Chichen Itza

This is Matt, I am publishing my first post to our blog.

I am in Merida, Mexico for the annual meetings of the American Society of Plant Biologists. The meetings occur in difference cities every year, this is my 4th year attending and my first one that is outside the USA. I arrived 1.5 days before the conference starts so that I could see some sights. Erin has spent quite a bit of time in this part of the world, but it my first time to be in the Yucatan peninsula and my fourth 7-10 day visit to Central America.

Because I got in late last night (about 10 pm), this was my first full day. I woke up with only a vague idea that I would like to do the Ruta Puuc, a bus ride that tours 4 to 5 of the local archeological site. The Ruta Puuc is enough to make Mesoamerican archaeologists salivate, hence one of the motivating forces for me was to live vicariously for my sweet wife who is stuck in LA, CA, USA. I decided to walk from my hotel, partly out of a desire to see the city and mostly to save 50 pesos (the current exchange rate is about 10 pesos/US dollar). It ended up being about a 30-40 min walk, the weather was perfect (mind you, this is in comparison to Houston), about 80F and cloudy. Merida streets don’t drain after rain in many places and so I was constantly avoiding getting splashed by overlarge buses. I had one of my favorite Mexican breakfasts, Fanta Naranja (I will soon regret indulging in that slightly bitter orange goodness that is so superior to the USA version, keep reading) with freshly baked tortillas that I found at a Mercado on the way to the bus stop. I also passed, quite by accident, the LDS micro-temple. It was fun to walk onto the ground and notice how the stress of walking the noisy streets of an unknown city melted away and was replaced by peace. I always wonder if this peaceful feeling is bread of the comfort of familiarity or the Spirit. Given the startling difference between the streets and the temple, I have to conclude that it is both.

Because of my several detours, I missed the Ruta Puuc by about 10 min. Instead, I bought a ticket to travel to Chichen Itza. Erin had told me to get a first class ticket, but I wasn’t fast enough on my feet to ask when the first class bus left and got put on a second class bus. The drive, costing about 50 pesos, is supposed to be about 1.5 h, but the second-class bus stopped at just about every intersection and tiny hamlet on some out-of-the-way back road to Merida. Normally it would have been fun to see the countryside, but about 30 min into the bus ride I ‘had the feeling that I had to go to the bathroom’ (thank you Elmo). This feeling only intensified as the ride lengthened, with no way to get off the bus without being left in the middle of the Yucatan countryside miles from Merida or Chichen Itza. About 2 hours later (2.5 hours into the ride), I found myself searching desperately for something to relieve myself into. I thought that it would be a bust, because the only bottles that I had were full of water, and I was not about to drink any water to free up some space. Then I found the plastic bag that housed my tortillas. The pressure and pain had mounted so high that I stuck the bag up my pants and tried to relieve myself. This was of course a bad idea that most likely would have lead to getting urine everywhere. Fortunately, my native ‘stage fright’ took control at this point and there was no relief. By this point, I could feel my kidneys starting to ache and my whole body was shaking. By the time I got off the bus (my 1.5 hour ride had magically transformed into 3 hours of agony) I could hardly walk erect and had to hobble into the Chichen Itza ticketing area. Not being able to immediately pinpoint a ‘servicio’, I snuck around back, kneeled down next to a chain-link fence facing the jungle and relieved myself while pretending to search for something in my bag. That sort of relief is one of the most underappreciated feelings in our culture.

Chichen Itza itself was marvelous and swarming with people, an interesting mix of Hispanics, gringos, and Europeans. The first thing that I came upon a central plaza with a typical Mayan pyramid (like in Tikal, or Star Wars, depending on your cultural reference point), surrounded by several rectangular buildings. I was preparing to be unimpressed by this rather typical scene, when I noticed a road lined with vendors leading off into the woods. Then I realized the real draw of Chichen Itza. It is enormous and has a striking variety of seemingly unique (to me, not the archeologists) features. One building that particularly impressed me was composed of hundreds to thousands of columns etched with carvings of various warriors. My favorite two features were the cenote, a water-filled circular pit about 100 meters in diameter and about 200 to 300 meters down to the water. There were not very many people in this area and it was relatively peaceful. The next was the Observatory, an impressive cylindrical structure built on top of a platform. I haven’t seen anything like that in the other sites that I have visited. I also succumbed to touristic pressures and paid too much for a little bamboo noisemaker to give to Ian and Lily.

As I was looking for some postcards, I lucked into finding the vendor for return bus tickets tucked away in a corner of one of the gift shops. The bus schedule was clearly presented this time and I booked a first-class ticket back to Merida. This bus was equipped with a WC (bathroom, which of course I did not need) and showed movies dubbed in Spanish. Best of all, it drove on the freeway and made the return trip in 1.5 hours. Just as I was leaving the site, it had started rain as is only seen in the tropics: hard, large, fast-hitting drops that will soak you before you know it is raining. The rain kept up all the way home, so I ponied up the 50 pesos and took the taxi back to the hotel El Conquistador (incidentally, this is a much more manly-sounding place to stay than the alternate, the Fiesta Americana).

All in all, it was a great day. My Spanish was remarkably good considering that I don’t practice that often (I served a 2-year LDS mission in Madrid, Spain). I did notice that by the end of the day I could hardly speak because my mouth is not used to making Spanish sounds and had gotten tired. Mouth fatigue was something that I had forgotten about since I left Spain. I missed my wife terribly. I found myself looking over my shoulder all day, wanting to ask her questions about the buildings and trying to make sure that I was taking care of all of the details (I did a horrible job on the detail front, no rain jacket, no food, no camera and hence no pictures in this post, no guide book, etc), but did manage to get there and back by myself with no real trouble. I always have a hard time imagining how Erin did this kind of traveling without a complete grasp of Spanish, I don’t know that I would be brave enough without being able communicate.