On the way to Merida
So you know what's coming, nothing to surprise you here anymore (Telchac is really a bigmouth, you'd agree if you knew him :D). Today I will tell you something about our first impressions and the ride to Merida.
We landed in Cancun in the late afternoon - me still hoping we could get to the beach that day. However, by the time we got our car and got to the hotel, it was too dark to go anywhere. The process of getting a rental (with a confirmed booking, I might add) was a bit of a pain. Yep, there were a lot of people, so we had to queue. Yep, they did (and do) not really worry when waiting and generally they tend to be content all day, every day so 'ningun problema' (how so very Italian of them :D). So when we finally got our Jetta (pronounced 'yetta' in Mexico) the sun was slowly setting down.
At the check-in we got a voucher for a free drink at the rooftop bar - sounds amazing, right? Really, an Instagram-worthy moment. Well, the reality was - we got up on the roof, I was shaking with cold (lack of sleep on the plane, jet-lagged, you know the drill), we got our drinks - 'sin hielo', of course, and tried to enjoy the moment. In a few minutes, I started to slowly drift off and poor Telchac had to call it a night :D.
In the morning, we had some breakfast and since Telchac (again) chose the best of the best hotels, they offered vodka for breakfast :D Yep, vodka, the alcohol...no, not Champagne, Vodka. So he, being a very good boyfriend (and probably trying to put me to sleep again so the ride to Merida could be as bearable as possible), prepared a good mix of vodka and orange juice just for me. How romantic! After the breakfast (and probably because of the magic potion) I (firmly) decided I must go and see the beach before we leave. And so we went (fully clothed, no swimsuits). I did see the beach and of course I went too far and got splashed and of course, I needed to change and leave my wet shorts to dry in the back seat.
The ride was pretty uneventful, there were just three eventful moments :D (now that I think of it, it was pretty eventful and quite funny). First one was (in no particular order) when we realised we got to another time zone. The car clock just reset itself and all of a sudden it was an hour later - an hour well-spent :D. The second was when we got to the toll. What you need to know is that Telchac doesn't really like exchanging money. We usually only travel with some cash (euros) and card (which may sometimes come as a bit of complication considering he also likes to buy things at local markets where they usually take neither cards nor euros). This time we also had dollars (woooow). However, as he warned you in the itinerary post, they do not take US dollars, only Mexican pesos. So we got there, no money to pay the toll with and no way to tell the man that we needed an ATM (very very weak Spanish at that time). He said to go with him, we did not know where. He took us to the line of the cars that were waiting and started to ask people in the cars if they were willing to exchange money. Btw this was really helpful and surprising, I cannot think of many countries or people in general that would help a stranger just like that. The funny thing was the first car he tried, there were some Czechs in there and they could not only understand us (Slovak and Czech are pretty similar languages) but they were also more than happy to help! Shoutout to those people! If you're reading this, you helped us big time, thank you! So we got our pesos, paid the toll and went off again.
All good, we were almost in Merida, when there was a police checkpoint (common thing there, especially going back to Cancun, you can spend quite a time there). This time we did not have any drugs on us (just kidding, we never do :D) so we were fine. At least, WE thought so. They stopped us, pulled us over - do we look like we could have something on us?! And they started going through our car. Again I have to point out the only Spanish we knew at that time was what we learned from Narcos - 'plata o plomo', 'pinche marica', 'come mierda' - so we could not really use those when speaking to heavily armed policemen. They asked Telchac to get out of the car and open the trunk - at that time I was starting to get nervous (in spite of not having anything illegal). Now I will let Telchac tell you what was happening while I sat in the car, cause it was all his wit and charm that probably eased our way "out" :)
Telchac here :) they asked me to open each and every suitcase (we had 4 of those), cosmetics bag (Hojancha had "a couple"), pocket and pouch there was. As Hojancha already mentioned, we didn't speak almost any Spanish at that time, so I tried to describe the use for all the "suspicious items" we had with us with my bare hands and feet adding some words from the first lesson of Spanish for beginners. You can imagine that even a hairpin can lead to surprised looks at such a situation - I referred to a hairpin as "para cabeza...mi novia..." while wildly pointing at my short hair. Obvious, isn't it :) After ca. 10 sweaty minutes with five policemen standing above me a stray dog came to sniff around. At that very moment, I took a shoot and said "mira, perro narcotraficante" and pointed at it. Because of my poor Spanish, it was, most probably, the first thing the policemen understood. They started to laugh, asked me to pack the suitcases and let us leave.
Pretty uneventful, right? :D Glad to survive all of this, we arrived in Merida and couldn't wait for our next adventures. Of course, we will tell you all about those, all in the right time - meaning in two weeks. Thanks for reading and C U THEN!
We landed in Cancun in the late afternoon - me still hoping we could get to the beach that day. However, by the time we got our car and got to the hotel, it was too dark to go anywhere. The process of getting a rental (with a confirmed booking, I might add) was a bit of a pain. Yep, there were a lot of people, so we had to queue. Yep, they did (and do) not really worry when waiting and generally they tend to be content all day, every day so 'ningun problema' (how so very Italian of them :D). So when we finally got our Jetta (pronounced 'yetta' in Mexico) the sun was slowly setting down.
At the check-in we got a voucher for a free drink at the rooftop bar - sounds amazing, right? Really, an Instagram-worthy moment. Well, the reality was - we got up on the roof, I was shaking with cold (lack of sleep on the plane, jet-lagged, you know the drill), we got our drinks - 'sin hielo', of course, and tried to enjoy the moment. In a few minutes, I started to slowly drift off and poor Telchac had to call it a night :D.
In the morning, we had some breakfast and since Telchac (again) chose the best of the best hotels, they offered vodka for breakfast :D Yep, vodka, the alcohol...no, not Champagne, Vodka. So he, being a very good boyfriend (and probably trying to put me to sleep again so the ride to Merida could be as bearable as possible), prepared a good mix of vodka and orange juice just for me. How romantic! After the breakfast (and probably because of the magic potion) I (firmly) decided I must go and see the beach before we leave. And so we went (fully clothed, no swimsuits). I did see the beach and of course I went too far and got splashed and of course, I needed to change and leave my wet shorts to dry in the back seat.
The ride was pretty uneventful, there were just three eventful moments :D (now that I think of it, it was pretty eventful and quite funny). First one was (in no particular order) when we realised we got to another time zone. The car clock just reset itself and all of a sudden it was an hour later - an hour well-spent :D. The second was when we got to the toll. What you need to know is that Telchac doesn't really like exchanging money. We usually only travel with some cash (euros) and card (which may sometimes come as a bit of complication considering he also likes to buy things at local markets where they usually take neither cards nor euros). This time we also had dollars (woooow). However, as he warned you in the itinerary post, they do not take US dollars, only Mexican pesos. So we got there, no money to pay the toll with and no way to tell the man that we needed an ATM (very very weak Spanish at that time). He said to go with him, we did not know where. He took us to the line of the cars that were waiting and started to ask people in the cars if they were willing to exchange money. Btw this was really helpful and surprising, I cannot think of many countries or people in general that would help a stranger just like that. The funny thing was the first car he tried, there were some Czechs in there and they could not only understand us (Slovak and Czech are pretty similar languages) but they were also more than happy to help! Shoutout to those people! If you're reading this, you helped us big time, thank you! So we got our pesos, paid the toll and went off again.
All good, we were almost in Merida, when there was a police checkpoint (common thing there, especially going back to Cancun, you can spend quite a time there). This time we did not have any drugs on us (just kidding, we never do :D) so we were fine. At least, WE thought so. They stopped us, pulled us over - do we look like we could have something on us?! And they started going through our car. Again I have to point out the only Spanish we knew at that time was what we learned from Narcos - 'plata o plomo', 'pinche marica', 'come mierda' - so we could not really use those when speaking to heavily armed policemen. They asked Telchac to get out of the car and open the trunk - at that time I was starting to get nervous (in spite of not having anything illegal). Now I will let Telchac tell you what was happening while I sat in the car, cause it was all his wit and charm that probably eased our way "out" :)
Telchac here :) they asked me to open each and every suitcase (we had 4 of those), cosmetics bag (Hojancha had "a couple"), pocket and pouch there was. As Hojancha already mentioned, we didn't speak almost any Spanish at that time, so I tried to describe the use for all the "suspicious items" we had with us with my bare hands and feet adding some words from the first lesson of Spanish for beginners. You can imagine that even a hairpin can lead to surprised looks at such a situation - I referred to a hairpin as "para cabeza...mi novia..." while wildly pointing at my short hair. Obvious, isn't it :) After ca. 10 sweaty minutes with five policemen standing above me a stray dog came to sniff around. At that very moment, I took a shoot and said "mira, perro narcotraficante" and pointed at it. Because of my poor Spanish, it was, most probably, the first thing the policemen understood. They started to laugh, asked me to pack the suitcases and let us leave.
Pretty uneventful, right? :D Glad to survive all of this, we arrived in Merida and couldn't wait for our next adventures. Of course, we will tell you all about those, all in the right time - meaning in two weeks. Thanks for reading and C U THEN!