop. This is more like the real thing. Puerto Morelos is still an authentic laid-back fishing village on the Riviera Maya, generally unaffected by mass- tourism (unlike Tulum). Its alive main plaza (with Christmas Tree, yes, we are getting closer...), the pier with its Pisa-like lighthouse that was affected by the 1967 Hurricane Beulah, its beautiful quiet beach... too bad that we didn't skip Tulum to go straight here.... As some of our clothes were close to the point of dying, we went one afternoon to the city of Cancun. Shopping. Is this Mexico or is it The Strip in Miami? Jezus Christ, what a circus! A strip of 18 kilometers of hotels, bars and shopping malls, one hotel even bigger then the other, big-bellied people with bright coloured plastic bracelets in the most horrific colours depending on the taste of the All-inclusive resort of your choice, North Americans pretending that all values associated with normal behavior don't count here... in otherworldly Cancun.... Man, where are we? Fortunately we succeeded in our mission, being very happy to go back to our 'home-town' Puerto Morelos .... home sweet home....

From the 'Ruta de los Beachbuns' we got so tired that we needed a break.... no, seriously, in fact we wanted a break from it all. One week no worries about finding a place to sleep, searching for (cheap) food, carrying our stuff, etc. In short: charging our batteries before moving to hectic, hot, humid Asia. We thought that Isla Mujeres (Women's Island), just off the coast of Cancun, was a good place to do so... so we booked a vacation of one week in a beach resort. Although the resort was not worth its stars, we definitely had a great time doing nothing but sleeping, drinking our daily Mojitos and Soles, sunbathing

Leaving the beach 'well-done' we left Isla Mujeres and moved into the Yucatan Peninsula. Valladolid was our first encounter with the real Mexico and we liked it. Although Valladolid was undergoing an extreme makeover (its streets were being paved, the colonial houses were collectively being painted), the city was definitely worth a couple of days. Especially off the main square there were no tourists and it was great to walk around here, admiring the typical colonial style buildings, the Zaci cenote (underground river) in the middle of town and less but not least just enjoying daily life.

From Valladolid we went to the main historical attraction of the Yucatan Peninsula: Chichen Itza. Trying to temper our expectations, because of the beautiful Maya- sites we have seen already in Guatemala, Honduras and Belize, we were still very curious whether it would be able to live up to its status as one of the New 7 World Wonders.... To make the chances to do so as big as possible, we stayed in the village of Piste just 2 km from the site so that we could be there as early as possible before all touring busses would arrive.... and that saved Chichen Itza...

Although the site is beautiful; the impressive pyramid on the grand plaza functioning as the solar calender of the Mayas, the temples in the typical Puuc style, the Chac Mool sacrifice stone, its huge ballcourt, the obeservatory (being the only circular structure of that time) but it is lacking something... the 'wow- factor'. The main reason is because of the (literally) hundreds of souvenir-stands along the main paths connecting the different buildings.... Our ability to imagine and visualize how the ancient Mayas were living in Chichen Itza was largely troubled by the market vendors pushing their 'shit' almost in your face and not shutting their f*&king mouths for a second ... Chichen Itza is big BIG business... you will probably understand that we skipped the Pink Floyd light-and-sound show in the evening ...

Moving to the heart of the Yucatan, there is the town of Izamal 'El pueblo magico'. Izamal (derived from the Mayan word Itzamna meaning 'mist from heaven' definitely is magic (and not misty, but ... we have to admit: mostly cloudy). All the colonial buildings in town are painted in the same colour yellow. The huge (yep, also yellow) Convento San Antonio de Padua is a jewel (although also being renovated....), the Kinich- Kakmo pyramid in the middle of the town center is one of the largest in the Maya world (200 x 180m), the Kinich restaurant with its Yucatan specialities was the best imaginable place to celebrate our one year anniversary on the 18th of december (and still not being tired of each other...). Yes, Izamal rocks!

Our last stop in the Yucatan is Merida. Merida is alive and kicking especially on sundays when the Plaza Santa Lucia is filled with the city's 'seniors' enjoying the outside dance venue going loco and get some exercise. Some of the locals dance with so much passion (and all body parts...) that it seems they forget the world around them completely.

From Merida we flew with Mexicana Airlines to Mexico D.F. (Distrito Federal). This huge capital with around 20 million inhabitants is very impressive (and not only because of its size). Its beautiful Centro Historico with the Zocalo (one of the biggest squares in the world) was filled with a huge ice-skating rank and all kind of other Christmas related stuff (which was fairly reasonable because it was the 23rd of December when we arrived in 'D.F.'). The buildings surrounding the square were decorated with kind of kitsch lights representing the Three Kings (in our opinion a little early, but ok...) and a fluorescent 4x4 meter Mary and Jesus- piece of art hanging next to the Catedral Metropolitana... Although the Centro Historico is beautiful the other neighbourhoods in the city are also definitely worth it. The Zona Rosa (no, it's not what you think...), Cuauhtemoc (for the folks among you who were in NY: a sort of SOHO- like area), the Bohemian quarters of Coyoacan and San Angel, the Paseo de la Reforma (a huge passageway through the city which definitely can compete with Manhattan) and the huge Bosque the Chapultepec (forget about the Central Park, this is the real thing!)

Knowing that Rudolph would not come to Mexico, we 'celebrated' Christmas without the friendly rendeer, but with lots of other things. Imagine a Christmas in Mexico D.F. as: sunny weather with a temperature of 23 degrees Celsius, the largest (Pepsi-sponsored) X- mas tree in the world measuring 122 meters, the typical Mexican 'piñ atas' everywhere hanging on the streets, hundreds of nativity scenes competing with each other for being the most original or biggest or beautiful, literally millions of people on the streets doing their last-minute shopping, children singing christmas carols for 'posada' ('posada' means 'lodging' but better imagine it as a legitimate way of begging for money and candy, giving you the ultimate 'guilttrip' if you don't give anything....).

Pinatas are the most emblematic element of the Mexican christmas. Christmas pinatas are made of clay and covered withy coloured paper. They normally have 7 points representing the 7 deadly sins, but are filled with sweets and fruit representing the grace of God. They are hung around everywhere and children break them with a stick, but blind-folded, representing the virtuous faith that allows people to believe without seeing.

For us spending Christmas in Mexico City was a mixed blessing; restaurants were closed on the 24th and 25th of december meaning we had a pretty pathetic kind of dinner in our hotel, the museums had free admission which meant loads of people, the 25th was the perfect day for an extensive and to our (travel-) standards a pretty luxury breakfast/lunch = brunch (yes, a very few places were open...) and take the underground to the Bosque de Chapultepec and just walk and hang around together with probably half the population of Mexico City. As you can imagine 'busy' is an understatement...

About 40 km from Mexico City is the Aztec- site of Teotihuacan, the City of the Gods (in Nahuatl language). Getting there before the masses we got up at 5.30h to take a nightly metro-ride through all Mexico City to one of the major the busstations at the outskirts of town. From there it was a one-hour busride to Teotihuacan with the world around us slowly (in a Mexican pace...) waking up. And was it worth it? For sure! After all Maya- sites we saw, this was significantly different. The magnitude of the Piramides del Sol (sun) and de la Luna (moon) and the fact that all buildings are aligned along the 3 km Causeway of the Dead, so-called because archeologists believe the pyramids to be mausoleums, has made a profound impression on us.

Ok, folks, this the end of our Latin America- experience. For us it was a great adventure with its ups and downs. The fact that we don't speak Spanish fluently was a handicap, although in a few months we mastered at least a basic level to communicate... Our curiosity is saturated now (there is no hungryness for more Latin America), but all the time we had enough curiosityf or new adventures, countries , people and habits... Bolivia is, even despite the not-so-pleasant-gunpoint-robbery, definitely our favourite country in Latin America because of its pureness and its magnificent nature! Draw your own conclusions, use your imagination, explore the world! For us it's time to broden our horizon and explore the other side of the world: Asia!

See you again in Hong Kong! ?