Starting again organically in East Sussex

Mexico

After the upset of Obi, we left Vedanta just house sitting and headed to Mexico. This piece is only about our time in Mexico so if you're not interested in my "ramblings," opinions and observations about another country, please sign off immediately.

Frank absolutely loves flying whereas I'm quite indifferent to it and we're both aware that it increases our carbon footprint. I used to say that planting trees on our land in Portugal and using homegrown firewood for heating helped to offset the flying. I no longer have that excuse but I am planning to plant a few trees around our new home in East Sussex. Besides, there's a lot of hypocrisy around the subject. A couple of old friends from my biology student days claimed to be "absolutely passionate" about their carbon footprints and never fly within Europe but take the train. Then they spent Christmas in The Falklands.

We landed in Mexico City and our first impression was the hazey atmosphere and a malodour everywhere. Having grown up on the borders of East London I'm basically an "Essex girl" without the injected lips, bleached hair and teeth, and botoxed brow, but I don't enjoy cities. I used to get a headache just at the thought of taking the District Line into "town." I confess to being a complete philistine when it comes to art galleries and museums, excluding natural history and science museums. There we were in a city of some 24 million people. The Spanish had decimated the indigenous folk all those centuries ago and now we tourists have countless pyramids to visit and museums full of relics. We did the almost obligatory hot air balloon ride over Teotihuacan (don't ask me to pronounce it) which was fabulous, followed by three hours to explore the hugely extensive ancient city site.

We read almost every information board and I was surprised that there were no mentions of human sacrifices, though there are apparently lots of children's remains buried at the corners of the pyramid of the sun. (I struggled over which is correct, children's or childrens'. It's an interesting bit of grammar.) It then transpired that although it's called "Pyramid of the Sun" it was actually the God of Water who was worshipped there by the original civilisation, the Teotihuacan's. I'd never heard of them but they were succeeded by the Aztecs, who I had heard of.

While we're on the subject of pyramids and civilisations, I'll jump to later in the holiday, we visited Coba on the Yucatan Peninsula which is another huge archaeological site with ruins of the Mayan civilisation. We avoided the more famous site, Chichen Itza, because it was off our route and much more likely to be very crowded. Coba is another enormous site and in the middle of steamy, humid jungle. We scoffed at the visitors hiring bikes and especially those hiring taxi tricycles. Some oversized visitors seemed to have been obliged to hire one tricycle each by the sensible Mexican riders engaged to propel them around. After walking several miles, drenched with sweat, we stopped scoffing.

I, of course, was more interested in the orange flowering trees which on closer inspection turned out to be a species of parasitic plant, like our mistletoe. A quick search revealed it to probably be "Psittacanthus mayanus.

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Then there was a beautiful fern in the undergrowth belonging to the Maidenhair Fern family, which has about 250 species in it

The Ocellated turkey which totally ignored everyone about it was magnificent except for the weird orange blobs over it’s face.

I digress. I searched for information about the Mayan and Aztec civilisations. Apparently, the Mayans had an advanced form of written language incorporating lots of hieroglyphs like the ancient Egyptians. They had an impressively accurate calendar, some advanced mathematics and astronomy. However, there are some pretty graphic details about their human sacrifices and offering human blood to their gods which they believed required it for sustenance. They (and the Aztecs it seems) sometimes tortured their offerings, bleeding them from lips, tongues, genitals and other sensitive areas before cutting out the still beating hearts which they accessed either through the abdomen and diaphragm or by crunching through the sternum or ribcage. Then they might decapitate the bodies, throw them down the pyramid steps to a waiting priest who would skin them and perform dome kind of ceremonial dance wearing the skin. I mistakenly read all this after I'd eaten breakfast one day and even now, writing it, I feel nauseous. I appreciate that like language, societies evolve and we shouldn't judge historical events and practices by current standards, but I started to find it difficult to regard these ancient peoples as civilised. Modern definitions include "treating people fairly." Internet searches often call the ritual sacrifices "pre-Columbus" but it seems that at least a few Spanish Franciscan Friars, bent on converting the Mayans to Christianity had their beating hearts ripped out.

As a self confessed philistine, I rapidly lose interest in cities. I try not to enter any churches, which I consider to be built by immensely wealthy religious organisations with money provided by poor, subjugated, brainwashed people and it seems that the South American pyramids and temples fall into the same category. I rapidly concluded that after seeing one pile of ancient rocks, they all look much the same. Impressive monuments to delusional worship.

My main memories of flying over Teotihuacan are the fields of freshly planted cabbages, the dead or dying 2 metre plus stems of a sunflower relative and huge trees covered in  red-pink berries. There were large areas of the "sunflowers" and I wondered whether they were Jerusalem artichokes, which are apparently native to North America. Our balloon pilot didn't know, but if they are part of the local staple diet I wouldn't want to eat them as a staple. I grew them on an allotment thirty years ago and their indigestible carbohydrate caused me such painful bloating and wind. Then it took years to eradicate them because they're so invasive. The huge trees on closer inspection turned out to be Schinus molle. If you ever buy "pink peppercorns" they're from this tree and absolutely nothing to do with true black and white peppercorns which come from a vine, Piper nigrum. Schinus molle is actually native to the Peruvian Andes but has often been planted worldwide as an ornamental. It has become invasive in many areas and further planted banned there.

My main memories of the Historic Centre of Mexico City are:

The beautiful garden outside our beautiful hotel which was planted entirely with different species of Agave.

The historic architecture which looks like so many European cities.

The crowds, and the Mexicans being far more polite and courteous than New Yorkers.

Massively hiked up prices for food and wines in restaurants. (That was almost everywhere in Mexico. The theme seeming to be "let's rip off wealthy tourists."

The noisy restaurant. Frank had pre-booked a Sonora Grill which Amex was promoting with a really good deal. We booked an early table so that we would feel safe walking there, expecting to get a cab back to our hotel. We were shown to a table in a corner with a loudspeaker directly above us. The music was blaring at ear damaging decibels and the base vibrated through us. I eventually succeeded in getting Frank to hear that I couldn't possibly enjoy a meal beneath the speakers. The waiter eventually understood our gesticulations, after being unable to hear us and he called the "host." (They seem to use that term for the maitre dis.) She eventually understood too and led us to another table. It was equally loud. Then she took us to another room, through closed glass doors and we hoped the walls and doors would provide some relief from the relentless noise. There were speakers everywhere blaring out "music" at the same volume and I now totally get why we call them "loudspeakers." I shouted that I couldn't possibly enjoy a relaxed meal in an environment where I cannot hold a conversation, my insides are being vibrated by the base and my sense if hearing is in danger of being destroyed. Frank agreed and we left apologetically. Why did I say "I'm sorry but I can't eat in this noise?" At least it was still daylight so we walked back to the hotel and ate there, surrounded by music not playing at an earsplitting volume.

I now acknowledge that I've turned into my father who used to say Top of The Pops didn't play music, it was just noise.

We left Mexico City and spent a whole day travelling to Cozumel which is an island off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. From the air, it looked as though the peninsula was almost entirely covered in undamaged jungle. We landed in Cancun and headed straight away from the now sprawling metropolis which has grown out of the package holiday boom but the roadside was peppered with holiday resorts all the 75km to Playa del Carmen. Cozumel has marine reserves, protected coral reefs, sandy beaches and swathes of seagrass where green turtles graze. It sounds idyllic, though it's also, arguably, famous for being where the lovely Kirsty McColl was killed by a speedboat. Or was it a jet-ski? Either way, the outcome was fatal. Just thinking about it made me nervous about the prospect of snorkelling.

Frank had chosen a hotel as far away from the main town as possible. As we made the crossing by ferry we saw a number of huge cruise-ships and immediately after leaving the ferry we saw the "high end" jewellers and designer label shops targeting the passengers. Apparently, in high season there can be up to a dozen cruise-ships docking there each day. As the taxi took us towards our hotel we passed hotel after hotel, and were later told by some people on the same snorkelling trip as us that the sea was brown and murky on one side of the ferry port, but cleaner and clearer on the other side. Fortunately we had chosen the clearer side. It seemed that there was a mismatch between the number of tourists and the infrastructure to deal with their waste. The inevitable victim is the environment.

We checked in after dark, tired and hungry. It was an "all inclusive" hotel, a chain called Secrets and associated with Hyatt, so we were looking forward to not being ripped off for overpriced food and wine. It wasn't cheap. Sadly our room, though mainly clean, looked as though it had seen better days, there were no towels, the bathroom tiles didn't look well cleaned, the toilet leaked and we switched on the extractor fan to try and reduce the lingering smell. We decided to report the lack of towels and get something to eat. The seafood restaurant sounded good and we were on the coast, so we went there but discovered a queue and no guarantee of when a table would be free. Could we reserve a table for the next day? No. None of the restaurants reserve tables and we were advised to get there at 6.30. In that case, we were in Mexico so let's eat in the Mexican restaurant. There was no waiting time so we were quickly seated, had a glass of house wine in hand (any other wines cost the earth) and starters and main courses ordered. We ordered different starters but got the same. That was ok because they were good but it ended up as a standing joke. Whatever we ordered there was usually something wrong. We went back to our room, still no towels. Next morning we woke up to this view from our balcony

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We went to reception after breakfast to complain about the smelly, leaking toilet and ask whether there was another room available. The duty manager was unimpressed. "This is not a new building and if I give you another room it will be the same." We agreed to look at an available room after he had arranged for it to be cleaned. He was not wrong. It smelled worse than the one we'd got, so we stayed put. Room service that day changed our bath-towels but didn't leave bath mats. Then the daily water aerobics started with ear-splitting music vibrating around the hotel and across the beach. We had managed to discover that each restaurant had days when they closed so we went early to the seafood restaurant. Not early enough I'm afraid. We queued. The host slowly seated a few people, ignored the queue and cleaned tables. We chatted to a waiting American couple who had been advised to go to the bar but there was no system to call them when a table was available and when they returned they were kept waiting again while people way below them on the list were being seated. He eventually took our names and advised us to go to the bar. We had a few drinks and returned to the queue finding that he was ignoring us again. The US couple had now eaten and told us not to bother waiting but go to the French restaurant because the food was infinitely better. We abandoned our wait and went to the French restaurant, but there was no sign of the host at the desk and several others waiting. I went into the restaurant and asked a waiter who the host was. She was cleaning tables so I asked whether she would come to the desk and deal with those waiting. She did, with a "face like a pound of tripe" and put our names on a list, saying that it might be half an hour before we could be seated. I was not impressed. There were three empty tables, no-one waiting to be seated, so I started to complain but she simply turned her back and walked away. I walked away too. I went to reception and demanded that the duty manager came to the restaurant. I think a telephone call was made and we were seated quickly. The manager arrived with a sidekick and we very politely told them that the hotel seemed to gave some serious management and attitude issues. Only one restaurant seemed to take names, sit you at the bar and call you in when a table was ready. None of it was so bad that we were going to check out, but it was a bit reminiscent of Fawlty Towers. We guessed that because it's an "all inclusive" hotel, the staff don't get many tips, are probably badly paid and consequently don't give a shite. Be warned if you're considering Mexico for a holiday.

We borrowed snorkels and masks on the first day and enjoyed the sea directly in front of the hotel. It was amazing. We could lie in the water just a metre or so from the edge and it was like immersing our heads into a marine aquarium with a variety of beautiful fish seemingly as curious about us as we were about them, but I'll write more about the snorkelling in my next blog.

Before signing off on this one, I need to write a little about our smelly room's balcony. As dusk fell on our first evening on Cozumel, we were enjoying a glass of something cold, leaning across the balcony rail when we realised that there were bats right in front of us, sometimes almost in our faces. We sat back in the chairs and Frank was convinced that he could hear them through the balcony wall and we started to wonder whether they were roosting in the drainage channel through the wall. By now it was fully dark and we were too late to see any leaving. The next evening we returned from a boat trip to the marine reserve too late to check, so on our last evening we made sure that we were on the balcony before dusk. As dusk descended we both could hear squeaking in the drainage channel so Frank lay full length on the balcony floor, peering through the channel while I leaned over the rail and focussed my phone camera on the exit hole. He spotted the first one crawling from, presumably a cavity in the wall, into the channel but it probably sensed him and crawled back. Then they started to emerge, and it's quite shocking how fast a bat can crawl and launch itself into the air. He kept calling "here comes one" or "now two" and I kept clicking my camera button, hoping for the best. I'm rubbish at taking videos on my phone and I hoped that as it got darker the flash and a still photo would be the best option. We estimated that at least 50 bats were roosting and I ended up with blurred images of 25

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Never mind "bats in the belfry" we had "bats in the balcony," literally.

We made no mention of them to hotel staff in fear that they would try to clear them out, but for us, they were the best bit about the building. We hope that if it ever gets a badly needed "upgrade," those bats aren't disturbed. Mind you, it wasn't just keeping  the hot, humid air out of our room that made us keep the sliding doors closed. There are vampire bats in Yucatan!

If you can bear to read more of my holiday stories with a bigger natural history content, read my next blog. If not, just skip because I'm back in East Sussex and I'll find some more gardening stories to write about soon.