February 24, 2009

So we woke up late this morning due to our excellent night last night. And thanks to Mom’s ingenious idea for putting the “don’t-come-knock-at-9-AM-to-see-if-we-have-laundry” sign on our door, we got up at 10. We moseyed on downstairs for breakfast and then back upstairs for showers and to get changed before the parade.

As it was though, we were rather out of luck when, at 12 o’clock, we were looking for a spot to watch the final Carnaval parade. This was rather unfortunate. Oddly enough, though there were a lot of still empty seats, they were all taken: paid for in advance where the people had tickets.

For a little while, we managed to squeeze behind a fence, but this seemed somehow particularly striking as a separation. This left us without really being able to “experience” the parade or really interact at all, even though we had a few left over beads from last night. That being the case, we decided to walk down to Paseo Montejo and see what was going on down there. Maybe we could get a better spot, or at least something would be happening. We ended up in a shady spot, sitting on some steps but really not able to see the parade, however enjoying the little children all dressed up for the day.

The way the city was recycling all the beer cans from the 5 day Carnaval was by allowing you to turn them in for shirts, ball caps and other hats all with the special Caranaval Logo. Katelyn had seen this the first night we were there, but the trick was you had to turn in 5 empty beer cans to get it, so we passed on that. Now today we realized that one mans trash is another mans treasure. There was a man standing near the tent where you turned in your cans. He had 2 trash bags of beer cans. So I said to Katelyn “go over there and ask him if we can buy some of those cans” So she asked and we actually bought empty beer cans from this man, 40 pesos for 20 beer cans so we could get shirts and ball caps. I never thought I’d see the day where I’d buy empty beer cans but I guess now I can say I’ll buy just about anything. Hey Bob…..I’m really trying to keep the spending in check, you can blame Katelyn for the trash purchase, she “had to have” those shirts.  You know how Katelyn is, she can’t throw away anything and I told her before she left not to bring home any trash, (candy wrappers in Spanish etc.) so I guess she putting her behavior in reverse.

We decided to call it day from Carnaval and headed back to the hotel where we rested at the pool and then headed up to the room to check into the cost of going to Chichen Itza. We ended up having to walk all the way over to the bus station which is a good 20 blocks away in order to buy the tickets but it all worked out. On the way back, we took a slightly different route and ended up right in the middle of an actual carnival where they were selling food full force with rides and games. In the end, we were swayed by very compelling aromas of churros and marquesitas for a “little” snack followed by some yucatecan ice cream which we had yet to buy while we’ve been here.

So actually making it back to the room, we thought one of the things we had bought while we’d been here had gone missing. We found it after tearing the room apart though …twice. So we were all set. Mom actually organized her luggage a little so hopefully that won’t be too much of a chore tomorrow evening and we can just enjoy ourselves. I’m really hoping that she isn’t too far over the weight limit (oops…)

And that’s where we are for the night. Writing up the blog, possibly going to watch a movie, possibly going to go have dinner and Ta-Da. That’ll be a wrap for Tuesday.

We did actually decide to get a little bit of dinner before settling in for the night. Because it's rather cold tonight, we went to the restaurant downstairs and ate there. It's always very nice when we eat there. They really make an effort to make sure everything is wonderful and open the door when you leave. It's a really great hotel in case anyone is planning on staying in Merida. =)

Love & Cheers,
Kate and Sunny