Merida

This past weekend Andrea, Amber, Alysse and I traveled to Merida, which is a city two hours away in the province of Yucatan. We left Thursday afternoon and arrived in the evening to our hostel in the centre of the city called Nomadas. After we got settled in we went to meet a family friend of mine living in Merida for dinner. We met Dermot in the central park of the city and he quickly told us we would be going out for 2 for 1 drinks at a bar called Ponchos close by before getting food. After Ponchos we went just next door to one of Dermot's favorite restaurants to get some delicious food. I had heard a lot of stories about a Irish bar Dermot had found in Merida. The girls and I wanted to check it out, so Dermot took us to Hennessy's Irish Bar for some more drinks. Hennessy's is owned by two Irish men living in Merida, speaking perfect Spanish - while also maintaining their Irish accents. We had a great rest of the night there listening to an 80's rock band, and enjoying the company of many other Americans - the most English speaking people we've seen in one place in a long time!

Friday we woke up early to make the trip 2 hours outside Merida to Cozuma; a small town that has three cenotes, popular for tourists to visit. When we arrived in the town and got off the bus, two men on bike carts approached us offering their taxi service to take us to the cenotes. It was 5km away so we couldn't walk so we agreed and enojoyed the ride. After a 10 minute ride we were droped off in another part of the town and were guided toward two other guys with a cart on old railroad tracks attached to a horse. Alysse's guidebook said this was the way to see the cenotes, so we got on the cart and started to get pulled along by the horse. The three cenotes were so beautiful! The water was so blue, and the caves around them were so amazing. The second cenote we had to climb down this ladder that went so far down you couldn't see the bottom from the top; it took a great leap of faith to trust it would be ok - and sure enough it ended up being the most beautiful of them all. We had such an amazing afternoon swimming, jumping into the water, exploring cenotes, and riding around on a horse pulled cart!

That night we met some people at the hostel and were hanging out around the pool they have in the back. Friday nights the hostel offers free salsa lessons so we went to have a few laughs and learned the basic steps in salsa - which turned out to be useful when we ventured out to a salsa bar that night to partice our moves. Watching the other couples at the bar was so amazing, they knew exactly what moves to do when - they were so unbelievable to watch.

Saturday we had another early morning to go to a different town 2 hours away called Celestun to see flamingos. It's not flamingo season so we didn't see as many as we would have liked to, but we saw one flock in our 2 hour boat ride. We were a little dissapointed by the day and we all got eaten alive by the mosquitos there (I counted over 100 bites on both my legs!). When we got back to Merida that night we did a bit of shopping and walking around the centro and had a much needed sub from Subway for dinner! When we got back to the hostel we went for a swim and relaxed in the hamocks over the pool. Alysse and I checked out a fiesta going on in a square close by and met up with some friends from the hostel for some drinks at a local blues bar. We had a lot of fun this weekend, and plan to go back since it's so close to Campeche!