Merida’s chill atmosphere makes this place a wonderful city to hang around for a couple of days. The city is nicknamed ‘The White City’ but no one knows why. It has colorful houses, clean streets, lots of plazas, big shopping mercados, museums, a Wall Mart, and at night there is plenty of outdoor activities like music performances and dancing’s.

We stayed at hostel Nomandas, which is absolute not the worst place to stay at! It’s big swimming pool – bigger than the one in Granda and Leon together! – makes the hot days a little cooler. Yes Merida’s climate is hot, really hot!

I visited the museum MACAY – Museo de la Arte Contemporáneo Ateneo de Yucatán – which had a interesting gallery of several Mexican artist. Worth a visit if you are here!

There are so many plazas with markets, live music from different states of Mexico and live music to dance on – there was one plaza filled up with older people dancing salsa, amazing to watch! The evenings here are definitely not boring, and if, you can always hang around the hostel and join a salsa lesson or go for a swim.

Cenotes

Another great day trip around Merida are the Cenotes! Cenotes are big caves with clean water where you can swim in. From Merida you just take a bus to Cuzama – 14 pesos – than a bike taxi to the start of the railway – 50 peso for 2 persons – and there you have to take a sort of train. It’s a wagon on the rail pulled by a horse. Really fun and a unique way of transportation. It costs 200 pesos for 4 persons, so in order to do this trip on a budget make sure you are with 4 persons, no more.

It takes about three hours to visit three different Cenotes, swim in them and return to the start. The whole track goes over railway made in 1880! I will post some great movies from it later!

Swimming in the caves is amazing! The water is so clear and warm. And to get to the last one we had to climb down a 10 meter steep later, with of course no security!

Palenque

Another 10 hours away – night bus from Merida – is Palenque! A small village in the jungle which has one the most beautiful Maya ruins I’ve seen so far. Early in the morning we – me, Hanne from Belgium, Tom from Australia and Leon from Holland – arrived in Palenque and it was raining! Not a little bit, but it was really falling down with liters. We jumped into a taxi and drove off to El Poche where hostel Maya Bell is located and which is right in the National Park.

The four of us shared a room for 100 peso each, pretty good deal. And because it was pissing outside we first got some more sleep before we went to the ruins. Of course first 22 pesos National Park entrance, and 51 peso entrance for the ruins. Inside it was quite and the ruins are really beautiful. Its build on a hill in the jungle. Its not as big as Chichen Itza or Tikal but the ruins I saw where more beautiful and you were able to climb them all! We spend about three hours at the ruins and went back to the hostel just before it started raining again.

The next morning I and Hanne left Tom and Leon behind and went off to our next place called San Cristobal – only 5 hours by bus. Tom and Leon, nice to meet you guys, I enjoyed your company!

Photos of Merida are here.