Mmmmmelaque

SOOOO here we are! Melaque Melaque Melaque! I've got a lot to cover here, so I'm just gonna take a running start at it, it may or may not spiral out of control and end up being a semi-life changing rant about global warming, Whitney Houston's death, and/or my opinion on the 54th Grammy awards earlier this week. I'm about 57% kidding.

This is Adele winning like 5 or 6 Grammy's and making everyone else look like your average shower singer.

Also:
I don't have any photos of anything yet, so I've included a bunch of stuff I found online which I thought would be cool instead.


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For those of you who don't know, Melaque is kind of like, Ryan's THING. Like, he walks around and its like any small town, you go 5 feet and run into someone, and this repeats itself all day every day. This is fabulous because we've been such vagabonds lately, aimlessly wandering around towns that we're pretty sure we know the name of, but beyond that, we've got nothin.

How we were traveling before. (Actually we've been rockin it. But it felt like this at times.)

This town feels more like home, even to me, who has never been here before, just because everyone is so happy to see us (Ryan). The town is on the beach, which as everyone knows, is ballin'. Its a small town, next to another small-ish town, and it only takes a few minutes to get between them, so really its like one big town right at your fingertips. Melaque is full of taco stands lining the streets, and retirees roaming around. Its the kind of place that draws the same people back year after year for the same months. People come to escape the winter, their lives, or whatever else might be troubling you in the great North. The other people who come back every year are SALT SPRINGERS. I know Ryan knows everyone, but even I know half the people here, and I've never been here before.

This is a baby Chihuahua. I held one the other day. They're cute. That's all.

I've heard a LOT about the people here, so meeting them was like meeting famous people. I hear about them almost every day, but from the moment we arrived, it became clear to me, just how great Ryan's friends are.

These are some friends..

I was expecting the normal, "Oh hey, what a surprise its so good to see you! Let's meet up sometime and have a drink!" The typical, excited, but also busy and "its been a while"-ish response. I was wayyyy off. From day one they were ready to drop what they were doing and hang out all night, every night. Somehow, they all find the time to get together and its almost like he never left, except for the raging excitement that fills the air (although that might be normal too, I haven't decided yet). We've been traveling pretty low key, so we're still working on being able to stay up until 4am...

This is what we had for breakfast today. Except not as awesome.

Our first week was spent in a pretty run down hotel on the beach. On one hand...its on the freaking beach. On the other, the sink was broken and leaked all over the floor, so my first morning experience was walking, eyes still pretty much closed, to the bathroom and putting one bare foot down into a cold puddle of water. I don't care who you are, there's nothing more concerning than your foot landing in a puddle of water on the bathroom floor, because there's a good chance it came from the toilet.
After a week, and what was a totally wild goose chase house hunt, we have moved into a house. Its one that Ry and his family have stayed in before (those of you reading will know it, its the green one.) While it may not have been our first choice, it quickly became clear that it was probably our only choice for the money we wanted to spend and the space we needed. Right now it's a little big for us at 3 bedrooms, each with ensuite bathroom, living room, and full kitchen, but when Ryan's sister Jessy comes to join us, we'll fill it out a little better. We are loving having our own space again. To be able to wake up and not have to walk several blocks to get your morning coffee is something that I used to seriously take for granted.
The only down side was lack of internet, which we use often for our phone (Skype) and communication with our loved ones (thats you guys) plus things like Ryan's morning news check, etc. We were prepared to go without it for a month, until our loving neighbors turned out to be AWESOME and gave us their password, so now...We're hooked up!

This is how we felt when we got the internet password.

I'm an invalid right now, and can't walk due to my hip, which didn't get the memo about being 21 years old and has done something to realllllly impair my walking abilities,
so I'm sitting in the house stretching it out and watching Aquaman in Spanish on the TV here.

The man is riding a seahorse. Seriously? They couldn't give him like a shark or something?

Ok, who's still with me?
I could go into more detail and really paint you guys a picture of the strange and hilarious nights out, Valentine's Day, or our various taco experiences (Mom...)
but I'm not sure how that would be possible in any less than a million zillion characters or less. I'll take some very descriptive pictures for you guys soon.
Until then (or next time I feel like subjecting you all to another "update"), I think that pretty much covers it.

And this is Whitney Houston, because she was amazing and I'm still really sad about this whole dying thing.

Guanajuato

And now another set of photos from the mountain town of Guanajuato, another UNESCO World Heritage site. If you can believe it, I'm still drawing a blank as to what exactly to talk about, but there is a great short description of the town here a the UNESCO site if you're interested.

We only stayed a few days, the prices are higher than we're used to. Since everything was both full and expensive, we ended up staying in a really nice little place just since it was the cheapest thing available to us on those days. Way more money than we're used to spending, but it was so nice to sleep in a really comfortable bed and have a nice bathroom, and the location was unbeatable. We were right in the heart of the historical area, just a couple blocks from the city center, but somehow it was peaceful still.

Anyway, here are some photos to help me describe it:





These are photos taken by Ryan from the rooftop of our hotel. We basically had a 360 view of the city, it was incredible.


These little streets reminded me of Europe. Some of them were just like Venice and I kept expecting to see canals where the tunnels are.

This is the Alhondiga, the site of an important even in the Mexican war of independence. I was mostly taking a photo of the most gigantic flag I have ever seen, but the building is an actual destination. I can't explain it very well in my own words, but here is a bit from a book that describes what happened. Its not pretty, but its a big part of the history:

"Built as a granary, turned into a fortress, and now a museum with artefacts from the pre-Columbian and colonial periods. When Father Hidalgo took the city in 1810, the Alhondiga was the last place to surrender, and there was a wanton slaughter of Spanish soldiers and royalist prisoners. Later when Hidalgo was himself caught and executed, along with three other leaders, in Chihuahua, their severed heads were fixed, in revenge, at the four corners of the Alhondiga."
-Footprint Central America & Mexico Handbook

The market! Lots of food, and strange little trinkets. Lots of candy, shot glasses, dolls...Such a cool collection of weird things.

One of the many quiet little squares. These reminded me almost of Paris with the fountains, trimmed trees, and curly metal benches.

This is us at the top of the stairs at the University of Huanajuato. There was a cool view of the city behind us, but with our aim, this is as good as it got. I think it turned out ok, even without the whole view in the background :)

Market food!

One of the main squares in town.

The square close to our hotel full of restaurants, mariachi bands, street vendors. One night when we came out, a mariachi band was playing music, singing and walking the streets, and behind them was a huge following of locals half singing along. They looked like pied pipers, playing with the crowd and prancing through the streets. Another night, a band was playing in the gazebo in the photo below this one, and groups of elderly couples danced banda and cute little numbers with each other all night long. One group of gringos tried to dance also, laughing at themselves, until a local woman came up and started to teach one of the men how its done.

Here's where the dancing took place later.

The view from the doorstep of our hotel.

Another picturesque street corner.

Our whole experience in Guanajuato was charming. It won't come as a surprise to you that I was sick one day, Ryan a little too, and we had to stay in bed that day, but it was still beautiful and we're so glad we made the time to get up there. I will definitely have that on my schedule if and when I ever come back down here.

Tulum and Xel-Ha

In the spirit of writer's block, I'm going to keep the actual writing part of this post short. Instead there will be a lovely collection of photographs for your enjoyment.

Our trip to Tulum began with the bus ride from hell. It was like a big joke but without any laughing. We sat 16 hours on a bus which, in the rain, smelled like wet dogs. In front of us was a cute, but baby-ish baby who made other smells which we won't talk about. So the smell makes you nauseous enough, but then for at least 8 of the 16 hours we rode hairpin turns. There was not a lot of sleeping happening, we'll just round it off at that. We arrived in Tulum, sleep deprived, nauseous, and disoriented. We took the first room we saw, and slept for the entire day.
Once we'd gotten rested, fed, and decided to book a flight for the return trip, we felt pretty much better and as it turns out, Tulum has a pretty fantastic beach.

So that pretty much brings you up to speed on the less picturesque events, but from here on out I think we're good to stick with photos and captions, hurray!
These are some cats that saw us order the shrimp ceviche at the restaurant on the beach. They're cute so we took pictures of them.....

Ryan soaking up a good moment in paradise.

Yeah we have a lot of pictures of iguanas.

We took a walk around the ruins at Tulum. They're not as spectacular as the ones in Copan, but you really can't beat the setting, can you?

The beach at Tulum. It really actually looks just like a postcard.

I know this looks like a picture of rocks, but its actually a picture of rocks...with iguanas fighting on it!!


Those gray clouds poured down monsoon rain for like 10 minutes. All the tourists and guides ran for cover huddling under palm tree clusters. I wish I had a photo of that..

So remember how we ended up all stranded in San Pedro Sula at night and we teamed up with another couple to get a cab and a hotel room? That's them again! We ended up on the same bus to the ruins. That actually happens more often than you would expect, but its still crazy.




I told you we have a lot of pictures of Iguanas.


Ryan at one of the entrances to the ruins. The wall that surrounds Tulum is unique to this site. When these ruins were built, the Mayan civilization was in decline and each village was at war with another, so they needed protective walls, whereas the older ruins didn't. This site also has frescos which are closed to tourists, but pieces of it are still visible and one scene depicts a man on a horse, which means they were still being worked on after the Spanish arrived, bringing horses with them. Originally, the Mayans believed that the horse and the man were one being, and worshipped it as a God. When one of Cortes' horses died, they collected the skeleton and worshipped it.

One of our days in Tulum was spent at Xel-Ha (Shel-Ha) which is the largest natural aquarium. Now its a park, and you pay an admission fee for an all inclusive day. It includes snorkel gear, tubes, food and drinks (both alcoholic and non alcoholic), towels, lockers, etc.. and you can spend the whole day perusing the park. If you pay extra you can add other activities like swimming with dolphins or weird underwater things that aren't quite scuba diving, but not really snorkeling either. Basically you can snorkel this huge area full of amazing fish and rocks and caves. There are some water zip lines, and that thing where you walk on a rope and hold onto another rop above your head and try not to fall off into the water.... I don't know what that's called. We ate lots of good food, and did some awesome snorkeling, there were dolphins and manatees...It was pretty awesome. Most of the photos I took were on a disposable waterproof camera which I haven't developed yet, so I don't have many right now. This thing is a...White nosed coati? I think. We saw a few of them roaming through the forest.
This is one of the little crevices you can swim in. Its a pretty impressive network of little caves and tunnels. That was Ryan's favorite part of the snorkeling.


Annnnd another iguana....


Manatees...They don't do a lot, and they kind of look like big rocks, but they're all endangered so I thought I'd take a picture for good measure.

WELL that's about all for the Tulum trip. We spent more days there than we actually took advantage of. I was sick one day (that seems to happen a lot to one or both of us...usually me). At the end of it, we bussed up to Cancun and flew to Guadalajara. This was SUCH a better way to go than by bus for a hundred hours, and only a little bit more expensive. Totally worth it.

Thanks for bearing with me whilst I struggle with this lack of.....words...in my brain.....? See what I mean? Its tragic. Its ok though, pictures are more fun to look at anyways.
Adios!

San Cristobal De Las Casas, Mexico!

I'm having a bit of writer's block these days, and have been slackin on the blog. However, I'm getting to the point where if I get any more behind, I might never take the time to catch up.
Instead of one big re-cap, I'm just gonna take things one step at a time, starting with a bunch of photos from our first stop in Mexico, San Cristobal De Las Casas.

We took a long bus ride from Antigua, Guatemala back near the end of January. The border was easy, but one guy was having immigration issues, so the whole bus had to wait for him. We were really glad to finally get to Mexico after all the suspense behind whether or not we should go or not. Just as we thought, it was beautiful and not any more scary than any other place we've been on the trip so far.

Obviously, the writing thing is not happening today, so lets just skip to the photos and stick with short captions. Today will be all about visuals. Huzzah!

This is the view from just inside a little chapel on top of lots and lots of stairs. My foot was in a bad mood and refused to cooperate, but I hobbled all the way to the top in time for the sunset and it was worth it!
The view from the top of the stairs, and a nice little view of the city...

More view. We couldn't quite get enough of this one, in case you can't tell...



A street view, probably near the stairs...We were trying desperately to capture the sunset on film, and it wasn't quite working, so as a result we have 100 million photos of the same general thing...Still so pretty though.
Sometimes when we feel like we have too much stuff, or our bags are too heavy, I like to look at this photo and then I feel much better about the whole situation...I believe Ryan caught this moment.

The main drag right where our hostel was. Lots of trendy shops, food, music. It was so nice to arrive here after the long bus ride. It feels pretty different from the little Central American towns we've been in thus far. And if everyone looks cold, its because they are. It turns out the mountains are frigid. I don't know how cold they ACTUALLY are but after so many months in the sun, we were layering up big time.

This is the main square, it looks totally empty here, which is odd because I think it was actually pretty busy. I love all the bright yellow churches we have been seeing along the way. They're usually pretty basic inside, but you can't beat that bright color.

Ryan caught this moment in a park. He's got a good eye, that one.

The other end of the main attraction street near our hostel.

While I was checking out the inside of the church, Ryan did some people watching and got this photo. So good! Its so typical too, like this is so what we see day to day. I love the woman behind him too, draped in the scarves she's selling. I'm still looking for the perfect pashmina.