Mexico
José María Morelos

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    • Day 17

      Quintana Roo

      May 6, 2022 in Mexico ⋅ ⛅ 33 °C

      Check24 made it possible that we found a nice and economic Nissan X-Trail Jeep at Cancun Airport.

      From there it was only a one hour ride to our first destination: Cenote Azul. Cenotes are natural sweet water pools wich sometimes are open and sometimes closed as caves, but kind of connected underneath.

      Absolutely cool stunning waters with many fish inside wich eat your dead skin around your feet. Fish spa for free.
      We could climb and jump from above the caves. Lots of fun.

      After this refreshment we made our way to Tulum, the city in wich we all had very high expectations in the nightlife.
      As it often is with expectations, they didn't got fulfilled.
      Our hostel (The Mayan Monkey) was dope, but the rest of the center was kind of basic and there was not so much going on. After investigating and asking 1000 people I finally found a party in the jungle were we got happy. Not that many people, but great music. So we danced there all night and met some nice guys wich took us with to the after party at their Pool Villa.
      When the sun came we made our way back home.

      The next day we checked out the hotel area at the beach. On beach club / hotel after the other and all suuuper expensive. So for the most places you had to pay 80-100€ entry + additional minimum consumption fees. Not in our budget.
      We founs a public beach were we stayed the afternoon. There was so much Seaweed though, that we didn't even wanted to get into the water.

      Some people told us about the one beach club party were If you go early enough you don't pay entry. We went there as first people, got a stamp and went out again for some Pizza. After some time we went back and the club slowly started to fill up. We had a fun night but went home early, to get up in the morning for the Bacalar Lagoon.

      3,5 hours drive to our accommodation directly placed at the lagoon. We rented 3 kayaks and 1 Stand up padel and made swum out.
      Depending on the sun stand and the water depth you can see 8 shades of blue in the lagoon. There are also 360 ° Cenotes inside of it, wich we kept on searching until the locals told us that were already in the cenote wich was directly connected.

      The next day we drove 3 hours further into the country to see the Mayan temples of Calakmul.
      It is only 35 kilometres from the Guatemalan border. Calakmul was one of the largest and most powerful ancient cities ever uncovered in the Maya lowlands.
      It was estimated to have had a population of 50,000 people. The largest building of which is the great pyramid at the site is over 45 metres high, making it one of the tallest of the Maya pyramids

      We have been there almost alone because it's so far away from any civilization or tourist point.

      From there we made the decision to drive all the way back to Cancun (8hours) and chill there one more day until my flight to Puerto Escondido takes place.

      There I found a workaway at a eco hostel were I could stay for the next weeks to safe some money.

      Chelsey also wanted to join but she lost her Passport at the airport, so unfortunately she's stuck in Cancun...
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    • Day 26

      Week #1 volunteering in la Zona Maya

      November 29, 2022 in Mexico ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

      After my first 3 weeks traveling, I left the beaten touristic track to spend 3 weeks at my volunteering place at a Mayan eco-cultural center in the middle of the Yucatán peninsula.

      Already in the bus leaving from Bacalar I noticed that I was the only foreigner in that local bus. 2 hrs in that bus, one mototaxi and one taxi ride later, I eventually arrived at Selva Bonita (or in Mayan Kíichpam K’aax), an eco-cultural center and hotel in the Zona Maya of Quintana Roo and also in the middle of nowhere of the jungle 😀🌿

      Selva Bonita itself is a huge space and has a lot to offer for visitors, from endless gardens, a mystic Mayan trail, a traditional sauna, a theater, a pool, a pond with a crocodile, a small museum and rustic Mayan cabins to stay the night. The family of Don Damian lives here and offers all kinds of tours about the Mayan culture in order to conserve it as good as possible in their communities. Accommodations and the way of living here is rustic, very traditional and in coexistence with the nature. Here you don’t find any unnecessary luxury items, everything has a purpose.

      Incredible, I can’t even describe all I have experienced and learned in that single week, the pictures say more than a thousands words! I am very grateful for being able to stay with them ✨

      In exchange for all that I just started working on their website, which is already quite beautiful. See yourself: www.selvabonita.com 🌿🧐
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    • Day 38

      Week #2 volunteering in Selva Bonita

      December 11, 2022 in Mexico ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

      Selva Bonita not only is a ecotourism center, Don Damian and his family have big visions to actually improve things in their community and around:

      👣 The first big vision is to conserve the Mayan culture and their knowledge about plants, medicine, agriculture, food, textiles and the language for future generations.

      🌱 The second vision is to conserve the nature and the subterranean water in the peninsula and to implement an ecotourism that benefits the community, the environment and the planet.

      Don Damian has great ambitions and wants to establish a more holistic approach on tourism that can even help to regenerate, socially, economically and ecologically. During our brainstorming, there were many ideas, but there are also a lot of ongoing projects in the center and the family. We as volunteers wondered how they will be able to do this all, so that we eventually recommended to focus on improving the center first in order to be able to invest in projects. E.g. they also recently started to do workshops in the schools and the community hall of the town. Until now they are funded by bigger organizations of the peninsula which require a lot of documentation and lack transparency.

      I was lucky to take part in some of these workshops and could at least support in the registering and supervising of the kids. I actually didn’t think to attract that much attention, but they literally loved me and asked a thousand questions❣️The most frequent ones:
      - What does this and that mean in English/German? 🗣️
      - Does it snow in Germany? ☃️
      - Why are your eyes blue? Are they real?🤣
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    • Day 43

      Week #3 volunteering in Selva Bonita

      December 16, 2022 in Mexico ⋅ ☀️ 33 °C

      Week 3 and again, I can’t describe all the things I have experienced. I already got used to the place, the jungle, the people, the animals (including the mosquitos), the fresh food from the garden, the strange forms of transportation between towns and the communication in Spanish (and some words in Maya 😅).

      Now it is time to move on, and one part of me doesn’t want to leave Selva Bonita ☹️ I will need time to process all the things I have seen, heard, done and tasted in the upcoming weeks…

      For the Mayas there is no goodbye, only a see you another time in another place! Entonces, hasta luego Margarita, Juanita, Don Damian, Don Severo, Mariana, Julio, Jeremias, Antonio, Miguel y Gaelle 👋❣️

      My solo travel ends for now and the next chapter begins! Seb, Ele & Yannick, see you in Mérida! 🇲🇽
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    • Day 49

      ADO Merida - Bacalar

      December 28, 2021 in Mexico ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

      Grosse journée trajet ... Encore et toujours avec les bus ADO !

      On met 6 heures à rejoindre Bacalar qui est de l'autre côté de la péninsule de Yucatán.

      Encore un trajet qui se passe bien ... même si le film sur Hitler était un peu de trop dans le bus 😱 ... Joe n'arrive pas à s'endormir le soir 😰.

      C'est vraiment la spécialité ici dans les transports, films violents ou clips osés + froid intense 🥶
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    You might also know this place by the following names:

    José María Morelos, Jose Maria Morelos

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