San Cristobal de las Casas

Here I am, in La Casa del Pan, about to eat delicious guacamole, una ensalada y un licuado de pina. I love San Cristobal already! Wow, this is the best meal that I’ve had in weeks.
San Cristobal is everything that I’d imagined and more. It will be even better once we find outselves una casita to live in. I am eating organic lettuce, in Mexico, wonderful.

So I met this guy, Cameron, on the bus. He's from Bellingham, Washington, just finished a grad degree in International/Economic Development in San Fran. We had too much in common, we talked from about 9pm till 2am. Then slept till about 5, and then on and off till 8:30 when we arrived here. Almost 14 hours on the bus, which makes it 18 with my ride the other day from Cancun.
He’s been in Central America since August, spent time in every country from Panama to Mexico and volunteered in Nicaragua with an NGO that works with schools for 3 months.
It was really nice to have someone to talk and relate to on such a long journey, and the fact that we had so much in common was amazing.

Climbing up to San Cristobal in the bus at sunrise this morning was awesome. We're at 2100 m above sea level here...which means it can be really cold in the morning and at night, but today felt like real mexican sunshine to me.

Merida and camping

Recipe for Camping in Yucatan:

- 8 Mexican guys
- 2 Mexican girls
- 1 Costa Rican girl
- 1 Ecuadorian girl
- 1 Canadian girl
- 2 camionetas (SUVs) and 1 truck
- 3 casas de campana (tents)
- 104 cans of Mexican beer (for the caballeros)
- a 40 of vodka and 4 L of OJ (for the damas)
- 2 kg of hotdogs
- 2 famiy sized loaves of Bimbo bread
- 20L of purified water
- 4 L of Coca
- 2 iPods wuth musica ‘rock’, reggaeton and banda

Take all of the people and put them in the super super mercado Soriana to buy beer and food (in that order). Take half an hour deciding how many and what type of beer and how much and what type of vodka. Take another hour deciding on food, snacks, resfrescos, breakfast…Collect money from all 14 people to pay for everything…grand total $700, pesos that is…about $75. Drive about 30 munites to arrive at the cenote. Open a beer and turn up the stereos hooked up to iPods and blast Pitbull and Daddy Yankee. Set up the tents, drink some more. Build a fire, drink a little more. Drink, eat, dance, sing, drink, sing, drink, sing, sing, sing, drink, drink, drink...fall asleep. Wake up early in the morning to make the climb down the rickety ladder to bathe in the cenote. Pack everything up and drive back to the city.

I had a really great time camping with Rafael and his friends…lots of good conversation and lots of Mana amd Sublime singalongs. The cenote was really cool, it was exciting to finally swim in once after having learned about them for so long! Many of the people that we were with are studying tourism, like Rafael. However the Costa Rican and Ecuadorian girls are on exhange in Merida studying human ecology…I got long with them very well. I even managed to discuss Mexican politics with some people, in preparation for my poli sci class…but I’m still confused.

I ended up having a great time staying at Raf's. I had lunch with Rafa’s family and I was able to understand and participate in the conversation, which is always nice, I could even understand el abuelo who had no teeth... sometimes.

Cancun to Merida

As soon as I walked off the plane the heat and humidity hit my dry, Toronto winter skin like a wave. The heat really didn’t help my situation though. That airport might as well be in the States, all American travellers, Mexican service workers and even the signs are in English first with the Spanish secondary as in the US. So I hurried to get my two large, heavy bags and get out of there but as soon as I left the baggage area I was bombarded with people trying to get me to take their bus, taxi, hotel, vacation package etc. My LP said that there’s a cheap bus into the city…if you can find it. So this nice guy spoke Spanish to me and helped me to find the cheap bus. When I walked up to the platform and saw locals I knew I was in the right place and paid my 35 pesos. The bus ride was great, as I’ve heard Mexican buses are. By the time I got off at the bus terminal in the city, I was hungry and desperately wanted to shower and sleep. So, I thought I’d find a hostel. I made it almost to the hostel walking with my bags and then gave up, thinking I’d gone the wrong way. So I hopped in a cab and was taken the last 2 blocks or something. So I got out of the cab, onto this potholed cracked street that was wet and muddy (the crazy whiteish mud that’s eveywhere on the peninsula, I think its limestone?). Anyway, my stupid holey soles cause me to slip and there I am fallen, lying in a muddy potholed road. The cabby watched and waited till I got up before he drove off, which was nice. However, getting up was no easy task…50 lbs on my back and about 40 on my front, in a skirt I felt like a beached wale as I rolled and put in all my muscles to right myself and get to my feet. So, I’m covered in this mud and my knee is scraped…by this point I’m ready to go home. Checked into the hostel, 100 pesos, met Laura a 23 year old Christian missionary from Texas and Freddy, a 30 year old Peruvian guy who’s on a trip around the world. Discussion at dinner was intriguing…we talked about veganism, ethics, environmentalism, religion, Christianity, the difference between Canadians and Americans and even a bit of politics, all of this in both Spanish and English, with me working as translator for the other two who understand about 50% of what the other says. Then Freddy and I went in search of a market to buy some frutas and we walked through a few real Cancun neighbourhoods, complete with garbage piles, shacks and random dogs in the street. All in all Cancun was good, I even made it to the beach for about half an hour Wednesday afternoon. The ocean itself is absolutely beautiful, with warm bright blue water and the whitest sand that I’ve ever seen. However, the constructions on the beach and the whole Zona Hotelera was not as I had expected…I pictured it to be just like in all the tourist propaganda, clean, new etc, however it seems that that only exists within the walls of the hotel compounds.
I decided that after that night of no sleep, I had to leave Cancun. So I took a first class bus to Merida. We had to stop at a military checkpoint, which wasn't as bad as it sounds. The soldiers are so young though, with machine guns and big black boots. I met two nice Norwegian girls on the bus, which was wonderful since I hadn't yet worked out where to sleep. So we shared a taxi to Nomadas hostel. So far Merida is wonderful, much better than Cancun.

no sleep

so apparently my bed was transported to the dance floor of some sort of discoteca, but this music didn´t seem to begin until about 3am...good thing I went to bed early.
I really do need sleep however, the fact that I was awoken by car alarms and dance music at 3:30 makes me feel like its not very possible to get much sleep. I think this means that I should go to Merida tomorrow, where it is a bit quieter, i hope. Well breakfast is in 3.5 hours, I doubt that I will sleep before then. Tomorrow I will take a trip to the beach, maybe swim in the ocean for one minute, walk around the city a bit and then leave for Merida I believe.
well, i´ve used this time while no one is on the free internet to learn about the candidates for the ams election (ubc student society) and I almost feel ready to cast my webvote.
Goodnight!

airport vol 2 y cancun

ya estoy en cancun!
It is so humid here that the pages fo my lonely planet and my notebook have waves in them now.
there´s a tiny lizard on the window in front of me, i´ve decided to stay at a hostel tonight, because i´m absolutely exhausted from last night in the airport and then I will head to Merida tomorrow, I think?
The Cancun airport was an experience...i´m too tired to write about it now...but i will.
espero que todos esten bien

airport vol 1

This is something that I wrote on Dec 16 and haven't posted yet...

Sitting at the Vancouver International Airport, Domestic Departures, Gate B22. Length of time I’ve been sitting here: 4 hours and counting. A lady just screamed at an airline employee: “We been here five hours and all you give us is shit food. This is worse than food bank.”
All it took was that one woman, to first say this to her friend and then repeat it out loud to the staff, to which her friend agreed. Then, of course with mob mentality, other people began to chime in. People complained about everything. And when the staff told them that they were doing their best and that they are frustrated too, people said “but you’re getting paid to be here”, as if money if the motivator for all things in life. People paid money for this flight, after all. And, in the end, they will be on a plane, right? They’ll get their vouchers and they’ll write their angry email and make the angry phone calls because they spent their whole day in an airport and time is money after all. Well it seems that many people on my flight think that their time is very expensive, since there was a big stink…and the RCMP had to come and talk to this one dude who was particularly irate, starting a fight with one of the airline women, who really had done nothing wrong…some people just have anger issues.
This relates back to economics class. My flight to toronto has an accounting cost of $245, what I paid with my VISA for the ticket, however, the economic cost of my flight is the $245 plus the oppotrunity cost of my time, what I could have been doing had I not been sitting in this uncomfortable waiting room. How much is my time worth?

But, in the end we’ll all get to Toronto, some of us will arrive with higher blood pressure and more stress. And I bet that everytime that they tell this strory (and they’ll tell it a lot, to a lot of people, on account of the holidays coming up) they will conitnue to become enraged and they will never fly harmony airways again.

So, they decided to give us taxi and food vouchers. I thought that maybe I’d take a taxi downtown (why not, its free) to go say one last goodbye to the hostel, since I had a few hours to kill.
I went to the taxi area and the guy who gets paid to get people taxis got me a taxi.
I got in the cab, asked the cabby if he’d accept my voucher and he became irate because the voucher wasn’t for his cab company and that I should have mentioned that to the guy who got me the cab. Oh my it was too stressful and kinda pointless to waste harmony’s money and gas on the cab ride so I said eff that … I won’t go anywhere, this place is hilarious, maybe I can learn something from all of the random people who are here in the airport.

Two of my favourite things to do are people watch and evesdrop, and the two go hand in hand, so that’s what I’ve been doing. And surprisingly I’ve had a good time.
Right now I’m sitting at the Medallist, a restaurant, waiting to order some food, a Meditarranean Chicken Salad (hold the chicken, hold the feta) and some fries and there’s a woman at the table close by who appeared to be talking to herself as she eats her burger and fries, but then I realized that I guess she’s got one of those bluetooth thingys and shes gossiping with a friend. However, she could just be crazy, I mean this is the airport. The best part of this conversation though, is the fact that she’s making the correct facial expressions as she tells these stories of whats going on in her life. Its as if her friend is here with her sharing this moment, technology is wonderful isnt it? She’s even drinking a glass of wine! It’s a virutal Saturday night with the girls!

So I thought this should be fine, I’ve got my laptop, I can just waste time on the internet…but apparently “nothing is free at the airport” and wireless costs $8 an hour, that’s insane. But, oh well I don’t need the internet.

I tried to watch Napolean Dynamite, cause I have it on my computer, but I got bored, its difficult to watch a funny movie alone in a room full of people, you feel like you can’t laugh out loud cause only you can hear the joke. I find that this same thing happens when I’m listening to music and I want to sing along, but im in the library, on the bus or in an airport waiting room and only I can hear my music. These things are more fun with other people.

So, you may be wondering, why didn’t I make some friends? I did, I made friends with Natalie, the cutest 4 year old ever. She and a couple of the other little girls were playing tag. It really made me admire the ability that children have to make new friends. I talked to a bunch of people, but I find, as often in these situations that the conversations tend to be centred around complaints. Everyone tells their story of why these circumstances suck for them (my story is that I was Ms. Stressy Rushy Pants all day trying to leave my house on time, get all my stuff packed and get my room cleaned up…and then turns out I had no reason to rush). While its nice to connect with people because of a common shitty situation…there’s not much to it and I had more fun with the little girls. Natalie can do the splits.

So now I’m back at gate B22, my new home. I’m so excited to get on the plane and actually get my journey started…theres been so much anticipation all day, the illusioin that I’m actually leaving, when I havent even left Vancouver yet, and its been 10 hours since I left my house.

I sorta feel like Tom Hanks, you know in The Terminal, except that I don’t actually have any problems, my country is still in tact and my family is all safe…but my flight was delayed so that sucks I guess. This airport has everything though…doctors, spa, shopping, a chapel. I wanted to go to a service at the chapel but they didn’t have one Saturday night. Some people have made good friends today though. Its nice to see people who don’t know each other hanging out and sharing stories.

I’m so excited to take a cab home from the airport, I never do that stuff, and then I am going to sleep aaaaaalllllll day tomorrow, I need it.

Well the plane is in the gate, almost time to go. Soon I will be in a nice warm bed in Toronto.