For the second time since I arrived, the Food and Health students invited me to a meal. The first time, the second-year students invited me, and it was free. This time it was the third-year students, and they charged ¥300.
There was plate of cold, sliced pork with tomatoes, wakame, and cucumber; a small, but plentiful portion of rice; miso soup; a soy bean dish; and a jelly desert made of oranges. The menu said it was 667 calories. Nice job!
In June, 2006 we were able to take a quick trip up to central Florida. We first headed to the Kennedy Space Center where there are several places to explore. The tours take you to more places, and we decided on the Maximum Access (or something like that) tour and got to head out to where the shuttles are launched. We were lucky because the shuttle Discovery was set to launch in a couple of weeks. Since we took the better tour, we were able to get within 1 km. of the pad (and much closer to the shuttle-less other pad.) This was much closer than I was able to go when I went in 1985, and we were able to get out of the bus this time and take in the awesome view.
There are huge tunnels under the pad into which several thousand liters of water are dumped just before ignition. This water helps to both dampen the sound and vibration, and keep things at a manageable temperature. This shuttle turned out to be a bit delayed and launched on the 4th of July, 2006.
I highly recommend a trip to the Space Center out at Merritt Island. You will not be disappointed! 
The photo is a little dark, but then again, so were the connected series of caves at Loltun (sorry, I didn’t find any decent sites to link to). These are located in the Puuc region of Yucatán, Mexico and were part of a Puuc region tour that we took last New Year. The others on the tour included Kabáh, Sayil, and Labná (I’ll save the links for posts on these sites later).
We drove up to the site (the only Mayan site on the tour with restrooms [keep that in mind]) and had to buy our own tickets. Read the small print on the signs carefully because the charge for the guide is included in the entrance fee. On the instructions of the guide, we moved quickly ahead of a huge group that was near the entrance. This turned out to be a good move because it could have been crowded in places (four members of our group were Mexican and were part of that larger group; it took them 45 more minutes to finish up).
Anyway, some of the caves were huge! There were lights placed in several areas, and virtually all of them shine in your eyes, rather than on the cave walls. Surely this can be taken care of! There are some figures on the wall in places, but they are hard to make out. I understand that not so long ago there were many very clear ones. Some stalagmites (as you may remember from your geology courses, they’re the ones from the floor up) in one room seemed to be hollow and made a kind of musical sound when hit (no hard instruments for this, please).
It turns out the caves were used as a last stand against the Spanish who were intent on controlling the area and the inhabitants. There were some large rocks piled up to close off one of the openings, but the Spanish got word that many were holed up inside. The climb up these rocks in very little light could prove challenging, so keep that in mind. I believe that climb and one other caused the delay with the other larger group.
The final large room, the one you see in the photo above, is like a scene from a movie. We understood that it was in fact used in a movie, but our guide was not sure which one. Maybe there’s an excuse to watch some potential candidates again.
One final note concerns the guide fee we had already paid that I mentioned above. As we neared the exit, our guide began to talk about how much other well-known tours cost, and that the usual fee was about $40 U.S. per family! There was one other family in our group; the father and I talked, and we decided to give the man $5 each. It was a good tour, and it took about an hour. A ten dollar tip for a job well done. Caveat emptor!
It’s a fairly well-known secret that there’s a barbershop not too far from the entrance at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. The cool thing is, for those of you who are young at heart, for the price of haircut, you can get a Micky Mouse image and some confetti sprinkled in your hair. The shorter your hair, the better the washable dye works (a word of warning: the image could still be seen for a few days after). It also works if your hair is long enough to be pulled back and tied with a band of some kind. They will add some hairspray to hold it all together. I have to say that each time I did this, I felt several years younger. That helped put me in the spirit that I think Walt intended. Have you ever been applauded by a hundred Brazilian school kids? It was a lot of fun.
Mmmm… Now that I’m reading this post, I wonder if anyone will take the previously one seriously. It’s all part of life, isn’t it?
Despite what Lonely Planet’s book on Yucatán
Anyway, back to the Casa. It was quite typical in much of Meso-America to build structures on top of existing ones, especially the larger pyramids. There appears to be some debate on the whys and whens, but I have heard numerous times that many of the add-ons were put up based on the Mayan life cycle of 52 years. What you see in the photo above is the fifth of these structures. It has been and is being restored. I climbed it in 1990, but now it is closed. The backside is in the midst of reconstruction, and you can currently see inside some of the exposed layers.
There is more to see at Uxmal, and the Puuc region. Time permitting, I’ll post more. Oh yeah, regardless of my disagreement of the comment in the book above, it helped us get around to many places and filled in several gaps we would have otherwise missed.
The observatory/snail shell is one of my favorite man-made creations on the planet. One look at the shape makes it clear what its purpose was. Despite what our guide told us (that it was “just used to watch the stars, not the planets”), it was used by the astronomer-priests to measure the movements of the stars and planets (a week before I visited there was a show on TV about how this structure was used to measure the various locations of Venus in the night sky).
I’ll leave it to your searching techniques to explore the various thinking on the sources of the architecture, but the Caracol seems to have elements of Toltec, Puuc and Maya. Unlike most of the structures at Chichén, you can walk up the two flights of stairs, but you can no longer climb inside the Caracol. I’m not sure when this was stopped (it was not allowed in 1990 either), but I did go up it in 1985. It has a spiral stone staircase with a very narrow passageway. I had to get really small to get in there, but at the time I knew I was doing something that would not be continued. There was just too much damage to the top of the structure.
I did my best to focus on the structure itself in the photo, but I have to say that the crowds were completely overwhelming on this day! When I visited in 1985 and 1990 (both in the summertime), there were relatively few people and no vendors along the pathways. This time the pathways were half-blocked by locals hawking t-shirts and carved goods laid out on blankets. Seeing all of this took away from the awesome and mysterious experience that is Chichén. Caveat salutor!
Ah, Mérida… What a great city. I’ve been there three times now: one one-night whirlwind visit in 1985, one slightly longer visit in 1990, and a nine-night stay for the 2006-07 holidays. Friendly people (smiles everywhere), great food (watch out for those habaneros!), lots of places to visit, and an endless number of challenges for travelers. For those of you who like to have a home base for other traveling, Mérida serves as a great staging area to head out to the Mayan sites and other interesting places.
The shot you see above is from the zócalo/centro/plaza (I heard all used) around sunset. It was a beautiful sight with all the colors changing every minute. The building you see is the oldest cathedral in North America. There are lots of sites (try the ones linked here) with information on history, dining, lodging, and places to visit.
I ask one favor. This city sustains some of the nicest people I know. If you visit, treat them with the same respect that they will show you. My greatest fear is that some are going to take advantage of the generosity of these people. A careful reading of the history of the area shows how they’ve been treated over the past several centuries.
Well, after enduring several days of cold weather, we finally got a payoff. This is a case where a picture is worth a thousand words…
