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Wanderings Through Mexico ~
February 7 through February 29, 2000
$1 U.S. = 9.40 pesos
(Remember
to click on the thumbnails for enlargements of the photos)
Playa del Carmen,
Quintana Roo, Mexico
February 7 through 11
(ccl) Looking back on it now, it's hard to
believe that we're actually on this trip. The last week before we left was
probably the most hectic of either of our lives. Between my leaving my
job, moving out of the house, and arranging for Wiley's father to take care of
the many loose ends we left dangling, we nearly killed ourselves. I
remember reading other people's accounts of their last days at home before they
left on their world trips, and thinking, "Man, we are so much more
organized than they are. We will have plenty of time to relax and enjoy
our last few days with friends and family.". Ha! Once we were
actually in Mexico, we remarked several times at how brilliant we were to have
started in a country that we know pretty well, so that traveling would relieve
some of the stress of those last days at home.
We flew out on Monday, February 7,
for Cancun, with a stop and a plane change in Miami. Very few people can
leave on a two-week vacation and have everything go perfectly, so you would
expect that quite a few things might not go our way when on the road for over a
year. Our first "issue" occurred when we sauntered up to the
Iberia counter in the Miami airport to get out boarding passes for the
Miami-Cancun leg of the flight. We were told that the flight was oversold,
and since we had not arrived at the gate the requisite 90 minutes prior to
flight time, we had been bumped. Luckily for us, there was a Mexicana
flight leaving only 45 minutes later, and the Iberia folks got us on that
flight. Later, once in Cancun, we discovered that they got ONLY us on the
flight - not our luggage. Oh well. We found our shuttle driver at
the Cancun airport. He was to take us to our hotel in Playa del Carmen, a
nice little beach town about 40 miles south of Cancun. He explained to us
in halting English that his van was broken down. We proceeded to wait an
hour on the steps of the Cancun airport while he attempted to jump off the
Suburban about three times. I kept trying to tell him that it was the
alternator, not the battery, but he didn't seem to understand. This is
where the duty-free rum we had purchased in the Miami airport came in
handy. The shuttle guys bought us cokes and dinner, and we were able to
enjoy the situation despite the fact that it was getting late and we had no
luggage.
We got into Playa del Carmen around 8:00 P.M., and checked into the Hotel Copa
Cabana (Barry Manilow played in my head the entire time we were there), an nice
hotel with a very authentic feel on the quieter end of the main drag in Playa,
5th Avenida. The realization that had dawned on us as we made the trip
from the airport was that we had American Express baggage protection, which
meant that each of us had $500 to spend on new clothes, toiletries, etc., if our
luggage was more than 3 hours late. Now, imagine the situation: someone's
just given you $1000 to spend on new clothes. You're in a town with great
shopping, yet you've got 2 completely crammed full backpacks on their way to you
sometime in the near future. Shopper's hell?? Perhaps. We
bought some clothes and a couple of bathing suits. Our luggage arrived
late the next afternoon.
 If
you have been to Cancun and found that it too closely resembled Miami Beach for
your taste, you must visit Playa del Carmen. It's a real live Mexican
beach town that's been attracting Europeans for years, and is finally catching
the eye of the American tourist looking for a more authentic experience.
Although it had nearly doubled in size since our last visit two years ago, we
still love going there. There are many value-priced hotels just a couple
of blocks off the beach, great restaurants, and all the partying anyone could
want. We spent four days enjoying the sun and the beautiful turquoise
water. 
Sun and sand are great for relaxing,
and we managed to do quite a bit of that, but our stay in Playa del Carmen was
not without stress. Two things have caused us stress during this
trip: the availability of money, and our computer. You probably
already know that the hard drive on our laptop crashed about a week before we
left on our trip. When it became obvious that Sony was not going to get it
repaired in time to send it to us in Atlanta before we left, I made arrangements
for them to send it to me at the Copa Cabana in Playa. So as each day
passed, we waited for the computer to arrive. We even stayed a day longer
than we had planned, just so that we could pick up the computer.
Unbeknownst to us, Sony had mistakenly sent the computer to my office in
Atlanta. More to follow on this later...
The other problem we were facing was,
as I mentioned, the availability of our money. We had enough in our
checking account to get by for a while, but ultimately we were attempting to
transfer mutual funds to our American Express Brokerage account, and liquidate
those. We started that process in January, and as I write this in early
March, we still don't have access to those funds. Needless to say, we
don't have alot of good things to say about AMEX Brokerage. You may
remember reading elsewhere on this page that we also have American Express
Online Banking. We discovered in Playa del Carmen that you can't use your
ATM card outside of the United States with AMEX banking. What's their
slogan again? "Don't leave home without it"??? Well, you
may want to take it with you, but don't forget your VISA card for cash
advances. But, I digress.
Palenque, Chiapas,
Mexico
February 12 through 18
Ultimately, we had to leave Playa del
Carmen without the computer. I had been attempting to communicate with
Sony via phone from Mexico, but you can imagine how expensive that was. We
figured that it was on its way and would surely arrive in Playa soon, so we made
plans to come back to Playa after we had attended the Entheobotanical Conference
in Palenque.
We took an overnight bus from Playa
del Carmen to Palenque. If you've never done this, it's quite an
experience. Mexican buses are very comfortable, but Mexican roads
aren't. We were able to sleep some, but I was awakened every 15 minutes or
so by the bus driver's attempt to hit every pot hole in the road. One
really great thing about the trip is that they showed 2 or 3 movies during the
ride. Apparently, really bad American movies that never make it to the
theater OR video are dubbed in Spanish and sent to Mexico for use on Mexican
buses. There was some pretty awful stuff being shown.
 We
arrived in Palenque at about 6:00 Saturday morning, with our friend Jane from
New York, whom we had met at the Playa del Carmen bus station. We got a
cab to the hotel where the conference was being held, the Hotel Chan-Kah.
The hotel was so beautiful - everyone had there own little cabin made out of
stone, each with a front porch and its own unique view of the surrounding
jungle. The pool is incredible, made entirely out of stone and surrounded
by lush tropical rain forest. It was a marvelous setting for this
conference on how plants are used to heal and provide insight.
The thing I enjoyed most about the
conference was meeting so many nice people from so many different parts of the
world. Wiley has been to the conference before and has made contact with
alot of interesting people who are into all kinds of alternative healing
procedures, development of new nutritional supplements, massage therapy,
etc.
Just a short distance from our hotel
were the ruins of the Mayan city of Palenque. It is an incredibly
beautiful and tranquil place, discovered in the jungle early in the 20th
century. The ruins of many beautiful temples stand amidst the jungle
foliage, and while we were there, two howler monkeys starting going at it over
position in a tree. It was very surreal and prehistoric. A local
Mayan tribe, the Lacondons, was positioned outside the gates to the ruins,
selling arrows that they make and use to hunt. The Lacondons consider
themselves to be the true descendents of the Mayans, and to show that they are
still in the "old ways", the men don't cut their hair. One
of the speakers at the conference, Christian Rausch, spent 3 years living in the
rainforest with the Lacondons, and wrote his doctoral thesis on the preparation
and use of an alcoholic beverage they brew called balche. 
While we were at the conference in
Palenque, our good friend in Atlanta, Cristin Zegers, was hot on the trail of
our laptop. She discovered that it had been sent to the Informix office in
Atlanta, so we made arrangements to have it sent to the Informix office in
Mexico City. We had to be in Mexico City to fly to Peru anyways, so we
figured we could cancel our 2 day layover in Panama, and stay in Mexico City
until Wednesday, in order to get the computer. With this plan in place, we
headed for a weekend in San Cristobal de las Casas.
It's worth adding a comment here
about travel in the third world. Originally, when we thought we had to go
back to Playa del Carmen to get the computer, we bought plane tickets from
Cancun to Mexico City, figuring we would spend the weekend in Playa. When
we discovered we would be getting the computer in Mexico City, we decided to go
to San Cristobal, so we went back to the travel agency to change the plane
ticket to a flight from Tuxla-Guitterez (the closest city to San Cristobal and
the capital of Chiapas) to Mexico City. Travel is a lesson in
patience. When was the last time you bought a plane ticket from someone
who didn't have a computer? In an office where the highest-tech piece of
equipment was a calculator? It took about 45 minutes to buy the original
ticket, and about an hour and half to change it. We are used to executing
business transactions on an almost instantaneous basis in the United
States. The rest of the world, for the most part, doesn't work at that
speed. The only thing to do in these situations is to relax and enjoy the
ride.
San Cristobal de
las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
February 19 through 21
 I
had heard and read some about San Cristobal de las Casas in the guidebooks, and
we were intrigued. The bus ride from Palenque took about 4 hours, but the
moon was completely full and the mountains were beautiful. This bus ride
had no movies, thankfully. We arrived around midnight, and headed to a
hotel recommended by the man who booked our plane tickets (see above). It
was $15 per night, and just off the main zocalo.
On Saturday morning we woke up and
headed out for breakfast just down the street at the Gordo Gato (Fat Cat), and
had a delicious meal for about U.S. $2 each. We then spent the day
wandering through the town. It's a beautiful little town, with a feel of
old Mexico. Families stroll the streets hand in hand, and native Indians
sell their wares from the sidewalk. We visited the local craft market and
bought a few things. Everything is so inexpensive and we want to buy so
much, but we realize that we'll have to ship this stuff home, so we try to be
reasonable. 
In the afternoon we followed our map
to the mercado, the main market in town where the locals shop. There were
stalls there with people selling everything from socks to eggs. San
Cristobal is famous for its calla lilies, and these gorgeous flowers where
everywhere. People sell watermelon and pineapple slices in an extremely
unusual way: after peeling off all of the rind, they slice the fruit to make big
round slices, then sell those for about $0.10 each.
We had lunch at a restaurant we
happened upon close to the mercado. Wiley and I have a way of looking for
a restaurant while we're traveling until we're about to pass out from
hunger. We'll stop, look at one menu, decide to go across the street to
look at another place, and we'll keep this up for a good hour. I don't
know what brought us into this place, except that maybe we were really
hungry. It turned out that we were the only tourists in the place, and I
was the only woman. Well, maybe there was one other woman,
but she was cooking. Anyways, it was kind of bizarre. All of these
men who looked like truck drivers, eating lunch and drinking out of quart beer
bottles. Then this guy got up and played pop tunes on an electric piano,
accompanied by a drum machine. Surreal...
In case I haven't mentioned it, our
budget for the trip is $100 per day. San Cristobal is a town where you can
definitely live right for that amount of money. Beers are less than $1,
and a great meal can be had for under $5.
Sunday morning we attempted to go to
church. One of the things we want to do on this trip is see how other
people worship and celebrate. We got to church too late, but it inspired
us to try again on another Sunday. After breakfast, we spent most of the
afternoon hanging out in the zocalo, reading and soaking up the sunshine.
Children are everywhere in San Cristobal, and some of them are begging. I
had just bought one of my favorite foods from Mexico, a fresh mango, peeled and
cut into sections and placed on a stick. They squirt fresh lime juice on
them, and then sprinkle them with salt and fresh ground chili pepper. It
is an incredible taste sensation. I was enjoying my mango when a little
boy, no more than 4 or 5, came up to me and signaled that he wanted the pit when
I was through. I felt so sorry for him, that he would be satisfied with
eating my leftovers, that I went back and bought him one of his own. His
face lit up when he saw it, and he ran away to share it with his sisters.
We take so much for granted.
Sunday afternoon we visitied Na Balom, literally, "House of the
Jaguar". This house was owned by Franz and Trudi Blom, a couple who
dedicated their lives to preserving the ways of the Lacondon Indians (see
above). Franz was an archeologist, and Trudi a journalist and
photographer. Their house has become a haven for artists, Lacondons, and
those hoping to better understand the ways of the rainforest's indigenous
peoples. Trudi devoted the last years of her life to planting more than
100,000 trees in de-forested areas around San Cristobal. It was a very
inspirational tour, and a place we will not soon forget. 
Sunday night we had dinner and drinks
at a local restaurant that featured live local music. The band had a sound
somewhat like Santana, with bongos and guitar. The bass player played bass
and drums AT THE SAME TIME! A great time. 
On Monday, we left from San Cristobal
at noon on the bus for Tuxla-Guitterez, where we were to catch our flight to
Mexico City. What a ride! We got the seats right behind the driver,
and we quickly understood why those seats we're taken when we made our
reservations. The road from San Cristobal to Tuxla winds through the
mountains the entire way, and there are cars and buses passing each other with
little leeway on either side. We plugged into the mini-disc player and
tried not to think about it. Tuxla is a pretty grimy place, and is pretty
much a stopover for most travelers. We didn't spend much time there, just
enough time to get some lunch and head to the airport.
Mexico City, Mexico
February 21 through March 1
When I look back on the Mexico City
experience, it almost seems unreal to me. We were supposed to be there a
little more than 2 days, just long enough to get the computer and catch a plane
to Peru. If travel teaches you anything, it's that your expectations and
your realities don't always meet...
We got into Mexico (as the Mexicans
call it; confusing, I call it) on Monday night around 7:00. If you've ever
flown into Mexico City, you know that there's hardly a more depressing-looking
place from the air. It's a huge, sprawling metropolis, with almost
no trees, and a brown haze over everything, especially in the late
afternoon. I had flown in and out of there once, and never thought I
wanted to spend any time there.
But, like alot of things, Mexico
isn't so bad close up. We went to a hotel that was recommended by one of
our guide books. It turned out to be a nice place in a great neighborhood,
right down the street from the British and U.S. Embassies (if you've traveled
much, you know that the embassies are usually in the best neighborhoods) for $45
per night. We settled in, had some dinner, and went to bed, with thoughts
of getting the computer tomorrow morning in my head.
Tuesday came and went, with no computer. Sylvia at Informix de Mexico
explained that it would be coming to the office on Wednesday. No real
problem. We were due in Peru on the following Monday for our Spanish
class, so we just changed our flight out from Wednesday to Friday, still giving
us plenty of time to get to Peru and get ready for class. On Wednesday
morning we visited the National Museum of Anthropology. It's truly a
fantastic museum, with artifacts from the Maya, Inca, and Zapotec cultures, to
name just a few. A highlight was seeing Moctezuma's headress, which was
given as a gift to Cortez. Little did Moctezuma know that Cortez was
planning to plunder his entire kingdom... 
On Wednesday afternoon we headed to
the Informix office. Once there, we began to learn the awful truth that
our computer would probably never make it into Mexico. It seems that
according to Mexican customs laws, it's very difficult to import a used
computer into the country. It's no problemo if the computer is new, but
since mine was not, there would be a lengthy (possibly 30 days) approval
process, which might not even result in approval. The advice of the
Informix folks, who deal with Mexican customs regularly, was to send the
computer back to Atlanta, and get it there.
You have to understand that
contemplating a return home after a big send off, complete with bon voyage
party, saying goodbye to friends and family, quitting the job, selling the
house, etc., was nearly impossible to do. By this time, we had both pretty
much "checked out", and neither one of us was too excited about going
back. But it seemed like the only way to get the computer, and we realized
the farther we got away from the States, the tougher it would probably be to get
the computer sent to us. So we decided that I would go back and get
it.
I returned to Atlanta, and thanks to
our good friends Harry and Cristin Zegers and Mac and Betsy Orr, had a great
weekend seeing friends and getting some stuff done, like calling American
Express to find out where our money was. (It was no where close to being
in our hands, as I found out.) On Monday I purchased a new computer, as
ours was still in Mexico customs, and is probably sitting in the living room of
the director of customs as I write this. I returned to Mexico on Monday
night, February 28. On Tuesday afternoon, we flew to Panama City, then on
to Lima, where we spent the night.
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