Where the Sky is Born and Where the Dead Come Back to Life

I haven’t written in a stupidly long time. I genuinely don’t know where the time has gone. I suppose my only explanation is that I’ve been busy and just doing lots of lovely things.

I apologise to anyone who, for any reason, is interested in what I get up to. In this article I’m going to cover a couple of trips that I actually made before Christmas, one to the Sian Ka’an nature reserve, close to Tulum on the East coast of Quintana Roo (yes, in my mind it’s the Caribbean), and the other to Mexico City at the end of October for Day of the Dead Celebrations.

Generally when I got to Tulum I laze around on the beach, drink cocktails and wander around Maya ruins. This time I mixed things up a little. I lazed around on the beach, drank cocktails and floated around the Sian Ka’an biosphere reserve. In Maya, Sian Ka’an literally means ‘origin of the sky’, although to me it sounds like a faraway land in a Disney movie, and is a ginormous ecosystem in which the wildlife is protected but the people who live there are also able to live sustainably.

It remains one of the most beautiful places I’ve visited. Sian Ka’an is bigger than Mexico City which, put quite is simply, is really, really huge. Our little boat trip wasn’t anywhere near enough to give you a realistic idea of the size of the reserve. It was just an endless maze of twisting canals, water meadows and tropical forests, beaches with sand as white as a snowy fields in England (which I hear is pretty accurate for this week’s weather forecast) and exotic and fascinating wildlife. We saw a family of beautiful manatees, crocodiles from a distance, spiders big enough to make me not what to get out of the van, the most awesome caterpillars, colourful friendly fish and various giant birds who looked too heavy for the branches they perched on (feel free to tell me the type of bird in the picture – not my area of expertise).

We spent a delightful morning travelling though the mangroves. In one area we were able to disembark the boat and, with rather fetching upside down life jackets which resembled nappies, we floated through the canals, carried along by the natural current in the water and protected from the sun by the twisted mangrove trees. This was possibly the most relaxing experience of my Mexican life. For 20 minutes I laid back and bobbed about in the water, not dissimilar to the rivers they have at theme parks but in complete peace. I was so content.

At the opposite end of the tourism scale is the crazy world that is Mexico City. I’m not even sure where to begin with this insane metropolis of life. Just arriving by plane and coming across the mountains to a view of endless colourful houses, buildings, towers, roads, and hills was enough to blow my breath away.

Being in Mexico City around the Day of the Dead celebrations was incredible, if a little scary. It was also full of tourists and spectators eager to see the procession made famous by Spectre. My sources tell me that the James Bond producers more or less created this spectacle and it has only been attracting visitors to the city since the movie’s release in 2015. We spent hours wondering up and down the streets in the centre watching all the dressed up dead people (who deliberately try to scare you) and taking pictures in the Zocalo square which had been decorated to look like Halloween threw up on it. There were sugar skulls everywhere.

 

Other highlights from Mehico Citay included

• Visiting the extensive and extremely impressive ruins of Teotihuacan. My only experience of Aztec ruins was pretty incredible and the race to the top was extremely rewarding (we didn’t make bets on how long it would take and then run to make sure we didn’t lose). See picture of the pyramid of the sun from which one can see the pyramid of the moon.
• Exploring some of the museums. Closely rivalling London for the most museums in a city, there are many to choose from in Mexico City. We opted for any free museum and actually ended up in a pretty cool aquarium which was underground and is the only place where I’ve touched a starfish (Plymouth aquarium got nothing on this). Didn’t make it to the Frida Kahlo museum. Next time.
• Listening to mariachi in Café Tacuba and stuffing ourselves silly on true Mexican food. We had saved up for this trip so we may have gone a little overboard with the ‘let’s treat ourselves’ attitude. But this was by far the best place to do it!
• Getting almost completely lost in one of the many markets in Mexico. I still can’t really believe we found the people we were looking for in this maze of stalls. I’ve never been anywhere quite like it and it was all a little overwhelming. I was encouraged not to stop for too long for security reasons but was able to take about 10 seconds to pay 10 pesos for some tiny Mexican Day of the Dead flags. I was very proud of my purchase.
• Oh, and we saw Paul McCartney.

A note to finish on. If you haven’t seen it yet, go and watch Coco in the cinema or however you watch your movies these days. Yes, it’s a Disney movie. Buuuuut it’s a really beautiful representation of Mexican life and the cultural traditions surrounding Day of the Dead. It’s also got some great songs in it.