We got on the bus and headed toward the city, what turned out to be a 2-hour drive, a little farther than we were originally told. One the way down we went through little towns along the way. It was so interesting to see how a rural Mexican area appears (mind you from the nice air conditioned, tour bus; not really integrating with the culture). All the homes are cemet, and when the people abandon them, they sit there are a living moment to history. And there is a lot of abandonment, in these parts. The areas are just left desolate begging for someone to come along and clean them up. Also on the way back we passed old haciendas again. The homes were smaller now, but the large markings of territorial gates still stood.
One home was completely destroyed a menos que for the grand central stair case that remained standing in the wilderness of the brush. It was finely decorated from what I saw. I can't imagine how pretty the house would have been.
Some of the houses along the way had thatched roofs made from local shurbry. The roofs weren't flat and were much taller than those compared to the cemet houses. Trash lingers in the yards, and sometimes there are just communal waste dumps, which shows that their isn't an organized trash system. People sit out on their porches and talk and relax. Often the parks were full of older people relaxing and gathered around benches, while the little ones played on the playgrounds and ran around. It felt slightly uncomfortable to know that this big bus were interrupting their lives. I felt like a fish out of water. In what bigger way can you say, "Hello, Im American, big, loud, and proud".
Many homes are adjacent to the shops the people own as their source of income. Unlike Merida, the big names such as Wal-Mart, Burger Kig, Super Bodega, Mega, Office Depot, KFC, McDonald's, etc. don't exist down there. It isn't profitable. Por lo tanto, many of the small speciality shops still exist because of the lack of corporate competition. There were panaderias, papelerias, ferrocarriles, farmacias, etc. Also on the walls of some of the larger stores, the political parties of PAN and PRI wrote their messages. There were several completing slogas in the smaller towns. Here in Merida, I don't see them as often; however, there are large buildings are the party headquarters for the town.
And I saw the coolest thing. So futbol, or soccer, is very popular down here, obviously. Many of the parks have mini soccer fields, and the schools, which by the way are huge, like community college campus size huge, have soccer fields that are on cement, like basketball courts. So what happened is similar to what happened in Spain where there became a vested interest in basketball, but it never really caught on. Now many basketball courts have been turned into soccer fields, although basketball is by far more popular here than in Spain.
So what I saw that was so cool, was a basketball hoop, soccer goal thing. The base of the mechanism was the width of a soccer goal, then two pipes emerged from the top and connected up higher to support a basketball hoop and backboard. I thought it was the coolest thing. The picture just doesn't do it justice. But one can see how the contrapcion has put one thing to serve two purposes.
So after bouncing around for two hours, we exit the bus, and head for the restaurant we will be eating at later. First we go on a boat ride to view the Ria Celestun Biosphere Reserve, which was way cool.
The boat ride...not so much. It was some old, rusted out boat. We get in and Im one hundred percentaje sure that we are going to capsize. I have a backpack full of things that can't get wet...anxiety sets in. I really had to psych myself into this one. This was just not my thing, not accustomed to these things in my life, before. Now I can handle it. So we get in and go.....rather fly. The boat driver literally has half the boat airborne for most of the ride because we are just flying through the water. I am so blessed that I don't have motion sickness or get sea sick because I would have been vomiting like nobody's business. After a few minutes, I just decided this was normal, so relax and enjoy. What's the worse that can happen? We capsize, Im stuck in an ocean with fish and other animals and things, I don't really what to touch, my backpack gets wet with several things ruined and probably lost, and I ride the bus back wet. OK. No big deal. :-)So I just put my feet up, pull my hair down and relax the whole way. Life turned out to be quite nice after I did this.
We saw several things on the tour. Birds, flamingos, mangroves, etc. Totally worth the bumping, crashing through the waves, bruising boat ride (and I swear he just did it on purpose sometimes).
The ria was so pretty. I felt like I was in part of a jungle. The reserve extends down into Campstre from the Yucatan. The birdwatching was great. There were sticks water marking the path like a highway for the boats to use. Many of the birds just perched on the sticks.
Also the mangroves, as pictured here, I thought were the best part. There was an area cut through for boats to travel down. It was thick and filled with wildlife. Fish swam through, and it was fun to try and see what one could find lurking around watching us. Supposedly there were alligators in the mangroves, 1.5 to 2 meters long as the guide told us. I don't know how they could travel around with all the roots of the mangroves being that big; however, I was not going to put my hand in the water and find out! The amound of wildlife that is lurking in those waters...it would have fun to just stick a camera down there and see. I once saw a national geographic speacial on the mangroves and how they are just teeming with life. I was excited to see them in real life.
So the flamingos inhabit one general area of the ria. They stick out like red stop signs on the road against the greenery. In November and December there are thousands of them, and they line most of the area.
May is the end of peak season, so we only saw a small portion of what it looks like during the climatic months, but it was still awesome. The boats can't get too close because the birds scare easily, so this was the best I got picture wise. We did see two birds go at it though when we first entered the area. Talk about aggressive. Swaqking and making such a racket. Unbeilevable. They are such pretty birds. Afterwards, we ate fish at the restaurant, and then played around on the beach. The waters are different colors because it is so shallow. And there were huge, pretty shells everywhere. The beach doesn't get a lot of traffic, so it was nice to be an uncrowded area unlike Progreso. The entire day was well worth it, even the rocky boat ride that I thought at times I was going to die, was just all part of a great experience.
Chao!
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