Impressions from Mexico

When my dear friend suggested that we should get together sometime this year and we should plan  for a week or so and ideal would be an all inclusive resort, my thoughts were Caribbean or Cancun. Since we had a few friends who had earlier visited Cancun we decided with the same.

The all inclusive was the best and it was the first time for us in an all inclusive  resort which took us close to a day to get used to, but this blog is not about that.

Here are some of my take-away from the trip

• The blue waters and the white sand beaches are truly mind blowing. My best experience was to keep the window open through the night just so I could hear the ocean. The temperature was near perfect 80F through out the stay
• We hardly had to use it but the public transportation facility is very good.
• Being in the resort we are always shielded from real Mexico. Step outside and take a few steps up and down and one gets to see real Mexico
• I felt Mexico lives on bargain, there were multiple layers of agents for every single activity we planned (Chichen Itza, Islas Mujaras, parasailing and water ski). In some sense they have adopted capitalistic system for their tourist attractions.
• As always, the bigger the group and longer we persisted the better negotiating power we had.
• The visit to the Mayan village of Chitchen Itza reminded me of a stroll in our native in India, granted the main roads were much better paved than in India.
• Far too many Indians have visited Chichen Itza as it is evident from the fact that the local sellers were greeting us with "namaste, accha price"
• The tour guides while booking promise you that they will start at 7:45AM from hotel and be back by 7:00PM in the night but in my experience the start time is right but the end time will be closer to 8:45PM, I highly recommend this trip though.
• Outside the resort, I felt the everything had a different rate for tourists vs locals(just like India, not the pharmacy though)
• Islas Mujaras is overrated, when we negotiated the tour to the island the guy was very particular "no swimming with dolphins, only seeing them", I think he failed to mention that we will be in the boat itself when we see the Dolphins.
• It's hard to believe, but the restaurant we went while on the island the food was cooked on an open flame stove using wood as fuel, yes the food had a barbecue flavor to it.
• At the cost of being too harsh to the island, I won't recommend this specially with young kids. Unless you have an insatiable penchant for snorkeling and would do it at any cost.
• There is also the activity of holding the baby shark, that felt like animal cruelty and human rights violations than anything fun.
• I think The island is very very poor and lives on tourist income only, the evidence was when they said pesos 5 to use bathroom to change clothes.
• The resort we stayed from vegetarian perspective always had great breakfast and lunch selection but dinner was so so, come to think they have no other restaurants open for breakfast, 1 for lunch and 5 for dinner. Keep in mind this might be true for your resort also.

Needless to say the best part of the whole trip was catching up with old friends and making some new friends (as young as 2 year), The ocean and the beach were all secondary.

The Mayan village

During our tour to Chichen-itza we stopped at the model Mayan village and the structure of the same surprised me. It totally reminded me of my native village in India. The house was in 3 parts with one part dedicated for the temple, the other for the kitchen and the rest of it was boarding and playing areas. Wait a minute that’s how my native house in my village is built like.

The other intriguing common thing I found was the use of samrani aka benzoin resin, a sort of powder that when put on the burning charcoal gives an aromatic flavored smoke which we use specially around new born. The same is apparently true in Mayan also.

You are still interested, their back yards had Cuban oregano (dodda patre), banana plants and few others, voila that’s again our back yard in my native. We do have a few conconut trees there but these guys seemed to have some betel nut trees instead.

I am not here to talk about any major connections between the 2 cultures as one could argue that the same tropical weather led to the growth of these plants and human beings through evolution figured out the same.