Bienvenidos a Mexico!

Mexican magnificence:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=164049&id=510568119&l=268db84be4

After an excellent 8 months in the US and Canada it was time to begin the next phase of our travels in Mexico and Central America. First stop south of the border was the old colonial city of Merida, a quintessentially Mexican town where tourism seems to be mainly for other Mexicans, there's banda music blaring from every other window and the streets are a chaotic mass of pedestrians, street vendors and erratically driven vehicles. At its heart, however, is a peaceful leafy plaza surrounded by grand old buildings built from the remains of Mayan pyramids. We arrived just in time for the 6 January - an important feast day in Catholic Mexico and one which is particularly celebrated in Merida as it happens to coincide with the city's birthday. The Dia de los Reyes (day of the kings) as it is known is traditionlly marked by eating "rosca de reyes," a sweet bread encrusted with dried fruits, bits of jellied sweets and meringue. On the way to the supermarket on the eve of the festival we stumbled across an entire street cordened off and lined along both sides with tables, along the length of which ran three rows of the aforementioned cake, interspersed with intricately carved watermelons. An army of chefs in white hats patrolled the space inbetween the two rows of tables handing out large pieces of cake and cups of fizzy pop to anyone who presented them with a couple of pesos. Later the next evening we watched a dramatic reenactment of key moments in Mayan history in the main plaza, followed by a procession through the city led by women in elaborate dresses handing out roses, carrying candles, singing patriotic songs and flanked by balloon-bedecked horse drawn carriages, before several local mariachi bands took it in turns to sing songs about Merida on a stage back in the main plaza as a prelude to an impressive fireworks display launched over the heads of the audience from at least 4 different points around the square. I plan to propose similar annual festivities to Redcar council when I return to the UK.

After a relaxing week of roaming the city and trying to remember (i) my Spanish and (ii) not to put toilet paper down the toilet we moved on to the smaller but even prettier city of Campeche where I spent several days to fending off a particularly vicious cold. In between violent sneezing fits I noticed that almost every building on each street was painted a different colour, which made the whole place feel slightly like somewhere out of a fairytale. During our stay we also sampled some of the local delicacies, including pollo pibil (chicken marinated in sour orange juice, spices and sweet chili then cooked in banana leaves), pipian de pavo (turkey in a chocolatey pumpkin seed sauce) and cactus and pineapple yoghurt (self explanatory, but see video for tasting notes).



Finally, no trip to the Yucutan peninsula would be complete without admiring some Mayan ruins, and we liked the ones at Chichen Itza so much we decided to visit Palenque as well. What Chichen Itza lacked in atmosphere (unlike Palenque, where it still felt like you were wandering through the jungle, Chichen Itza's ruins have been cleared so drastically you can see more tourists than trees) it made up for in grizzliness, with carvings of warriors holding enemy heads and eagles tearing out human hearts. One temple was entirely covered with engraved images of human skulls. Nice.