16 days in pre-Columbian Mexico and Guatemala

Mexico in December? Why??

Because the period chosen for our wedding coincides with the beginning of the dry season in Mexico, the best season to visit the country. The hurricanes (Emily, Katrina, Wilma) of this summer and autumn 2005 hit Yucatan, Chiapas and Guatemala hard but by December most of the locations were accessible for tourists.

We choose pre-colonial Mexico deciding for ourselves where to stop to sleep and how long to stay, booking from Italy the hotels, the internal flights, two mini tours (in Chiapas and Guatemala) and the car rental from Hertz.

Departure from Turin on 4 December (11:10 flight) to Frankfurt with Lufthansa to then avoid the stopover in the USA. At 13:40 we board for the transoceanic crossing (12 hours of flight), at 18:50 we're at Mexico City airport, the capital, El DeFe (el Distrito Federal). On the plane we filled in the immigration form ("Forma migratoria turistica") which must be presented at customs where it is stamped and returned with the passport also stamped. A tip: indicate as a precaution a few more days of stay than the days planned, after all it's valid for 180 days and you never know... in our case, then, the official instead of writing a precise number of days made a scribble. You then need to fill in a form for luggage, one is enough per family unit.

Having collected the luggage you arrive at the famous "traffic light" for the statistical check: for us it turns green and we can go to the counter to take a taxi: we pay $15 (or alternatively 152 pesos) to go to Zona Rosa. There is however a Metro station 300 metres from the airport exit. The taxi fares (taxi seguro) are fixed and based on the destination zone.

Our hotel is in Zona Rosa, a neighbourhood with streets named after European cities, full of consulates, embassies, hotels... Tired from the deliberately sleepless journey we go to sleep at 9 in the evening (for us by now it's almost 4 in the morning)...

5/12 (Monday) Biological alarm at 7, shower and breakfast at the supermarket near the hotel with pastries and a very long and boiling coffee in a big jug. Like good bewildered tourists we look for an exchange bureau (we find 12.20 pesos for 1 euro.....), then we're stopped by a policeman who offers us his help and proposes a guided tour by taxi with a friend of his, Juan. For 500p we accept to visit the quarter of the workshops that work silver, the Sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, a fabric shop and Teotihuacán. Among other things, being Monday the city museums are closed. Convinced... off we go!! First stop the silverware shop which obviously also lives thanks to these visits: they welcome us warmly, they show us how they engrave on sheet metal, they offer us beer and Margarita without insisting on the purchase.

With Juan during the journey we speak in Spanish, about a bit of everything (e.g. the invasion of the Chinese fabric market, energy sources, the favelas, the "reforma agraria", dance competitions...). Second stop the Sanctuary of the Madonna of Guadalupe already crowded with pilgrims (12 December is the feast of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe) and finally the site of Teotihuacán, preceded by a quick stop at a fabric shop where they show us the many uses of the agave (even as needle and thread) and offer us a glass of tequila... Teotihuacán, the city of the gods: seen from afar the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon look like hills, the first contact with pre-Columbian archaeology (in this case the work of the Olmecs) takes our breath away. You enter the site for 38p. We climb both Pyramids, it's hot but the air is dry.

There are almost more street vendors of obsidian objects (masks, necklaces, pyramids...) than tourists... As a first day we're satisfied and around 15:00 we return towards Mexico City retracing the ring road that passes alongside the favelas that surround the city.

6/12 We leave early for the Zocalo (the historic centre, around the main square) by metro (2p per ride): Plaza de la Constitution, the Catedral Metropolitana, el Sagrario, the Templo Mayor (from the outside), the Palacio National (free entry with an ID document) with the murals of Diego Rivera, Casa de Azulejos, Palace of Fine Arts, Palace of the Post Office. In our wandering on foot we pass in front of the Dulceria de Celaja on Avenue 5 Mayo at number 39, one of the pastry shops considered the best in the city. At number 52 of the same street there is instead the café El Popular. Having left the centre we go towards the Chapultepec woods. A nice walk in the park, a visit to the zoo (free entry), with an interview by a group of teenagers armed with a video camera for a school group project on the Zoo and tourists.

After the Zoo the Museum of Anthropology (entry 38p): beautiful!!! What some write is true: one should see the Museum as soon as one arrives in Mexico and then at the end of the trip to be able to know first what one will then see in the sites and then at the conclusion of the trip to truly understand the greatness of the civilisations that have succeeded one another in this stupendous land. Exhausted we return to the hotel.

7/12 Destination Tula: the buses leave from the Terminal Norte, by mistake we take a non-direct bus (40p): it will be a journey of almost two hours with stops at the refineries to drop off commuter workers but in the end we arrive at Tula, then with another bus for 5 km (cost 5p) we go to the site (entry 33p). Very few tourists, the restoration workers are more numerous!!! But it's a spectacular site with its Atlantes, the enormous stone statues over four and a half metres tall that supported the roof of the Pyramid, the work of the Toltecs. Majestic, beautiful they appear to us along the dirt path among the cacti. At the site we also see our first pelota playing field. Return to Mexico City with a bus directo (47p) and after a snack based on various sweets in the atrium of the Terminal Norte we return to the hotel.

General impressions of Mexico City: chaotic like every large metropolis (9 million in the city, 24 million official considering the whole conurbation), not as dirty, nor dangerous and polluted as they say. On the contrary, early in the morning everywhere people with bucket and mop wash the pavements and squares with soapy water and ammonia...No problem with the altitude and the rarefied air.

8/12 We leave Mexico City, destination Oaxaca (pronounced Uahaha) with a Click Mexicana flight. We stay at the Mision San Felipe, a nice hotel flagged on various Web sites 5 minutes from the centre: in reality it's 15 minutes away by minibus, kindly offered by the hotel at fixed times. Oaxaca is stupendous, its colours at sunset are unforgettable, as are some of its culinary specialities: the quesillo (spun cheese in the shape of a ball of yarn), the mole (a sauce based on cocoa and spices that accompanies chicken, more or less spicy), chocolate (Mayordomo obviously), the chapulines (grasshoppers fried with chilli).

Excellent climate, clear sky, breeze, warm sun...a real treat!! Absolutely worth seeing is the Catedral de S.Domingo, spectacular both outside and inside, the Zocalo, the covered market is characteristic.....but the whole city is beautiful, its streets, the pedestrian zone......a very lively city!

9/12 Double excursion by coach: Monte Albán (the capital of the Zapotec kingdom) departing at 8.30 from the lobby of the Hotel Riviera de l'Angel in Mina 518, cost 30p. In about 30 min covering 10 km towards the mountain you arrive at the site. At 9 we enter (38p) ahead of the tourist buses. Two hours are enough and at 11 we have the agreed return, we get dropped off in the city at a bus stop for Mitla thus avoiding going as far as Gate 9 of the Stazione di Seconda Clase. A journey of 90 minutes for 50 km on a very battered bus (cost 12p) and then you arrive a few minutes from the site (entry 30p), famous for the original colours that decorate the buildings of the Mixtec era. Having left the site we buy a 250 ml bottle of Mezcal for 50p.

10/12 In the morning a short tour of Oaxaca then a flight to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas. At the airport a driver will wait for us for a mini tour of Chiapas. The plane takes off late and we land in Tuxtla at 17:00. On the programme there's the excursion to the Cañon del Sumidero, which we do in complete darkness. It was predictable and avoidable. Too risky to leave Oaxaca at 15:15, a 50-minute delay makes us arrive at Chiapa de Corzo by now at sunset. And so we climb onto the boats and on a full-moon evening we travel through the Cañon without managing to see anything except the eyes of the vultures lit up by the torches and the flashes....Having left the Cañon they take us to S.Cristobal de Las Casas along a winding mountain road. We're in Chiapas!!!

11/12 On the programme is the excursion to the Indian villages: I'm a bit prejudiced about the genuineness of what we'll see but I know it's perhaps the only way to access that world. San Juan Chamula, the church, the market square, the ban on taking photographs, a quick in-and-out visit that leaves us a bit unsatisfied (we passed by the cemetery, very characteristic, and the guide, Italian, made us move on...). Then Zinacantán and the visit to a family community that prepares tortillas for us and shows us how they use the hand loom. We buy a few handmade placemats, in the typical colours....Here too everything seems pre-packaged......

In the late morning we're back in San Cristobal: its churches (the baroque Church of S.Domingo, the cathedral, the Church of the Señora de Guadalupe), the amber shop (good value, especially the red amber) run by friends of our guide, the Indian market (where we see fabrics similar to those sold in Zinacantán but at a "precio más barato"!!!! Luckily we don't see the ones we chose at the market......) Children everywhere surround you to sell you fabrics, pens with caps depicting Marcos, necklaces, bracelets....you'd like to give everyone some pesos but in the end you satisfy only a few outstretched hands.

Note for Italians orphaned of their coffee: in the Zocalo square between calle Francisco Madero and calle Real de Guadalupe, inside the "Astur Viajes" agency, besides the Internet stations there's an excellent Italian-style coffee to try!

12/12 It's the day of the feast of the feast of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe and we leave San Cristobal heading for Palenque. We cross Chiapas, the narrow mountain roads jammed with pilgrims on foot, running, in vans decorated in honour of the Virgin.....Along the way the planned stop of just an hour at Agua Azul: an enchanting landscape, incredible colours, green-blue water....then another hour at the Misol-ha waterfalls, very spectacular and evocative and immortalised in the film "Predator" with Arnold Schwarzenegger. At 17:00 we're at the hotel in Palenque, the cool of Chiapas and Oaxaca are a memory. Even the beauty of S.Cristobal is a memory: Palenque is really ugly, only shops for tourists and places to eat.......all amidst the chaos of cars and humidity.

13/12 8:30 a.m., we are already at the site, a suffocating humid heat weighs down your skin and your T-shirt; at the entrance two Lacandon natives in white tunics have their picture taken next to their everyday tools, to the delight of the tourists who are unloaded from the buses…. The most important Maya site, the first one we see immersed in the jungle, is really well kept, lushly green, all tidy, even too beautiful. Of course in the rainy season it becomes impossible to visit without collapsing from the heat. A toucan soars through the air and howler monkeys catch our attention. Only a tiny part of the site, about 5%, has been wrested from the jungle; at Palenque there is the temple where King Pakal was buried, whose sarcophagus, skeleton and funerary mask are now kept at the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.

End of the mini-tour of Chiapas, free afternoon with a swim in the pool.

14/12 Second package: from Palenque to Yaxchilán: departure at 6:00, at 8:30 we are at Corozal, the border point with Guatemala on the Usumacinta River. We go down to the river and with a motorboat and half an hour of navigation we reach Yaxchilán, a magnificent Maya site in the forest. We are the first tourists of the day, the howler monkeys exchange messages from one tree to another, their howl pierces the silence, they seem to be just a few meters above us, it's not a howl…it's almost a roar. It feels like being the first explorers of the site, much wilder and more unspoiled compared to Palenque. A unique experience.

For lunch we return to Corozal, then after completing the formalities to emigrate to Guatemala via the river we sail toward Betel: a landing on the sand, 500 meters among the dunes and then the Guatemalan van waiting for us: $5 and you enter Guatemala after filling out the usual entry form. Ahead of us are 80 km of dirt road full of potholes and dust before reaching a bit of asphalt. After almost 3 hours we are in Santa Elena / Flores for the Tikal tour the next day. A tip: our Palenque – Flores tour with a visit to Yaxchilán was well organized, however we would have liked to see Bonampak too. It would therefore be worth spending two days to visit Bonampak and Yaxchilán on the first day, stopping to sleep in Corozal (or in Bonampak if need be) and moving on to Guatemala the following day.

Flores is a characteristic little town on Lake Petén Itzá and is connected to the town of Santa Elena by a 500-meter-long causeway. Characteristic colorful buses and hundreds of red and yellow motor-trucks used as taxis travel along the dusty little streets of Santa Elena.

15/12 Excursion to Tikal, the site we consider the most evocative of the whole trip. After an hour's drive from Flores you enter the nature reserve in which Tikal is located (entrance 50 quetzales). The pyramids at Tikal are unique, often taller than the forest. It is a very extensive site; well-marked jungle trails lead to the pyramids and temples wrested from nature. Wooden stairs flank the structures and allow you to climb up. The experience of ascending to the top of the pyramids, especially that of the "Mundo Perdido," is hard to explain: on the roof of the world, higher than any tree, with the upper parts of the other pyramids jutting out of the forest, absolute silence, the sensation of being close to the Supramundo, Paradise in the Maya vision of the World (Inframundo, that is, the Underworld, the Mundo and the Supramundo).

A more acrobatic experience, on the other hand, was the one at Temple V (especially the descent down the staircase…..). Spider monkeys and wild turkeys accompany us along the trails. Three hours for a unique site, unmissable even though it is a bit out of the way compared to the tours of Mexico.

16/12 First and only mishap of the trip: the TACA flight from Flores to Cancun at 11:30 is delayed several times, then cancelled and finally reinstated at 11 p.m. A day lost among the airport, customs ($33 to leave), the hotel, various waits, conversations with the TACA staff and finally the departure at night. Arrival in Cancun at 2 in the morning, some arguing with the customs officials (at Corozal they had stamped our passports to leave Mexico but had not taken our immigration form since we would be re-entering after 3 days: in Cancun they dispute our possession of that form, take it, have a new one filled out, stamp it and give it back insisting on knowing the days of our stay in Mexico and in the end we have to tell them which flight we will return to Italy on…).

Baggage collection with the usual single form per family unit, green light and finally more arguments with the TACA people. Our plans for the 16th would have been: arrival in Cancun at 1 p.m., pick-up of the rental car at Hertz and departure for Merida with an overnight stay. At 3 in the morning on December 17 we leave the TACA counter without having obtained anything except words and promises and get in the car heading toward Uxmal, the destination planned for December 17. Traveling along the Autopista 180, after 380 km, devastated by the sleepless night, we arrive in Uxmal (about 240p in tolls total).

17/12 After a few hours of sleep, looking for a bank we go to Tikul (about 25 km) but both are closed since it's Saturday morning, so we withdraw with the ATM (at this point, to withdraw with the ATM we could have done it inside the Uxmal site too). After lunch we visit the Uxmal site (38p entrance plus 50p for the site's "cultural activities": a wristband is put on that allows access to the evening "Sound and Light" show). The tiredness makes itself felt and the suffocating, torrid heat of the Yucatan doesn't help: it's a climate more suited to iguanas than to tourists.. And of iguanas in Uxmal there are everywhere! An approaching storm makes us leave the site early. Looking for a gas station we go to Muna and discover that at 5 p.m. a bullfight with 12 young bulls is scheduled. We negotiate two entrances for 50p and climb onto a wooden stand.

It's a small-town bullfight, lots of kids and families in the stands, tourists are practically absent! We see 3 bulls, teased by young bullfighters with the muleta, then caught with the lasso by a horde of cowboys and taken out……a bullfight thankfully without bloodshed and pointless cruelty.

18/12 Departure for Chichen Itzá, arrival at 9 at the site thus beating the tours of the tourists from the sea; at 11 indeed there are people everywhere, very many groups of distracted Italians taking photos with their cell phones thinking of the holiday village near Cancun. So much chaos, heat, hit-and-run tourists for a site with perhaps the most photographed pyramid published in guidebooks….Entrance as at Uxmal at 38p plus 50p for the "cultural activities." In the evening the evocative "Sound and Light" show ruined by the usual storm.

19/12 From Chichen Itzá to Tulum to visit the only wonderful site by the sea. Entrance at 38p. Unforgettable photos with the ocean behind us, the blue of the sky and the sea…..then after 30 km we reach Akumal at the "all inclusive" village for the last 40 hours of sea and absolute relaxation in Mexico. The usual afternoon storm, the trip to Playa del Carmen to drop off the car and return by taxi to Akumal (156p).

20/12 Last and only full day of sun and sea, wake-up at 5 to photograph the sunrise…the bitter surprise of a leaden sky, breakfast, then to the beach, a quick swim, fleeing from the imminent storm that lasts from 11 to 5 p.m.!!! A disaster, an afternoon of entertainment in the hotel lobby playing and cleaning up at Bingo!!!

21/12 Overcast sky at dawn and bright sunshine from 9 in the morning but at 12 we have the transfer to Cancun. At 16:20 the flight to Mexico City with Mexicana, at 20:40 the Boeing 737 for Frankfurt awaits us. At 14:00 on December 22, after almost 10 hours of flight, we are in Germany, a quiet trip trying to sleep a bit. Three hours at the airport, a couple of beers and at 17:40 the flight to Turin with an on-time landing at 18:55 at Caselle.

Various tips

At the airport the exchange rate is fairly favorable, in any case at the various exchange offices you can easily find a rate of 12.30p per euro. Some difficulty in the Yucatan with exchanging (strange, being so touristic…they offer us the conversion "euros into pesos" but at the dollar value).

To make phone calls, look for prepaid cards like the Andina one: by dialing a code you get about 36 minutes of conversation to Europe at a cost of 100p. Using Tel-Mex phone cards the cost is about 20p per minute but the card is ejected when the credit drops below 20p. Triband cell phones work, those with GPRS receive texts, normal ones search for the network without success.

Absolutely remember the adapter for 115V power.

Guatemala: better to have a few dollars (at least 100) for the entry and exit expenses. They don't accept euros except at the same value as dollars (1 to 1). In Flores we exchange 1$ for 7 quetzales.

Final considerations

Apart from Merida, not visited because of the cancelled TACA flight, and Cobá, planned for the day of the Tulum visit and then eliminated from our travel plan since we had already seen enough sites, we managed to see and do everything we had planned in Italy. So all good!!

One more week would have allowed us to see Bonampak, the North of the country or the Atlantic coast or a few more days at the sea, but you can't have everything in life…..for us, instead, 16 days in Mexico plus the two days of travel. In short, for Mexico you need at least 20 full days on site.

Finally, thanks to all those who came before us and told the story of their travel experience!