Final Weekend of the Trip: Mexico City

There is so much to do in Mexico City I could probably do a dozen posts and still not do it justice, there are probably even some museums I would happily wander around in, especially the Museum of Anthropology and all the various ones that house ancient Mayan artifacts. However, I would like to think this won't be my last time here so I can save that for another time. With time pressing and only a weekend available, I will just focus on the most important things on my brief stay: Mexican wrestling, the Mayan city of Teotihuacan and a local football game.

Arriving at the hostel on Friday afternoon I soon made friends with people on the rooftop terrace as we all patiently waited for 5pm to arrive for the bar to open. Over a few beers everyone was talking about the Lucha Libre event that night, namely, Mexican wrestling. Having been made aware of this I quickly ran downstairs and found out that there was still time to buy a ticket for the show, much to my relief. I was aware of the wrestling but with it only being on Tuesdays and Fridays I felt lucky I got to fit it, unexpectedly, in my plans. Forget the fact it is a tour based thing, which I generally dislike, there was the promise of fighting dwarves and with that in mind I was sold. Pretty sure that's still okay.

Once the group got there we discovered that you can't take cameras in, however much to our bemusement, you can take in phones with cameras. Mexican logic at it's finest.

There were six matches in total, the first of which was a female fight which was in full swing as we found our seats. Not a bad show but the real entertainment started in the fourth show when there was about ten wrestlers involved. There didn't seem to be any discernible order to proceedings but no one in the arena cared as they screamed and shouted during what can only be described as a royal rumble on crack, with the place reaching fever pitch as a dwarf jumped off the ropes and nutting a guy in the cojones, brilliant. This match was worth the price of admission alone, what with the resident gay wrestler upsetting the opposition with kisses and affection, obligatory muscle men for the girls (and boys) and irascible dwarves been thrown around like rag dolls and just getting up again and kicking someone in the nuts. Pretty sure the beers helped too.

Come the end of the night, everyone was buying masks, I managed to find myself out of this purchasing bracket, and after a few drinks in a local bar with some 18 year old police recruits who had just graduated, God help us, we called it a night.


A little sluggish the next day but we managed to make it to Teotihuacan, a Mayan city of epic proportions just outside of Mexico City. Tours abound for this place but doing it on your own is a breeze, just get to the North Bus Terminal (taxi, bus) and from there ask for a ticket to Teotihuacan.

Entrance is the usual two ticket job and from there you have the sprawling grounds to traverse. The main roads are like a cross, two roads perpendicular to one another, with the extensive Avenue of the Dead running north to south culminating with the impressive Pyramid of the Moon. The, even bigger, Pyramid of the Sun lies along this road and surrounding the Pyramid of the Moon there are numerous other pyramids.

You could get a guide but for me the best thing about this place was just the sheer size of it, it reminded me of places like The Forbidden City or the Summer Palace in Beijing, just massive. There are plenty of signs around the main monuments and a small museum if you are interested in learning a little more about the history of the place.

Avenue of the Dead

Pyramid of the Sun

Pyramid of the Sun

Pyramid of the Moon

After more drinking, partying in a gay bar and paying off police officials we found ourselves in the early hours of Sunday and on my final day of my trip, I was finally going to get to a football game. Sadly I managed to miss Boca in B.A and a cheap game in Bolivia but at the University Stadium I was able to enjoy a great afternoon out in the sun, drinking a beer and watching sub-par football surrounded by passionate, English speaking locals. A great way to round off the weekend before 48 hours of painful transport home, that'll teach me for flying coach.

No belts allowed in thr stadium

Chichen Itza, Mexico

Right in the heart of the Yucatan lies another Mayan great in Chichen Itza, one of the new seven wonders of the world. There are so many old Mayan ruins in Meso-America that it isn't surprising that one of them made the list, and with it's famous pyramid in the central plaza this is probably the most recognisable of the lot. Unfortunately, this comes at a price and as a result it is the most frequented and given it's close proximity to Cancun is something of a tourist trap. Still, this shouldn't take away from the splendour of the place.

Getting here is easy and there are transport links from several towns within a few hours drive from here. The easiest route would be to take a tourist bus but the local buses are so frequent and cheap that unless you want to be surrounded by a bus load of other tourists, you're as well off doing it on your own steam. In my opinion, just take the local buses. If you want a guide, just hire one on site.

Once at the park, there's the standard negotiating of crowds and buying tickets for the park entry and admission, not sure what the difference is there but you need both at these sites. As you go through a 
turnstile, the path is flanked by touts selling everything you have no doubt already seen before at exorbitant prices, so just ignore them unless the promise of 'almost free' goods is too good an opportunity for you to miss. I was definitely sucked in a couple times, almost free, are you kidding me?

After a short walk you come to the main plaza where the Kukulcan pyramid or El Castillo (The Castle) greets you. It is the centre piece of this archeological site and prominently stands out as there is nothing around it but grass. Two side of it have been reworked and if you get lucky you can sneak a decent photo in between the tour groups who incessantly clap to hear the echos from above. Unfortunately, you can't climb up, the same goes for just about all the structures here which isn't surprising given the through traffic.

Of course there is more to Chichen Itza than this momument which so easliy draws in the punters. To the north lies the sacred cenote which Mayans used as their main water source, on the way to this you also pass the Platform of Venus which like any good Mayan platform worth it's salt probably saw its fair share of ceremonies and decapitations.

To the west of the main plaza is the Great Ball Court, which I heard a guide saying was the biggest of it's kind in the Mayan world, (sometimes it is handy to eavesdrop on tour groups). Here they played a sport which could be described as a cross between football and Quidditch, no hands were allowed but you had to put the ball through a hoop attached to the wall. The pitch is surrounded by grandstands with carvings of, to put it mildly, death, and experts say that the captain of the losing team was probably sacrificed. Of course he was.

Adjoining the court is the Temple of Jaguars and just outside of the pavillion is the Lower Temple of Jaguars and the Platform of Jaguars and Eagles, which is adorned with beautiful carvings of skulls and eagles tearing hearts out of living men.

East of the great plaza is the Temple of the Warriors which is surrounded by the Group of the One Thousand Columns, I couldn't tell you if there are 1000 but there are a lot of them. Thankfully the Mayans didn't just build a load of stelae and it is widely acknowledged that they once supported a roof of some great hall or other.

To the south is the High Priest's grave, also known as the Ossuary, due to the fact that it has a communal graveyard in it's foundations. A little further down the path will bring you to El Caracol, the Observatory, where the Mayans were able to look to the skies for guidance and time bearings.

Most of the structures are within close proximity to one another and it is easy to walk around the site in only a couple hours, a day trip in the afternoon would suffice and if you feel the need, a guided tour would only add a little extra time to your day. Easy to get to and visually stunning, it is indeed a treasure and awe inspiring. However, I can't quite help but wonder why this got the nod over Tikal or Palenque, both of which still maintain that mystique, either due to the jungle and overgrowth that surrounds their structures or the fact that they are less busy, which I feel is imperative to a Mayan archeological site. All in all though, this makes for a worthy detour from the chaos of Cancun.

Isla Holbox: Swimming with Whale Sharks

Just off the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula lies the island of Holbox, home to brilliant white shell beaches, bird watching and fantastic whale shark viewing. The island is just a short ferry ride from the mainland and costs 80 pesos one way for the 30 minute trip. The ferries leave from a little town called Chiquila which has many bus connections. Getting to and from here to Cancun is only three hours, however they aren't that regular so best to check times at the bus terminal first.

Finding accommodation is easy enough as there are now plenty of options on the island, the place fills up at weekends, and during holidays it is a very popular destination for Mexicans, but if you walk around the small town which occupies the centre of the island you'll soon find something.

As for activities there are a few on offer here from deep sea fishing to bird watching, but none more popular than the whale shark viewing. There are loads of tour operators who pretty much run the same operation, as usual, just walk around and enquire and when you feel you've found the cheapest/best place, go with them. We paid 1000 pesos which is on the low end of the spectrum, many places were charging up to 1300. Just shop around.

The tour begins with an early morning start at the dock where you join up with the rest of the group, your captain and guide. It take about two hours to get to the spot where the whale sharks are feeding, the plankton which was so prevalent only a couple years ago close to the coast is now all gone so the whale sharks have to go further out to sea.

It is possible to see schools of these beasts from some distance off, with their fins popping out of the water as they swim around and surround the nearby boats. At time of arrival, there must have been some 30 whale sharks in the general vicinity, quite incredible really and a real treat for me since I have wanted to see one since my first scuba dive in Thailand. For a week every other boat on the island saw this one solitary whale shark chilling in the area, I think I can safely say this makes up for that disappointment and then some.

Groups are small on the boat and you have to be with a guide, this isn't a problem anyway as he was able to figure out where they would be just by looking in the water and seeing something we couldn't. If you didn't follow his lead you had to attempt to listen out for people on the boat telling them yelling directions or suddenly bricking it and swimming away as a 30ft whale shark came out of nowhere with it's mouth wide open. I know they're not into eating humans but as if you would bother playing chicken with one of them.

You get about a couple hours or so at the site, and by the end you're pretty tired from kicking your fins in a pathetic attempt to catch up with a fish, and just from the exhilaration of the experience itself. In comparison, the rest of the day doesn't hold a candle to the first activity of the morning: there's a stop at a lagoon, plenty of flamingo viewing and ceviche, which on any other day taken on their own would have been great, but whale sharks are just cooler. The ceviche was delicious though, and the captain was good enough to give me a second bowl.

Aside from these aforementioned activities, the only other thing to do here really is to relax. There are plenty of hotels along the beach and if you buy drinks or food you can make use of their deck chairs, failing that take your own booze and wait til someone asks you to pay a rental fee, this only happened one time in four which made for very pleasant drinking and lounging.

My trip may be coming to an end but I was happy to come to a place which would rank among one of the highlights of my trip: it was peaceful, there was affordable day drinking, the sun shone endlessly and the beach was right on my doorstep, what's not to like? I would definitely come back here on holiday.

Palenque Ruins in Chiapas, Mexico

The Chiapas region has many jewels to share but considering I am right at the end of my trip, time is tight so just a couple highlights before scooting east to the Yucatan Peninsula for snorkeling with whale sharks on Isla Holbox and visiting Chichen Itza, the last of the Mayan ruins on my itinerary. Before I get to those though, Chiapas has it's own notable and world renowned ruins worth a look at: the ruins at Palenque.

The ruins themselves are situated about 8km outside of town, however there are accommodation options both in town and along the road to the ruins. If you have a bit of time, stay outside of town where it is much more relaxing, however, if you are low on time just stay close close to the bus station and take a combi from town to the visitors' entrance of the ruins.

Once you get into the grounds it is just a short walk to the first and main plaza: Templo de las Inscripciones Group, pretty easy to figure out. As you enter, the first temple you see is the Templo de la Calavera (Temple of the Skull) which you can climb up and gain a good view of the area. Next to it is a non-descript ruin, followed by Temple XIII which archaeologists believe was a tomb for Pakal's wife, and next to that is the Templo de las Inscripciones which was the tomb of Pakal himself.

A little background information: Pakal was the Mayan ruler here from 615AD to 683AD, he actually managed to live to the ripe old age of 80 which was pretty impressive in the 7th Century. Unfortunately for visitors now, both tombs to the deceased are now off limits to the public as they undergo much needed renovation.

Temple of the Skull

View of the Temple of Inscriptions Group

View of El Palacio

View of the Temple of Inscriptions from El Palacio

As you walk through the plaza you can't help but always notice El Palacio (The Palace) and where archaeologists believe Palenque's ruler would have lived, it is the biggest building in the area after all. The Temple of Inscriptions has the honour of being the tallest. There are a few courtyards to wander in and a watch tower which was built by Pakal's son, it is believed it was primarily built so that the rulers of the day could watch the sun hit the stairs of the Temple of Inscriptions during the winter solstice.

View of El Palacio

View of main plaza

The next main group is Grupo de las Cruces (Group of the Crosses) and construction of these buildings took place after the death of Pakal. Templo de la Cruz (Temple of the Cross) is situated on a mound overlooking the rest of the complex and there are great views stretching all the way to the Temple of the Skull available. Surrounding the mound are Templo del Sol (Temple of the Sun), Templo XIV and Templo de la Cruz Foliada (Temple of the Foliated Cross) which is another temple where you can climb up the steps to look around at the engravings.

Templo de la Cruz

Steps up to Templo de la Cruz

Templo del Sol and Temple XIV in the foreground

These are pretty much the main complexes amongst Palenque's ruins but there are more to look around. South of the Group of the Crosses lies the Acropolis Sur (Southern Acropolis) where discoveries are still being made close to the two main temples. Further north is the Northern Group which is accompanied by two satellite groups: Group 1 and Group 2. Not too much here besides a ball court where Mayans are believed to have played a sport similar to football and the Templo del Conde (Temple of the Count) which gained fame primarily because some crazy count decided to live up there for a while.

Templo del Conde

Part of the Northern Group

Part of the Northern Group

Part of the Northern Group

You could easily spend hours just roaming around the grounds and inspecting every nook and cranny for something a guide book or a guide will tell you about. I for one just enjoy wandering around the ruins with a book in my hand reeling off information as I go. Similarly to Tikal, visitors still have access to walk on and around many of the buildings which also adds to the experience. If you are ever in the south of Mexico, Palenque is right on the edge of Chiapas and pretty much in the middle of the area, so if you ever get the chance, I would definitely recommend a day trip here.