The Gallivanting Grasshopper: Pig Disease -- Merida, Mexico

I'm starting this post from The Italian Coffee Company in Merida, Mexico. Reminiscent of my intolerably hot winter in Puerto Escondido, I'm more thankful for the air conditioning than I am for the actual drink I'm about to imbibe. The creamy cappuccino in front of me cost nearly half my daily budget, but this tired vagabond needed it.

Merida. I'm sure there are lots of people who like you just fine, but I don't believe I'm one of them. I love your food, I love your people (my hosts, Jose and Lau, are kind of incredible), but I do not love you as a city. You're just too big, too pedestrian unfriendly (there are no walking streets. None) and too stinkin' hot.

Perhaps the heat serves as a partial excuse for the reason it took me thirty minutes of panicked wandering (I panic when I have to pee and see no solution in sight) to find this expensive cafe. All I could see as I hurried along were clothing stores, ice cream shops, pharmacies and hotels.

You're not in San Cristobal anymore, Bourget. You can't expect to see two cafes and a craft shop on every block

But even though Merida might not be my favorite place in Mexico, Jose and Lau are some of my favorite people. Staying with them has been just marvelous, and I'm still just kind of waiting for my consistently good couchsurfing luck to run out.

Jose is an architect who is able to work primarily from his home in Xcuyn (I dare you to try to pronounce that one) and Lau is a photographer who's in the process of starting a business wherein she photographs births. She showed me some of the photos from her portfolio last night, and I was sort of choking back tears by the end. The moments she captured were remarkably beautiful. Raw. Authentic. Profound. Uninhibited. A journey through incredible pain to immeasurable joy. I was riveted.

And I don't even want babies.

All that said, Lau is kind of an amazing artist.

There are many reasons I love staying with Jose and Lau.

a) They picked me up from the bus station when I arrived on Friday, completely exhausted from a nine hour bus ride and not an awful lot of sleep the night before in the inferno hostel, Yaxkin.

Note to couchsurfing hosts: it's one of the nicest things in the world to step off of a bus in which you've been sitting for the past million hours and know that you don't have to do anything except wait. You don't have to wander out into the streets with your heavy bags and try to find internet so you can get a map on your phone to find your hosts at the place they asked you to meet. All you have to do is sit. Preferably with a cappuccino.

Jose and Lau have spent a lot of time on the road, so they're really aware of what vagabonds like myself need. And they go so far out of their way to accommodate. It's humbling and wonderful and makes me want to pay it forward like no one's business.

b) Jose and Lau live outside of Merida. For some couchsurfers, this might seem a bit inconvenient, but for me? I'm simply thrilled to death to be sleeping in a peaceful village instead of the hustle, bustle, SO MANY CARS AND BUSES of Merida.

(this is what happens to you when you spend a month of your life in a permaculture/yoga retreat and discover what it's like to live life off-grid and deeply connected to nature and people. You start pining for composting toilets, blender bicycles and a community of people who walk everywhere (preferably barefoot))

Merida's version of the tuk-tuk. Some of them are attached to bicycles instead of motorcycles.

A small church/school in Xcuyun

Xcuyun's (can you pronounce it yet?) village park. Yes, there are horses being trained in the park.

Village ruins

c) Jose and Lau are food enthusiasts who are very generous with the food about which they are so enthusiastic. On my first night, they fed me peanuts (my favorite), cheese (my FAVORITE), ham (delicious), wine (my favorite) and olives (my favorite). We spent the evening sharing stories before I tiredly excused myself to bed.

Another example of the food these enthusiasts share:

Welcome to the wondrous world of Poc Chuc. Grilled pork seasoned with bitter lime, oregano, thyme and onion. Served with sumptuously creamy Yucatan avocados, tomatoes, radishes and handmade tortillas.

d) Jose and Lau are the happy owners of a charming ranch located just outside of Tekax (a little over an hour's drive away from Merida).

I've never seen so many butterflies in my life. During the course of the hour long drive, I caught myself drifting off (I'm the worst driving buddy of all time ever), and when I came to, I saw a fluttering yellow butterfly achieve a quick and (hopefully) painless death against Jose's car.

"Did you just kill a butterfly?" I croaked, rubbling sleep from my eyes.

"No, we just killed a butterfly," Jose answered, very rationally.

And once I'd finished rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I noticed that it was impossible to not hit butterflies. They were absolutely everywhere. Medium sized yellow ones, MONSTER brown/black ones, fluttering beside the car, floating above the car and -- SMASH -- getting annihilated by the car.

I spent a few moments exclaiming over the butterflies at Jose and Lau's red ranch, and then took an exquisite nap in the living room hammock. As one does in Merida. Nap. In hammocks. Always.

When it began to cool down, Jose drove Lau and me into Tekax.

We meandered through the streets for a few minutes and then walked up one of the only hills in the entire Yucatan (it's a rather flat state. Sort of like a blueberry pancake).

At the top of the hill was a church.

"You ready to see the minion?" Jose asked just before I reached the top of the blueberry hill.

"The minion?" I replied in bewilderment.

"You'll see."

And I did.

The Yucatan. It feels bizarre and foreign to be in such a flat place after spending the last few months in Colorado, on Lake Atitlan and in San Cristobal.

These trees with red flowers are everywhere. And they take my breath away almost as much as the hordes of yellow butterflies. I especially love that they are forever shedding their flowers, so the ground underneath them is a scarlet carpet.

Photo by Lau

Lau and Jose

I don't have any photos of the ranch because Lau started feeling sick that evening, and even though Tekax is in close proximity to Poc Chuc, it is not in close proximity to decent hospitals. So we hopped back in the car and blazed back to Merida.

I dozed in the back. Like the most excellent travel buddy I am.

e) Family lunch. These are always my favorite, most memorable experiences with hosts -- when I have the privilege of being invited to a family gathering of sorts. And being invited to a homemade lunch in the Yucatan... might be one of the most delectable family events to which a couchsurfing guest can be invited. So after a quick visit to the hospital to make sure nothing was tremendously wrong with Lau, we continued on to what Lau referred to as a very "traditional Mexican house" in Merida.

If this is a traditional Mexican house, I want one.

The meal was unbelievably good. I wasn't able to eat the queso relleno because of gluten things, but the PAVO EN ESCABECHE ORIENTAL gave a whole new meaning to turkey.

Go.

Find a turkey.

Cook it now.

(and then invite me to come eat it with you)

The meal gave us all what Jose referred to as "the pig sickness". A terrible post-feast disease wherein all one is capable of doing is lounging on comfortable furniture and making the occasional half grunt/half moan.

After we'd all recovered (somewhat) from our pig disease, Jose's brother drove us into the town's center so that we could explore the Sunday Mayan Market.