Merida

We arrive in Merida, where its hot and humid! We upgraded from a windowless tin shack in Oaxaca, to a newly refurbished house with a private pool. Not that we had much time to enjoy it unfortunately as we’re only here a couple of days. 

We arrive around 8pm, and it’s Saturday, so we head straight to a bar called La Negrita which is rammed with people. A group of Mexicans beckon us over and start forcing us to drink tequila shots (not that I needed much coaxing). We then befriend a lovely couple from Argentina, Macarena and Federico. The Mexicans take us all to a live music bar where they order a bottle of rum for the table and things start to get messy. It ended up being one of the best nights of the trip so far, and definitely the messiest. 

The next day is spent exploring Merida historic centre, another pretty colonial town. We stop for lunch to eat cochinita pibil tacos, which is the speciality here. I’m glad my appetite for tacos has finally returned!

That afternoon, we invited the Argentinian couple over to the house, which is when I realise I understood them a lot better when I was hammered! Their accents are super difficult, so I was knackered by then end of the evening from trying to keep up.  We had some beers by the pool and then rustled up a slap of meal of sausage, scrambled egg and chicken. It can’t have been that bad, cause they offered to drive us to Tulum, our next stop, in their hire car to thank us for our hospitality! 

The next day we’re up at 5am for our tour to Chichen Itzá, one of the 7 wonders of the world. There’s two other girls on the tour with us. We were literally the first people to enter the site, which meant we were able to get some awesome pictures against the backdrop of the temple without other tourists getting in the way. Our guide walked us around for a couple of hours and explained a bit of the history. He was a rather shit guide though, not at all engaging, and he talked a lot without actually really telling us anything.

Next, we’re driven to a private cenote which is literally in the middle of a Mexican family’s back garden. They discovered it 20 years ago while digging for a well, which more than quadrupled the value of their property overnight. Large corporations have been trying to buy it since to turn it into another tourist attraction, but the family refused to sell and so the cenote remains private and accessible only to locals in the village (and our tour guide and his tour groups). 

Pretty cool to have the place to ourselves as most of the other cenotes are public and crowded. When we arrived, the electricity was out, so the light to the cenote was being powered by a back up generator. Which meant we spent most of our time down there shitting ourselves the generator would fail, we’d be plunged into darkness and ravaged by cave monsters.