1-29-06
Paul here at an internet booth in Playa del Carmen with Miles next to me on his own computer pleading with his friends and classmates to send him e-mail. Because we haven't done a homestay yet, the kids haven't been able to meet up with other kids and they get a bit tired of each other's company. There's some TV show in english playing somewhere else in this computer shop and although I'm choosing to block out what they're saying on the show, there's a wave of canned laugh track that seems to flow over this shop in a regular cycle.
It's Sunday, and we've wrapped up 3+ weeks in Playa del Carmen. This past week was ours without a spanish instructor and we took the opportunity to travel. Monday morning we caught a bus from Playa to Chichen Itza. Although the bus was in excellent condition, complete with functioning bathroom and numerous video screens, it was a four hour journey nonetheless.
There seems to be a "Mexican Bus Film Genre" which usually means a shoot-em-up American movie with either subtitles or overdubbed in Spanish. Our first film was some whacky story about Matthew McCaugnahy and Penelope Cruz chasing confederate coins and nuclear waste throughout the southern Sahara, and because of the length of the trip, we were blessed with a second feature which involved Val Kilmer trying not to assissinate the president of the US in some podunk Southwestern town. The combined body count of the two films was way beyond my spanish counting skills. (Another feature of Mexican Bus Cinema is that I rarely catch the titles of the movie.)
Upon arriving at the ruins in Chichen Itza, my son, the observant one, counted 27 toilets in the very nice restroom at the ruins.
Miles had heard of Chichen Itza last year in school where it was nicknamed Chicken Pizza (I thought this was a Hinesburg Exclusive until a time share guy in Playa offered us a trip to "Chicken Pizza"). The ruins experience was good, though the kids had hoped to be able to climb to the top of the Castillo and we didn't learn until we arrived that that was now forbidden.
We found a nice little "posada" (inn) in next door Piste before walking back to the ruins after dark for the light show. We opted out of the English translation headset which was just as well since the Spanish was gruesome enough as the ancient Mayan woman described how honored she was to offer her firstborn child as a sacrifice to the gods. The Strauss waltz over the loud speakers prior to the light show was a little odd, but it was a beautiful star-filled night in the middle of the Yucatan, so no complaints.
We chummed up with some other travellers at the light show who we had talked to on the bus. They were an older crew from Boise, Idaho. While on the bus and trying to ignore the blood and guts on the screens around us, a Boise guy and I talked. His sister-in-law lives in Vergennes, Vermont and is a nurse practioner for an organization that serves young and unwed parents. Well, wouldn't you know, after the light show and after dinner at a small restaurant in Piste (more later) we went up a mysterious 3 flights of stairs to find a top-floor internet lab. And when we checked or email we learned that a leading prospective tenant for our vacant apartment in Vergennes (a source of minor cash flow stress for Yours Truly) is a health care professional who will be working with an organization in Vergennes that serves young and unwed parents. I love it! He (she?) is from Dublin, travelling in Nigeria, but wanted an address where to send first month's rent and security deposit in US dollars. I hope it all works out and I am very grateful to our housesitters who are handling this stuff.
Dinner in Piste was at a little shop with about 4 tables and an owner who couldn't see very well. She cooked good food though we had our suspicions whether the spots on the tortillas were mold spores or hot spots from a griddle. For entertainment, the TV was playing Mexican ranchera music videos which were a welcome change from the usual MTV-VH1 load we see everywhere else. And for additional pleasure we were hustled by 3 young boys trying to sell us souvenirs (no spell check in a spanish computer lab). The kids were around Miles and Jill's ages and we had a lot of fun talking with them even though they were feeding us a line of bull. It turns out the rock carvings are really plaster of paris and do not come from the Sacred Cenote (cavern) as promised by the 10 year old sales leader.
Tuesday morning we walked all around Piste (not very hard to do), ate breakfast and waited at the bus station for a bus to Valloladid (sp?) With a couple of hours to kill in Valloladid, we walked to a city park where there was a huge cenote with steps down to the water surface a couple of stories down. It was open for swimming had any of us dared, but we opted out. Valloladid was a busy colonial era city with skinny sidewalks and busy streets and it was a reminder to us how relatively young Playa del Carmen is with a well laid out matrix of wide streets and sidewalks.
We caught another bus to Coba and had to hustle to find a hotel room, there just aren't that many in our price range in Coba, maybe 20. Somewhere during the evening I realized we were running out of cash. I had expected to find an ATM in Coba since it is a tourist site, but it turns out it's really for daytrippers so there's no need for an ATM. I put the family on rations and after mostly sufficient food, and necessary bus tickets, we pulled out of Coba on Wednesday with 70 cents in my pocket.
More about Coba: We had wondered why there were so many flies near our breakfast table Wednesday morning but only figured it out after we finished eating. There was a large dump of fresh dog poop about 2 feet behind Jill's chair. Sweet.
The ruins at Coba were in some ways more impressive than Chichen Itza partly because you don't hear much about them and partly because one of the Coba pyramids is the highest pyramid on the whole Yucatan peninsula--and you get to climb to the top! We went counterintuitive and headed straight for the big one first thing in the morning before the hordes of day trippers finished their sightseeing route.
As impressive as the pyramid, were the fleets of bike taxis heading our way full of tourists. Cheap Daddy had opted out of the bike taxi which made the scores of them passing us by that much more interesting.
After eating at another cheap-but-good place with stick walls, no front end and prerequisite old lady, we hung out for an hour or two waiting for the bus. During the wait, while we watched the packed tourist buses go by, we asked the kids what it was like to be the people eating at a shack that the tourists watch as they drive by. We never quite got an answer.
We did get to chat up a bus driver during our wait. His Mercedes Benz tour bus had a pretty sophisticated tire pressure management system that had hoses attached to each tire valve to automatically keep tires inflated in case of puncture. He was a nice young guy with a wife and 2 young kids in Cancun. He makes $15 a day driving a $300,000 bus full of tourists. He gets an extra $10 from the shop owners if he parks the bus at their gift shop.
We also killed some time in a souviner shop and because we were broke there was no pressure to buy anything. Instead, we had a nice time chatting up the shop lady who turned us onto the inside scoop on where all the stuff really comes from (like from a bag of plaster of paris instead of a sacred caven).
We made it back to Playa del Carmen Wednesday around dinner time after watching Wesley Snipes shoot all kinds of people on the little screen.
Time to help Miles with his email.
Paul here at an internet booth in Playa del Carmen with Miles next to me on his own computer pleading with his friends and classmates to send him e-mail. Because we haven't done a homestay yet, the kids haven't been able to meet up with other kids and they get a bit tired of each other's company. There's some TV show in english playing somewhere else in this computer shop and although I'm choosing to block out what they're saying on the show, there's a wave of canned laugh track that seems to flow over this shop in a regular cycle.
It's Sunday, and we've wrapped up 3+ weeks in Playa del Carmen. This past week was ours without a spanish instructor and we took the opportunity to travel. Monday morning we caught a bus from Playa to Chichen Itza. Although the bus was in excellent condition, complete with functioning bathroom and numerous video screens, it was a four hour journey nonetheless.
There seems to be a "Mexican Bus Film Genre" which usually means a shoot-em-up American movie with either subtitles or overdubbed in Spanish. Our first film was some whacky story about Matthew McCaugnahy and Penelope Cruz chasing confederate coins and nuclear waste throughout the southern Sahara, and because of the length of the trip, we were blessed with a second feature which involved Val Kilmer trying not to assissinate the president of the US in some podunk Southwestern town. The combined body count of the two films was way beyond my spanish counting skills. (Another feature of Mexican Bus Cinema is that I rarely catch the titles of the movie.)
Upon arriving at the ruins in Chichen Itza, my son, the observant one, counted 27 toilets in the very nice restroom at the ruins.
Miles had heard of Chichen Itza last year in school where it was nicknamed Chicken Pizza (I thought this was a Hinesburg Exclusive until a time share guy in Playa offered us a trip to "Chicken Pizza"). The ruins experience was good, though the kids had hoped to be able to climb to the top of the Castillo and we didn't learn until we arrived that that was now forbidden.
We found a nice little "posada" (inn) in next door Piste before walking back to the ruins after dark for the light show. We opted out of the English translation headset which was just as well since the Spanish was gruesome enough as the ancient Mayan woman described how honored she was to offer her firstborn child as a sacrifice to the gods. The Strauss waltz over the loud speakers prior to the light show was a little odd, but it was a beautiful star-filled night in the middle of the Yucatan, so no complaints.
We chummed up with some other travellers at the light show who we had talked to on the bus. They were an older crew from Boise, Idaho. While on the bus and trying to ignore the blood and guts on the screens around us, a Boise guy and I talked. His sister-in-law lives in Vergennes, Vermont and is a nurse practioner for an organization that serves young and unwed parents. Well, wouldn't you know, after the light show and after dinner at a small restaurant in Piste (more later) we went up a mysterious 3 flights of stairs to find a top-floor internet lab. And when we checked or email we learned that a leading prospective tenant for our vacant apartment in Vergennes (a source of minor cash flow stress for Yours Truly) is a health care professional who will be working with an organization in Vergennes that serves young and unwed parents. I love it! He (she?) is from Dublin, travelling in Nigeria, but wanted an address where to send first month's rent and security deposit in US dollars. I hope it all works out and I am very grateful to our housesitters who are handling this stuff.
Dinner in Piste was at a little shop with about 4 tables and an owner who couldn't see very well. She cooked good food though we had our suspicions whether the spots on the tortillas were mold spores or hot spots from a griddle. For entertainment, the TV was playing Mexican ranchera music videos which were a welcome change from the usual MTV-VH1 load we see everywhere else. And for additional pleasure we were hustled by 3 young boys trying to sell us souvenirs (no spell check in a spanish computer lab). The kids were around Miles and Jill's ages and we had a lot of fun talking with them even though they were feeding us a line of bull. It turns out the rock carvings are really plaster of paris and do not come from the Sacred Cenote (cavern) as promised by the 10 year old sales leader.
Tuesday morning we walked all around Piste (not very hard to do), ate breakfast and waited at the bus station for a bus to Valloladid (sp?) With a couple of hours to kill in Valloladid, we walked to a city park where there was a huge cenote with steps down to the water surface a couple of stories down. It was open for swimming had any of us dared, but we opted out. Valloladid was a busy colonial era city with skinny sidewalks and busy streets and it was a reminder to us how relatively young Playa del Carmen is with a well laid out matrix of wide streets and sidewalks.
We caught another bus to Coba and had to hustle to find a hotel room, there just aren't that many in our price range in Coba, maybe 20. Somewhere during the evening I realized we were running out of cash. I had expected to find an ATM in Coba since it is a tourist site, but it turns out it's really for daytrippers so there's no need for an ATM. I put the family on rations and after mostly sufficient food, and necessary bus tickets, we pulled out of Coba on Wednesday with 70 cents in my pocket.
More about Coba: We had wondered why there were so many flies near our breakfast table Wednesday morning but only figured it out after we finished eating. There was a large dump of fresh dog poop about 2 feet behind Jill's chair. Sweet.
The ruins at Coba were in some ways more impressive than Chichen Itza partly because you don't hear much about them and partly because one of the Coba pyramids is the highest pyramid on the whole Yucatan peninsula--and you get to climb to the top! We went counterintuitive and headed straight for the big one first thing in the morning before the hordes of day trippers finished their sightseeing route.
As impressive as the pyramid, were the fleets of bike taxis heading our way full of tourists. Cheap Daddy had opted out of the bike taxi which made the scores of them passing us by that much more interesting.
After eating at another cheap-but-good place with stick walls, no front end and prerequisite old lady, we hung out for an hour or two waiting for the bus. During the wait, while we watched the packed tourist buses go by, we asked the kids what it was like to be the people eating at a shack that the tourists watch as they drive by. We never quite got an answer.
We did get to chat up a bus driver during our wait. His Mercedes Benz tour bus had a pretty sophisticated tire pressure management system that had hoses attached to each tire valve to automatically keep tires inflated in case of puncture. He was a nice young guy with a wife and 2 young kids in Cancun. He makes $15 a day driving a $300,000 bus full of tourists. He gets an extra $10 from the shop owners if he parks the bus at their gift shop.
We also killed some time in a souviner shop and because we were broke there was no pressure to buy anything. Instead, we had a nice time chatting up the shop lady who turned us onto the inside scoop on where all the stuff really comes from (like from a bag of plaster of paris instead of a sacred caven).
We made it back to Playa del Carmen Wednesday around dinner time after watching Wesley Snipes shoot all kinds of people on the little screen.
Time to help Miles with his email.
posted by The Lambersons at 3:36 PM
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