After driving through and visiting so many towns and cities, we get a feeling as soon as we arrive. Sometimes you love a place and don't want to leave and sometimes you can't leave soon enough.
Merida was always on the top of our list of cities to visit in Mexico. We heard a lot of great things about it. So when we we're on the outskirts of town we we're really excited to finally arrive.....
Maybe it was the three checkpoint searches by the military, federal and state police we had to go through before entering the city. We had to open everything up and answer many questions. Thing is, searching our truck is a very time consuming task.
Maybe it was getting lost for over two hours trying to find the historic district with no air conditioning. Anna was overheating and so we're we. The street numbers had no rhyme or reason to them at all and the honking horns while trying to negotiate the streets didn't help. Justin was at wits end and put the truck into neutral and stepped out shaking a fist at a man - making him back up. Eventually we hailed a cab and followed him into the historic district.
Maybe it was the heat and the high humidity. The temperature was in the low forties everyday. Neither of us in our lifetimes had ever experienced suffocating heat like this. We didn't make the mistake of leaving our hotel room between ten and four again, as the first time we did we nearly died (our soles of our sandals we're melting.) There were many things we wanted to do and places we wanted to see but we couldn't handle the heat.
Maybe it was the hotel we stayed at. First off, our shower had a root system coming from the tree outside. Secondly, one of the three beds had dirt, hairs and some curious stains that could of been blood. But the best was the first morning we woke up to an army of black dots moving along the wall. Upon further inspection we saw that they were ants removing Annas food bit by bit. And when I say army, I mean hundreds. Some of the larger pieces of Annas food had six ants moving it up the wall and out the window. There was a lot of screaming and jumping going on by one of us. Wherever we would move her food the ants would find it.
Maybe it was the fact that we have grown so accustom to Mexican hospitality and courtesy and we didn't really get it in Merida. We think it has to do with the fact that there are many pushy, rude tourists here. We're not used to the crowds and aggressive sales approach by the vendors. NO, WE ARE NOT ON OUR HONEYMOON.
Don't get us wrong, Merida is a beautiful colonial city. It has an amazing center square, beautiful buildings, many museums. Its in a great central location to see many ruins, close to the ocean and cenotes. There are lots of cultural events going on and tours to take. In short, its a great place to go on vacation. We really thought we would love Merida and we tried too. But we didn't, it just wasn't the place for us. Oh well.
