Viajar el mundo: Chicken pizzas

8 de Julio

Confirming their lazy stereotype, the Mexicans built escalators up the pyramids

Farewell Mexico. Gracias for your tacos, for your cerveza, for your wonderful beaches, your pieces of paradise and your history. Thanks also for your stomach bugs, but I am happy to blame that on Guatemala seeing as you were so nice to us.

Cancun is a place of excess. There is approximately 20km of beachfront hotels, most along the five star resort range. The bars and clubs pump out loud continuous top forty music and generally charge about $20 for all you can drink and spew deals. The main clientele are Americans on weekly vacation packages who really only use the hotels as a place to change when they arrive back home at 7am, ready to do it all again in a few hours

Chichen Itza was a great escape away from Cancun for a day. The ancient Mayan town was the centre of commerce, politics and human sacrifice. The focal point of the town is the famous pyramid and it really is pretty impressive, from all angles, and is especially popular during equinox periods where the figure of the serpent God is made out by the setting sun. But it’s the poc a poc field, the number one site of human sacrifice, which is the most amazing. Set out like a massive basketball field, in a way that makes it echo like a cave, is the arena where the warriors played. Using a 13kg natural rubber ball the warriors (seven to a team) used their hips, legs and chest to pass the ball to get it to their captain who then used a racket to hit the ball through a relatively small stone circle set high in the wall of the field. If you were lucky enough to be the best warrior of the day, your best and fairest prize was to be decapitated as an offer to the gods. Much better then a $5000 cheque and a trophy

But for those of you not good with sports, not to worry, there are other ways to sacrifice yourself to show the Gods you care. You can be drugged, adorned in an armoury of gold and ushered in to a very deep swimming hole by a priest. To be picked for this one, you just need to have been born on a certain day, for example the day there is no moon.

If none of those appeal to you, there is the most gruesome still to come. Every 52 years, to welcome in the new decade, a local from the lower gentry is bent backwards over a large block of stone until his spine snaps in half and he cannot move. While the victim is relaxing the head priest sticks a knife into his chest and rips out his heart.

All pretty gruesome, hey? And that doesn’t go into the fact that from eight days old to eight months old, babies have their heads bound – a board at the front and the back of the head to flatten it like a snake head. Or a board at the top and the bottom of the head to squash it to make it like a Jaguar. All to make themselves the images of their serpent and feline Gods. Amazingly, they found a baby in the jungle just 18 years ago that had this binding. They say that it actually does no harm to the kid apart from make it hard to find hats to fit.

The Yucatan peninsular is a limestone shelf and as such has to rivers. How did the Mayan’s survive without water you ask? Well the whole area is full of cenotes, which are basically under ground water holes. On route to Chichen Itza we stoped by one of them. They are very deep and in a cave. The water is refreshingly cold and fresh. We popped in for a swim, which was a nice change from the warm salty waters of the Caribbean.

The swimmers would soon realise why the site was called Impaler Pools

The ranga turtle would be mad once it found out its shell was missing

Ancient graffiti artists were never a chance to escape due to the length of their tasks

Ancient slalom courses were useless in summer

We are now in Panama City, albeit only for one night, as we await our captain and our catamaran which will be sailing across the San Blas Islands and the Caribbean towards our next destination, Colombia.

Which is great, as first impressions of Panama City aren’t that fantastic. There isn’t a whole load to do here, except to visit the old town and the famous Panama Canal and her locks. We are staying in a lovely hostel in some dingy neighbourhood, reminiscent of the setting for Prison Break, which coincidentally, was filmed here in part. Special effects weren’t needed, as the barbed wire and mad locals were on call. However the local beer, Balboa, is super in this heat, and only 50 cents each. And like all other Central American places with taxis, there is of course the crazy cabbie. This one, we shall call Super Mario. Actually, he calls himself that. He demonstrates this by hooning down the highway at 100km/h without holding onto the steering wheel, and merely controlling it with his guts. One would assume he needs his hands free to throw banana skins and turtles out of the window. Mario loves toll roads too, as this gives him the opportunity to chat up the attendant, who he calls one of his many chicas. Taxi racecars are the way to go