Travels Around The World

Média and Chichén Itzá

From the jungles of Palenque I took a night bus to the city of Média. Média is a starting point for the many Mayan ruins in the Yucatán Peninsula. Média itself isn't really all that exciting. Like most towns in Mexico it has its own Zócalo, old buildings, cobblestone streets, and colonia heritage. Média is unique in that it is my first stopping point in the famous Yucatán Peninsula.

Without much fanfare I arrived in Média very early in the morning. The night bus was extremely cold so I didn't get to much sleep. Imediatly after getting off the bus I was met by a guy trying to sell his hostel. He offered a good rate (50 pesos), and a free ride there. Since it was about 5 in the morning I took him up on the offer. Myself and a few other travelers from the bus piled into his beatup 1980s Crysler car and headed off to the hostel.

Once everything was settled at the hostel, three of us decided to take an adventure out to the ruins of Chichén Itza. My companions were an English guy named Dave and a Brazilan girl named Telma. After wondering around the city for about an hour we found a bus to Chichén Itza.

After about 3 hours on the bus we finally arrived at Chichén Itza. The stupid guidebook was wrong again (thanks Lonely Planet) and instead of 1.5 hours it was 3. I never knew it could take so long to go about 60 km.

Chichén Itza is a very famous ruin of the ancient Mayan people. You've probably seen pictures of its famous time temple pyramid on the cover of some magazine or book. The buildings here were in very good shape and awesome in size and standing. The only problem were the thousands of tourists that flocked the area. We commonly joked about the fat american tourists not being able to climb up and down the pyramid. I guess thats what to many McDonalds burgers does to you.

The next day we (Dave, Telma, and I) were going to catch a bus to Uxmal. However, ourselves being lazy slept in to late and we just ended up laying around the city most of the day. We did go for a walk around the city visiting sights such as the Paseo de Montejo with its famous old buildings on each side of a grand boulvard.

Média's Zócalo

Around the Paseo de Montejo

That night we joined forces with some other travelers in our hostel (two New Zealanders and two Italians) and went on an attemped pub crawl. We walked around the city for an hour until we finally stopped at some noname bar. The noname bar was ok though. They were playing salsa and merenge music to my delight. After a few drinks I got some of the girls in our group to dance salsa and merenge. The better highlight of the night was the constant stream of mexican guys trying to hit on the girls in our group. One guy got kicked out the the bar. Apparently he said something rather bad about someones mom who worked at the bar. These same guys were alright though. They liked to pound pitchers of beer and try to talk to us in broken english.

Posted by todd at December 2, 2005 03:17 PM