After leaving Campeche, we headed up to Merida, once the grand Maya city of T'ho, it has been the dominant metropolitan centre of the Yucatan peninsular since the spanish conquest.
We arrived and headed to the rather bizarre hotel trinidad. The room was utterly vast and rather bizarrely furnished, with enormous hardwood furnishings and a totally barking painting on the wall. The floor of the shower room was made a sort of home made mosiac of broken tiles which turned out to be thoroughly lethal for me hopping around on my non broken pegar.
We had arrived fairly early in the day and Clair had managed to locate us another wheel chair, which was due to be delivered at 6. We played pool for some time while we waited on the hotel's billiard table, with a little help from some of the more furry guests.
Unfortunately we both got bitten to smithereens that night, possibly due to all the broken fountains in the hotel teeming with mozzy sporn, and decided we would find somewhere else the following day. We ended up in a slightly pricier but much nicer place round the corner, and took advantage of their suggestion to do the touristy city tour, like we did in Campeche.
This one proved to be even more comedy than the last, albeit unintentionally. The guide geninely sounded like he had learnt english from watching the Borat film. It was a struggle to contain our laughter throughout the entire preceedings. We did however get shown just about everything you could possibly show anyone about the city of Medina, including but not limited to; the industrial sector, the poor district, the mormon temple and the international airport. We also got dropped for 20 minutes in the most touristy mall we had yet come across.
It did also show us some of the nice architecture in the city. These buildings are on the Paseo de Montejo, an attempt by Merida's 19th century city planners to create a wide boulevard akin to the Champs Elysees in gay Paris.
A monument to the Maya heritage of the city.
A Maya 'Tree of Life' we passed on the tour.
A Moorish style hacienda.
One of the old colonial city gates.
This is the rather spectacular Teatro de Merida. Lovely dramatic night lighting.
We ended up in a particularly funny cantina one night where you could buy cocktails by the pint. Here's us after a couple each.
Unfortunately, I woke up the day after having savagely thrown my shoulder/back out, and literally could barely get out of bed for the next couple of days. It was total agony putting any weight on my left shoulder at all. I think it was my slight over confidence with the crutches which meant I'd been throwing myself around on them and my left shoulder had been taking most of my weight (the poor thing). Luckily, there was fairly continuous CSI on the TV in the hotel room, so it wasn't too horrific.
Clairy took the opportunity (when not watching CSI with me) to take some nice photies of the town. There ware very self important traffic police on every corner.
This rather palacial mansion was built by the Montejo family (Spanish colonial masters of the town). A number of the churches in Merida where built from destroyed Mayan temples (by the enslaved Mayan peoples....horrific) and you can apparently still make out the Maya markings on them. We couldn't however.
The main plaza.
A lot of the streets in the old town were not given names initially, so they have these little signs indicating the names people gave them. These were then used by the Maya to learn spanish according to our tour guide. I couldn't help thinking this must have left them with a somewhat limited vocabulary (though maybe parrots played a more important role in their lives than we realise).
We arrived and headed to the rather bizarre hotel trinidad. The room was utterly vast and rather bizarrely furnished, with enormous hardwood furnishings and a totally barking painting on the wall. The floor of the shower room was made a sort of home made mosiac of broken tiles which turned out to be thoroughly lethal for me hopping around on my non broken pegar.
We had arrived fairly early in the day and Clair had managed to locate us another wheel chair, which was due to be delivered at 6. We played pool for some time while we waited on the hotel's billiard table, with a little help from some of the more furry guests.
Unfortunately we both got bitten to smithereens that night, possibly due to all the broken fountains in the hotel teeming with mozzy sporn, and decided we would find somewhere else the following day. We ended up in a slightly pricier but much nicer place round the corner, and took advantage of their suggestion to do the touristy city tour, like we did in Campeche.
This one proved to be even more comedy than the last, albeit unintentionally. The guide geninely sounded like he had learnt english from watching the Borat film. It was a struggle to contain our laughter throughout the entire preceedings. We did however get shown just about everything you could possibly show anyone about the city of Medina, including but not limited to; the industrial sector, the poor district, the mormon temple and the international airport. We also got dropped for 20 minutes in the most touristy mall we had yet come across.
It did also show us some of the nice architecture in the city. These buildings are on the Paseo de Montejo, an attempt by Merida's 19th century city planners to create a wide boulevard akin to the Champs Elysees in gay Paris.
A monument to the Maya heritage of the city.
A Maya 'Tree of Life' we passed on the tour.
A Moorish style hacienda.
One of the old colonial city gates.
This is the rather spectacular Teatro de Merida. Lovely dramatic night lighting.
We ended up in a particularly funny cantina one night where you could buy cocktails by the pint. Here's us after a couple each.
Unfortunately, I woke up the day after having savagely thrown my shoulder/back out, and literally could barely get out of bed for the next couple of days. It was total agony putting any weight on my left shoulder at all. I think it was my slight over confidence with the crutches which meant I'd been throwing myself around on them and my left shoulder had been taking most of my weight (the poor thing). Luckily, there was fairly continuous CSI on the TV in the hotel room, so it wasn't too horrific.
Clairy took the opportunity (when not watching CSI with me) to take some nice photies of the town. There ware very self important traffic police on every corner.
This rather palacial mansion was built by the Montejo family (Spanish colonial masters of the town). A number of the churches in Merida where built from destroyed Mayan temples (by the enslaved Mayan peoples....horrific) and you can apparently still make out the Maya markings on them. We couldn't however.
The main plaza.
A lot of the streets in the old town were not given names initially, so they have these little signs indicating the names people gave them. These were then used by the Maya to learn spanish according to our tour guide. I couldn't help thinking this must have left them with a somewhat limited vocabulary (though maybe parrots played a more important role in their lives than we realise).
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