Coba

Mon 9 Oct: What a thunderstorm we had last night, probably the loudest thunder we have ever heard, although didn't see much lightning. It was tempting to stay at Tulum but we really need to carry on exploring more of the Yucatan Peninsula, so we were up at 7 am, to leave for Coba, and another Mayan Ruin. This was quite a big site, at one stage, around 400 - 600 AD the city had over 50,000 inhabitants, and it was abandoned around 1550 when the Spanish conquered the area. Since then the jungle has taken over most, with only pockets of ruins unearthed, so there was quite a lot of walking between ruin sites, most people seem to hire bikes to explore or even "taxi bikes" which were bikes with a seating area in front for 2 people. There were a few information signs at some of the ruins, but didn't really explain much, I suppose they want you to pay for a guide, which again we didn't, and so found it a bit hard to understand what we were seeing. We were done after a few hours of wandering around. We were keen to then head to one of the 3 cenotes 5 kms down the road, however we were low on pesos, as I didn't budget on the parking fee. We tried to find somewhere in the small town that would change some USA dollars, but the only place we found didn't have a very good rate. So we decided to have some lunch instead as we saw a restaurant advertising nachos. Nachos is Doug's signature dish back home so we were keen to compare to authentic Mexican Nachos but we have not found them until now. There was the choice of nachos with chicken or pork. I got chicken, and Doug went pork. They were certainly different to our nachos but still a very tasty experience. When we arrived at the restaurant we choose an outside table under the veranda, a few minutes later it started to rain, so we moved to a table inside by the open doorway. The rain became quite torrential, and we had to move further inside. We were so pleased with our timing of finishing the ruins and being dry inside a restaurant while the rain passed. It was sunny again as we were leaving and went back to the car which was sitting in quite a stream. Still keen on doing the cenote, we changed US$20, and headed to Cenote Multum Ha, only to be told that they were closed as they had no electricity, therefore no lights in the cave. We stopped at the entrance to the other two cenotes, but one was very shallow so not great for swimming, and the other was a very deep one which most people go just to do diving off the 5 or 10 m diving boards, which we weren't keen on so decided to give it a miss and carry on our way to Valladolid where we had accomodation booked for the next 3 nights. After arriving at Casa Chi, we found out we were now in a different time zone so it was now 2 pm and not 3 pm. We were both pretty tired and hot so ended up having a few hours siesta. With it a bit cooler in the evening we went for a walk to a supermarket to get breakfast supplies. It was a large but crammed supermarket that sold everything from motorbikes, washing machines etc, along with the groceries, but the aisles were barely wide enough to get a trolley down (found out the next day it was a Mexican Walmart). After choosing our few items we headed to the checkouts, only to get greeted with mega long queues we decided it wasn't worth it so put all the items back, and we would just get milk at the smaller shop we passed on the way. There wasn't many options for dinner, but there was a little place which seemed very popular with the locals so we thought we would try it. They had 9 choices, which we only knew of empanadas and sopa (soup). They just served a guy his meal which looked good and found out were Salbutes - a puffed deep fried tortilla that is topped with lettuce, sliced avocado, pulled chicken or turkey, tomato and pickled red onion. So we ordered one of those and an empanada each. Both were very delicious. Headed back to our room and that was us done for the day.Read more