It’s been 9 years since my last travel blog, which I’m in the process of relisting somewhere accessible. I feel I’m a very different person since I last travelled to Japan, or at the very least more confident. While my first trip abroad took me for work and my 2nd trip abroad was for a life-changing experience, this trip was to finally disconnect from the hectic life I’ve built myself. I never had a particular interest in visiting Mexico but an opportunity came up where I was invited to join someone there that I couldn’t pass up plus, I love Mexican food so why not turn this into a bit of a food adventure?
Leading up to my departure day, my anxiety was running high – as it usually does when I do anything new. When I travelled to China, it was under the guidance of the corporation Huawei. In Japan, I never had much concern for my safety since it’s renowned as one of the safest countries in the world. But Mexico? There are cartels, corruption, mosquitoes with diseases and apparently if you drink the local water your intestines explode. All these things had me frantically Googling “how to stay safe in Mexico” or “what to know about Mexico” type of articles. I can’t say they really helped as they just validated my concerns so I figured just be smart and try to blend in and surely everything will go well. Well, if there’s one thing I learned quickly, it’s that it’s impossible for my pale-white never-seen the sun skin to blend in with locals who are constantly pummeled by the sun!
Before I get into my first impressions of Mexico, specifically Merida, let me share some brief notes about my flight. To this day, I’ve been a bit of a snob when it comes to flying with my go to airline being Air Canada. For this trip I ended up taking Aero Mexico since my choices were limited. I wasn’t sure what to expect at first but I can now say after 2 flights that Aero Mexico has been my best flying experience yet. Both flights from Toronto to Mexico City and then to Merida were smooth, they served us all peanuts (I was shocked) and I had some orange juice that tastes so much better than the orange liquid they sell in the Canadian supermarkets. The nice touch though is when you land they play some Mexican music as either a calming melody or perhaps a victory tune for landing. I don’t know but the whole thing was a great experience. And I still can’t believe they handed out peanuts to everyone with no fear of anyone dying! Wild times.
Now let’s get into the meat of this blog and why I named it “There are no rules”. I had heard of countries in the world where there isn’t as much structure or that rules are there more as guidelines than actual enforceable laws. Here are just a few bullet points of the things that shocked me while I attempted to drive around this place:
- Break lights are optional, you better be paying attention to the speed of the car in front of you
- Riding in the back of a truck is completely fine, especially on the highway – even if it’s raining
- Sandals on a motorcycle? Go nuts.
- Driving in lanes? What are lanes? If there’s room next to the car you can go around them
- If you’re the bigger car, incoming traffic will yield to you if you attempt to pass – at least I hope that’s the case
- There are a ton of dogs everywhere
- There are military convoys driving around with fully armed guys in back of trucks
- Speed bumps are everywhere and you will hit them when you least expect it
- Everyone is nice and not aggressive despite how chaotic this sounds, there is no honking, just everyone waving to each other and smiling, it’s like a chaotic peace
I don’t usually enjoy driving in other countries and after seeing the way traffic flows around Merida, I really didn’t want to have to deal with that mess. Unfortunately, the company I was with ended up being super tired after our day visiting Mayan temples and I was the only other qualified driver so I ended up having to drive us all back to the hotel. It was an adventure in stress management.
Speaking of Mayan temples, what a fascinating site and piece of history I knew nothing about. I visited the largest Mayan temple and one of the great wonders of the new world: Chichen Itza. As part of the trip we decided to book a tour guide to learn more about the history of the site and I really wish I was recording the guy because he was just blowing my mind for 3 straight hours with ridiculous knowledge. I learned how the temple we see is actually the third temple, and there are 2 smaller ones inside built on top of each other. There’s also proof of a 4th temple that had been started to be built over the one we currently see. Apparently, this would have coincided with the Mayan calendar that whenever it was renewed, a new temple would be built – at least that’s what I remember. I learned that these temples used to be painted white and red and looked amazing and even modern. I couldn’t believe that the Mayans had also built highways between their cities and also painted them white so the road would be illuminated by the moon at night (when it was cooler to travel). Everything about how the Mayans built things was just so hard to grasp. The temple is built with so many intended designs features it’s crazy to think an older civilization could achieve such feats. For example, when you clap in front of the temple, the echo of your clap imitates the sound of a Mexican quetzal bird which was a sacred animal of the Mayans. The temple is also built like a massive Mayan calendar, it’s a position also has it that the sun rises on one corner and sets at another. During the equinox, it casts an intended shadow on the staircase that looks like a snake, another beast that was sacred to the Mayans. Everything was just so fascinating – even the whole human sacrifice part which I’ll leave it to you to google if you’re interested in learning how they killed a chosen Mayan every season to appease the gods and get a good harvest. All this to say that I’ll be digging more into Mayan culture when I get back home. Oh! And one more thing which is mindblowing: their cities and roads line up with constellations in the sky. If you’re familiar with constellations, look at google maps and you’ll see that they used the stars to lay out their civilization. Crazy!
All these words and I still haven’t even talked about the whole reason I came here: food! Honestly, I’ve been a little underwhelmed with my food experiences here so far despite going to highly recommended restaurants. I’ve had my tacos, I’ve had the local specialities but nothing has left me going “wow” after eating it. Maybe it’s the fact I’m still blown away by Mayan history or by seeing a dude ride in the back of a truck going 120km/h on a highway while covering himself from the rain in a tarp – I don’t know. While the culture shock winds down I’ll be making it a priority to find all sorts of new dishes to try and find some food experiences to write about in the next blogs.
I’ll have to end it here for now. That wraps up my first 48 hours in Mexico. I just finished travelling to Tulum where I’ll be spending the rest of my time here.
Thank for reading!
