Traveling through Kyrgyzstan Part 3: Do I Prefer Wilderness Now?by Randi / October 15, 2017
After a week in the wilderness of eastern Kyrgyzstan, we were finally on our way to the big city for a few days. Bishkek (formerly Pishpek lolololol) would bring us restaurants, cafes, parks, museums, a hotel, laundry, all the markings of civilization – plus a shittonne more people and, with other cars besides ours in a 100 mile radius for the first time, lots and lots of pollution from the exhaust. But laundry!
Catch up on the previous Kyrgyzstan posts!
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village
Part 3: Jeti Oguz, Karakol, Cholpan Ata
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village
Part 3: Jeti Oguz, Karakol, Cholpan Ata
Bishkek has almost 1 million residents in an area of 127 square kilometers. Considering public transit is really not a big thing there (most people rely on mashrutkas (which we will be talking about a lotttt in the next post) which are literally just small unmarked white vans crammed with lots of people and you just like get in???? no!), the traffic is abysmal. It took like an hour to go a mile one afternoon. Yes we could have walked faster. Because of all the cars, and all the lack of environmental regulation on said (super ancient Soviet) cars, the pollution in the city was intense. The concentrations of dangerous pollutants in the city center often exceed allowable maximums. It’s not as bad as the pollution in Beijing, but I noticed it 100x more, and smelled it. I guess different sources make different smellies. I wonder what the world will do about this sort of thing oh that’s right NOTHING.
Aside from that Bishkek was pretty nice.
There’s a good amount of green space and parks in the city center, and lots of statues and arts
Day 7
We woke up in the Chon Kemin CBT guesthouse to the wifi not working. Since this was the day we were going to actually drive to the capital city, we finally switched on the privileged yoot section of our brains that we had turned off for so long in the wilderness and righteously complained (to each other; we’re not monsters) about the lack of modern-day amenities. Entering a yurt for breakfast while totally unaware of what happened in the world overnight?! Who does that? Besides literally everyone who lives in yurts, I mean.
Breakfast was a heavy fried dough calzone type thing filled with potato, so not exactly the kind of thing that sets me off feeling great for a day. I wish I could have refused but yurt lady would not allow people to even refuse to drink tea! Old yurt ladies are not to be messed with! So I tried to eat some and pretended to drink my tea all while looking around the table for my missing friend, the watermelon. Arbus! Arbus where are you?
this field did not have my friend arbus
however it did have this giant f-ing hoe (bag)
We set out for our drive to Bishkek with a few stops on the itinerary. First stop after only a few minutes was this giant hoe in a field. I think it’s a giant hoe. It might be a giant guitar. Who knows and who knows why. Z do you remember? I mean who doesn’t like big f-ing things in the middle of fields, I guess.
Next up was a legit tourist attraction, the Burana Tower, which is a big minaret from the 9th century. The original tower was severly damaged by earthquakes over the years (omg there are earthquakes here?) and restored in the 1970s. You might be thinking that those renovations not so long ago mean that the tower was reconstructed with modern audiences in mind, but you would be wrong. Climbing to the top of the tower, which is the thing to do if you are able-bodied, is a legit shitshow. Hold on here’s a picture first.
tower of doom
First, you climb up a rickety metal winding staircase on the outside of the tower, to a platform about 2 stories up. (I don’t know how big a story is but it seemed like 2 times what I do to get upstairs at home.) We found about 4 people on the platform, waiting at the entrance/hole cut out of the tower. We were told we had to wait for everyone up at the top at the moment to come down, because the stairhole inside is only big enough for one person at a time in one single direction. And you have to climb up and down using your feet and your hands because it is so cramped and narrow and super steep. SO MUCH FUN. Like I said above, you have to be able-bodied, and more than that you have to not be claustrophobic because if you freak out inside there is literally no way for anyone to get to you. I was petrified. I almost said f it and turned back down the winding staircase to the safety of the ground, like two of the people in line ahead of us did. But I figured I would want to have done this. I guess. It’s really not a huge deal. It’s not the great wall. I don’t know if I recommend climbing up if you are not super enthusiastic about tiny ancient stone torture methods. Oh ps no one works on the tower to keep order; just another guide told us about the waiting and the narrowness so it was lucky she was there. They should have a sign or something.
Finally (we waited like a half hour) the other tourists came down, clearing the way for us to go up. You know who one of those finishing tourists was? An eighty-year-old woman. F-ing hell. I had to try after seeing her! See me above, tentatively grasping for the stair above me while I still had light? After these first few steps, they wind around so that the brick wall is right against your back and you have to climb up like you are in 2D. And it was dark. It was scary. Blech. Luckily it didn’t take as long as I feared; maybe the fear made me scamper faster. Anyway this was the view.
So, you know, not, like, gorgeous.
Going down was awful, since you couldn’t see (even if there was light, it was too squashed) what your feet were reaching for as your hands did their best not to let go. But finally we were back on solid ground. The rest of the Burana site had a few small museums with artifacts uncovered in the area and some ancient stone statues, probably for fertility or war.
Finally we made our way to Bishkek! We dropped our stuff at our hotel before Sacha took us on a tour of the city. That’s right bishes, a hotel! It was a nice little clean and modern place called Futuro Hotel and it was splendid to have my own bathroom again, even if there was a big mirror in the shower which is just weird. The only downside was that, despite being a smaller cooler not-upscale hotel, Futuro mimicked upscale hotels’ stupid stupid stupid overpriced laundry service costs, the per-item kind where it’s cheaper to just buy new clothes than to pay $4 to clean each sock. Speaking of, I had lost a sock so I was down to one clean one which really did me no good. I get that fancy hotels do this because a lot of people who stay there don’t care what it costs or can charge to businesses or something, but this hotel was clearly catering to the laundromat set who would never spend more on cleaning a tee shirt than they did on the room itself. Anyway, so we searched high and low for a laundromat. Where was my laundry babushka when I needed her? (Oh in Ulan Ude.) We found one online – one – but it didn’t have an address, only a neighborhood and a phone number that didn’t connect 99% of the time. Sacha called A LOT and they never picked up until ahhh finally they did! Where are you located, we assume he asked? And they said the name of a main street and that was it. Wtf. We drove up and down the main street 100x and there was no sign of it. Sacha yelled at every single passerby “DEVUSHKA!” (the word for girl and like waitress) and asked if they knew where the laundromat was and no one had any idea that there was one in their city. Why doesn’t every single city have a laundromat I don’t understand! It would do such good tourist business. Finally we went down an alley and then turned into another alley and found a dusty shed of a place that was a carpet cleaning business. That was it, it turned out! I felt real weird leaving all of my clothes at a carpet cleaning shop but they said they could clean clothes too so okay. It was the equivalent of like $4. We picked up the next day and everything was ostensibly clean, but smelled like horse.
yeah like that
After we got that sorted, we could finally relax and see Bishkek. Well, relax as much as possible when we were 75% sure we were never getting our clothes back. Eh I’m sick of everything I brought anyway. Bishkek was a welcome shot of modernity after the past few weeks. There were buildings and sidewalks, restaurants and museums, all kinds of signs of a real city. And like I said before, tons of horrible car exhaust to try not to inhale. Funny how traveling can make one long for London’s pollution. Bishkek had lots of important statues all around the center commemorating important state history as well as important world events. The guy on the horse above is Magnanimous Manas, one of the most important legends in Kyrgyzstan. Manas is from an epic poem that is 500,000 lines long, and while Kyrgyz people argue that that’s the longest epic poem in history and Tibetans are like naw look here, I think we can all agree it’s in the top 3. Manas’s stories contains the expected battles and invasions and his heroism in such things. He’s strong and brave, and then he has a son who is equally brave and strong and they defeat the Afghans and stuff. Rode horses.
well I’m not entirely sure if this was one of the war ones but it looks like it right, and odds are good
this one definitely looks like war stuff
this one is definitely about the war. It’s in a whole memorial square in the city center, near the arches pictured at the top
The statue pictured above, of the MAN HOLDING UP A HORSE, represents the very important guy Baatyr Kaba Uulu Kozhomkul. Hoo boy, this guy, he’s big here. He was said to be 7.5 feet tall, over 400 pounds, and so strong that he carried his horse through a mountain pass after an avalanche. Hence this statue, outside the sports stadium named after Kozhomkul, honoring his most famous Feat of Strength. Hysterical.
But of course my favorite statue had to be the requisite GIANT LENIN that every once-Soviet city must flaunt.
giant lenin giant lenin giant lenin
We walked all around the city center with Sacha to see all the things, and it was soo freaking hot. 35 degrees celsius which even I know is hella hot despite my refusal to learn celsius. There was a good deal of green space which helped give a little relief from the sun. One of the parks had my favorite thing, a moon bounce. I mean a bouncy house. I mean a bouncy castle.
why aren’t they ever for grown ups
i just wanted to share a picture of this pretty flower square I SWEAR TO MANAS that that white figure in the background in the hat was NOT there in real life wtf???
Actually since we’re on the subject of favorites and I usually have 100 favorites thereby completely draining the word of any meaning, here’s my real favorite thing about Bishkek. This square right in the city center had this giant screen sharing information, maybe news, maybe pictures of art, or maybe advertisements. I don’t actually know, because this is how the screen was when we were there – not working, on the windows desktop by accident. I am still hysterical at this. Did NO one responsible for it notice?
Someone got fiiiiired.
After our scorching hot tour of the city with Sachafierce, we had the evening to ourselves. First on my list from HappyCow was a restaurant called Social Coffee. They had a vegetarian section in the menu! I was so excited – I got hummus (my favorite), tofu (my favorite), and green juice! The hummus was good but they didn’t serve it with nearly enough bread or crackers so I had to eat most of it just on a fork which is whack. The tofu was good for not being in a tofu country! The green juice was whatever, green juice, but might be the thing responsible for my nausea later than night. Betrayed! No it was probably because it came with ice. Ugh. I was okay though it passed. I know you’re concerned.
The best thing about the Futuro Hotel was, well my own bathroom, but aside from that, the best was that five minutes up the road was a huge Globus Supermarket! (It was so big they named it after the globe!) They had amazing stuff – a giant prepared food section with wonderful vegan dishes like – of course – my favorite tofu skin and carrot salad that we had all through Siberia. AGAIN, it translated from the Russian as “asparagus salad”. If ANYONE can explain to me why they call strips of tofu skin ‘asparagus’ please let me know! Isn’t that confusing for them? Or do they not have asparagus in this part of the world so like, they just gave that name to something else? Isn’t that still confusing when like people from other (non-Soviet) parts of the world talk about asparagus? What if you’re having a conversation and someone is like “we had this great asparagus it was cooked just enough so it was still crisp” and the former-Soviet person would be like, “what do you mean still crisp? it’s never crisp, it’s stretchy.” I mean I guess the odds of this conversation happening are slim to none but still, there’s grounds for confusion and I wanted so badly to have someone work this out with me but my Russian is barely good enough to order all the asparagus/tofu skin salad. Which I did.
the next night we had a hotel room buffet dinner from Globus with this ‘asparagus’ and the potato wedges you can sort of see and a huge cabbage salad and bread literally one of my favorite dinners ever 😛
Globus also had a great bulk food section of things like nuts and dried fruit and my favorite thing – fried broad beans! Like I found in the Kashgar bazaar! Luckily, unlike those market beans, these grocery store beans did not threaten to break my teeth every time I tried to chew them. These were actually made safely for human teeth! I wish I had more ugh so good. And yes London people I know the organic shoppe up the street from me sells these from the bulk bins too but it’s not the same! This was sustenance!
The supermarket, and Kyrgyz minimarts, also had this amazing chocolate popcorn that happened to be accidentally vegan. We ate the shiiiiz out of that.
lolol ‘real American’ okay sure I’ll take it!
Speaking of ‘what Kyrgyz people think America is’, here’s the peanut butter they had for sale. CRACKING UP.
THOSE ARE TWO DIFFERENT STATES
But the real best was in the toiletries part of the store. There was a GIGANTIC section of hilarious socks. I’m obsessed. They were cheap and adorable and easy to squeeze in my pack so I bought sooo many. If we’re friends in real life you will probably be getting one of these beauts soon.
Full with TWO different kinds of protein, my bag stocked with crazy socks, beans, and popcorn, I was pretty happy with our first day in Bishkek. That first night’s sleep in the hotel was amaze.
DAY 8
For our last day in Kyrgyzstan, Sacha picked us up early to drive us to Ala Archa National Park. Forget Ulan Ude, Ala Archa is the REAL way Russians say “Alan Alda”. Ala Archa (which is pronounced, at least by Sacha, with an amazing elision so it’s more like ‘alarcha’) is an alpine park about an hour’s drive from Bishkek. It’s still part of the Tien Shan mountain range, can you believe how big that range is?! Still since China! The park is mainly the gorge from the Alarcha River and all the pretty mountains for trekking and hiking and climbing and just general wanderingment.
look at those freaking snow capped mountains! can’t get over
Alarcha is gorge-ous
always screaming about something this bish (actually sneezing is more likely)
Ala Archa was beautiful, as you can see, and also serene, feeling a lot more untouched and raw than other national parks sometimes do. We had all morning to hike around the trails and relax in nature while we still could. It’s places like this that make you forget all the troubles of the world. Well until Sacha recommended that we climb a particularly steep part of a mountain to a place affectionately known as “climbers’ cemetery”. Mmm, nah, we good.
THEEEE HIIIILLLLS ARE ALIIIIIIIVE
Still can’t believe things like this exist in this world
troubled little bridge over even more troubled water
We walked all around the park and the gorge, exploring the area around the rapids via these tiny little petrifying bridges. Luckily Sacha didn’t try to drive over this one. I love how loud the water is, when it’s the only sound you can hear in the whole world.
SQUIRREL
As ever, the signage did not disappoint.
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? FOR THE LIFE OF ME. I CANNOT FIGURE OUT WHAT WAS INTENDED.
Regardless of how much my head still hurts from trying to figure out that sign, this was a pretty perfect last day in Kyrgyzstan. Ala Archa was lovely and reminiscent of my favorite place, the similar Jedi Oguz Geopark place from the last post. To say goodbye, Sacha took us out to a great lunch (I got TWO kinds of cabbage salads!) and gave us these absolutely ridiculous and perfect souvenirs.
They crack me up every time I look at them! So perfect. So, I know you probably wanted me to despise my time in Kyrgyzstan (it’s funnier that way FOR YOU) but as it turns out, I kind of loved this trip! I would highly recommend a visit around the country for anyone who likes natural beauty and places off the beaten path or terribly named peanut butters. Such a wonderful time.
Tomorrow we leave for Kazakhstan! Mah wife!
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Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia: WWCD (What Would Chingis Do)?
Our first stop and only city visited in Mongolia (also the only city in Mongolia, from what I saw of the rest of the country), Ulaan Baatar improved upon the food in the eastern-Asia part of our trip, continued the sad tradition of incredibly polluted air, and worsened the car traffic situation so far. It’s hard to say no to this city since it has so many Loving Huts and even better other vegan restaurants (I know! In Mongolia! So many!), but I think the annoying parts of it outweigh my ability to have good food. Luckily, we were there for Naadam, the national annual festival of the Three Sports of Men, dedicated to Genghis (pronounced Chingis here, and ya know what, I’m gonna call him Chingis because that’s the real Mongolian way) Khan. Naadam (for a separate post) was interesting and something big and fun to do. Without it, Ulaan Baatar is a dilapidated city with some temples and monasteries and museums but I quickly got tired of it. Exhausted, really. Maybe because I couldn’t breathe.
Chingissssss what’s up mannnn
After we landed in Ulaan Baatar at 6:30am, we DIDN’T walk with all our bags to our hostel! A first! We had a car waiting for us, thanks to the tour company we booked our countryside trip with. More on that shitshow in a later post too, but at least they drove us to our hostel. Of course the driver asked when he dropped us off if we had money to pay, even though he was from the tour company who offered the ride a perk of the package. We said no and he just shrugged and said goodbye, so yeah. That’s annoying.
He dropped us at the Modern Mongol hostel, which had a sign on the door saying check-in was from 2pm to 6pm, and reception opens at 9am-11am, some time in there. Um. You cannot have a SIGN ON THE ACTUAL DOOR be the only way you communicate to guests that there will be no one to OPEN THE DOOR. I was so mad I was ready it burn it down. Like they didn’t send an email or say on their pages on booking.com or hostelworld that this was the case. You need to make sure your guests know this information BEFORE they arrive. It was freaking 7am! We had to wait at least 2 hours for a person to let us in? Bullshit. Luckily, another guest let us in, and there was a big lobby sitting area so we set up camp, got out our toiletries and camping towels, plugged in our devices, and showered in the pretty big shared bathroom, all before checking in. (This place had many more showers than toilets. Not the right ratio, guys.) We didn’t even care about how we were making a mess with all our shit all over the place. You don’t tell us the details about checking in (not even checking in to the room! Coming in to the place just to leave our bags!) before we arrive, we don’t care about making the lobby our own. We showered so good. It was lovely. I mean it was a shitty hostel and none of the showers had functioning drains (always bring shower shoes) but still.
The day we arrived was Inauguration Day for Mongolia’s new President! We didn’t really see any of it besides this group of army doers in Sukhbatar Square, the main square in UB. With Naadam starting the very next day, it was a super exciting time for the country and capital!
Unfortunately, our beloved friend (and fellow lawyer/travel blogger) Sivani at Ever the Wayfarer was unable to join us for this Mongolia portion of our trip as planned, and we were very sad to not have her around to show us how to fashion a sink out of a twig and some fabric as we knew she could have once we were sinkless in the countryside. However, sorry Sivani but it’s for the best that you weren’t in Ulaan Baatar with us because our ‘triple’ room barely fit one person. We had to put all of our stuff on the bunkbeds because there was no floor space! You would have been sleeping with all my peanut butter and accidentally vegan cookie finds! (Actually that sounds amazing.) Also, we learned that despite appearances (of the lobby), this hostel was not great. It attracted all the crowds I despise: young teenage blonde girls who facetimed their boyfriends all night every night without regard for how much bandwidth they were using OR how loud they were being (so loud, heard them always); dirty older European backpackers who do their laundry in the sinks (despite their being a machine) as a GROUP ACTIVITY so people who actually need to use the sinks for regular usages are forced to stand behind them and give ‘are you kidding me with this?’ looks at them in the mirror as they take over all 4 sinks; older white female Americans who praise themselves for how liberal they are (while praising Bernie) while repeating the same story over and over about the one time they told a white man not to be racist (it was barely a story; do more, white women); and generic other yoots who have no consideration for how loud they are throughout the night. Oh and old Chinese men who shout at each other in the hallway in the middle of the night. Oh and people who play music in the common areas without headphones like they’re doing the rest of us a service. So, everybody I hate. Also, the wifi at Modern Mongol was so bad it was pretty much nonexistent (which is why we are now two weeks behind ughh I hate it I’m sorry). Hard no on a recommendation.
obviously a picture of the train station should be higher up the post but weebly just does notttt like the wifi here and it’s easier to type this caption than move a picture
Out in the city, I was immediately struck by how bad the air was. It was like how Siberia was very polluted, but the car and traffic situation here is more like Bangkok – long, long lights, exhaust blown right in your face by substandard unregulated engines no matter where you stand, and dangerous drivers. At least in Bangkok there are a lot of overpasses for pedestrians to use on busy streets. This was a bad situation. And despite UB being the coldest capital city in the world (true fact, though we haven’t gotten a clear answer about whether that’s due to extremely low winter temperatures or a low overall yearly average of temperatures), it was hot and dry and burningly sunny most of the time. I felt asthmatic the whole time I was there, like my lungs were screaming and I couldn’t get a deep breath. That’s so awful! It also meant pretty much every time I stepped outside, I was exhausted, not being able to get enough oxygen. I must get a mask for China. I hope all you republicans enjoy when your part of the world has air like this too.
It’s hard to ignore the air when we need that to live, but the city apart from that was okay, I guess. It’s really nothing special, and the best part of it is the various vegan restaurants which we will talk about separately (because there are so many!) It looks clearly third world, and so many city buildings (aside from the skyscrapers) are very dilapidated – and almost every single building in the countryside is decaying or straight up falling apart. Literally half of the country’s 3 million residents live in this city, with the rest spread over the vast open spaces of the countryside. With UB representing so much of the country’s citizenry and most of its wealth, it’s clear that governmental corruption and mismanagement has done all of Mongolia a disservice, to say the least.
Chojin Lama Temple
There are some nice tourist attractions though. We first went to the Chojin Lama Temple Museum, which survived the communist purge of all things religious by being a ‘museum’ of religion. It was really close to the hostel, so an easy first site. That also means it’s right in the middle of the city, adjacent to modern buildings and skyscraper-types. The juxtaposition of this super old temple with the sleek new office buildings was interesting, like how in London the Tower Bridge is like next to the Gherkin. I think I mean the Gherkin; it’s been too long already.
-OH OK – you know how in the Ulan-Ude post I talked about the lama in the monastery outside of town we went to and his body was embalmed for like centuries (or it was a ‘miracle’) but his head was papier-mache and I was like hey where’s your head? OKAY I WAS MISTAKEN. The Ulan-Ude shiny lama corpse was NOT papier-mache (you gotta say it the French way it’s funner) headed; he was fully intact just all head and body that’s been dead forever but still shiny. The papier-mache headed lama was HERE! At the Chogin Lama Temple. I KNOW, we are seeing SO MANY F-ING EMBALMED CORPSES that I’m mixing them up! It’s like I’m back in my internship at the D.A.’s office! JFC if you are mixing up your embalmed mummies you are seeing TOO MANY. And we have more to come in China! Sorry, I will try to keep them straighter but seriously how do you tell mummified lamas apart? (That sounds like the beginning of a joke.) Anyway, guess who has two thumbs and took a PICTUREEEEE? (imagine me pointing to myself with my two thumbs)
forgive me buddha!
The Chogin Lama temple was very pretty, and I enjoyed it because it was our first Buddhist monastery in Mongolia. I was not yet very sick of seeing the same faded colorful fabrics and dingy Buddha statues and crazy scary demon sculptures. I would indeed get sick of all this very, very quickly.
Husband made me do a face hole in the temple grounds, as he always does, so here is my reluctant agreement.
We lucked out with the bright sunny weather for these pictures, but we quickly realized that UB, and Mongolia in general, heat and sun are not playing. They are serious, and they are intense. Coupled with the terrible air quality, the immobilizing burn of the sun was pretty miserable. It rained one day and it felt sooo amazing afterwards. There was actual humidity and I could breathe! It lasted an hour. Whoever talks about how dry heat is so great is making shit up.
After the Chogin Lama temple, we went to the National Museum of Mongolian History, even though I was so f-ing tired and crankpotting and oh yeah, I think I kind of hate museums. It was interesting though. They had good stuff documenting the country’s long, interesting history, from the Stone Age to the modern change from communism to democracy. It’s very centrally located by Sukhbaatar Square, which I’m going to spell differently every time I type it I think, not on purpose just by default. I decided that I deserved to listen to music while museuming because I was still not in a bed and thus super sad about that so I put my headphones in and shuffled some showtunes. It took me until an old Mongolian woman glared at me to realize that I hadn’t pushed the headphone jack into the phone far enough and the current song playing, “My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada”, was audible to all in the room. I hope no one understood some of those lines. Actually no I hope they did.
After the Chogin Lama temple, we went to the National Museum of Mongolian History, even though I was so f-ing tired and crankpotting and oh yeah, I think I kind of hate museums. It was interesting though. They had good stuff documenting the country’s long, interesting history, from the Stone Age to the modern change from communism to democracy. It’s very centrally located by Sukhbaatar Square, which I’m going to spell differently every time I type it I think, not on purpose just by default. I decided that I deserved to listen to music while museuming because I was still not in a bed and thus super sad about that so I put my headphones in and shuffled some showtunes. It took me until an old Mongolian woman glared at me to realize that I hadn’t pushed the headphone jack into the phone far enough and the current song playing, “My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada”, was audible to all in the room. I hope no one understood some of those lines. Actually no I hope they did.
I liked this big statue of Chingis Khan (at least I think it’s Chingis…I mean it’s a statue and it’s in a museum in Mongolia, odds are that it’s Chingis) and a few ink drawings about his time, (1162-1227). The ink drawings were like recent, not from then, but still they were cool. Or I saw them in a brief moment of lucidity and that’s why they stuck.
lol right and left wise wangs
Later in our stay, we visited the Gandan Khiid monastery complex, which was kind of far from everything cool (like 45 minute walk from wherever you were, literally, no matter where, like everything in this city actually but worse) and actually not cool itself. It was whatever. Maybe I’m down on it because the bathrooms were locked and the one staff member on the huge grounds was the living embodiment of the shruggie emoji when I said hey the bathrooms are locked. Maybe I’m down on it because the name translates to “The Great Place of Complete Joy” and like no, if you’re not going to let me pee this is nowhere near even partial joy. Anyway, it’s home to the spiritual head of Mongolia, the Khamba Lama. So many lamas! It’s the most important monastery in the country, which I would not have believed looking at it. Originally, the monastery was built on the site in 1785, and newer buildings and temples have been built up since, though we couldn’t go in most of them. The ground is filled with stupas and little temples and shacks that were locked. I couldn’t really get a handle on the place. (I can’t get pictures to load because Weebly is awful and the internet here is too so imagine another temple/monastery.)
Over 800 monks live there, which is crazy because I didn’t see any.
We also visited the Bogd Khan Palace, which is down in the south of the city close to the Naadam stadium. Bogd Khan means ‘holy king’, and the palace is where the last holy king of Mongolia lived. The guidebook says it’s ‘full of ghosts’. The various small pavilions house statues of Buddhas of all sorts (who knew there wasn’t just a Buddha? Apparently anyone can become a Buddha, so we were told. Didn’t know!), lots of paintings of insane scenes of Buddha and friends and demons and all sorts of religious and wacky imagery, and random objects like musical instruments and, like, dishware.
There’s also a winter palace (like the Hermitage!) on the site that is a museum of the bog man’s personal possessions, like a lot of his furs and crowns and like, more dishware. Be warned, as I was not, that many rooms are full of bog stomper’s stuffed animals. I do not mean the cute fluffy kind that we all still sleep with. I mean real animals that were taxidermied. Rooms and rooms of them. All sorts. Big, small, birds, lions, polar bears, it was gross and unnecessary. Skip the winter palace.
Our last museum in UB was the unique Intellectual Museum, a private man’s shrine to puzzles. So there’s this genius but probably kookoopants man who the staff refers to as ‘the founder’ which doesn’t sound culty at all who has been making puzzles since he was a child, so he was like why not put all this in a museum along with all my weird baby dolls? A guide takes you around and shows you how to do a lot of them, and gives them to you to try. It will successfully make you feel like an idiot. They are impossible to do without knowing the tricks and stuff, but the guide will do them all in like 4 seconds and it’s hard to remember that it was her job to learn how. Anyway, there are all sorts, from secret boxes that open their compartments if you pull the right pieces apart, to those silver keys that slide apart if you twist them a certain way but your brain does NOT want to ever remember how to twist them, to strings of metal balls that when aligned properly make a sturdy pyramid (this one I can now do! so proud), to wooden rubix cube type things that will just drive you crazy. In addition, there is an entire floor of all the elaborate, and I mean elaborate, chess boards that The Master made. He either made or designed everything in this museum himself, btw. He is an impressive, prolific, probably socially awkward guy. The chess boards range from tiny marble boards with coral figures to gigantic (like 15 foot) wooden boards that are puzzles to make the table and board, and then each of the figures is its own intricate puzzle. I mean. Crazy. The museum offers visitors a few of these puzzles and chess players to try to put together for cash prizes. They range from $1,000 to $100,000, and I don’t think anyone has ever won, they are so difficult. I bet Sydney Bristow could do it but I am just not a spacial puzzle genius person.
The museum doesn’t let you take pictures, but if you have extra time in UB it’s a decent place to visit. You could get the same idea from buying a few of those wooden puzzle type jawns and trying to solve it for years and years until you go crazy because you just can’t, but it was cool to see all the different kinds and all the beautiful chess boards Our Great Leader made. I would have called it just a puzzle museum though, because calling it the Intellectual Museum makes it seem like the ability to solve this puzzles is what makes someone smart when that isn’t the case you just need to learn the trick to it I’m not upset about it at all.
Taraji P. Park
On one of our UB days, we took a day trip (with Sunpath, the company doing our longer trip to the countryside) to see Terelj National Park, which I refer to as the Taraji P. Henson National Park, obviously. I think this was by far our best day in Mongolia – the best natural beauty in the country, fun sites, and none of the whole living-in-the-desert-and-not-showering bullshit. Taraji was beautiful (she is, girl) but the drive was a little hard. Haha, I would have killed for a drive that hard during our week in the desert. Coming soon.
With our teenage guide (they all are!), we hiked a nice hike to a meditation center slash temple that was pretty cool. On the walk, there are all these numbered signs with different sayings (of the Buddha I guess?), and at one point you are supposed to spin a wheel to see which saying you need to focus on. I got #41 (my favorite Dave Matthews song!), and this is apparently what I need to think about for the next year:
girl you don’t have to tell ME people aren’t clean after the month I’ve had
Do all the parentheses mean you can replace words with new words? like Mad Libs?
view from the meditation center
on our hike
Ger camp in Terelj, like the ones we lived in the folowing week
Taraji also included Turtle Rock, a natural rock formation that looks like a turtle. Cute! Our guide said we could climb up it so we did, which was a bad idea. It is a frightening climb up very steep staggering rocks. We didn’t expect such a challenging climb to be the result of the guide’s casual suggestion. At one point, you have to go through this hole. We watched a few people and then said hell. no.
see the turtle?
nahhhh
The best part of the day trip to Terelj was seeing the GIGANTIC CHINGIS KHAN STATUE! It is 40 meters tall, but seems bigger, with Chingis just freaking enormous and depicted riding a horse so the whole thing is just so flipping big and fun and hilarious.
took this from the horse’s head, which you climb up!
Inside the complex (very nice complex!), there’s a museum that not-so-accurately charts Mongolia’s ‘illustrious’ history, and there’s a boot. The biggest Mongolian boot in the world.
I highly recommend doing the day trip to Terelj and Chingis statue if you find yourself in this country for some reason.
As has been the case all over Asia, we saw some amazing signs, like this club dedicated to our favorite Nicholas Cage movie.
And of course we both immediately realized what our legal professions hold once we return to work:
na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na BAT LAWWWW
So, overall UB was okay. We had some good times, but mostly we were glad to be there for Naadam (next post) and some good vegan restaurants (actual next post). Really, we were excited to end our city time and go out for our week in the countryside and the desert, because we heard that that is where Mongolia really shines. Hoo boy. Next next next post. Stay tuned for that carnival of atrocities.
that’s wonderful dear!
It’s Yucatanfastic: Merida, Uxmal, Mexican Chocolate, & More Cenotes
Welcome back to Mexico Central (not to be confused with Central Mexico), at least for the next few weeks! After our wonderful but brief trip through Valladolid and our visits to Chichen Itza, Ek Balam, and our favorite cenotes, we’re ready to continue through the Yucatan – which is, as you saw above, Yucatanfastic – via Merida and Uxmal. And not only are there more cenotes to come, there’s also a museum…of chocolate. It’s all my favorite things, babies! And then a real museum, which as you know is usually not my favorite thing only because for some reason in museums I tend to turn into Dug from “Up” seeing a squirrel , but this museum held my attention. IT’S ALL GREAT. Let’s get to it.
Once we saw all the wonders of Chichen Itza, on that amazing first full day in Mexico, we drove about two hours towards the west coast to Merida (it could take you less but remember we left Cheechee at closing time (5pm), so we were living it up during rush hour! On a Monday! So fun in every country!). As we saw in Valladolid and as I warned you would happen in every town in the Yucatan, our evening arrival was commemorated with half of Merida dancing in the street outside the main square, and the other half watching. It’s so fun and lovely; I love that there are still legit communities out there in the world. Meanwhile we don’t even know our neighbors (but one of them has a Leave (Brexit) sign in their window so we don’t want to know them, obvs). Honestly I can’t even believe there are Americans who don’t want Mexican people to be their neighbors. THEY’RE JUST GOING TO DANCE IN THE STREET AND MAKE YOU AMAZING FOOD, what is your problem?
Now that we’re in Merida, it’s time for our favorite travel segment:
Merida, along with being the heroine of the most disappointing “Disney princess” movie (seriously all she does is turn her mother into a bear and we’re supposed to appreciate the “feminism”? she’s a “strong female role model” because she “decided” to turn her mother into a bear? how many “quotes” can I “use”??), is the capital and largest city of the Yucatan state. It’s also one of the most popular destinations in the Yucatan because of its prime location as a perfect jumping off point to start negotiations explore the surrounding sites, and also because it’s one of the most beautiful cities. It’s been named the American Capital of Culture a few times by smart people who know that ‘American’ doesn’t just refer to USA. Merida is indeed a cultural gem, with interesting architecture that mixes its Mayan roots with European influence, and with strong museums, amazing food, and the aforementioned dancing in the Plaza Mayor. Having the largest indigenous population of any Mexican city means its Maya heritage and history are at the forefront.
So in the 1500s, there were three men named Francisco de Montejo and they were all Spanish conquistadors AND they were all related so it got super confusing but there wasn’t much they could do because there just weren’t that many names back then. To make it easier, they used cute lil nicknames: the oldest was “The Lieutenant” (“hello lootellaaaann” – South Pacific), his son was “The Boy”, and his nephew was “The Nephew”. Cute for you! Obviously these were in Spanish because they spoke Spanish because they WERE Spanish! which means they arrived in Mexico and saw indigenous people just carrying on living their lives and the lootellant, the boy, and the nephew – or just The Boy, actually; I think it was just The Boy but then why did I have to hear about all three of these bozos? – were like “LA LA LA I DON’T SEE ANYONE ELSE I MAKE MY CITY HERE. HERE’S A GOOD SPOT.” Merida was built on the site of the ancient Maya city of T’ho, and stones from T’ho’s/those buildings were used to build the Spanish colonial buildings of downtown Merida, including the cathedral.
For a few centuries, Merida was a walled city, needing such protection because SOME Maya people had the BIG IDEA that the Spanish and their descendants shouldn’t have just up and taken the land so there were some revolts. Modern Merida has since expanded well beyond those old walls. I don’t know much about the treatment of the indigenous population today, but considering they are the majority, I hope they are running things.
I’m going to share Merida hotel and vegan food info in a separate post because there is just SO MUCH to talk about! You may recall we only spent 1 night in Valladolid (and did so much I’m honestly just so proud of my lazy butt) but we have 3 in Merida, so we have a lot of ground (food, really) to cover – as well as a beach day in Progreso! It was not as exciting as it sounded! But you’ll see! In the separate post!
After our first night, we slept in a little because, well because I hadn’t been able to sleep in for like at least a week and I can’t function like that for too long because I have a SYNDROME and the only cure is MORE COWBELL sleep. Also, we had to be ready for another gigantic day! This day was going to be packed with a trip to the site of the ancient Maya city Uxmal, more cenotes, and a surprise chocolate museum that literally took 3 hours and yet was great.
UXMAL
After about an hour’s drive, we got to Uxmal at 11:30am, which is a terrible, no good, very bad idea. See, this was summer, in Mexico. It’s hot. At almost noon, the sun is, like, ready, and boy oh boy it felt like we were in a sauna while we explored the extensive grounds of Uxmal. It was about 102 degrees (Fahrenheit, obvs; see last post for my rant about systems of measurement it’s totally worth it) and we were positively baking. (You’ll be like THEN WHY ARE YOU WEARING A SWEATER IN THESE PICTURES but it is not a sweater it’s like the thinnest material ever made and it just protects my arm skin from burning.) Entry into Uxmal is 413 pesos (about $20) and, like the other sites, a portion of that is a federal fee that has to be paid in cash so you just need to be prepared to pay in cash.
Like pretty much every site we’ve seen so far in the Yucatan, Uxmal is an ancient Maya city and one of the most important archaeological sites in Maya culture. It’s on the Ruta Puuc, a long grouping of roads that lead to endless Maya archaeological sites and ruins. If you are in the market for an entire day of endless ruins, just drive down the Ruta and see however many you have time for, ensuring you end with Uxmal since it’s the grandest and most important. If, like us, you’ve already seen lots of ruins and you don’t want to get burned out to the point where you don’t appreciate them any longer, start with Uxmal, spend a significant amount of time exploring this site, and then treat yo self to a hilarious afterparty/museum.
While everyone visiting the Yucatan will put Chichen Itza at the top of their to-do list, we were impressed with Uxmal and I think we both agreed it was our favorite site in the state. It’s an enormous site like Chichen Itza, but it’s much less crowded, and it’s also much more interesting topographically. There are so much areas to explore and it seems like they’re all on different levels, like various earthen platforms rising in unexpected ways so there’s all this surprising variation in elevation as you explore. This made our exploration of Uxmal much more exciting and fun. Also, there are ZERO touts, whereas Chichen Itza has tons of stalls all around the interior grounds, which I get and it happens at most important sites around the world, but it’s nice to find one that isn’t all commercialized inside.
actually we made about 1000 of these new frens. they are EVERYWHERE.
Despite its popularity and general fame, Uxmal has not actually been studied enough as an archaeological site. I’ve been calling it an archaeological site and I’m going to keep calling it an archaeological site because calling it old ruins sounds like I’m being a bitch to her, but there hasn’t actually been much archaeology going on. Very little excavation or research has been done because I guess archaeologists are too busy in Egypt still? I don’t know where are they? People think that it was founded about 500 AD and was the capital of the Maya state from 850-925 AD before invaders took over. During its height, it teamed up with Chichen Itza to dominate Mayan society; the two together were like Helene Bezukhova, the queen of society, beautiful, barely clothed, plump bare shoulder and much exposed neck, round which she wears a double string of pearls! okay I’m getting sidetracked by musical theatre again (PIERRE THE CUCKHOLD SITS AT HOME PIERRE THE CUCKHOLD SITS AT HOME the poor man).
Like all good ruins, Uxmal featured a enormous f-ing thing that you have to climb. Well you don’t have to, but we always feel compelled to climb whatever is climbable, even though my FOMO (fear of missing out) is regularly outweighed by my FOFO (fear of falling off). Uxmal’s expansive grounds include lots of highly climbable structures, but the highest building, the grand temple, is the Featured Climb. As always, it probably looks like an easy climb in the pictures but it was g-d terrifying to come down. I mean the climb up wasn’t a picnic in 102 degree heat when you are sweating buckets even without moving but I almost panicked to a halt coming down. No I definitely did panic-halt a few times. At the top, we met a really nice English family who were taking a year-long tour around the world. They had a son of about 7 years old and the two of us literally talked each other through the descent. We both went down on our bottoms (as the English say) for a part of it, but I felt better standing and going sideways. Guys it was legit terrifying. It’s so steep that you are basically looking at a sheer drop; the stairs are almost on top of each other and even for my small-ish feet they are TINY. I felt bad leaving my new child friend as he took longer but his parents were waiting for him at the bottom and like, didn’t seem concerned and I had to GET THE F OUTTA THERE before I froze again. Ahhh these descents are scary! I mean I get extra scared because I fell down a similar thing once (okay it was stone stairs at college not at an ancient archaeological site BUT STILL) but it’s definitely not a breeze to do for anyone. (Also not a breeze? The lack of breeze.)
At many of these ancient sites, amid the enormous temples and structures for sacrificial rites and residential buildings and smaller temples and everything, would always be an open field called the ‘ball court’. Some, like at Chichen Itza, are ‘Great Ball Courts’. I honestly saw all these signs for ball courts and thought ‘well it’s nice they also had leisure activities and sports.’
We’ll put a pin in that ball court discussion until we get to the Mayan Museum at the end. REMEMBER!
Surviving the descent of that temple was definitely my favorite part, but my second favorite part offers some stiff competition. Like I said (a lot) (yay complaining), it was hot as the balls they used in the great ball court’s non-basketbally game of basketball. When we exited the grounds back into the ticket/welcome building with the toilets and a few shops, we saw THE BEST THING EVER:
ICY DRINKS! PLEASE AND THANK YOU! We shared a mango one and a coconut one and because it was so sweltering out, they were amazing. Icy drinks have never been better. HUZZAH FOR ICE.
What a great place.
After our just-under-two hours at Uxmal, we were definitely ancient-ruinsed out for the day. I mean, all we’d really done so far in Mexico was tour these sites, so continuing further down the Ruta Puuc would have probably made us bitter. Instead, we went across the street from Uxmal to…the Museum of Chocolate.
CHOCO-STORY: ECOPARQUE MUSEO DEL CACAO
We thought the Chocolate Museum, or “Choco-Story” would be a nice little air-conditioned diversion to regroup after our exhausting (but awesome) time at Uxmal, before getting back on the road to find more cenotes. But it turned out to be a HUGE cacao plantation, where they grow and harvest cacao beans and also have an entire museum about the history, growth, use, everything to do with cacao. It was INSANE. We thought it would be like 30 minutes tops and we were there for over 2 hours. But it was SO fun, and so interesting. The museum is spread through the endless grounds in numerous thatched huts, with each hut covering one topic. I fancy myself a chocolate connoisseur and I never imagined there could even be so much information about it.
We learned what healthy beans look like, as well as a lot of (too much) information about all the different kinds of diseases your cocoa beans could catch (omg it was actually very sad). We learned how the very special beans were used as currency in ancient times, and how much they’d be worth. We learned how the Maya would use cocoa beans in their sacrifices to the gods. And we learned about the cocoa gods the Maya people would pray too, like this fine one below who is appropriately but oof sadly covered in cocoa bean…lesions?
90% of what we learned in the Yucatan was about human sacrifices. I mean I’m all about respecting other cultures BUT DAYUM
We ALSO learned – too late – that it wasn’t just a cocoa plantation, but also a sort of animal sanctuary. When I first came upon the cages, I was like OH SHIT OH SHIT IS THIS SOME SORT OF F-ING ZOO? But there are signs all over the animal areas saying WE ARE NOT A ZOO! and explaining that the animals living here have been rescued from abuse, and wouldn’t be able to survive in the wild. Now I’m no wildlife expert, and I’m sure there’s a strong argument that we still shouldn’t interfere with wild animals even if they face certain death remaining on their own. But there’s not much I personally am mad about if this place is giving these animals a nice life that otherwise would have been over long ago.
Another thing I thought this place did well was reinforce the respect that cacao farming deserves, and how we should treat chocolate as something special and not something we are entitled to. And of course, we have to be careful where we buy from and what kinds of practices we support.
My favorite part was that one hut was for learning how to make traditional Maya hot cacao drinks, complete with making and enjoying your own cup! The cocoa on its own is extremely bitter, so there is a bowl of sugar for making it palatable, plus the traditional spice additions of cinnamon, annatto, allspice, and hot pepper. I added everything!
I also really enjoyed the sign on Chocolate & Health. We had a pretty good laugh at how ridic this was.
It was pretty cool but kind of awkward when we were ushered deeper into the forest (it’s like in a forest, it’s nuts) for a traditional Maya cocoa ceremony. Awkward just because we were uncomfortable with these guys performing for us white tourists and we were just like eeeek thank you I really appreciate this but eeeek, but it was interesting.
Obviously, my favorite part of the Chocolate Museum was truly the gift shop. IT WAS ALL CHOCOLATE! and like, things for making chocolate? and soaps and shampoos made from chocolate? The flavors of their bars sounded incredible, but it was so hot and they would all immediately melt before we made it back to London (in like, another week? no chance!). We limited ourselves to two awesome flavors, both with some sort of pepper.
OH NO! HOLD THAT THOUGHT. My actual favorite part was the additional information inside the main building, near the gift shop. There was a “Chocolate Timeline”, and it included such shade, such absolute, gorgeous, sensational shade, thrown at the king of fuckery, Mr Christopher Columbus. Behold the glory:
I CANNOT handle how excruciatingly perfect this is. In so few words it’s basically announcing what a f-ing asshole Columbus was but without saying anything objectionable. SO GOOD. WHAT AN ASSHOLE.
Choco-story was a really fun surprise! It took over two hours to tour, and the toilets are only outside the ticket area (had to do a few reentries), but I’m glad we went.
After the chocolate, you know what it’s time for.
CENOTES
Another day in the Yucatan, another swim in a cenote! We followed our GPS as best we could towards the middle of nowhere for X’Batun Cenote, which eventually led us down a dirt road. We were like, is this right? Where TF are we? We drove through this amazing, quaint little villages with a single small church and like a cow on the side of the road, wondering if we were going in the right direction. Eventually, we saw a small sign up on a big porch, with a few guys sitting in chairs. They were selling tickets and giving directions! They also had toilets!
The men sold us a joint ticket for two cenotes located across the road from each other, X’Batun and Dzonbacal. It’s 80 pesos for both. Unfortunately, X’Batun was closed because of heavy rains earlier that week – the rains made the water too dirty to swim in. We had a peek at it though, and it was very similar to Dzonbacal, where we still could swim, so it’s fine.
We still have to get there though! This ticket porch is still miles away from the actual cenote! They directed us to drive to the end of this road, turn right past a certain tree, and then drive 3 kilometers down a random suuuuper dirt/off-roady road till there’s a split in the road, indicating the two cenotes. We peeked at the one and then drove to the other, where the parking area had toilets (!) and a shower stall. The toilet was the foulest one I’ve seen yet in the country, and still no hooks were to be found (Mexico like doesn’t do hooks in toilet stalls), so changing in it without letting any of my stuff touch the gross floor was A CHALLENGE. We rinsed off with the shower stall/bucket as you should do (really as you should do not just with natural swimming wonders of the world but in public pools omg the gross men at my London pool don’t shower beforehand even though it’s IN THE RULES and they all reek of cologne HOW MANY EMAILS DO I HAVE TO SEND BEFORE THEY ENFORCE THE RULES) and then we enjoyed this cenote! It was beautiful, like half in a cave half outside.
Such a great cenote. There are decent signs advertising X’Batun, so you shouldn’t have a hard time finding it (or at least finding the right village) if you include it with your trip to Uxmal, which you should do. Hopefully for you X’Batun won’t be too dirty to swim in!
Since we were already in wet bathing suits when we got back to our hotel, we enjoyed our hotel pool after our cenote time. Double swimming days are the best. But more on that in the next post!
Aside from our beach day in Progreso, we have one more sight to share from our time in Merida, and one of the most important: The Mayan World Museum of Merida, or the Gran Museo del Mundo Maya.
GRAN MUSEO DEL MUNDO MAYA
The Mayan Museum is the big thing to do actually in the city of Merida. It’s off one of the main expressways of the city leading north out of it (so it makes sense to visit the museum first and then continue north to Progreso for a beachy day trip, if you are planning things for yourself). It’s a huge, modern, shiny building with a gigantic, new, shiny, modern parking garage underground. It costs 80 pesos to park in it, which is $4, and worth it to keep your car out of that sun.
When you get to the huge shiny lobby of the museum, you’ll be (I was) happy to see water dispensers for refilling your enormous water bottles! Honestly my favorite part.
It’s 150 pesos per ticket, about $7.50 which is not bad considering how much this museum has. The exhibits are great, but there isn’t very good signage, at least in English, which was a little disappointing. Still, you can learn a lot from what what signs there are and from just looking at the displays with a modicum of critical thinking.
There’s tons of information about indigenous cultures, their ways of life, and what they were like in ancient times, in every aspect. There’s tons of archaeological finds, including ancient statues and all kinds of pottery.
But you’re here to finally learn what the big ball courts in all the ruins sites are about. All over Mesoamerica, these ancient cities have these huge ball courts, and like I said before, it’s not just for old-fashioned forms of basketball. Archaeologists believe that the game was played by hitting the ball with one’s forearm, or a bat-like device, to try to pass it through those rings we saw above, in Uxmal, on the side walls of the playing field. Hitting it with your forearm sounds like it would hurt, because the balls were HEAVY. Yikes! That’s probably as bad as it gets, right? Pain-wise? Noooope. Scenes carved on walls of the spectator benches show players wearing protective gear as well as carrying tools that could be used for striking the ball, so who knows what the right way to play is. It shouldn’t concern us too much, though, because REGARDLESS can we just ALL AGREE as a society NOT to play this game? Okay so after you play and try to get the ball through the hoop, there would be a winner and a loser, as there are. Seven players on each side would parade toward the center of the field, and the captain of the defeated team would kneel. Then the captain of the winning team would DECAPITATE THE LOSER. The winning captain/murderer would hold his knife and the severed head of his friend up before the probably cheering crowd. This, like almost everything else in these ancient cities, existed as a way to offer human sacrifices to the gods but in a more communal and fun way, I GUESS. And I thought football sucked.
I won’t leave you with ‘horrible sports gone wrong’, though. Elsewhere in the museum, there was an interactive screen display that, if you entered some personal information about yourself, would tell you sort of your Mayan fortune – what your personality is like and what jobs you’re equipped for. I’m sure it’s a way for the government to collect private details about its guests but we really wanted to know what it would say so we did it anyway.
As you can see, my color is black and my direction is west, so I’m kind of like a Kardashian in Mexico. I’m like IN AWE of how accurate this is. I DO live between day and night (like most people…because they just mean like…daytime, right?). I am GENEROUS with my ADVICE (/extremely judgmental and bossy). I TAKE TO THE ROAD IN BOTH HAPPINESS AND SORROW! this is amazing. Although apparently I should be a road guide or a…a marriage spokesman?? what job is that and how do I get it? LOVES IT! WORTH THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT HAVING MY EMAIL ADDRESS!
So that’s it for Part 2 of our trip through the Yucatan, but there’s much more to come. Like, the hotel (and its pool) and all the vegan food, plus a beach that I did…not…love. So fun! Stay tuned.
