Hammocks, WiFi and Jungles

9Feb08

Well, it is our last full day here in Mérida. What have I done to celebrate you ask? Woke up at around 9, took a shower, packed my huge suitcase, went to the park with free WiFi to do some last minute emailing, came back and cleaned some more, had a nice talk with my host mother Mimi as we cooked lunch together for ourselves (mmmm … panuchos J), some Mayan studying for a few hours, and now back to the park to post all these back blogs (apologies by thway for not being more conscientious with posting – sketchy internet connections and time constraints in general); all while everyone else is at the beach :-P. This past week has been pretty eventful though – although it screwed with most of our internal clocks – usually we take day trips on Saturdays, but this week we took one on Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday’s trips were to the ruins of Acanceh, Tecoh ad Mayapán. The city of Acanceh was actually built on top of/around the ruins of the ancient Mayan city. There was a pyramid almost in the middle of the town square with incredibly preserved stucco masks on the top level. Across the city, there were more ruins that held nicely preserved carvings with many of the aspects that Rebecca has been teaching us these past two weeks – “goggle” eyes on animal depictions and we even got to use our bird identifying skills to recognize a carved cormorant. The next site, Tecoh, was a beautiful church that looked to me like something that one would see on the moors of England – it had an almost castle-like appearance from the outside. Lastly, the ruins of Mayapán were more like the other sites that we have been to thusfar – was a very condensed city setting with pyramids and temples.

More eventful, was our trip on Thursday to Campeche to tour a few museums. We first went to a museum that looked like a castle – complete with a moat and one of those doors that can be brought up so people cannot enter the fortress (I’m sure there is a word for it, but it escapes me at the moment – think of castles and the door that spans the length of the moat when down and is attached to the walls with chains that can be raised or lowered). We learned that since Campeche is on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, that the moat and likeness to a castle was because veritable pirates would come and attack the area. This museum held incredibly preserved artifacts, mostly from the site of Calakmul – there were stelae (carved stone monuments) with extensive hieroglyphics, tools, incredibly colorful pottery, skeletons in recreated burials and countless other artifacts. It was such a great reinforcement to actually be able to see the vast majority of the things we have been learning about in class. On the second level, there was an amazing view of the Gulf of Mexico, complete with cannons and turret-looking things on the roof.

After going to lunch at La Parilla, which was the first restaurant we ate lunch at when we arrived in Cancún back in January and we also noticed that we have all eaten at the one in Mérida more than a few times so that was quite amusing to realize that we have eaten at one in every Mexican state that we have been to so far J, we got on the bus only to find that it had broken down. After some calls to the bus company and getting whistled at by these guys in a truck who drove by numerous times, Hugo told us that we were going to take public transportation into the city and hang out there until the situation could be cleared up. One thing that I have noticed on this trip is the amount of trust that is placed in the people here. Many times that I have been on the bus, I have seen people get on before paying – some don’t even pay until they get off. They might have bags, fiddling with children or something of that nature. In the states, there would be NO way that you would get on public transportation without paying (especially a bus). Another example was the beginning of the week when I dropped off Ash’s and my laundry at the lavendaria. There were 8 kilos of it since we had not been able to do laundry for over a week. We were told that it would be done by 8PM that night, so we went to the park to get some work done, and when we returned home at 7:30 our laundry was already on my bed – cleaned, folded and everything. I still do not know how they knew where we lived, but Mimi said that they came by and dropped it off a little while before. Bear in mind that we had not paid yet, and it was a pretty good bill of 56 pesos (aka 5.50 USD). So I walk up there and pay the bill and thank her profusely for dropping it off. It just really floored me how trusting some people can be in certain situations that would never, at least to my knowledge, work out the same way at home. Anyways, back to Campeche when the driver let us all on the bus without asking for payment until Robert, the last one on, paid him and therefore started that whole tangent. After getting off the bus, we walked through this huge archway opening in a wall that looked like it surrounded the city, and found an entire city inside its walls! It was incredible! Since every city is laid out essentially the same with a main plaza and the rest of the city laid out in a grid work from the center, we found the central plaza with a gorgeous cathedral, governor’s building and a really pretty old house that we were able to take a tour of. After the tour, we were told that we had free reign about the city, and to meet back at 5:15, when there should be more news about the travel situation. A group of us broke off, went into a few stores, went inside the cathedral, with some of the most beautiful Stations of the Cross I have ever seen and eventually wandered out to the coast. Going back to the cathedral – the Stations that I had seen so far have been small sculptures, but these were gorgeous and vivid paintings that had to have been as tall as I am. As I remarked on them, I explained to the non-Catholics of the group what they were and what they meant. On a religion tangent here (again about what I have seen on buses – one can obviously glean a great amount of controversial topics from the daily bus ride to and from school :-P) I have noticed that in almost all the buses or cabs that I have been in, there are rosary beads, pictures of Our Lady of Guadelupe an numerous other religious symbols out in plain sight … and I have yet to hear anyone say that they are offended or feel discriminated against because there are images of Catholicism everywhere. I think that if someone were to actually say something, he would be met with an incredulous stare and told that that is his problem and to find something else to worry about. Again, just something that struck me as very different from the States. Back to Campeche … we had to cross out of the “fortressed” city to get to the coast, so we eventually made it to a wall that we all sat on. That part of the city had been built on the water, so the water was literally 4 or 5 feet down from where we sat. It was such a gorgeous day with the water lapping at the sides and a beautiful sunset. Although we all felt pretty sticky after being next to the humid air coming off of the water …

When we returned to the meeting spot in the center of the city, Rebecca informed us that there was this really great museum that held great examples of the different types of architecture that we are going to be seeing. It was a very interesting museum that did a very good job explaining what we were seeing. The styles of architecture that are our main focus are Puuk, Chenes, and Río Bec. Puuk architecture is characterized by intricate frieze work and stone carvings; Río Bec has these false temples/towers that are placed very high up, usually on a palace structure; and Chenes is more of a mix between the two. Lastly, Petén architecture has high temples with staircases on the sides and also carries some elements of the other styles. There were some incredibly preserved stelae that we got to try our hand at decoding – which we found that it was infinitely easier to use the line drawings next to the monument :-P

Returning home to rainy and overcast Mérida, 3 hours later than anticipated, we had a wonderful time trying to catch a bus, but we all had to admit that overall, Campeche was not a bad place to get “shipwrecked”.

Yesterday was our last day of classes at CIS and in Mérida, and tonight will be our last night. Quien sabe what we will do tonight, but tomorrow starts the next phase of the semester, sleeping in hammocks, but supposedly there is wireless internet, although I’m sure 18 people cannot be on it all at once. I’m actually pretty excited to see how sleeping in hammocks will work out, and also excited to start the next part of the semester. We’ll see how life goes in the hammock and wireless internet field station in the middle of the jungle. (Still sounds like an oxymoron to have hammock, field station, jungle and wireless internet all in the same sentence :-P)