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01. 05. 2007 Playa del Carmen (MEXICO)

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May Day: everyone's resting, but we're always on the move! After a 12-hour flight, here we are already working, in a van taking us to the hotel. The transfer from Cancun to Playa del Carmen lasts about an hour and, as always, I'm fascinated by the first shy contact with the new country! This time the hotel entrance was a bit different: there was no row of waiters with multicoloured cocktails waiting for us, no full team of entertainers for the classic welcome, or a thousand porters pouncing on our suitcases, but a sleepy "Pedro" who calmly has us fill in a little registration form... without giving us the "mythical tourist bracelet"! The room is far below the standards Aunt Anna has accustomed us to, but it's fine all the same!

02. 05. 2007 Playa del Carmen (MEXICO)

After a short sleep because of the jet lag, we're straight out to organise the first stages of our trip. First of all we need to change money... I still can't get over how the clever girl at the bureau de change tried to swindle us out of 100 euros, and if it hadn't been for the attentive Nick (known as Mastice) she would even have managed it! So: watch out! A typical lunch in a great little restaurant by the street: "Los Portales", complete with atmosphere included in the price! A nice plate of "asado" chicken, rice and spicy black beans! With a full stomach we organised the first of our various expeditions: Merida. We'll leave tonight at midnight on a bus from the ADO company, and 5 hours of travelling await us. The spirit of adventure, which has faded in me over these years, starts to light up again, a bit like my neck burnt by the sun...

I feel like the old inter-railer I once was, with a great desire for adventure and discovery!

03. 05. 2007 Merida (MEXICO)

Destination: Merida, capital of Yucatan, also because, as we said: "Merida is worth it!" Once we arrive, armed with our now inseparable "Routard" (the "Lonely Planet" of the poor), the "search for the lost little hotel" begins! We wander like three zombies through the lonely streets of a Merida that is about to wake up at 5 in the morning.

Thanks to our guide we find a cheap place to sleep: Hotel Margarita, which at just over 5 euros per person per night becomes our base for the next 3 days! It's an old colonial building that recalls ancient splendours, but it's quite welcoming — though at 5.30 in the morning, with a receptionist still asleep and all the lights off except those lighting a big Madonna and a Christmas tree (in May!) and an entrance made of a big gloomy barred door (like a prison), as in the most classic of horror films, it didn't leave much hope! It looked like the start of the film "Hostel", but appearances, luckily, were deceiving!

Breakfast in the centre, in the Zocalo! In that bar, with a lovely fresh fruit salad on the plate, the big Mexican flag waving there in front of us and the people passing by... what feelings!

At 9.30 we took advantage of the free tour of the historic centre, but after half an hour, a bit bored, we hopped in a taxi to visit the cemetery, famous for its colourful tombs where each colour corresponded to a different type of death...

But our day is still long. We buy 2 tours for the two most important sites. First stop: Uxmal! Honestly, a bit like what happened in Cairo at the foot of the Pyramids, here too I wasn't enchanted as I was when I first saw Stonehenge... The two great pyramids of Uxmal, however, and all the various monuments around them, and above all the various mysteries hanging in the air, were very interesting, also thanks to the fact that we were the only visitors to the site! We looked at all the great spaces around us, perhaps trying to imagine what hundreds and hundreds of years ago the Maya could admire from there.

Uxmal is the place that struck me most for the presence of iguanas. I've never seen so many in my life, they were everywhere, "hanging around", climbing, eating, indifferent to these strange bipedal beings armed with video cameras! How strange the world is!

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