Category: Yucatan

Counterintuitive Travel Tips #7 and #8: Taxis and Sleep

Two final bits of contrariness, both terribly sensible.

Tip #7: Don’t ask the price of a taxi before you get in.

Guidebooks always say “Agree on a price before you get in a taxi.” I think I’ve even written this myself. But nothing marks you as an out-of-towner like asking a cabbie, “How much to…?” This makes the cabbie’s eyeballs flash dollar signs, just like in the cartoons.

So your one job as a visitor is to find out in advance how much a taxi should cost (ask at your hotel, or ask your Airbnb host, or whatever). Then just get in the cab, say hello in at least a loose approximation of the local language and state your destination. Pay the known fare when you get out (or, in known antagonistic-cabbie towns, get out first and hand the money through the window). This is what locals do, and it works!

I don't have any photos of evil cabbies. Instead, enjoy these perfectly sweet triciclo guys in the Yucatan. Maybe taxi drivers only turn bad when they get engines?

Even if you’re in a metered-taxi town, it’s nice to get a ballpark estimate, for peace of mind.

(Why are taxi drivers the world over so prone to unscrupulousness? They are their own strange tribe. May the honest and generous ones multiply!)

Tip #8: Sleep now, not when you’re dead.

A very concrete aspect of Tip #4 (“be lazy”). Again, you’re on vacation – why tire yourself out? Take plenty of naps. Observe the siesta culture, if there is one.

There is nothing more delicious than waking up in a strange place. (Freya Stark, by way of Matthew Teller, says it even better.)

More practically, the better rested you are, the less likely you are to have those little streetcorner meltdowns, where you’re hungry and tired and just can’t make a decision, and suddenly your travel partner is looking like the worst beast on earth, just because he/she is also hungry and tired and can’t make a decision.

One person I know calls this the Death Mope. The Death Mope is easily avoided through adequate rest. (And carrying some peanuts in your bag–another tip of mine. But there’s nothing counterintuitive about not starving.)

Me enjoying Greek culture and avoiding Death Mope. (Not-so-flattering-but-oh-well photo by Peter. I didn't realize till after the trip that my very ugly bra was always visible through the very large sleeves of that dress.)

Counterintuitive Travel Tip #6: The Water

The first five tips (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5) had a lot to do with how to plan your trip (or not plan it). Now we’re getting into the more nitty-gritty on-the-ground stuff.

Drink the water.

I had written a righteous screed about how all guidebooks are just covering their asses when they tell you not to drink the water, and of course you can drink it, if normal middle-class people drink it too.

Then I went to Fes, Morocco, where everyone drinks tap water…and I got sick.

But even so, I believe that tap water is often not so horrible. If people who could afford to buy bottled water drink from the tap, you can certainly brush your teeth with it. You can even swig a bit in the night, when you realize you’ve run out of bottled water. You can have a little ice in your drink.

Peter drinking from the (very large, public) tap in Comitan de Dominguez, Mexico. Later we drank the water in Villahermosa too, sin problemas.

It’s with cumulative exposure that your system freaks out (or mine does; yours may be different–that’s my CYA). I didn’t get sick in Fes until about a week in. My threshold for Cairo tap water is about four days.

Contrary to logic, the worse the water is, the better off you are. If all the restaurants use bottled water, this means your ice is almost certainly made from purified water. Basically, there are very few situations in which you have to do that prissy “no ice, please” thing.

The reason I’m even being so macho about tap water is that plastic bottles are the world’s third-largest evil, after plastic bags and Halliburton, and I feel like a failure every time I buy bottled water. If you’re not feeling like risking it, I really recommend a Steripen. I just got one this summer–it’s fantastic. It has cut down on my water-risk-taking and makes me feel like a magician every time I use it. (But I recommend rechargeable batteries–it was due to battery fail that I was in the unfortunate Fes situation.)

The Mini-Mex Algorithm

On the occasion of a major update to my Cool Cancun & Isla Mujeres travel app (for iPhones and now for Android* too!), here’s just a few reasons to love this part of Mexico. If you’re a regular reader, you know I have a soft spot for Cancun. It’s why I wrote the app, to share all the cool things no one knows about it…and Isla Mujeres and Puerto Morelos too.

Oh, so THAT's what that stands for...
Public bench/library in the park in downtown Cancun. Just register to get a key, and check out books as you like.
Coco Bongo promo dudes hiding out from photo-mad tourists in Cancun.
Genuine maid cafe in downtown Cancun. Was just opening--unclear whether staff really dress as maids.
Aw, poor little Chocomilk! Cutest dog name ever.
Genius can with screw-top lid. And always good mango juice.
Ana is ruling the market for haircuts for dogs. She has totally blanketed Isla Mujeres in signs.
Man bites shark.
How you might feel after too many days on Isla Mujeres...
This drug is available even in the Cancun airport pharmacies. Not sure if it causes or cures.
Somehow it's more existential with 'a' at the beginning.
Queens of Carnival on Isla Mujeres, on display at the cultural center
Crazy architecture in Puerto Morelos. Everyone calls the complex in the big photo "the Star Wars building."
Grown man with a Spongebob purse. Reason I Love Mexico #3438

Spring Break Guidebook Giveaway!

You’re never too old for a little spring break… That’s why I’m giving away two copies of the newest edition of The Rough Guide to Cancun & the Yucatan. The book came out last fall, so the info’s quite fresh and includes some great new spots I was excited to discover during research last winter: a cool Maya hut near some of the peninsula’s best cenotes, for instance, and some great restaurants and new hotels in Valladolid.

If you head south now, yes, there’s a little spring-break craziness in Cancun, but even 15 minutes south in Puerto Morelos, the beach scene is pretty mellow. If you head to Mexico during Semana Santa, the week before Easter (April 1-8), you’ll be on vacation with pretty much the entire country. This isn’t as crazy as it sounds–as I discovered a couple of summers ago, Mexicans are really fun tourists, and in some places, like the little church in San Juan Chamula outside San Cristobal de las Casas, it’s nice to be part of a crowd.

Win your copy of the book just by entering a comment below–maybe let me know what kind of Mexican food you’re hankering for. I could go for a cochinita pibil torta right about now…

The contest will be open until next Sunday night, March 25, at midnight EDT. I’ll pick two comments through a random-number generator. Thanks for entering!

Update: I am now starving. A little slow on picking the winning numbers, but here we go…

Oh, what the heck: you’re all winners! After discounting Maria (no offense, but who already has a copy of the book), that’s exactly the number of extra copies I have lying around here. Christine, yours will be coming by courier in May (I’ll explain by email).

Mexico #5: Snack Break!

OK, time for less narrative, more pretty pictures.

Bees

Bees swarm the displays of sweets in every market. I always thought people must bring the bees with them, and put them out to show off how sweet their treats are. I mean, where the hell are the bees coming from in the middle of the city? But then I saw a girl with a fly whisk actually trying to brush them away. (I guess every other vendor has just given up.) And then I noticed bees on flowers in someone’s teeny front-almost-all-concrete-patch of a yard. The ancient Maya kept bees and traded honey. Those bees are here to stay.

Here’s another Hanal Pixan specialty, mucbipollo. It’s a big ol’ tamale, studded with black beans and chicken.

Mucbipollo

We stopped at the market in Oxkutzcab–I’ve never been there early enough to see much action. But in the morning, the whole front area is filled with people selling oranges and flowers wholesale. Inside are snack and craft vendors. And this woman, selling delicate thin disks of chocolate, patted out by hand like tortillas. Her fingerprints were in every one.

Chocolate

The chocolate was completely bitter, and so intense as to be medicinal. Good medicinal.

Just across from her sat a woman shelling xpelon, the little black beans eaten everywhere in the Yucatan:

Beans

Not all tradition is good. I see this stuff everywhere too, and it fills me with horror.

Cake

I believe it’s white bread slathered with some kind of mayo-y treatment, and studded with canned peas. Hilarious, in an El-Bulli-wait-I-thought-this-was-going-to-be-something-normal mindf**k way.

Here’s some slightly more high-brow junk food:

Best Bar Snack

Poblano pepper stuffed with cream cheese (most beloved cheese of the Yucatan, aka queso Filadelfia) and shrimp, and–yeah, baby–battered and deep-fried. Tastes great even if you’re drinking some healthy green juice instead of your ninth beer of the night.*

And…well…just this:

Refriend Beans

*Wondering where to get the deliciousness? Check Pescaditos, in Cancun. Details in my Cool Cancun & Isla Mujeres iPhone app.

*Flickr set from this trip
*Mexico #1: Where the Party at?
* Mexico #2: Partying on…and on
*Mexico #3: Party Favors
* Mexico #4: Howdy, Cowboy
* Mexico #6: Back Roads

Mexico #4: Howdy, Cowboy

In Tizimin, I was driving around the main square, and I noticed there was an awful lot of horse shit in the street. “What happened here?” I wondered out loud. “Did we just miss a parade?”

That was a little bit of a joke for my mom, who was in the passenger seat. See, she and my brother* are all nature-y, and go hiking around in the woods looking for animal dung so they can figure out what the animals have been up to. So I was being an urban tracker. I started following the horse shit, but soon I lost the trail, and I had to check the bus schedules anyway.

As we were driving out of town, we found the parade. Or we found the tail end of it–a huge mob of people on horseback, waiting for the procession to move forward. It was a good two blocks of horses, all edging and prancing and shuffling around. Moms, kids, and loads of cowboys were all saddled up and ready to ride.

Horse Parade

I’ve never seen so many horses in the Yucatan. Aside from the Pollo Vaquero logo, you just don’t see a lot of cowboy imagery in the Yucatan. That whole open-plains, rope-and-ride, oompah-music kind of scene doesn’t happen here, because there aren’t a lot of cows.

Horse ParadeExcept for around Tizimin. I’m not sure how or when the ranching industry got started here, but the forest has been cleared, and I guess cows graze around in the tall greenery somewhere–I haven’t actually seen a lot of them, but I have eaten their meat, at an excellent restaurant in Tizimin. It was heartwarming, seeing all this Western wear–plaid shirts, big hats. I grew up around that, and even if I’m a city slicker now, I do like horses. If my previous posts were about seeing odder things than expected, this afternoon was all about being surprised by a more familiar thing.

Horse Parade

And then, this guy. He looks completely Arab, and not just because he was a foot taller than everyone there. Lebanese and Syrians came to the Yucatan in the early 20th century. This guy’s family must’ve gotten into ranching at some point.

Horse Parade

You might’ve noticed a lot of beer cans in the previous photos. Yup, a beer company was sponsoring the whole shindig. These guys just skipped the horses and rode the truck.

Horse Parade

I’m a terrible reporter. I have no idea what the parade was for (though we did see a statue of the Virgin being carried down one of the streets). I just liked the pretty horses.

*Regular readers of this blog may know, but it never hurts to remind: my brother just wrote a great book for hiking around in the woods looking for other animal sign: Bird Feathers: A Guide to North American Species.

*Flickr set from this trip
*Mexico #1: Where the Party at?
* Mexico #2: Partying on…and on
*Mexico #3: Party Favors
* Mexico #5: Snack Break!
* Mexico #6: Back Roads

Mexico #3: Party Favors

Beyond Hanal Pixan, fall is dotted with village fiestas and fairs of all sorts. Izamal is notorious for having some kind of festivity from mid-October straight on through December. When we passed through, it was the season for gremios, which pilgrimages to the church, made by each trade syndicate, such as engineers, taxi drivers, etc. Each syndicate dresses up in all their Mayan finery, parades to the churchyard, does some dances, and then parades off to some block party somewhere. If you follow the parade, by all reports, you’ll wind up at a pretty serious throwdown.

The whole parade-and-dancing part of it takes quite a while, as there’s lots of stops, and someone setting off fireworks the whole time. (I guess this lets you know where the parade is at any given time? Bottle rockets as GPS pings?) I was pretty impressed with just how much dancing was involved once I laid eyes on a guy with a big platter on his head. Damn! He had to hold onto that platter with one raised arm through all the dances! My muscles started seizing up in sympathy.

But the guy looked so cheerful. His white teeth were gleaming, under his nicely trimmed little mustache, and his eyes were all atwinkle. Once I got up close to him, I saw why he was so delighted.

He had a pig head on his own head!

Pig head

OK, this kind of thing is exactly what I love about the Yucatan. Everything’s pretty mellow, and I basically know what’s going on. It’s not like you’re in an obviously trippy place–people aren’t dressed up in crazy masks and taking peyote. So just when I think everything’s kind of familiar and pretty…some dude starts dancing with a roasted pig’s head!

The previous post was another example of this same blindsiding-with-bizarre. It turns out it’s worth spending so much time in visiting a place not so you actually get to know it, but so you think you’ve gotten to know it–and then are even more boggled by the oddities.

These, on the other hand, are totally normal party elements in Izamal:

Wolverine

Loteria Beast

*Flickr set from this trip
*Mexico #1: Where the Party at?
* Mexico #2: Partying on…and on
* Mexico #4: Howdy, Cowboy
* Mexico #5: Snack Break!
* Mexico #6: Back Roads

Mexico #1: Where the Party at?

Mexicans love a party.

That is not a stereotype. That is a stone-cold fact, extrapolated from years of visiting the Yucatan in every season, and encountering some kind of festivity every time. I can only conclude that Mexico really does have a fiesta culture, like all the brochures say.

If you really want me to qualify this statement, we could agree to say that Mexicans love a party from October through December. Better?

The fall is a nexus of public holidays, religious rites and village parties. You start complaining about Christmas creeping up to early November, but in Mexico, the holiday season cracks open in mid-September, with Independence Day. This year was an insane blowout, because it was the bicentennial of the year the independence movement started.

I missed that exact two-day party, but considering how many public buildings were lit up with special bicentennial-fund LEDs, it was like the fireworks were still going.

Bicentennial Legislature

I also arrived just in time for the next big event on the Yucatecan party calendar, Hanal Pixan. You probably know it better as Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), at the end of October and the beginning of November. All that skull-chic you associate with Mexican folk art–that’s Day of the Dead stuff, and, more important, it’s central Mexican stuff. In the Yucatan, the aesthetic is a little different. Hanal Pixan doesn’t dwell so specifically on the skull imagery. The name means “feeding the souls” in Maya, and the emphasis is on the altars for the deceased, where you place traditional foods and candles and flowers. Usually, they’re private–in houses or offices, but not a huge public show. Or it didn’t seem that way to me the last time I was in the area for the holiday, a few years back.

Hanal PixanThis time, though, I think I was in the right place at the right time. In Valladolid, schoolkids got out early to enter an altar-building competition in the lawn area in front of the big convent. The altars were dedicated to family, or politicians or public figures. Imagine a history or science fair, but rendered in palm fronds and marigolds.

I know it makes me sound like an 80-year-old to say it, but it was just so nice to see all those young people working together!

Hanal Pixan

We unfortunately had to leave Valladolid before those altars were done…and then we got to Merida just as the ones there were being taken down. But that evening, we saw a big Hanal Pixan parade–and this is where the skull-fest began.

Hanal Pixan

Again, it was mostly schoolkids. And this event did not exist several years ago. It’s something the city of Merida organized recently, I think in part to be more of a tourist draw. But it’s not like people were going through the motions–everyone seemed to be having fun. And part of the fun was the skull-face-painting–it was as much a costume as anything, and yet one more excuse for a party.

Hanal Pixan

*Flickr set from this trip
* Mexico #2: Partying on…and on
*Mexico #3: Party Favors
* Mexico #4: Howdy, Cowboy
* Mexico #5: Snack Break!
* Mexico #6: Back Roads

Cancun Is the New Tulum

Finally, all in one place, with photos, my thoughts on why Cancun is not a place for smart travelers to flee, but a place for them to challenge their ideas of authenticity, and what it means to have fun:

Cancun Is the New Tulum, in this month’s issue of Perceptive Travel.

(And honestly, this has nothing to do with the climate change conference happening there now. For better or worse.)

Crap, and I didn’t even mention the shrimp tacos with the Doritos garnish! Well, you’ll just have to buy my Cool Cancun & Isla Mujeres iPhone app for that…