It’s been two weeks since I arrived in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. I’ve been bouncing around between two different Couch Surfering hosts, Luis and Sarai, both students in Merida. My days have felt pretty full with four long hours of Spanish class per day, plus two and a half hours on the bus to get to and from the school. Fortunately, during the second week three additional students arrived: two Americans and a Japanese guy.
Although I have certainly spent more time on the bus than I would have liked to, it has been a good opportunity to learn about public transit in Mexico. In Merida, there are at least thirty different private bus operators providing service throughout the city. Although it is a privatized system, operators work closely with the government; routes are fairly well coordinated, fares are regulated ($0.50CAD) and some degree of subsidy is provided. According to Luis, the relationship between the government and the bus operators can be a little too close and, as a result, it is very hard for anyone new to get into the business.
Because there are so many different operators, the system lacks a certain degree of integration. It is also incredibly centralized, so just about every bus route goes to and from the city centre. As a result, if you need to go from one peripheral area to another (as I did) you end up having to take two or three buses and pay the full fair each time. Buses have no numbers so you basically have to “know” which bus is yours, something which becomes pretty simple after the third or fourth time, but rather intimidating up until that point. I managed to get my hands on a map of the city which has all the bus routes. Of course you still can’t tell which bus is which, but if you know this bus goes down this street, you can figure out which other streets it might potentially go down. Needless to say, I’ve gotten on the wrong bus more than a few times. The whole thing might also go smoother if you spoke intelligible Spanish.
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| Colectivos or cambis provide "express" service, to and from the centre. |
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| Larger buses provide more distributed service. |
My second host, Sarai, studies architecture in Merida. She lives with her younger sister, and neither of them speaks any English, so we talk almost entirely in Spanish. Although there have certainly been a few frustrating moments, communication has actually been pretty good. Body language and context go a long way as well, in the end probably further than my Spanish. Talking to people who don’t make the effort to be understood is pretty impossible. The experience has really given my an idea of what it’s like to be learning English, how native speakers can be helpful by slowing down, and how the whole thing can be extremely exhausting and at times just make you want to give up and speak your own language for a while.
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| At the planetarium with Sarai |
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| Getting a snack |
It was Sarai’s and her sister’s birthdays on the weekend and their mom made the trip from the small town where they are from. A couple late nights were spent eating different Mexican food and drinking tequila around the kitchen table. I almost always ended up asleep before the party was over. We also made the trip to Progresso, a nearby beach and port town. At a restaurant called Eladios they keep bringing you different Mexican ‘tapas’ for free, as long as you keep buying drinks. It was a neat way to try a whole range of different Yucatan food. Sarai’s mother somehow convinced me get up and attempt to salsa with her, while Sarai convinced the restaurant owner to let her sing a few songs with the house band.
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| Lunch at Eladios |
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| Singing with the band |
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| Birthday wish |
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| Cake |
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| Mexican 'tapas' |
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| More food, too bad I don't know the names |
On my last day at Spanish school, the school’s owner Miguel organized a trip for three of us to an old hacienda called Cuzama. Hacienda is the Spanish word for estate, and many haciendas developed in the Yucatan in the late 1800’s as farms and factories to grow and process henequen, a variety of the agave cactus. Before synthetic fibers were developed, the John Deer Company began purchasing rope made from henequen as a replacement for metal bailing string, which was dangerous for cattle. Henequen was also used as high strength rope and was important during the First and Second World Wars. During its peak, henequen was incredibly important to the world economy and made Yucatan’s hacienda owners some of the richest people of the time. The owners of Cuzama had so much money that they built a system of metal tracks for transporting the henequen from the fields to the factories. Although the haciendas were subsidized for almost 50 years after they were no longer profitable, many eventually collapsed after a brief revival during World War II. Today, numerous haciendas have been purchased and fixed up into hotels or other tourist sites, others lie in ruin waiting for someone to come along and invest some serious dinero.
The Mayan community which owns Cuzama has converted the old hacienda infrastructure into an ecotourism project. Visitors are transported along the rail lines by little horse-drawn carts and taken to three different cenotes. Because the Yucatan is made from porous limestone, there are no streams or rivers. Instead, natural water pools have formed in the limestone, many of which are connected by submerged underground passageways. These sites have served as a water source for thousands of years, and for the Ancient Maya, represented the portal to the underworld.
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| In the cart, on the way to the cenotes |
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| Our noble steed and driver |
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| First of three cenotes |
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| Jumping in for the first time |
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| One of the cenotes was almost entirely covered |
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| Tree roots grow down through cracks in the rock and hang above the cenote |
Several years ago, a politician got ambitious and decided he wanted to develop Cuzama further. After involving an NGO, he succeeded in getting funding from the government to build a parking lot with plans for future buildings including a visitor centre and artisan market. He wanted the Mayan farmers who operate the existing ecotourism project to pay him a portion of their income to fund further developments. Unfortunately this created a split, with one portion group of farmers remaining with the old project and the other group joining the new project.
In the next few years, the new project will gain control of two of the three cenotes and begin operating their own tours. Fortunately there are more cenotes in the area and the original group is hoping to open up access to these areas either by bike or by hiking. The sad part is that the conflict has split the community, creating a social rift between families and former friends.
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| Snack before returning to the city |
Tomorrow I begin to make my way back to Cancun, where I’m meeting Mohini and Robin. We’ll spend the night there before making our way South to Tulum and eventually on to Belize.
Before leaving, I made a second trip to Chichen Itza, this time with an American English teacher named Ben who I met through Couch Surfing. Ben’s a Maya fanatic who first came to Chichen Itza over twenty-five years ago when it was still a part of the jungle. He claims to have felt at home the moment he saw El Castillo (the great pyramid), and has since oriented his life around being closer to the site, even if it means living on one can of tuna a day. To thoroughly get into some of Ben’s more radical theories about Chichen Itza, the Maya, Egpyt and human evolution would require a whole post in and of itself. Let’s just say it was an interesting day, and that when it comes to archaeology and ancient history, not everyone agrees.
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| My second trip to Chichen Itza |
