Mack, Sack and Craic

Managed to catch the right bus, this time, to the town of Merida. Absolutely pouring, good day for bus journey. REALLY boring though, long motorway flanked either side by dense green vegetation.

Went straight in for some Yucatecan specialities… Sopa de Lima (Lime soup) at La Chaya Maya is an immediate fav. Lovely restaurant; there are two, we were in the new one set around a central courtyard.

Next day we woke up to this.. view from Hotel Dolores Alba in Merida at dawn.

2014-10-30 12.24.22

Also the dawn of this blog. Yessss… it HAS taken a while since to actually start blogging. Our wi-fi issues increased when our hotel started to fill up as we neared el Dia de los Muertos, and we have (unsuccessfully) been trying to think of a good domain name.

Initially I chose jimily.org, but once committed we realised it was a bit twee. My parents house is called ‘Linzel’, which I always thought must have been a naff portmanteau of Lin and Hazel, or Linzi and Manuel, or something. And here I am creating a blog called ‘Jimily’. But its endearing to be given a collective noun by your mates, so why not?

Other non-starters were:

  •  macksackandcraic (but too Jim oriented)
  • Iquit.job
  • masmasmas
  • ojorojo
  • alpackinglight
  • ancientruins
  • gringostars
  • etc

…. there’s a pun somewhere.

Pretty chilled the rest of the day. Wandered out along Merida’s cracked and crumbling streets for a nose around after breakfast. Very near Zocalo main square, with its cute little love seats (see us show you how it’s done below), groups of men were setting up thatched stalls for el Dia de los Muertos, massive queues for the bank, lots of people milling around busying themselves or chilling in the shade.

2014-11-02 17.34.57

Had a hang around the pool, then went to Lucas de Galbez market to find some lunch. I guess you’d describe it as a ‘people run’ – massive, undercover, with narrow walkways…you get picked up by the crowd shuffling through and deposited the other side. Found a decent street taco stall, two each with a large bottle of coke for 40 pesos (about £2). Loving the habanero sauce, lime and radish accompaniment. Watched everyone buzzing around – cooking, walking, running, carrying, talking. Lots of flies buzzing around too on the sweets and treats being sold. People, signs, stalls, wares, cars, police, whistles, smells of damp or sewers or sweets or perfumes.. or all of them together! Pretty damn hectic.

Bought some snacks and traditional “el pan de muerto cake to bring back. Cake smelt like cheese so we didn’t eat that. Think its actually egg.

During the afternoon we discovered, in the course of doing some spanish learning, that Jim has an amazing French vocabulary he didn’t realise he was harbouring all these years; “merci”, “pourquois”, “a quelle heure” etc are all making a comeback. We’re also a bit unsure of the usage of ‘seniorita’ as opposed to ‘señora’… so we imagine Jim is calling everyone ‘gal’… “alright gal”, “thanks gal”, “very good gal”. The first cockney Espanol.

Walked out again in the evening and found Los Trompos (on street where photo below was taken), sort of fast-food but cheap. Each time we buy dinner its getting roughly 20% cheaper as we work out how to stick to a backpacker budget. Checked out a Mayan pub afterwards, nice garden where locals were drinking.
.. street at night.
.. street at night.

Posted

in

,

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *