Travels with Hayley

Today was a full day in Merida and eager to explore, we gathered at 9am for the orientation tour and set off to check out our new home.

The first thing that hits you is the humidity – it’s been hot along the way during the last few weeks but a drier heat, whereas the air here hangs heavily with a dampness that seems to just slow everything down to a limpid, dragging pace. In our sweaty convoy we set off to see the major sights, past a policewoman achieving some admiral multitasking by directing the traffic at a four way junction, ignoring the wildly scantily clad woman on the advert in front of her and eating a snack simultaneously.

First on the list was the palace of government, a semi-grand building with some interesting murals.

We wandered around taking pictures but the pinnacle was the giant oversized bench that we all eagerly clamoured on for a photo opportunity. Below is an excellent example of the difference of an ‘Instagram’ shot and a real life one!

Instagram

Real life!

Next on the agenda was the cathedral, stark inside for it’s lack of decor which apparently is down to the humidity rotting away anything that has been hung there.

A rainbow beacon in the expanse of grey is Jesus holding hundreds of brightly coloured trailing ribbons – if you fancy a miracle, you write your wish on a ribbon, hook it over JC’s outstretched arm, put some cash in the box (everything had a price right, even divine intervention…) and wait your turn for the thunderbolt. Whether it works or not I’m sure is up for debate but it did brighten up the place a treat.

The centre piece of the altar was the largest crucifix I’d even seen – and I don’t wish to be sacrilegious, but is it just me that can see the bat signal above the doorway below? Some kind of secret divine/crime fighting collaboration that we’re not aware of? That’s what the next superhero movie should be about, even I’d watch that!

Off to the indoor market next, I never get tired of of these, there’s always something fascinating around every corner.

Highlights of this one were a seemingly excessive amount of shoe repairers, intriguing fruit and vegetables, lots of religious souvenirs (all shrink wrapped – are the holy particularly prone to contamination…?) and the usual interesting people just going about their business.

A quick side note, if you will indulge me, about Pedro Pato (Pedro the duck). Now, we’ve all been expressing concern for Pedro’s mental health as he’s made a bid for freedom half a dozen times now – being found in the stairwell of buses, down the sides of beds and various other hidey holes where he has apparently flung himself in a bid to get away from our loving embraces. We have diagnosed loneliness and have decided therefore that the time has come for Pedro to find himself a nice wife. Enter…Juanita!

I’ve left them alone in the room for a bit of private ‘ducking’ time and hopefully this will put a pep in old Pedro’s step and he’ll cease with the constant great escape plans.

Back to the market…by the point Juanita joined the family we’d been out for about and hour and a half and the heat was getting to me – all of us have really struggled with Mexican food on our tummies to put it politely, half of the group at any time is hoofing down medication and looking green around the gills (Judith even had to be taken to the doctor today who has diagnosed a bacterial infection and put her on antibiotics).

The combination of that and the humidity made me decide on a most sensible course of action of heading back to the hotel for a little session laying prone by the pool.

Joined by Lynsey we set the world to rights over bottled water (we have lost faith in the so called ‘filtered’ water we’ve been given by the hotels), read books and updated travel diaries.

By late afternoon the tourist guilt had kicked in and after a quick check of trip advisor I identified three ‘must sees of Merida’ for us to check out. First was the English library, a really sweet, volunteer led resource that lent out English language books, jigsaw puzzles (I assume those are language neutral but I’m no jigsaw aficionado…) and dvds – although we were advised they are ‘getting out of the dvd business’ and encouraged us to purchase any of the remaining titles for the princely sum of 50p each.

They hold English and Spanish lessons there, have weekly lectures on various topics and all sorts of other events like wine tastings etc. It was such a lovely little space, we all lingered there for longer than was probably strictly necessary.

Next on the list was an art gallery about half a mile away. Trudging through the treacly heat we spent the whole time dodging street construction – half the roads in the town seemed to be being dug up and all by hand with hammer and chisel. The whole place was weirdly deserted too apart from an abundance of homeless and mentally ill people so it was quite an interesting walk…

But totally worth it as the gallery was fabulous! It hit the holy trifecta of things I want out of a museum/gallery experience:

1. It was free

2. All of the art was really interesting and made you want to go and have a closer look

3. It was small enough to see and appreciate everything and still be out within 15 minutes!

Last on our list was trip advisor’s number one Merida tourist attraction – Paseo de Montejo, an avenue apparently full of beautiful and impressive buildings. Let’s just say whilst there were indeed a couple of instances of this sentiment being seen to be true, we got halfway along and Lisa, who is a machine and had been out walking the entire day and already seen the whole avenue, showed us the pictures of what was to come and we turned around and came back to the hotel! We tried to find the legendary local grasshopper flavour ice cream on the way home for her (the only one with a cast iron stomach that has not been ill so far) but to no avail – it’s possible someone might have been having us on with that piece of information come to think about it…

We sat and laughed and chatted for a few more hours around the pool as the sun went down and then ventured out for a third and final time to the town square in the hope of music and dancing. Finding a distinct absence of either however we decided to draw a line under Merida and have a picnic in the hotel reception with the gourmet offerings of a cup’o’noodles for Lynsey and a packet of Burger King fries for me! You may mock, but this morning was the first day for a fortnight I didn’t wake up with stomach cramps so I think this was a smart move to be honest!

A comedy moment while trying to cook Lynsey’s noodles – we asked the very patient receptionist for hot water and a fork which he trundled off to get but then we realised she needed a spoon too. Pertinent to this story is that knife and spoon in Spanish are relatively similar words and Lynsey must have got slightly mixed up – which would have been funny in itself except that after a prolonged wait the guy appeared with what I would call somewhere between a large kitchen knife and a small machete! Lord alone knows what he thought she was going to do with the pot noodle that required such a serious piece of kit but he did seem a bit relieved when we established it was in fact just a normal sized eating implement that was required.

Full of Burger King’s finest potato products it was time for for bed as it’s ceynote day tomorrow which I’m super excited about – watch out for an onslaught of pictures coming your way!

Lots of love always xxx