A real mexican town?

Because of all the rest yesterday I had no problem getting up early to day. I had some scrambled eggs and a coffee and was soon all packed and off to the busstation in town. I took the Bus to Valladolid at 9 am.

In addtion to the fact, that I was already pretty early on my way, when I got there I found out that Valladolid is in hour behind Quintana Roo, so it was even earlier again, may just 10 am if I remember correct.

So that after a short walk, when I arrived at the hostel, people were just starting to get up. Luckily a bed was available for me... I booked an air-conditioned room and had it all to myself.
Just when I got a map of the town at the little reception desk, I met a german couple from Wuerzburg, who a couple that just checked out and had of hours left before their bus was going to leave and we decided to quickly have a look around the area closer to our hostel.

We went to the San Bernadino Convent, but couldn't find the cenote that we were promised was hidden in a secret cave underneath it. Even asking some of the local monks and construction workers (there as some renovation going on at the convent) didn't shed any light on this mystery. Anyway, the building was nice, even without the cenote and soon Lisa and Sebastian had to leave for their bus.
I walked around a bit further in this very pretty colonial town and had a look at the central plaza and some other old churches. This place really felt like you would imagine Mexico: hot, old buildings, many nice and not so nice smells, a couple of VW bugs crawling along the street.. it was really great to soak it all up.

I found a food court and had some lunch before I headed back to the hostel for a bit of a rest.
After my Siesta I went to a taxi stand that I was told has taxis going to Ek Balam - a not so famous Maya ruin.

It wasn't a long walk and I quickly found this old courtyard where an old Mexican was sitting in the shade. I was the only one there, other than the man in the shade and had wait around a while until we had enough people (4 passengers plus the man in the shade, who was our driver).
The waiting was worth it, the 25 km trip to Ek Balam only cost me 40 Peso (3€).
This place was very different from the archaeological maya site in Tulum. No Subways and only one official souvenir shop, not 40 buses in the parking lot and most importantly not so overrun as Tulum.
After a little walk through the jungle the path opened up onto a large, area with maybe 10 stone buildings different sizes. Two rectangular blocks of stones rising 10 meters high mirroring each other, there was a spiral pyramid called the Oval, which was used for cosmological ceremonies but the all-over-looking and not to be missed piece of this Temple area was the large rectangular pyramid in the back: El Trono (the throne).

It was a great place to explore, not much was off limit, no ropes keeping you off or out of the different buildings. You could nearly everywhere and climb on everything. Most importantly you could walk up the stairs of El Torno and have a great view over the vast jungle that surrounded this cool place.

I may not have been as beautiful as the ruins at Tulum but it was certainly more adventurous and exciting. Well worth a visit if you are in the area and a good half day trip from Valladolid, which I also recommended to visit.

After a little wait in the empty parking lot a taxi came by and we quickly had enough people to fill all the seats and were taken back to Valladolid. Surprisingly for the same price as the way out. I feared the demand and availability ratio would drive up the price but the driver stayed fair and by that earned himself a nice tip (well, 10 peso, but that's a 25% tip).

Now it was time to think where will I spend my last couple of days in Mexico. I had planned one more night here in Valladolid to explore Chichen Itza tomorrow and then have a few days on in the sand before going to my next and last adventure (for this trip): Cuba.

I decided to try my luck on Isla Holbox, just north of here on the edge between the Golf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Most people I talked to, who had been their, counted it as one of their favourite places in Mexico and I knew it was going to be a challenge to find a bed since my stay would be right in the easter break. But, luck is with the brave and stupid, I found a bed for a couple of nights, but had to transfer the deposit in advance, they wouldn't take Credit cards. So I had to go to a Mexican bank and try to transfer money to that hostel (in Spanish)... that didn't work. As far as I understood, I needed to have an account with the banks I tried (I tried two).

I tried called the hostel to see if there is another way, and indeed I was able to use PayPal for the transfer in the end.

This activity took up most of the afternoon and it was time to get some Dinner. I wasn't really looking for any more Mexican Food by now and tried to find something else. After a bit of a stroll through the town I did find a local burger place and was just in time to enjoy it while the Mexico : Paraguay match was on TV.

A little walk while enjoying the cool evening air and I was back at the hostel, had a bit of a chat with some of the guests but after this, quite busy day I was happy to get an early nights sleep.

Recovering from the Cenotes

After a good nights sleep I woke up but was not really sure what to do for the day.
It was still quite early, so I got up and started looking where to go next.

There were quite a few options, Markus Kristofik (an old mate from the Motorhacke) was just a couple of kilometres up the coast in Playa del Carmen, but visiting him would certainly involve drinking more alcohol and at this point I was looking more for something a bit more relaxed. It also wasn't easy to find hostels in the next couple of days as the Easter weekend was coming up.
So, I got a coffee and made a decision. One more night here in Tulum and then off to Valladolid. The town itself supposed to be nice and I should be able to visit a few more Maya temples from there, including the world famous Chichin Itza.

It was only morning now and the entire day lay ahead of me, but I wasn't really in the mood to do a lot. It was already very hot at this time and I decided to just hang out in the nice gardens of the hostel, drink ice cold coke and catch up on my blog, read up a bit about Valladolid and Chichen Itza and fill in the last couple of days into my budget spreadsheet (exciting stuff, what eles would you want to do on a hot sunny day in Mexico?).

My lunchbreak from the new office job I spent, by going to town for some snack followed by a nice siesta... it really was very hot today.

The afternoon was agian filled with more blog writing but in the end I did get up and decided to get out and do something with the rest of the day and quickly met new people in the hostel and we went for a good last evening out in the town.

Waterworld under the jungle

As it was going to be an exciting day I didn't mind getting up early. I also had to change rooms, as my bed was booked already and I had only decided to stay another night a yesterday or the day before. My new bed was not ready yet (or rather still being slept in), so I just had a cup of coffee and tried to ignore my stomach, which was a little upset, due to the tacos, or rather the spicy sauce on them from yesterday.

I do love to eat spicy and even properly hot (I mean Dave Insanity and Da Bomb hot), and have never had any problems in the past but these tacos were something else. And the plan for today was to go scuba diving in cenotes with crystal clear water. Well planned, Andi.

But it has to be done, so I went to the dive Center (Infinity 2 Diving) just down the road and received a warm welcome and Met Mario (they guy from the day before), Amy , Duane and Sam, the letter two were also customers, whereas Mario and Amy were our guides.
We got our gear, threw all of it in the back of a big Hilux Truck and off we were to the first Centoe. The deepest of them all! The Pit!

It wasn't much of drive, maybe 20 min, the atmosphere in the truck was great, we all got along very well and it nearly felt like we knew each other for a couple of years rather than only a few minutes.
After a respectful look down from the edge into the Pit we assembled around a table and started setting up our gear. A couple of very basic Buddy checks and a comprehensive briefing about cenote diving in general and the Pit in particular we were ready to walk down the busy stairs (other groups of divers coming up and/or going down) to the platform from where we could jump into the darkness...

A last check and we all jumped in after each other and assembled again in the middle of the Pit, which is maybe 20 meters across to all descend together.

After only a few meters we already hit the Halocline (a visible line where the denser saltwater is separated from the freshwater above).

This place is spooky - it looks like John Carpenter's "The Fog" under water and around this depth it is harder to get the buoyancy right as a tiny but lower will put you into much denser water and you will go up again... The reason that there are salt water and freshwater present here is, that all the centoes are connected with each other through an immense subterranean underwater cave system called "Sistema Nohoch Nah Chich", the biggest in the world. And the entire system is in itself connected to the sea, from where the salt water enters, rain and little creeks add the rainwater on top, and voilà, we go ourselves a Haloc line.

Further down we "found" some animal bone and again, the organic matter (possibly from ancient Maya sacrificial ceremonies) that has been decomposing here over the last couple of hundred years has created another foggy layer. We were now around 30m deep already, but the tunnel system does not stop anytime soon. The pit itself is about 190 meters deep and does connect to many surrounding cenotes (certified cave divers have done explorations and have surfaced a couple of km away at these other Cenotes. This is obviously very risky and not recommended but it did cause inner excitement about these sort of adventures in me.

For now though, the ascent back to the surface was exciting enough, there was a real eerie atmosphere about it, the sun shining in from the top the diving torches of other divers from below, foggy haloc lines and bones, it was all very cool - but there were no fish... It was more like exploring a foreign planet than diving in the tropics.

Back at the surface, just out of the water I bumped into Lily, with whom I was diving off the coast of Isla Mujeres just a couple of days before. She was just going to go down now after us. Small world.
We had our lunch and a cup of coffee and very soon we were already on the way to our next dive site. Dos Ojos (two eyes)

Here we were going to have two dives, not as deep and more horizontal.

Dos Ojos is probably one of the most popular Centoes in the area, there are two major dives, Barbie line (max 8m) and Bat cave (max 10m).

We did the Bat cave first, and had to follow a line that was tightened between and wrapped around the numerous stalactites and stalagmites in the cave... it was certainly more beautiful than "The Pit" but it was an entirely different experience. We followed the line around corners, up and down, past large calcium walls and along rows and rows of columns... it was just like walking through a beautiful cave, but we were diving... Crazy! It took about 45 minutes and towards the end we surfaced into a hall that was dark, just lit by light that reflected from the sandy ground through the water back to the surface. This room was the reason why this dive is called Bat Cave... Through some opening to the outside world, bats can come in here and they call this place home. So we saw e few bat flying around and then left the cave through a tunnel back to the sunny outside world again.
After a bit of a break it was time to strap on the gear for the last time and head back into the caves. We entered through the same basin as before, but had to hold on to another line - the Barbie Line.
This dive was essentially the same as the previous one but into another direction and without Bats. Instead of bats, the path on this one had more openings to the sunlit outside world, thus the lighting was even more impressive than in the Bat cave. We also came past the reason why this is called the Barbie line... a barbie doll in the mouth of a plastic crocodile ...

That was it... we came back to the surface and were all pretty wrecked now.

However, over the last couple of dives my air consumption has greatly improved. After this second 50 minute dive (only at 7 or 8 meters) I had only used 1100 PSI out of my 3100 I had at the beginning. Lets hope that stays like this for the next time I'm going under water.

From here it was the usual, disassembling the equipment, heading back to the Dive show, exchanging addresses, signing log entries, a hug here and there and then finally back to the Hostel... I hope there is a shower available and I have a bed now!

This was the case and the rest felt very good, but soon enough the crowd of the Hostel was up for a night out and they dragged me with them.

The plan was to go to this Ska/Jazz band that everyone was talking about... I agreed to join them for two songs and one beer.

Unfortunately finding the place where they were playing wasn't as easy as hoped, so we wondered around for a while until we finally found the Hostel that was hosting the gig...

It was 10pm now and there was no sign of the band yet. An hour later some traditional Aztec performance group showed up and took the stage until finally at midnight this band showed up...
They weren't even that good, but for some reason everyone was talking about them... well.. I was wrecked now and decided to head home after a couple of songs and due to my stomach not being much better than in the morning I didn't even go for the one beer.