Category: My Adventures

Our time in Mexico City (for the rest of this post, I’ll just use the abbreviation CDMX) lasted from the first part of December through the first week of January, meaning that’s where we were for the holidays. Traveling during the holidays is always pretty weird. Not as much for New Year’s Eve, since you can usually be somewhere with some sort of party going on, but being away from family during Christmas is sad. However, missing the months of gray rainy weather that’s winter in the Pacific Northwest is nice. I guess you can’t have your Christmas cake and eat it too.

Anyway, on to my story. CDMX (and Mexico in general, really) kicks off the Christmas season on December 12^th with “the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.” It actually kind of starts before then, since people from all over Mexico make the pilgrimage – by car, bike or foot – carrying pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe, to her church in CDMX. I read something [citation needed] that said that around 2 million people would take mass there that day. So it’s kind of a big deal. We decided to make our way there. We went on the metro, not carrying pictures of the Virgin – just in case you were curious. It was an impressive sight, thousands of folks filling the courtyard of what is definitely one of the biggest churches I’ve ever seen.  In addition to taking mass, many tribes of Native Mexicans come to perform traditional music and dances in the courtyard. I have no idea how that fits into the tradition, but it was very cool to see.

As for Christmas, being a Catholic nation, Mexico takes Christmas pretty seriously, and didn’t skimp on the decorations, lights, poinsettias and piñatas (they’re a Christmas thing in Mexico, who knew?) everywhere. The central square was particularly done up, and even had an ice skating rink. Is it freezing in CDMX at Christmas? Nope. So they substituted ice for some sort of plastic flooring that looked like you could skate okay on it. As for how Elani and I celebrated, well, it was just a quiet dinner at home. Someone else’s home, actually. We managed to score ourselves a house-sitting gig for that week, so that meant having a bit more space, a larger kitchen and two friendly cats to look after. We took advantage of actually having an oven and had roast chicken. Not the usual spread of a big family dinner, but a nice dinner none the less.

New Year’s Eve was a bit more of a party. We headed down to the streets near the Angel of Independence where it was all going down. Block after block was packed, with loud music blearing. It was pretty cool to count down to midnight with thousands of other folks. But I must be getting old, because it was all a bit exhausting, and it wasn’t that long after midnight when we headed back to our apartment. One thing that was a bit disappointing was that they have evidently given up on the fireworks (well, the professional displays at any rate, there were plenty of amateur pyrotechnicians out that evening). I heard that a few years ago, the professional display actually hit one of the banking buildings nearby  –   apparently financial companies don’t like it when you hit their HQ with poorly aimed explosives. I guess you just can’t have any fun anymore. But it was still a good time, even if it was a little lacking in explosions.

I didn’t come to Mexico City with an overwhelming desire to catch a Lucha Libre match (or show or whatever you call one). I’d looked up a few ‘best of’ lists on things to do in the city and it kept coming up. That got me to look into it, and I learned was that it was it was over the top spectacle, it was cheap (less than $15 USD per ticket, even after Ticketmaster’s BS fees), and you could drink during it. So really, it couldn’t go that badly. That being settled, I picked a Sunday evening and booked tickets for Elani and me.

In case it wasn’t apparent, Lucha Libre isn’t a sport. It’s more like a soap opera with body slams instead of cheesy dialog, although there is some of that too. There are good guys and bad guys, and it’s not too hard to figure out who’s who. There are also ongoing plot lines. Not being a follower of it, I didn’t really understand them, but you don’t really need to. There’s some drama can only be solved by getting half naked and wrestling. If you need more than that, you’re probably missing the point.

Though this isn’t a sport in the sense that it’s not a competition to determine a winner (that’s clearly already been decided well in advance), the players are very much athletes. Some of the action is pretty silly –  punches come nowhere near to landing and the attacks that do land are usually full on open palm slaps to the pecs  – there were some downright amazing acrobatics. Arm locks starting from the ropes that turn into a flipping slam to the mat. Throws done from a spinning handstand. Slamming an ‘opponent’ by climbing the ropes and jumping into the pit next to the mat. Yeah, everyone is cooperating to make it happen, but still, doing that safely takes skill, and that’s fun to watch. I also really appreciated the minimal brutality. No fake blood, no real attempt to make the hits look realistic. The emphasis is really on the acrobatics and drama.

It certainly wasn’t highbrow entertainment, but it was fun to turn my brain off, have a beer, root for the good guy, boo the bad guy and enjoy some entertainment that really doesn’t try to be more than it is. Seeing it didn’t turn me into a diehard fan or anything, but being there in person was definitely an experience, and I could see catching another show if I have another evening free in Mexico City.

After Tulum, it was time to catch a short flight to Mexico City. We stayed there from mid December through the first week of January, so just under a month. We wanted somewhere interesting to spend the holidays, and there certainly is no end of things to do there. I’ll write some posts about individual experiences, but first I wanted to just write a little about my general impression of the city.

First, it’s worth noting that Mexico City (or CDMX as it commonly abbreviated) is huge. It is actually the largest city I’ve ever been in for any real amount of time (spending a night in a hotel next to London Heathrow hardly counts, I think). It’s actually North America’s largest city. And being that big, it had all the sorts of things you can expect from a big city, like any kind of food you could want, terrible traffic, a great metro system (cheap too, at 5 pesos a ride), and more museums then you could shake a stick at. It also has an enormous park at its center that puts New York’s Central Park to shame (in area if nothing else).  CDMX also has a complex and at times tumultuous history. I’m not going to go into it now, but if you have some free time, it’s a Wikipedia rabbit hole worth going down, and it colors the city even today.

But all that wasn’t really what I noticed first, the first thing that left its impression on me was how cold it got. I mean, not cold, cold, but it dropped below 50F a few nights, and after wearing t-shirt and shorts for a month in the Yucatan, wearing a winter coat is a rude surprise. The other thing was the air quality. The air there is naturally thin and dry thanks to the high altitude and desert climate, and when you add a dense layer of urban smog, it’s honestly pretty miserable. I felt at least vaguely ill for a month, and I’m pretty sure it was due to the air. So yeah, that kind of sucked.

CDMX has a long history, but it still feels more “unsettled” then most US cities. It’s just hasn’t been that long since its colonial past, and it’s still working towards becoming a modern, stable democracy. It felt safe in the neighborhoods we were in, but there was an edge of security and enough police presence to tell that that safety is only a few decades old.  It also is trying to reverse some of the cultural damage the Spanish did during the colonial period and take pride in its rich indigenous history while still maintaining the religion and traditions brought by the Spanish. In short, it has a varied, rich and still very much evolving cultural landscape, and that shows through beautifully in its art, music and food scenes.

All that said, the thing that still lingers more is how similar it feels to the United States. There’s a lot of cultural cross-pollution going on. The USA and Mexico are both former new world colonies and in the grand scheme of things, they just aren’t that far apart. Beyond that, there has been a lot of people and culture going over both borders for a long time now. And being here, there’s a real “American-ness” that is shared across the continent. It’s hard to put my finger on just what defines it, but it’s there. It’d be nice if we – as a country – could acknowledge it and embrace a bit more of a regional identity like Europe does. On the other hand, it took them a long time to get there, so maybe we will one day, too.

The last thing I want to write about from our time in the Yucatan is visiting the cenotes. I saved this post for last because the cenotes were probably the memorable things about our time in the Yucatan and definitely the most unique thing about the area.

Okay, so what is a cenote? Well, it turns out that the entire Yucatan Peninsula is made up of a little bit of dirt and jungle sitting on top of a porous limestone foundation.  A massive network of underground tunnels runs through this limestone. Through these tunnels, fresh ground water flows in slow-moving underground rivers to the sea. Cenotes are places where these rivers flow into a cavern, creating a lake that is accessible from the surface. Some are still mostly underground, and you have to climb down several flights of stairs to reach the water. Others had their ceilings collapse long ago and look simply like lakes or pounds, usually with a visible mouth to the underground crave system that feeds them. Each one we visited was surprisingly different, but the one thing they all shared was the water. Being fed by underground rivers, the water was clean, crystal clear, and refreshingly cool. While staying in Tulum, we visited nine cenotes, and I’m not going to write about every one. But I’ll take you through the highlights.

The first cenote we went to was Cenote Cristal. This one was a cavern that had long since collapsed, so today, it just looked like a small lake. It had a little diving platform (I think about 8 feet tall), so my first time at a cenote, I literally dove right in (don’t laugh at that, that was terrible). It was a beautiful place, located in the jungle, with fish and turtles swimming around, and baby basilisks running around at the water’s edge. But what was really memorable was seeing the water for the first time. It was clear, I mean, really clear. The bottom was supposedly 27 feet deep, and you could see it with perfect clarity (while wearing goggles, of course). Even tropically sea waters aren’t clear like this. It was pretty stunning.

Dos Ojos was the first underground cenote that we explored. What made it memorable was swimming into the bat cave. We went with a guide because most of it is closed to snorkelers without one. To get to the bat cave, you had to swim, single file, between stalactites and stalagmites with about a foot of headroom above the water’s surface. The bat cave itself was a cavern with only a small hole in the ceiling. It was quite dark (we had flashlights), and as the name would imply, it had a colony of fruit bats who were sleeping on the ceiling or taking the occasional lap around the cavern. Swimming through caves and underground caverns was definitely a new experience.

After exploring the Coba ruins (which you can read about here), we visited three nearby cenotes. Of those, the most impressive was Tankash-Ha. It is a huge round cavern and to get to it, you descend about 4 stories on a wooden stairway built in the center of the cavern.  If descending a multistory wooden stairway of unknown age in a wet environment isn’t exciting enough for you, said platform also had two diving platforms. The lower one was about 15 feet above the water, and I’d put the higher at at least 25 feet. First of all, no, I most certainly did not dive off the taller platform. The lower platform was plenty high enough for me. I did dive off that one, twice actually, and that was plenty. Even at only 15 feet, messing up a dive can leave bruises, as Elani found out the hard way (nothing serious, she just let her legs tuck up on a pencil dive). While I was there, several other people went off the low platform, but no one went off the tall one. I was a little disappointed, but it was probably for the best. But Tankash-Ha wasn’t just impressive for the way it enabled you to make more diving-based choices; it was also the deepest cenote we went to. It went down at least fifty feet, and that’s not counting the big crack at that bottom that just trailed off into inky blackness.  This cenote was not only the location of my highest jump, but also of my deepest dive. Like I said, this cenote was very deep, and I spotted a pair of goggles someone had dropped. They weren’t at the deepest point, but at a point roughly 30 feet down, and I decided I’d see if I could make it down to grab them. It took several tries. I worked my way down, going a little farther each time and seeing how if felt. After a while, I asked Elani (who was watching me) how close I was getting, and she said about 2/3rds of the way down. I thought about just giving up, since it was unnerving going down that deep, but I wasn’t running low on air, so I decided to keep going. The next try got me within a few feet. After enough of a rest to let my breathing return to normal, I made another attempt, and gave it that last push that let me get down to my target, grab the goggles and head back up.  Being that deep is weird, let me say. Looking up through three stories of water and having only the air I brought with me is sort of a combination of terrifying and awe-inspiring. I’m glad I had a reason to swim down that far, but I’m not really planning doing it again anytime soon.

The most pleasant of the cenotes was probably Car Wash. I have no idea why it’s called that, it’s actual Spanish name is Ak Tun Ha. But everyone (including Google maps) calls it Car Wash, go figure. Anyway, as far as a pleasant place to go for an afternoon swim, it was hard to beat, and it was the only cenote we made sure to go to twice. In some ways, it wasn’t as stunning or bizarre as some cenotes, but it had lots of fish, turtles and lily pads to look at, its diving platform was at a more reasonable 8 feet, and it was fairly large, so didn’t feel too cramped to share with the other swimmers and divers that were there. It was one of the open cenotes, though you could swim down and look into a couple of cave openings. All in all, it was just a fun place to spend a couple hours and beat the Mexican heat.

One of the last cenotes we visited, and really one of the oddest, was Yal-Ku. It is a place where the fresh underground rivers flow into the sea. From the surface, it looks like a marine lagoon, with a host of salt water fishes swimming in it. But once you are swimming around in it, you find out how weird it really is. There is a stream of cold, fresh water flowing up through cracks in the rocks at the bottom of the lagoon. Since the salt water is denser, the fresh water sits on the top, despite the fact that it is about 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) colder. So swimming through it, you see lots of heat distortion and if you dive down, the water is significantly warmer.  Swimming down to be in warmer water is a weird sensation, I’ve got to say.  Getting to experience something as weird as being in a mixing chamber of tropical sea water and underground river water is pretty cool, and getting to do it surrounded by colorful tropical fish is really something.

As I’ve traveled more and my perspective has broadened, more and more things I encounter don’t seem different so much as like a new variation on something I’ve seen before. Not that I’m complaining; seeing the unique variations from place to place is one of the joys of traveling. But it does mean that when you find something truly unique and different, it is mesmerizing. And I have to say, the cenotes of the Yucatan are really unlike anything I’ve experienced before.

One of the main touristy things to do when staying on the Yucatan Peninsula is to explore the various Mayan ruins sites. There are plenty. I’m not going to go into much detail about their history, because I’m certainly no expert, and I know y’all know how to use Wikipedia. But one thing I will say is that for a society that didn’t have beast of burden or use wheels, these folks were sure good at moving rocks around. So with that in mind, let me take you on a little tour of the sites we visited.

Muyil

Muyil is, if I’m being honest, the least impressive of the ruins we visited. There are a few buildings, most of which are fairly small. The central pyramid is cool, but honestly a bit small compared to the other sites we visited. But really, it being a small and unimpressive ended up being one of its main charms, because it’s not very popular. We went there twice and both times, there were only a couple other groups of people. That meant that if you hung around for a few minutes at any particular building, you’d get the place to yourself. Also, the jungle surrounding it was quite lovely, with small lizards lazing around in the patches of sunlight and colorful tropical butterflies flitting around here and there. These gave the place a much more tranquil feeling than the bigger ticket ruins we’d see later on.

Tulum

The Tulum ruins are located, surprisingly enough, in the city of Tulum. It’s actually pretty cool to have ancient ruins in a funky beach town like Tulum. You can even catch a view of them from one of the public beaches, which only adds to the charm of the white sands and turquoise waters there.

From downtown where we were staying, they were only about a half an hour or so by bike (probably less if we’d had decent bikes, not the old beat up loaners that our Airbnb provided). We decided to bike to avoid any hassle with finding parking, and hey, how cool is it to be able to bike to ruins! Anyways, the old city of Tulum was a port town and sits on the cliffs above the beach. One of the first buildings you come to is the wind temple, which isn’t particularly large, but does have a great view.

You can actually go for a swim on the beach below the ruins, but one of the downsides of the convenient location is that it’s pretty popular. And it’s not a particularly large beach, so we decided to skip that and just hit the public beach on the way home.

In additions to the crowds of human tourists, there are crowds of resident iguanas busy doing whatever it is that iguanas do. From what I could see, that mostly involved finding a particularly nice patch of sun to warm up for the day.

The main cluster of buildings is quite extensive. Most aren’t huge, but there are plenty of them. You can of course walk though the site and get a closer view of the buildings, though you’re not allowed to climb any (I hear this is a recent development, turns out it’s bad for ancient limestone building to have thousands of tourists tromping all over them), but the best view is on a little rise at the back of the site, where you can get a great view of the main temple and the surrounding buildings.

Coba

To visit Coba, it was time for a bit of drive. It was about an hour and a half from Tulum. Fortunately, renting a car in the Yucatan is surprisingly cheap, so we had one for our time there. It was a fairly pleasant drive, mostly just straight roads cut through dense jungle, interspersed with the occasional little town that all seemed to rely on a rather liberal use of speed bumps to make sure you didn’t go careening though at reckless speeds.

Coba is a rather large site. From the entrance to the site it took us, around 15 minutes to reach the main pyramid at the opposite end of it. The land around is littered with old stone buildings, including an observatory and two courts where the Mayans played their sacred ball game.

We headed straight for the main pyramid. We wanted to make sure we got a chance to get to the top before the tour buses arrived. Coba’s main pyramid is the only building you can still climb. A multitude of uneven steps polished smooth by countless feet stand between you and an excellent view of the surrounding jungle.

Getting to the top feels just a touch treacherous, but just enough to be exciting, and the view from the top is certainly worth it. Even though the archeological site is littered with buildings, few reach above the canopy. The picture below has me at the top getting in the way of the view. If you look just to the left of my elbow you’ll see one of the other buildings tall enough to break through the canopy (I’m pretty sure it’s the observatory). To get a sense of scale, that’s one of the closer buildings. Like I said, it’s a big place.

Ek Balam

Ek Balam started with another little road trip. Closer to two hours this time. As an archeological site, it was important for its well preserved stucco (there are actually some recreations of it in the anthropology museum in Mexico City), and as a tourist attraction, it benefits from being able to climb or go inside many of its buildings. Being able to walk on and around the buildings really does add something. Even though of course everything is pretty barren, it’s still cool get up close and personal with history.

The real show piece is the Acropolis. It’s by far the largest building there. The picture below shows the central peak, but it doesn’t capture its width. It is several times wider than you can see here, and much of it is unexcavated on the back side. Also in the picture, the sections of building covered with thatched roof are protecting rebuilt sections of the stucco façade, which may not be a departure from the antiquity of the surrounding rock, but is a good way to see what it might have looked in its heyday when it was covered with all its buildings elaborately decorated.

As a bonus, one of the little towns on the way there is famous for its smoked pork. On the way back, Elani and I stopped to get a taste. It is not too dissimilar to ham, but smokier, and served with tortillas and salsa. In case you were wondering, it was awesome. I think I had roughly 200% of my daily recommended sodium intake with that meal. Worth it.

I’m not about to claim to live completely like a local in the places I travel. I don’t. I eat at touristy restaurants and go to tourist destinations and stand around on street corners looking at maps and taking pictures of stupid everyday things. But there are a whole host of different worlds out there.

As the end our time in Tulum, Mexico was fast approaching, we were scratching a few things off our list. Two of these things were going and checking out Playa del Carman and going and checking out the Hotel Zone of Tulum. To be clear, these weren’t not the top of the list of things we wanted to do, they were at the bottom, which is why they were getting done last.

In these places, you find designer brand shops and hamburgers and detox breakfast burgers are as common on menus as tacos. And those tacos definitely aren’t going to be 10 pesos. I could go on, but you get the idea. What’s weird is how different those places feel. The places me and Elani tend to be are the convergent zones where you’ll find a mix of locals, expats, and travelers who are fine adapting a bit more to their surroundings. These other places feel more, I guess, constructed. The people who are there are either the tourists who want comfortable, familiar luxuries with a bit more of a pleasant climate and or course a bunch of locals who spend their workdays there.

Of course, there are worlds beyond that. Driving the highways on the Yucatan, there are huge, grandiose gates with 24/7 security guards manning them, behind which are all inclusive resorts that I honestly know almost nothing about. And I’m sure other places I don’t even know about.

I don’t really have a point here beyond just how weird it is to see all these different worlds coexisting in more or less the same places. I guess I think it’s a little sad to see people isolating themselves so much from the culture of the places they’re visiting. It’s not like I don’t have my comforts I still keep up while abroad, but if you aren’t challenged at least a little by traveling to another country, it kinda seems like what’s the point.

Cover Picture: Elani admires an art installation in Tulum’s hotel zone. Photo taken by Geoff

If you haven’t read it yet, probably best start with my first post from Tulum – or or don’t. Tacos don’t really need an introduction. Anyways if you want to read it click here.

So, there’s a lot of good food in Tulum: a variety of Mexican places, international cuisine, and some fine dining over in the hotel zone that I assume is good. But honestly to hell with all that, because street tacos. The going price for a taco is 10 pesos or about 0.50 USD, some nicer places charge a bit more, and cheese costs a bit extra. But unless you’re in a sitdown place aiming purely at tourists, they won’t be more than 20 pesos (if you don’t want to do the math, that’s a dollar).  I need to eat three or four to make a meal, but still – not exactly breaking the bank. Also, they are awesome!

There are a lot of taco places here. So, the local taco shops aren’t fancy, just a roof and plastic furniture, but let’s face it, anything more than that would be just a distraction. You choose your type – there are of course ordinary tacos (just meat in a tortilla) or you can get panchutos or sopas, which vary a bit but basically have a couple of veggies and thicker tortillas. Or for a change, you can get your meat completely enclosed in an empanada. There’s no real bad choice. Then choose the meat. I almost always go al pastor, which is spit grilled pork, which evolved from lamb shawarma brought over to Mexico by Lebanese immigrants.  Classics like steak or chicken are great too, but you really can’t beat spit roasted pork. Then it’s served with a couple of types of salsa (which range from mild to mostly just habaneros), limes and usually chopped veggies (often just onion and cilantro, but sometimes tomato or cabbage make an appearance). It’s a bit of a choose your own taco adventure situation, but one where the ending is always a happy one.

So this is why tacos have been on the menu for me and Elani at least 5 nights a week. There have been a couple of two tacos meal days. Do I get sick of tacos? Yeah, but it lasts a day. Then the taco withdrawal sets in and it’s back to the taco stand for a fix. Speaking of which, I’ve got somewhere to be…

Well, it’s been a while since my last update. Elani and I spent ten months back home in the Pacific Northwest. I worked at the local kite shop as a kiteboarding instructor (a bit off brand, I know, but it did keep me in kiteboarding equipment, so worth the sacrifice). But you know, I’m not a huge fan of cold weather and constant rain, so it’s nice to be out traveling again.  So, where to first? Well, Tulum, Mexico.

Elani and I have been here about 3 weeks now, and are loving it. The weather (aside from a few truly epic torrential downpours) is bright and sunny, the beaches are gorgeous and the food is good and cheap. Plus, there is kiteboarding to be had, though I will admit kitable days are a bit few and far between. Anyway, there’s enough else here to keep me occupied when the wind isn’t blowing.

The big attractions here are of course the beaches, an abundance of Mayan archeological sites, and more cenotes (freshwater pools – sometimes underground – linked by underground rivers) than you can count. Really, the whole Yucatan peninsula is pretty much that way, but Tulum is slightly more laid back than the more well-known Cancun and Playa del Carmen.  It’s basically divided into two main sections. There’s the pueblo, basically a downtown area where normal people might live along with more reasonably priced hotels and such, and the hotel zone, where there are some very nice beachside resorts and you can expect to pay ten times as much for dinner (okay, that’s kind of an exaggeration – kind of).  We’re staying in the pueblo, of course. Which means biking to the beach for a swim, but it’s very close to cheap tacos, so it’s probably the smartest choice (also it’s cheaper, of course).

We’re going to be here for another week, then it’s off to Mexico City for the holidays. There’s a lot to write about here, and I’ll try to get to at least some of it, but in an effort to keep my post short and manageable, I’ll leave it there for the moment and leave you with a picture of the beach here. It really is an amazing beach – oh, and in case you were wondering, the water is about the perfect temperature.