A few weeks before I am due to head for Mexico I was on Facebook doing all the extremely important things you do on there and found that a girl that I was in high school band with and played second chair to on the french horn, Rachel, was going to be in Merida. Merida isn't too far away from the PM (Puerto Morelos) so I shot her a message letting her know that I'd be down there and it would be pretty rad if we were able to meet up. She agreed. It turned out that she would only be there for a week after I arrived so I hurried my ass over there.
I learned a few things on this mini trip of mine to Merida.
1. If you plan your trip right and you aren't cheap you can make it there from Cancun in about 4 hours. But if you are like me and don't do any planning and just show up at the bus station and decide that you don't need the first class bus that is only 5 dollars more it ends up taking you 7 and a half hours. Turns out, if you decided to go the cheaper route it is the locals bus and we stopped at least 5 times in every town we went through.
2. Take into account that you will be on a bus for many hours, so do not drink that massive bottle of water and large box of OJ you have on your person, as the second class bus doesn't have a bathroom and though it makes many stops, none of them are long enough to step out side and relieve yourself. When I finally couldn't stand it anymore, I used my small amount of Spanish to find out when we were stopping because I was about to make a mess all over his bus. Medio hora. Awesome, thirty minutes. That is about 28 minutes longer than I can last. Thankfully, the older lady sitting across from me can see how much pain I am in and makes the bus driver pull over in the middle of the road so I can run out and pee in the jungle. I have never loved anyone more than I did at that moment.
We'll fast forward 4 hours. I make it to Merida and find my way to Rachel and Luke. We have a great dinner and I buy my ticket to the opera that Rachel is playing in. I don't think I mentioned the reason she is in Merida. Rachel is now a professional horn player and had been called to play in their orchestra for 6 weeks. Which leads me to my next lesson learned.
3. Any expectations of the acting level at a Mexican opera should be checked at the boarder. I'll give them credit since they were singing in French, but smiling throughout is not forgivable.
The opera left a little to be desired, but the music was great! After that we headed to the cafe they frequent. Rachel and Luke (the fiancé) took off a little early so I was left with Charlie which was fortunate since I was staying at his place. This takes me to 4 and 5.
4. Charlie likes to stay up and he doesn't pick up on subtle hints. Late. We were there so late that the early morning cleaning lady pretty much had to throw us out physically.
5. Mexico is hot. Really hot. So hot that I had to sleep in the hammock because the bed was too warm. Luckily, I am a huge fan of hammocks.
The next morning we took off for some Mayan ruins. On our way out of town, we got pulled over and he was threatening to take the car.
6. It is illegal to have a car with illegal plates that is not registered in Mexico. It doesn't matter if you have a FM3. They can take your car. The only way around this is to drive to the border every 6 months and get a stamp.
Super rad. It's about 95 degrees with a million percent humidity, which takes it to about 300 degrees and we have no idea where we are. Thankfully, he was really stocked to the brim with patience and let us call everyone we knew and spoke to all of them. He eventually got sick of us and let us go with the understanding that we had to drive the car to Belize tomorrow. We didn't.
The rest of the day was up from there. We went to some small Mayan ruins, Kabah, and wandered around and even got to climb to the top of a huge one that hadn't been remade.
Now that we have adventured, it was time to eat. There was one place along the road that looked open, so we stopped. Best decision ever! The lady that ran it was really sweet and while we were waiting for our food she let us swim in her pool!!! It was an amazing meal with amazing company. After we had stuffed ourselves we headed back to Merida for some French horn playing and BBQ.
Unfortunately, I could only remember about 6 notes on the horn, so I didn't play, but I did listen to the 4 professional horn players that I was with. Beautiful. What a way to end the day. After the playing, we headed to the pool and start the BBQing. The BBQing didn't start until about 11:30p so we didn't eat until 2:30a, but it was wonderful and they were hilarious!
I wised up on the way home and shelled out the 5 bucks and took the fast bus. And I didn't have to make the bus driver pull over since there was a bathroom!
What a wonderful trip. I am now in the beginnings of my first tropical storm (TS ALEX), so I'm going to shut this thing down and enjoy it!
Hasta luego!
