Part one my Cypriot Mayan adventure- Valladolid- Mérida

There are many things to see around México, but the Mayan coast is famous for three things: ancient ruins, beaches and cenotes (sink holes). Cenotes are natural holes in the earth made from collapsed limestone that exposes the groundwater underneath so you get like a natural pool. They are a great place to go for a dip and are usually beautiful as well. They used to be used by the Mayans to make sacred offerings to their Gods. There were many near where we were staying (there are about 7000 in México), so we had to pay them a visit. Plus, with the blazing heat, a cool dip was more than welcome. After hanging out at 38°C in the north, I thought I had aclimatised to the heat, and I had practically had a year of summer, moving from European to South American summer and now North American (not meaning to rub it in or anything). How wrong could I be? The humidity was through the roof and I felt like I was in the jungle again. The worst thing was that everyone else had had time to aclimatise (and most of them were born on an island anyway) and I was the only one suffering so for a couple of days I had this awful little taster of what menopause was going to be like.

We decided that it would be fun to bike to the cenotes which were 45 mins from town. What was a little less fun was the fact that the bikes we rented from the hostel looked older than some of the Mayan ruins we visited and riding them was a challenge to say the least (plus my menopause but I won’t go there again.) By the time we arrived at the cenotes we were exhausted but the refreshing dip brought us all back to life. The cenotes were also full of bats and bat poo and Philip’s jokes about guano provided constant comic relief (Ace Ventura reference for those of you unfamiliar with guano).

After the cenote experience and having stocked up on another round of tacos we made our way to our first Mayan ruins, Ek Balam. El Balam is an important Yucatec- Mayan archaeological site and although quite a small city, it was one of the head states of the Mayan Kingdom. We visited the cite although the burning heat meant we couldn’t hang around too long (there is no shade in the Mayan ruins).

So we finished the evening in my wonderful friend Pinelo’s home city, Mérida. But Mérida isn’t just special for Pinelo, it’s also a beautiful city with wonderful colonial architecture. It’s the capital of Yucatan and has the biggest indigenous population of any large city in México, as over 60% of the population is Maya. And most importantly, it is the home of my favourite Mexican food, cochinita pibil. Cochinita was one of the first dishes I ever had in México and I formed an obsession with it ever since. It’s a pulled pork dish stewed in a delicious sauce made mainly of orange juice and wrapped in banana leaves. It’s very difficult to make but delicious to eat. We looked up one of the best places to eat cochinita and made our way there.

For those of you who have met Stelios, you will know one of his favourite party tricks is eating quantities of food that others find inhumane and impossible. So much so that when he went for his surgery to repair his lungs, my dad suggested to the doctors that while they’re in there they fix the hole in his stomach too. His fellow Cypriots have a similar appetite (I should mention for those that don’t know them they all have lovely figures as well). We went to this poor little stall and started ordering more and more and more cochinita tacos so that between us we ate 28 tacos. When we ordered the 29th the poor waitress came back to tell us she unfortunately couldn’t give us any more cochinita because we had eaten it all and there was none left. We had literally tacoed the place dry. Needless to say, we had a good night’s sleep that night 🙂