Andre and Wendy: Izamal

Yeah, Friday. We have decided to go to Izamal for a night, it is supposed to rain here on Sunday so decided a Friday night away and come back to Merida on Saturday will work fine.

Andre is off this morning to find the bus station to go to Izamal. This is a strange city, depending on where you are going there are different bus stations, and different bus companies. He was also going to pick up some groceries, but since we are headed out for the night anyway will put that off for now. Andres walk around Merida this morning

Rooms by the hour, think we'll pass, but the more hours you stay the cheaper it gets!

Freddy has a place here!

After getting the ticket Andre went exploring. He found the market behind the main market. Most shops on the second and third floors are not open. Not as crazy as the main market either.

Not much open yet

Views from second floor

Vendor Trolly parking

Success, Andre arrives back with 2 tickets for the 2PM bus. We are breaking the bank for this one, less than $3.00 Canadian each way. The bus station is about a 15 minute walk from our place, it will be hot going, but walking on the shady side of the street makes it bearable.

We leave in time for one last quick visit and walk by the flower park on our way to the bus station, I think I have been here about 5 times now, but this is the prettiest as all the flowers are now in bloom.

This bus is different than the ADO bus we took before to Campeche, it is definitely second class. No bathroom on board, no movies, but it does the trick. We thought we had booked seats, but this bus it is first come first serve for the seats. It is not very busy, so no problem at all getting seats, and thank goodness we had air conditioning.

Not sure if this is Agave or Henequen plants for ropes

Arrived in Izamal after about 1.5 hours, this bus goes through a couple of different very small villages that many people get on and off. It is busier here than the people that got on in Merida, more of a connector bus between the little villages. Find our hotel which I had booked online last night, I think we may be the only guests here. Very little English spoken, and before we even go exploring we go for a swim in the pool, definitely too hot to do much else at this time of day.

Convent in Izamal, one of its claim to fame Pope John Paul visited here in 1993

Largest Atrium in Americas, second only to Vatican

Our hotel pool

View of convent/church from our hotel

Swim finished, off we go to find the tourist information. This took a few tries as our little map of the small city was a little off, but we found it. Found out about all the goings on for the week-end. Next off we go to the main square and find a horse and carriage ride. It was still pretty hot so we decided this would be a good way to get our bearings. Negotiated for $300 pesos for a 45 minute ride, and he would drop us off at a restaurant for supper that we had read about when we were done.

This is a very interesting city. All of the houses and buildings in the core of the small city are painted yellow, there must have been a great sale! There are also multiple ruins right inside the city which we plan to visit tomorrow. We really enjoyed the carriage ride, we saw a few places we want to revisit, and heard some of the history in our drivers very broken English, and our extremely broken Spanish.

Yellow city tour in the yellow decorated carriage

More bugs, these ones broken down...

Ruins to visit tomorrow

Our friendly horse, I felt a little guilty it was so hot, but this guy went around for 45 minutes without even breaking a sweat, we were sweating in the seat!

Off to the restaurant that Andre had read was really good, not sure where he read it but we should have just bought some tacos from a street vendor. We were both really disappointed in our meals. Though the margaritas may have been the best we have had all trip, so that kind of made up for it I guess.

We were served shells in these shells

Empty restaurant, it was really pretty, but not good food, they closed right after we left

After supper we walked to the spot where the video mapping light and sound show is to take place. Mexico certainly loves these, every city we have been to so far has these shows. This show we heard is different, it starts at one building and moves along to others.

We arrive at the designated spot about 15 minutes early, it’s been really busy in Merida so we knew to arrive early. There are 5 other people there waiting. The start time passes, then about 10 minutes late this guy arrives and tells us it is time to start, we’re on Mexican time. There has been a police car parked right beside us the entire time, turns out they close the street and we have a police escort! Yep, there are 7 of us all together, with a police car escort, street closed, guide at the front and back to stop any pedestrian or bike traffic from going in front of us. Andre and I are killing ourselves laughing. We have 3 different stops along this main street. The first stop is projected across the street from a hardware store, yep the hardware store turns off all their lights so we can see better, this is getting to be a better story all the time. If a pedestrian tries to go between us and the projection on the building the guide has a bit of a fit, priceless. The next 2 stops are not quite as exciting, but we continue along with our police escort to our final 2 stops which is in the main downtown area, our guide warns us to stick together since we are now “downtown”. You have to understand “downtown” is maybe the size of Shediac downtown, it was definitely not difficult to follow the guide. Next the projection is on the museum, yep they close the main door and turn off all the lights. At least at this point a few locals join us to watch the video. Finally we move on to the last stop which is at the Convent. The convent is closed at this point of the night, but they open it up for us, we pay a small entry fee, climb up the steps and discover they have put out campfire chairs for us to all sit and watch the finale. Really a fun night, the show was not nearly as impressive as Campeche, but the experience was even more fun!

Meeting spot for light show, notice all the people!

Final stop at convent for light show, this is the entire tour!

Climb up to convent/church entrance

Following the show we are off to see a Mexican wrestling show. When we were on the carriage tour earlier we saw in one of the squares they seemed to be setting up a boxing ring, our driver told us it was going on tonight at 9PM. This is another first for us. I’ve seen lots of the Mexican masks for sale in lots of shops, but this is the first time we have seen them in action. This is a real family event. I was hanging back while Andre went to take pictures in the crowd and then he waved me to come forward. He wanted me to hear the kids, oh the laughter, it was contagious. Entire families were out having a great time. I understand why kids stay up so late here, it is so hot out during the day you need to let them go out at night and play or they would never be outside. Oh and siestas are not because they are lazy, it is HOT, siestas are about all you can do in the afternoon.