Merida (Day 20 - 17/1/14)

Merida; the White City

Our accommodation is a sweet, hidden little treasure in the back alleys of Merida. A mix of Spanish and French, all black grills and doors that open 12 different ways, the Duck and I find ourselves cosy and comfortable in this quiet bed and breakfast chalet run by a diffident French woman. It's just what we need after an uncomfortable 8 hour overnight bus ride.

Our accommodation in Merida

We have now left the rainforest states of Chiapis and Campeche and have made it to the coastal state of Yucatan (at the top of the much larger Yucatan peninsula, the bit of Mexico that juts out into the Atlantic and Caribbean). Merida is the state's capital.

Being a sunny, provincial, colonial sort of town, the Duck puts on a dress before we head out into Merida for the day and pops her hands into her pockets. She absentmindedly pulls out a handful of black pebbles.

"What's that?" I ask.

She looks confused for a moment and then a realisation dawns on her, "It's volcanic rock!"

"Where from...?"

We both put two and two together. It's from Sunset Crater in Arizona. Duck was wearing this dress when she tripped, her pockets having accidentally filled up with bits of the crater. A week or two later, she still wears the strap on her foot that we picked up in a drugstore.

The Duck looks sad, "But it said in the park 'do not take the rocks'..."

I laugh and the Duck puts them aside, unsure what to do with them.

Merida boasts some very pretty architecture

Merida is known in Mexico as 'the White City'. Many of the buildings are blocky and European, shades of sandy grey and white and a few crumbling pastels. It's busy and metropolitan but lacks the dangerous edge of Mexico City. It's colonial but it doesn't really sell itself as a historical place of heritage in the way that Oaxaca or San Cristobal de las Casas do. There's a bit of a metro-hipster element - little stencils of birds are to be found all over the laneways, there's a few indie craft shops, and I even see a guy in a Descendants shirt. As we walk towards one of the big churches a guy standing on the corner hears us talking in English and jumps into action, keen to practise his own English on us (we've met a few Mexicans like this now so it doesn't seem strange to us). He helps us work out a few places to visit and animatedly recommends a restaurant.

We scope out the 'Mayan' markets found on the 2nd floor of a building after two more locals direct us there. The salesman inside looks more Mexican than Maya, and there is a surprising amount of penis-related sculptures dotted around the building. I don't believe this an authentic Maya market.

After this I lead the Duck to the Museo de Popular Arte, which turns out to be small but free. The curator tells us very sternly and slowly about each of the rooms before letting us in. The art is from all over Mexico, mostly sculptures. The best is a room that contains 32 separate models of the Nativity Scene from all different parts of Mexico; some carved in wood, some woven into rugs, some Asian in style, others indigenous. The unifying theme of Christianity is fitting for a Mexican art museum but the scope of interpretation represents the full complexity of Mexican cultural identity.

I have to be honest, today I felt homesick. One of the sculptures (a pumpkin) randomly reminds me of something from home and I begin to think of all the things I'll be glad to see and do when I get back to Australia. Even at the age of 34 I've never been overseas before, let alone to a non-English speaking country. It's been an amazing experience but the culture shock isn't something that I was prepared for.

Mexican art and aesthetics seem to predominantly (and paradoxically) reflect a preoccupation with death and the radiance of nature in all its colourful hues.

My ambivalence towards Merida is compounded by a trip to the city's zoological park. This is a large park divided into an empty fairground and a free zoo. I'm not sure what the deal is, but the fairground looks like it used to be part of the zoo and is now just these fading, kitschy statues. There a bunch of fairground rides that no one is interested in. Two of the statues are highly racist African-American caricatures. I feel like it's been a long time since this zoo ran at full steam. The actual zoo makes me sad.

There's one giraffe in a sandy enclosure that resembles a basketball court, its companions two zebras and a bunch of ostriches. One of the ostriches has a disturbingly bad case of hemorrhoids. There is a white tiger pacing a small cage while a child taunts it. Jaguars and other tigers also pace their tiny, cages, growling loudly. An overweight chimpanzee rattles the bars of his enclosure. These animals shouldn't be in such old-fashioned cages... why not charge entry for the zoo and use the money to do it up? Merida Zoo is a stark contrast to the nature-driven, conservationist agenda of the Palenque Ecoparque. Both institutions represent two sides of the same coin, the two extremes of how a zoo can be; the best and the worst.

The zoo actually had an enclosure with a couple of regular pet-store rabbits in it.

Raccoons!

The Coati is a long-snouted relative of the Raccoon found in Mexico

 

In the bed and breakfast we stayed at.

 

This didn't photograph very well but it was delicious. Slow-cooked pork wrapped in a banana leaf with some kind of chili-pineapple marinade. The bright pink stuff was very sweet.

Oaxaca City, Oaxaca (Day 13 - 10/1/14)

Oaxaca City

The bus out of Mexico City is comfortable and very modern, equipped with TVs and air conditioning and a working toilet.

Through the windows we see a different story.

There are so many houses scraped along the hillsides that the very hills themselves seem to be made purely from these uneven boxes. Most are grey, interspersed with the odd blue or yellow, poured down the mountainside like rivers of concrete. These are the favelas. Clamped together as almost one entity, there are no spaces between these residences, and they never seem to end. Even more depressing are the heaped, stinking piles of garbage along the highways: black bags gleaming amongst barbed wire, broken cement, and greasy fast food containers.

The trip to Oaxaca (pronounced wa-harka) is about 6 hours, and the bus takes us south-east to a much warmer part of the country. Most of the countryside en route is arid desert. Chalky white dirt and a few hay or goat fields, and lots of mountains covered in cacti as numerous as the spines of a hedgehog. There are all kinds of cacti here. Tall, skinny solitary ones. Short, little squat ones. Bushy ones. Ones that spring upwards in great number from a single stalk forming a crude imitation of a tree.

When we arrive at our destination it's a breath of fresh air; literally. After the stink and grime of busy, overcrowded Mexico City it's refreshing to step into a quieter city of bright sunshine and calmer demeanour. We walk from our hotel to the city's zocalo and find ourselves immersed in a whole other world - a colonial city of markets and tourists, far more forgiving to visitors and much safer-feeling than Mexico City. The Duck perks up, considerably, finally allowing herself to enjoy Mexico properly for the first time. Millimetre by millimetre the place is soaking into her skin.

We go camera crazy at all the old buildings - big churches and high stones walls, hip graffiti and 17th century administrative offices-turned-restaurants. All kinds of craftware are sold from the cobbled streets, and we navigate our way through the warm, busy evening to the local markets on the other side of the main stretch. This large, squared market place is thick with stalls, and we try fried grasshoppers and horchata. The horchata is delicious, the grasshoppers less comforting. The bugs are cooked in lime and chilli and are very crunchy, but as you pull their legs out of your teeth it's hard to get past the queasy feeling in your gut.

On our way back to the hotel we stop for dinner somewhere and get a platter that represents Oaxaca's unique culture. Great... more grasshoppers. Large bangs can be heard outside, like fireworks, and we go back outside to explore further. There is a big crowd in the zocalo now that it's nighttime - kids run around swearing with balloons while a clown talks through a microphone. After the fireworks go off a second time, two policeman appear with explosive-detecting dogs. The Duck and I discretely shadow them to see if we can spy some action, but the dogs are more interested in 1) another dog's butt, and 2) an old indigenous lady selling trinkets (in that order). 

Oaxacan Cuisine - the cheese was chewy and soft. More grasshoppers pictured in the middle.

 

Horchata

 

For sale in the markets

The restaurant we ate at