Now that I have replenished my supply of local currency, I can almost relax. But not quite. There is still the matter of finding a place to stay.

I decide to check out two places - one suggested on the Thorn Tree forum, the other is a the place that Sue said she would be staying at. May as well check it out since I’m going there anyhow to meet Sue. My gut feeling though, is that it would be better to stay at a different place from where she is staying.

I first check out the Alvarez Guest House, - my sight-unseen preference. It looks nice inside - a long and narrow courtyard, with a mezzanine leading to more rooms on the second floor. Despite being on a buys street, the rooms are quiet as their windows open to the tranquil courtyard.

Having checked out my first choice in hotels (glad to find they have room, always a worry that the best places will be full), I head on over to find Sue’s hotel, the Luz en Yucatan.

This hotel is much larger and less cozy. It is more impersonal in a way, but only because it is larger. The owners are very friendly. It has a pool and a big kitchen. The rooms are large, at least the ones I saw. Nice in its way, but it doesn’t suit me.

Sue has checked in but she is not here just now. I head back to the Alvarez Guest House to check in. I am met this time by a man of very different character than the fellow who shoed me around when I was here half an hour ago.

The first thing he does is worry me: “Lets see if we have a room …”. He shows me a room that is OK, but does not appeal to me. “But don’t you have a room upstairs? I just looked at it half an hour ago!” I am starting to feel a little anxious again, the aftermath of the bank experience having not quite warn off yet.

After a bit of a pause, he determines that the room I am interested in is available. That’s a relief! Tramping around town with a backpack, looking for a place to stay, is not my idea of a good time!

The room is large - with an enormous king-sized bed and a smaller single bed. The single bed is a perfect place to spread out all the junk in my back pack. There is a somewhat old bathroom - clean enough - with a large shower.

Enrique, the owner, proudly shows me one of his antiques - a tube-powered short-wave radio. This is just one of the many antiques throughout the hotels - guest house, really. This place is far to personal to be a hotel.

Finally, after a long day with a few stressful episodes, I just want to settle in.

I Decide on my Bank Of Choice in Mexico

By now I am seriously short of cash. It is Friday at about 3:30, so I’d better get stocked up on pesos before the banks close for the weekend!

On my last trip to Mexico, I learned that exchanging traveler’s cheques is troublesome and that my credit cards and cash cards did not work in any ATM. This was in Oaxaca. What did work was to go into any bank and ask the teller for a cash advance from my credit card. I pay my credit card in advance, before leaving Canada, so that I do not have to pay interest on the cash advance. I don’t even know the PIN for my credit cards, since it was of no use on my last trip to Mexico.

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Continue reading …

After three days at Eco Genesis, it is time to move on. I’ve relaxed and unwound, I’ve done everything I want to do here and more, and Sue must have long since arrived in Merida. I don’t want to leave, but I am ready to go. Perfect! Nothing worse than traveler’s Complacency!

The local taxi stand consists of a single taxi, and the driveway of the taxi owner’s house. Just as I leave the guest house, the taxi drives by. I don’t know where he is going, but he is more than happy to throw his plans out the window and take a paying customer to Valladolid. At the bus station, I have enough Spanish to understand that the next bus to leave is slow, and that the bus that leaves later will arrive in Merida earlier.

I have just enough time for lunch, an even bigger advantage to the later bus. Asking around, I find that the best food options are a taxi-rid away at the town center. but I don’t have time that. I am baffled by the lack of restaurants or food near the bus station. If I were somewhere like Thailand, there would be food stalls in the bus station, next to the bus station, and all the way from the bus station to the town center. Once again, I question how seriously Mexicans take their food. I must be missing something here, don’t all cultures take their food seriously? I can’t imagine any other way!

After about ten minutes of wandering around, I find a place with so-so food, but it does do the job of filling my stomach in the time available.

It is an efficient bus ride from Valladolid to Merida along an excellent highway. Once we reach Merida, our progress is slowed considerably. From this direction, Merida has no main road into the center of town. Instead there is a lattice of narrow streets, with many speed bumps. Some streets have few if any stop signs, and savvy drivers know to stay on these streets, and the others have stop signs at each and every intersection. There is a moderate amount of traffic that moves slowly but steadily towards the center of the city.

I steel myself for the bus station. A very prominent warning in the Lonely Planet guide book warns to watch out for pick pockets ‘at the bus station, or in any crowd‘. When I arrive, there is no crowd, no feeling of skulking criminals with evil intent. I sometimes think that Paranoid Planet might be a better name for that particular guide book publisher.

Merida is an easy-going city. The crowded part is crowded only because it is buys and the streets are narrow. After relaxing at Ek’ Balam, it is nice to have a change of pace!

Do we really need traveler’s cheques these days, now that we have credit cards, and there are ATMs on every corner? I figure the more methods for obtaining local currency, the better, so I have a few traveler’s cheques with me. Not many, but a few. In US dollars.

Last year in Mexico, I discovered that the money changers in Oaxaca would not accept traveler’s cheques in Canadian dollars! This is strange, they will accept cash in Canadian dollars, and Mexico is supposed to be in the same tracking block as Canada and the US. Try telling the money changers that, they are not interested.

I am very glad I have traveler’s cheques on hand. I am embarrassed to find I have insufficient cash to pay my hotel bill in Ek Balam. There is no bank in this tiny village. It would surprise me if any of the residents even had a bank account. The remedy to this situation is appealing: a 150 peso taxi trip to Valladolid, and probably about two hours of my time.

Luckily, Lee accepts my traveler’s cheque, although this comes at some cost and hassle to her. I pay her for her costs.

Traveler’s cheques still have their place in the traveler’s financial tool-kit!

Long after the twin hurricanes of two years ago, damage is still evident around the Yucatan Peninsula. Possibly the worst damage is entirely hidden to the untrained eye.

In many villages, I have seen empty empty homes, the walls intact, the roof long gone. Perhaps the catastrophic loss of the roof was the last straw for some families, already on the economic brink of disaster.

Last straw? More like a whole load of hay. Who knows where these families are now? No doubt these reminders of past calamities will eventually be transformed back into inhabited and happy homes. Let’s hope sooner rather than later.

Less obvious damage is in pane sight, right where you can’t see it.

In the aftermath of the twin hurricanes, the government took action to help the people. But which people where they helping? The storms wiped out the villager’s crops – the first storm wiped out the more mature plants, the second finished off the survivors. Rather than providing badly needed food, the government solved a problem the villagers could have fixed themselves.

Consider the traditional Mayan house. The walls are built of sticks – available from the local jungle at very competitive prices. This type of wall provides the sort of ventilation required for such a hot and humid climate. If less ventilation or more privacy is desired, a mixture of mud and palm fiber is applied to the walls.

The roof is thatched with locally-available palm fronds, also at a price the villagers can afford. I doubt a single peso is required to build such a house.

The government probably did more to help the construction industry than the villagers. Building materials – cement and cinder blocks – were supplied, along with the labor. The block houses were built the way the contractors wanted to build them, no local input allowed.

Lee tells me that the excessive heat and humidity in these cinder-block houses causes disease. During the hot season, they are like ovens.

So what do the inhabitants think about their new abodes? Lee says they consider this a step up. This is the way city people live. Take a closer look at the side of the block house (in the photo above). Yes, that is graffiti; apparently the owners of this house decorated it the way they think city houses are decorated! Notice also the traditional house behind the new block house. Perhaps they still see the benefits of the old style house after all.