Ola Mexico!

On Sunday Lauren, Katie, Britney and I had an excursion of our own! Having yet ANOTHER free weekend, we decided that Sunday we would go have an adventure of our own. So we woke up early at 7:00 (which is earlier than we get up for school so it’s early) and got ready to catch a water taxi to MEXICO for the day! We left Pedro’s at 7:15 and by 7:45 we had all purchased tickets, filled out custom forms and had our passports stamped to head north to Mexico. The water taxi went a lot faster than I thought it would. It was a fairly small boat and all the passengers sat below. The windows were open which allowed for a nice breeze to come in and an occasional ocean spray. Most passengers fell asleep but the 4 of us made friends with a guy who actually lived in Wrightsville beach for a few years (small world right?) and played card games for a majority of the ride.

It couldn’t have been a more perfect day. It was sunny and warm as it has been every day here but there was an exceptional breeze that kept us cool. We got off the boat at Chetumal, Mexico which was our final destination. We went through customs again, had our passport officially stamped for Mexico and exchanged our Belize money for pesos. I had brought $60 Belize with me which is $30 American and in return I got $333 pesos. We headed off to the “old market” to check out what they had to offer. I was so excited, we walked the streets and I couldn’t help but to smile the entire time. I was in Mexico and it felt like Mexico should feel. There were actually paved streets here (something we haven’t seen in a while) with stoplights and actual cars like Nissan Sentras and Volkswagens. Spanish was everywhere (and was a little overwhelming). We definitely turned heads, as we were the ONLY Caucasian people on the streets, we didn’t see any others the entire time we were there.  The sun was shining, it was warm and beautiful and palm trees lined the streets.

We were quite hungry by the time we reached old market, which was about 7 blocks from the port, so we searched for food. There were many fruit stands and lots of open meat stands which was something we are definitely not accustomed to! There was raw meat, mostly beef, hanging from hooks and laying out in piles on tables. There was also an open fish market as well that had fish that had be brought right out of the ocean and they were skinning it and filleting it right in front of us! We finally found some food that was already cooked. Not sure what it was called because the woman spoke NO English and we communicated via hand signals, pointing, repeating things each other said and head nods. I got two of the tasty morsels, which were like fry jacks. One had just cheese in the middle and the other had chicken, rice and spices. They were very tasty and hit the spot – we had our first taste of Mexico J

We walked around the old market a little longer, observing and taking pictures. Then we tried to go to the Mayan museum however they wanted almost $60 pesos for admission and wouldn’t let us in at the student price of $11 pesos because we didn’t have identification. Even though that is really only about $6 American to get in, we didn’t want to spend that much money so early in the day so we decided if we had time we would come back. Needless to say we didn’t have time but it is something I would like to go back and visit in the future. We then ventured to take a bus to new market in which we thought would be more modern per say. However, this was not the case. The new market was simply bigger! It was lined with fruit stands galore, so much fruit it was over flowing into the streets. Here there was not only raw beef but whole dead, raw chickens sprawled out on tables. Some of the stands had the chickens cut up into their different parts, buckets of chicken feet, buckets of chicken hearts, buckets of chicken heads … There were very few stands that did not sell either fruit or raw meat. On the other side of the street they sold more already cooked food and very random items but nothing that I would consider buying as a souvenir. Much of it was clothing at a cheaper price than you would find in the mall.

We ventured around new market for quite a while until we started getting hungry again. Upon coming to Chetumal we were informed that there was a McDonalds here! Having not had “American food” in about 4 weeks, we were craving a good American hamburger and some fries. We caught a taxi, which isn’t hard to do because they are all slowing down staring when they pass us anyways. Catching the taxi was the easy part, communicating to the taxi driver where we wanted to go, not so much. Katie was our chief translator, she knew the most Spanish out of all of us which isn’t say much! With what little Spanish words she knew, she tried to describe to the man where we wanted to go. Then she resorted to drawing words on her hands such as “shop”, “mall” and “buy. Then we started drawing pictures on her hands, a shopping bag! All the mean while Lauren is running around trying to find someone to translate for us and Britney and I are in the background repeating “tell him we want to go to McDonalds, he’ll understand that”. We were quite a site. We must have struggled with this poor man for over 5 minutes before we came to the word that described the place we wanted to go – “PLAZA”! We wanted to go to the plaza!

We piled into the taxi and he began driving us, speaking over his radio to another taxi driver. They were laughing back and forth and Katie was able to catch a little bit of what they were saying – they were making fun of the four of us and how we take pictures of EVERYTHING! Haha, which is true but we couldn’t help ourselves. He finally let us out at the mall, the taxi ride was only $25 pesos, the equivalent to $2.50 American! We walked once around the mall, enough time to consume the ice cream we all bought upon entering the front door. Deciding that it wasn’t anything we couldn’t buy in America and we didn’t’ want to waste our money we headed out and across the street to the big, golden arches. Being as though I don’t like hamburgers from McDonalds much in the first place, I was quite satisfied with a small thing of friends. Katie, Lauren and Britney all got happy meals and let me tell you, I think they were more excited about them than any kid in there that got a happy meal. We savored our little piece of America and then seeing that we still had almost an hour and a half left until we had to be back at the port, we decided that we would check out the zoo that we passed on the way to the mall. Getting to the zoo by taxi was much easier, zoo is a pretty common word and it’s easy to act out a monkey or jaguar.

We got to the zoo and found it was more set up of like a jungle. There were not really specific places in which each animal lived like zoos in America have; they were all kind of nestled into an actual jungle that had mazes of paths going through it. We walked through the paths, nonchalantly at first. We saw birds, lots of birds, even a flamingo! Then we discovered that there was a floating walk away above the trees that we could walk on and see the jungle from above. That was really exciting and gave us a whole new view of the zoo. We still hadn’t seen many animals but it was 30 minutes until we had to be back at the port. When we were coming down from the floating walk way, we ran into a boy who worked at the park and asked us if we had seen the jaguar or the monkeys, the two main attractions. When we said “no” he told us he would take us there. We figured it wouldn’t take too long so we allowed him to show us where these animals were. I’m glad that we got to see them. The monkey was a bit gross, I don’t like monkeys much in the first place. The jaguars though were so elegant! They were the only animals that were behind a glass wall, and for good reason, but they got right up to the wall and were looking at us. They are such magnificent animals, they truly are! Made me miss Brody a little J Well we got so caught up looking at the monkey and jaguars that when we looked at our watch we realized we had 11 minutes to get back to the port. Immediately we started running through the maze of paths, trying to find our way out. We were dodging in and out of pathways, going off the path, trying despertatly to find our way out. Finally we did and we were on the right path. I was leading the way and we were walking with a bit of a pep in our step as you would say. We were passing over a bride which had a water fountain to either side of it which made the bridge slightly slippery. I had just gotten over the bridge and was about to turn around the corner when suddenly my feet came out from underneath me and I came crashing down on my right side. I didn’t catch myself quick enough and my butt thudded when it hit the ground. As quick as I could I popped back up and continued walking, hoping that no one saw me. Unfortunately Lauren, Katie and Britney did and they were all doubled over, peeing their pants and crying with laughter. Luckily nothing was hurt but my pride so I could laugh along with them however I am sure that I will never know exactly how funny I looked.

We eventually made it out of the zoo, our sides still in stitches from my tumble. We caught a taxi, showed him a picture of where we wanted to go (the easiest method we've tried yet) and got to the port. Luckily they knew we were supposed to be on the boat back so they were looking for us. We were only a few minutes late and they took our passports and handed us papers to get back into Belize. Then they asked us if we paid the “exit fee”. We had paid a small exit fee of $7.50 Belize when we left that morning so we assumed that’s what they were talking about. It wasn’t, apparently there is an exit fee to leave Mexico as well. When we inquired how much it was they replied 262. In our minds we thought $2.62 pesos. NOPE – it was $262 pesos! We were shocked!! Even though that was only a little over $26 American dollars, it was the most that any of us had spent all day. Thank goodness we hadn’t found anything nice to buy or we would all still be in Mexico because we wouldn’t have had any money. It was a slight buzz kill to our day, especially since we didn’t want to leave yet. There was still so much to do but we had such a short time there.

On our way back we were allowed to sit on top of the boat with the driver. It was extremely windy up there but it was such a different view than the one we had below on the way there. The driver was really nice and pointed out landmarks along the coast here and there. He pointed out the different parts of Belize, some Mayan ruins that dotted the coast line and even Leonardo DiCaprio’s own private island that he bought. Apparently he has only been there once since he purchased it. It was a decent sized island, about 2 miles long, uninhabited. I’m going to have to call him up and ask about him building me a house there! Across from his island is an island that is owned by the man who brought Coca-Cola to Belize and is now a billionaire. Leo’s island was bigger.

The ride back took a little over 2 hours, the driver said it’s the longest it’s ever taken him to get from Mexico to Belize but I think it was because he got caught up playing tour guide! Over all it was an AMAZING day and it only gave me the urge to travel more and more! The four of us who went today are hoping that we will get the chance to travel to Guatemala when we go inland. Stay tuned to find out if we do J As for tomorrow, it’s my last Monday teaching in the schools – BITTER SWEET!