Besides experiencing the local food and culture, there are two things we wanted to get out of Mexico:  beaches and Mayan ruins.  On the advice of the super helpful girl behind the desk at Tribu hostel in Isla Holbox, we decided to make Valladolid our jumping off point for Coba and Chichen Itza.  Here’s a summary of our first two-day Mayan ruins extravaganza:

Coba Ruins

Coba were the first Mayan ruins we saw.  The guidebooks promise that Coba is uncrowded and off the beaten path.  This is soooo not true anymore… it was blatantly apparent to us that tour buses have discovered it.  Even though we took the earliest bus from Valladolid that we could, the ruins were packed with people when we arrived.

Coba is located in the jungle near several crocodile-filled lakes.  We didn’t actually see any crocodiles, but a group that was down the path from us did (apparently the tour guides regularly carry raw chicken to bait the crocodiles into coming out).  Since we didn’t have any raw chicken, and didn’t feel like using our own flesh as bait, we didn’t venture too close.

The ruins are quite spread out and you have the option of renting a bicycle for the day for 30 pesos (about $2.50 CAD) or hiring a tricycle taxi for a lot more than that.  Not being in any kind of rush, we opted to walk.  In retrospect, we should have coughed up the couple dollars for the bikes.  Oh well… live and learn!

Entrance is 51 pesos a person (just over $4.00 CAD).  There are several guides at the main entrance willing to show you around for a substantial fee.  We weren’t willing to pay somewhere in the neighbourhood of $20 CAD for a tour, so we just wondered around and caught bits information from other people’s tours.

The ruins were okay, but they weren’t spectacular.  They are in pretty rough shape, though the backdrop of the jungle makes up for it.  You need a pretty damn good imagination to see anything in the carvings though.  There is one pyramid (Nohoch Mul) that you can climb, but it’s hardly a mystical experience when you get to the top, standing shoulder to shoulder with other sweaty tourists looking at the jungle in the blazing hot sun.

Nohoch Mul

The sacbeob (raised stone roads, 1-2 m high) were really neat… Coba is thought to have been a trading centre because it seems to be at the crossroads of several of these roads.

Overall, we enjoyed Coba, but would have enjoyed it a lot more if there were less people.  If we had to do it over again, we probably would have gone to Ek Balam (located just outside Valladolid) instead.  The whole trip (bus from Valladolid and back, lunch in the town of Coba, admission to the ruins) only cost us $22 CAD and took most of the day.

Ball Court at Coba

Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza was incredible.  To be honest, I was expecting to be let down by the site.  Everything we had heard and read said that it was ridiculously overcrowded.  But we were not disappointed.

The earliest buses to Chichen Itza left the Valladolid station at 5:00 am, 6:00 am, and 8:15 am.  We tried to buy tickets for the 6 am bus, but the lady behind the counter told us we couldn’t.  She may have been telling us that the gates wouldn’t be open yet or she may have been trying to tell us it was raining chickens (our Spanish is pretty poor right now), so we cut our losses and bought tickets for 8:15 am. The tickets cost 20 pesos each.

We arrived at the ruins at 9:00 to find… NO ONE.  There was one lone tour bus in the parking lot, the ticket building was deserted, and there were only a few vendors along the paths starting to set up their wares.

We had about an hour and a half to explore the ruins before other people really started to show up.  It was so peaceful that we found a nice shady spot, pulled out our Kindles, and read our books amongst the ruins.

El Castillo (a.k.a. Temple of Kukulcan) did not disappoint.  It dominated the skyline and mesmerized me.  I can definitely see why it is one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

El Castillo/Temple of Kukulcan

But Chichen Itza’s appeal goes far beyond the often photographed main pyramid.  It has been restored to a far greater extent than Coba, and the carvings are much more defined.

Chaahk, The Mayan Rain Deity

Some of our favourite buildings were the Observatory and the Church.

El Caracol (The Observatory)

La Iglesia (The Church)

By around 1:00 or 2:00 pm the place was packed and we were more than ready to escape the tourist madness.  We had heard enough jaguar calls and pan flutes from the vendors for one day.

We had two disappointments at Chichen Itza.  First of all, the ball court was closed for maintenance.  It’s supposed to have great acoustics and we were itching to try it out.  Second, we made the mistake of not packing enough snacks.  The only food to eat in the visitor centre is microwaved American cuisine (can you even call it cuisine?).  In our deliriously hungry state, we forked over a whopping 75 pesos ($6.10 CAD) for a microwaved corn dog (no mustard!) and a doughy calzone.  At the time, this was ashamedly our most expensive meal in Mexico.

We were more than happy to leave the expensive food and packed visitor centre behind as we caught our bus to Merida.  All in all, we spent about $43 CAD on this excursion, including transportation to the site, entrance fees, and our terrible lunch.  And we would do it again (even the corn dog, if I had to).

I would definitely recommend a visit to Chichen Itza to anyone traveling in Mexico.  Go early though, and get out when the crowds start overtaking the place.

Info Box for Chichen Itza:
Entrance Cost:  166 pesos  for foreigners ($13.50 CAD)
Cost of Tour Guide:  We were quoted $600 pesos for an English tour.  If you want to do a tour, try to find more people to group up with… the cost is the same whether there are two people or ten.
Getting There:  45 minute 2nd-class bus ride from Valladolid costs 20 pesos/person (about $1.63 CAD)
Services:  lockers for luggage, clean & free bathrooms, bus station, bookstore, expensive snacks

If you like our pictures, you can check out many more in our Mexican photo album!

Booyah!  It’s only Day 16 of our trip and we’ve already hit our budget goal:  $100 CAD or less per day.  Despite the fairly cheap costs in Mexico, it’s taken some time to make up for the roughly $700 airfare.

As of today, our trip has cost us an average of $99.91 per day!  This includes airfare and a few whopping expenditures like the Whale Shark tour in Isla Holbox ($141.08 CAD for the two of us) and today’s splurge tour to Uxmal/Kabah/Mayan Village out of Merida ($111.55 CAD).  We were going celebrate with champagne tonight (actually ice cream after today’s 36°C heat), but didn’t want to tip the balance back to being in the red.

If you want to check out more budget statistics, or just find our exactly how many times Ashley’s beaten Mike at crib (he swears the cards we bought in Isla Holbox are cursed), check out our Statistics page in the About section above.

Yes, I know, I am actually keeping detailed stats… once a math nerd, always a math nerd.

Since Mike and I arrived in Cancun tired from trip preparations and going away parties, and with no plan or schedule, we did what anyone would do in our situation… we hit up the beaches!

Isla Mujeres

Our first full day in Cancun found us walking almost an hour from our accommodations to catch a ferry to Isla Mujeres.  It pretty much rained off and on all day (it is the rainy season here), but that didn’t stop us from enjoying a cerveza on the beach, going for a swim, and checking out the turtle reserve, Tortugranja.  We really enjoyed the island while we were there, but knowing what we know now would have probably skipped it if we did everything over again. It’s a nice little island… it just wasn’t worth the ferry cost (280 pesos, or just over $23 CAD roundtrip for the two of us).  Tortugranja was smaller than we expected.  It’s worth the entrance fee (30 pesos per person), but not the cab fare if you don’t have alternate means of transportation.  We chose to hitchhike our way back on a golf cart rather than pay cab fare again.  Isla Mujeres is definitely geared towards tourists… it’s crowded, full of in-your-face vendors trying to sell you souvenirs and drunk twenty-somethings driving golf carts like they’re indestructible, and it’s expensive to eat there (compared to downtown Cancun).

Cancun – Hotel Zone

The beaches of the hotel zone are beautiful, but you have to tolerate vendors trying to sell you stuff, cigar smoke, and dance music blaring from the nearby hotel pools.  Mike and I decided to catch a bus to the Hotel Zone, rather than walk (it was only 8.50 pesos (less than a loonie).  By law, all of the beaches in Mexico are open to the public.  So you just need to walk through a hotel like you own the place to get to Cancun’s beaches.  We had no problems doing this… in fact, we were even offered drinks by the resort’s waiter.  We had a great time swimming in the waves at the beach.

Isla Holbox – A Place That We Don’t Want To Ever Leave

On the Cancun airport shuttle, we got talking with a German guy who was just finishing up his time in Mexico.  He told us that if we could make the time, we should check out Isla Holbox (pronounced hol-bosh).  He told us about a great hostel, called Tribu, to check out there.  The funny thing was, the guy had never been to Isla Holbox.  His friends told him to check it out and he couldn’t make it out there.

Isla Holbox is a stunningly beautiful island that is a 3 hour bus ride and a 15 minute ferry ride from Cancun.  The bus fare to Chiquila was a mere 80 pesos per person (about $6.60 CAD) and the ferry out to Isla Holbox was 70 pesos per person.  The attitude on the island seems to be No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem.  The beaches have the nicest and softest white sand we have ever encountered, and the streets are made of the same.  Many people forego shoes and just walk barefoot around town.

 

Although Isla Holbox is a popular tourist destination for whale shark tours (more on this in a later post), it never feels overrun by tourists.  It has a much more laid back vibe than Cancun or Isla Mujeres.  Locals get around with golf carts, as there are only a few full-size vehicles on the entire island.  There is lots to do… swimming, sunbathing, kayaking, kite surfing, whale shark tours, birdwatching (there are wild flamingos here), and fishing.  The most popular past-time, however, seems to be relaxing and enjoying nature… and we’re sure getting our fill of this one!

At night, the village of Holbox comes alive.  Vendors fill the streets with street food, carnival games and rides open up, impromptu basketball and football games are started, and concerts are set up in the little amphitheatre in the square.  The really cool thing about it all?  It seems to be all for the locals and their children (this was one thing that surprised us everywhere we’ve been… the kids seem to all come out to play at 8 or 9 pm) – the tourists are just along to share in the fun.

Tribu is also an exceptionally cool hostel.  It has spiral staircases that lead to the rooftops where you can watch the sunset, lie in the hammocks, and crash a birthday party with a jam session and cake (as we did last night).  There are lounge chairs, hammock chairs, and a BBQ in the main outdoor commons area.  There is a cinema with a projector and a bar that hosts a variety of activities on different nights.

If this wasn’t the very start of our journey and if we knew a little more Spanish, we probably would have looked into getting jobs and staying on this island we loved it so much.  But alas, all good things must come to an end.

If you want to check out more photos from the beaches of Mexico, click on one of the photos below to go to the photo galleries:

Of all the decisions that had to be made for our RTW trip, choosing a backpack was the one that I agonized the most over.  And I definitely took my sweet time deciding.  After five trips to four different outdoor stores in three cities in two different countries, I chose the first one I put on… a green Osprey Kestrel 38 L.  And what did Mike choose?  A green Osprey Kestrel 38 L.  That’s right… we are sporting matching backpacks!  While this might seem a little too “cutesy” to you, it meant $40 in savings for us (totally worth it, and why does the same pack cost $40 more in Canada??).

I could go into the process of actually choosing a bag (fitting them, trying them on with weights, etc.) but you can find that information in a million places on the web.  Instead, I’ll just explain why we chose the packs we did.

Mike and I showed up at each store with a list of needs and a list of wants for our backpacks.  Interestingly enough, we ended up with packs that met all the requirements of the “needs” list and none of the “wants.”  This is probably because we opted to sacrifice on convenience for comfort.  A sacrifice that I’m sure we won’t regret as we spend 80 days walking through Europe with them on our backs.

Must-Haves:

• Under 40 L in Size – Mike and I already owned 55 L & 65 L packs and carried them around New Zealand for a month.  They were fantastic, but too big!  In New Zealand, we had a tent, sleeping bags, air mattresses, and a cook stove with fuel … none of which we will be carrying on this trip.  
• Comfort & Proper Fit – These were the most critical features.  If we are going to carry these packs for 80 days on the Via Francigena, they need to be comfortable.  It turns out this meant adjustable torso harnesses (apparently neither of us are quite standard size) and adequate hip belts.
  
• Good Quality – The pack had to be well built.  We want something that will last the entire duration of the trip (how ever long that will be…)
• Built-In Rain Cover – This might not be a must-have for most people, but after several hiking trips where Mike’s pack had a built-in rain cover and mine didn’t, this was non-negotiable.  Built-in rain covers are quickly and easily accessible when the weather changes and take up less space in your pack.

Things That Would Be Nice To Have:

• Panel Access – We’ve always owned top loading bags, but we thought it might be more convenient to have panel access for the big trip.  We quickly realized that we would need to ditch this idea if we wanted to stick with technical bags that met the <40L requirement.  Packing cubes and stuff sacks will have to suffice to keep our stuff organized and quickly accessible.
• Travel Features – When I first starting looking at bags for our trip, I was intrigued by the features of some of the travel packs… things like zippered flaps to cover the straps for flights and built in wheels.  We gave up on these as none of the technical backpacks seemed to have them.
• Back Ventilation –  Since we are planning to walk about 20 km a day for 80 days through Europe, we thought that it might be nice to have some airflow between our backs and the packs.  After trying on a few packs with the ventilation design, we decided that it wasn’t ideal… the curved shape of the frame meant the weight was centred too far away from your back, constantly pulling you over and throwing you off balance.
• Two Backpacks That Weren’t Identical – There are a lot of reasons to not buy the exact same pack as your traveling partner.  For example, they don’t look ridiculously matchy as you walk side by side, and there is no confusion about whose pack is whose.  However, the $40 in savings trumped them.  The REI in Vegas only had one colour in stock.  We could find more selection at home, but prices were $40 higher.

 The Final Result:

Two happy RTW travelers, matching packs and all.

June 30th was a milestone day that we’ve been waiting a long time for.  Yesterday it came and went.  June 30th was the last day we were both employed.  The day we received our last paychecks.  And it was our four year wedding anniversary (surprisingly Mike was the first to remember.  We’ve been so caught up with preparing for our trip that it almost went unnoticed).

With June 30th passing, we open the next chapter in our lives.  No more alarm clocks, no more commute to work, no more income.  As an exciting new feature we’ve reversed the direction of our travel funds progress bar and it will now begin its (hopefully) slow descent towards 0%.  For those that are relatively new to this blog, we’ve long said that our trip will end when we get tired of traveling or we run out of money.

This post is a little different than past posts in that we decided to team write it.  Not exactly collaboratively, but independently one after the other.

Comments from Ashley:

Yesterday was my last day of work.  It kind of feels surreal.  I can no longer introduce myself as a high school math teacher (at least, not for the next little while), but I will always be a teacher at heart.

I think the moment it really hit me was when I selected all of my files on my work laptop and hit the delete key.  I kind of thought that deleting over four years worth of work would be more epic and time-consuming, but ten seconds later everything was gone.  Symbolically, deleting all of my notes, assignments, and tests meant saying goodbye to my four years of teaching at that school. To all my teacher friends: I’m not totally crazy… I do have all my work saved on a flash drive which will be backed up before I go).

Handing in my laptop and keys to the secretary was an equally emotional moment.  It was the equivalent of a police officer handing in their gun and badge.  In that instant, I was unemployed.  Gone was the schedule.  (And gone was the bathroom schedule… I will no longer have to wait for the bell to ring to be able to go pee.)

 

I have to admit, I cried a couple of times when I had to say goodbye to some of my colleagues that I have worked closely with and who have become great friends.  Thanks for four great years guys!

Over the past couple of years I have been working with teams of teachers to do innovative things with Grade 9 classes.  During this process, we were often told to “go slow.”  And now, that’s exactly what I’m about to do.  “Go slow” is our new traveling mantra.  There’s so much to see and experience in this world… there’s no reason to rush through it all.

Comments from Mike:

I’m not going to get all emotional and blubbery, it’s just not my style.  Yesterday I left the company that I’ve worked for since my last year of university 7 years ago.  One thing I intended to do, but didn’t get around to on my last day, was to send out an email to my co-workers thanking them for being so great to work with and to give them the address of this blog.  If you happen to be one of the lucky few that I managed to give a Traveled Earth Buisness Card to, please feel free to pass on my thanks and this blog’s address to any co-workers that you think may be interested.

Work was kind enough to throw me a bit of a sendoff party at my favorite Regina establishment: Bushwakkers.  I’d like to thank everyone that made it out, I had a lot of fun.  For those that couldn’t make it, no worries, I received your well wishes by email, phone, and word of mouth and appreciated them all.  So, one last time – goodbye, thanks for making the last seven years so great, take care.

As our jobs wind down (only 6 working days left!) and our trip fast approaches (only 13 days plus a few hours.. crazy!) it’s hard not to think of the things we will miss when we get on that plane without a return date.  I’m sure this is a stage that every traveler goes through (see Skott’s post over at Get Up and Globe) – as I consider all of the things I’m looking forward to, I can’t help but look back on the things that I’ll be leaving behind.  Here are a few of them:

1.  Family & Friends

This is number one for a good reason.  We’ve been saying goodbye to family since Easter and let me tell you, it’s not easy.  My mom recently admitted that she’s already been shedding tears about our trip when we’re not around.  Mike’s mom seems to tear up every time we see her – which is a lot, since we’re living in her house right now.  If I had a way to bring everyone with us, I would (at least for a visit here and there), but since teleportation is still in its quantum stages, I guess I’ll have to settle with email and Skype to stay in touch.

 

 

2.  Our Cat, Pi

Although she is without a doubt part of our family, and thus included in number 1 above, I thought Pi deserved her own number on this list.  Pi has been a member of our family since our wedding nearly four years ago.  Since Mike’s parents didn’t want a cat in their house, we had to give her up at the end of May after we sold our house.   She’s got a great new home with one of my coworkers (again, thanks Lana!), but I’ve missed her every day she’s been there.

3.  Quachie Food

The Gateway restaurant in Qu’Appelle has THE best Chinese food I’ve ever eaten.  We even had them cater our wedding.  I think I’ll miss their egg rolls most of all.  And their ginger beef.  And their long dry ribs.  Oh, wow, now I’m hungry!  It’s the definitely the egg rolls that I’ll miss the most.

 

 

 

4.  Board Games

Mike and I love to play board games.  Sometimes it’s just each other, sometimes with friends.  We have spent many an afternoon talking and laughing over a game board.   We’re both super competitive so sometimes it’s pretty quiet after one of us backstabs the other on our quest for victory.  The first thing we secured a home for (after Pi, that is) is our collection of board games.  Somehow I don’t think they’d travel very well in our packs.

5. China Pastry

It might seem weird to you that I’ve got two restaurants on my list, but if you had ever tasted a bun from China Pastry you’d understand its inclusion.  My favourite buns are the plain buns, but I’ll miss all the other flavours (BBQ pork, Szechwan vegetable, hot dog, cocktail, etc.) equally.  Hopefully I will find on my journey a savoury pastry to equal these delicious packets of perfection.

6.  Boston Lee Days

For as long as I’ve known Mike, he’s celebrated Boston Lee Day with his friends on every Friday the 13th.  It’s a happy orange holiday that we always look forward to.  Celebrations were moved to our place after the bar that originally hosted them shutdown in 2007.  When the next Friday the 13th hits (January 13, 2012), Mike and I will be sure to don some orange and celebrate wherever we are.  Hopefully they find a new venue back home to join in.

 

7.  Teaching

I love teaching.  For the past four years, I have been teaching math at the same high school in Regina.  It’s become my second home.  I didn’t realize how much I would miss it until the last couple weeks, when I started going through the series of goodbyes that the end of the school year has brought (last day of classes, each final exam day, and still to come, report card day).  There have been lots of hugs and well wishes, and even a spontaneous round of applause from one of my classes that brought me to tears (just before I gave them their final exam, no less).

There are a few things that I won’t miss, and I think they might be worth mentioning too:

1.  The Alarm Clocks. Neither Mike nor I are morning people.  ‘Nuf said.

2.  Our Bed. We have been in desperate need of a new mattress for about a year.  But we were too cheap (frugal?) to buy one, since we knew we’d be leaving in July.  This may have been a smart decision, actually.  We’ve basically been in training for the variety of beds we’re bound to encounter in budget hostels.  In fact, a lot of the hostel beds may be a step up.

3.  The Stuff. I really don’t think I’m going to miss all the stuff I’m leaving behind.  Especially things like the TV, the stack of laundry (do I really need that many clothes to get dirty?), and everything else we’ve gotten rid of already.

4.  The Commute. Spending almost two hours driving each day is crazy.  That’s 12.5% of my waking hours!  What a waste.

5.  The Schedule. I think.  I’ve always been a fairly by-the-book kinda gal, so maybe I won’t like not knowing what tomorrow will bring.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve had school or a job to live by… even in the summers.  But then again, the more I think about it the less I think I’m going to miss having to follow a set schedule day in and day out.

For everyone out there traveling the world, what do you miss the most?  What’s the thing you’re most happy about leaving behind?

Mike and I arrived in Las Vegas today for my good friend’s (Tamara’s) wedding.  Our flight got in at 1:05 pm local time and our plan for the day was to check in to our off-strip hotel and get to REI (which is open until 9:00 pm) to buy our backpacks for our RTW trip.  And we wanted to do this the most economical way possible (i.e. without having to pay for a taxi).

Sounds simple enough, right?

I mean, we figured we are reasonably intelligent individuals, Las Vegas is full of tourists trying to get around the city, and everyone speaks English.  Taking the bus to the hotel and REI would be a piece of cake.

A Las Vegas city bus

… Or not.  Because here I sit, typing out this blog entry on our Kindle (which in and of itself is a great and painful feat), without a shiny new backpack to play with.  We never did make it to REI today.  But man did we ever give it the good old college try.

Here are the lessons I learned about taking public transit today:

1.  If you don’t have exact change, your bus trip just got more expensive.

2.  Don’t just write down the address of your hotel/destination.  Look it up on a map before you venture out.

3.  Better yet, print a google map of your hotel’s location.

4.  Don’t just write down Google Map’s bus directions and try to follow them without knowing the name of the stops.

5.  Don’t assume that you can successfully make several bus transfers without a TRANSIT map of any kind.

6.  Don’t assume that you can successfully make several bus transfers without even having a CITY map of any kind.

7.  Even if a bus is an hour and a half late, don’t give up on it arriving.  If you do, and you start walking away, you will turn to see it drive by you five minutes later.

8.  If the name/route number on the bus that pulls up is not the one you are looking for, don’t get on it – no matter how tired you are of waiting for the one you want.

9.  If you’re at a transit station that all the major bus routes go through and the bus you’re waiting for does not show up, find an alternate route while you still can.  Don’t hop on a random bus that also stops at the bay you’re waiting at and assume it will take you somewhere useful.

10.  Know where your stops are.  Otherwise, the trip will be much longer and more scenic than you ever imagined.

11.  Even if a bus appears to loop around on its route, don’t assume you can just stay on it until you get back to the stop you missed.  You probably need to switch buses.

12.  No matter what happens, take advantage of every opportunity to see new things, meet new people, and strike up a conversation with someone around you.  The other stuff can wait.

Now hopefully these lessons have stuck.  Because tomorrow morning, we’re going to try it all over again!

Have you had any misadventures with public transit during any of your travels (or in your hometown, for that matter)?