First Weekend in Merida

So, I've had an eventful weekend. I realized that I forgot to include contact info in my last post, so a little prelude first. I have my phone, but calls from Mexico are expensive, so please don't call me. I can receive texts for free (or so says the AT&T lady), but I can't send them, so don't expect replies. The best way to contact me is on gchat (my email is efranks555@gmail.com) or skype (username exafranks). Also, if you're interested in getting an email whenever I update my blog, just let me know, and I can add you to the mailing list. You can also use google friend connect, but honestly, I have no clue how that works, so good luck with it.

On Saturday, I went to Progreso with Yves, a guy who works at TNC with me. Progreso is the nearest beach town; it faces onto the Gulf of Mexico, and is fairly developed. There are restaurants all along the coast, so you can eat or order a beer as you sit there. I, for one, plan to come back with a good book to read on a future weekend! We had lunch with some friends of Yves' and their kids who were these adorable little girls. Their father was French and their mother was Mexican, so I had a rough time listening to the stories of 2-year-olds in two languages I don't know too well.  The place we ate was right on the beach in these cute little straw hut areas... you can see similar construction in the photos below. I ordered ceviche (my #1 favorite raw meat dish, followed by sushi), and it was delicious. One of the great things about being in the Yucatan is how fresh all the seafood is... even California isn't as good!

The wind at Progreso was crazy fast, so instead of swimming there, we went to a cenote nearby. Cenote translates to "sinkhole" in English, but they're much more than that. The Yucatan doesn't have any rivers at all; the porous limestone that underlies the surface allows all the water to sink belowground. This means that there  are extensive networks of underground river-caves, many of which are unexplored, and most of which flow out to the ocean. In some places, the ground has sunk down enough that you can go swimming in the underground caves - this is a cenote. We went to the cenote in Noc-Ac, a small Mayan town about 30 minutes drive from Merida. It was a bit awkward; in a bikini, and being white, I was DEFINITELY the odd man out and I felt very conspicuous. There were a lot of families there swimming to beat the heat, and a group of teenage boys trying to show off by diving in the water. But the cenote was very cool. I've been to one before near Playa del Carmen, but this one was very different. You can see the picture below, but the opening was just the beginning. The water was about 10 feet or so underground, and the opening led into a cave that was 70 to 80 feet wide and 20 to 30 feet long. The effect was that you were swimming in underground, with a cave over your head, and unknowable depths below you. The water was so clear that even in the shallowest part, I tried to dive down, but couldn't reach the bottom. In the far corners you could see that the underwater cave extended far below - most of the underwater caves in the Yucatan are unexplored, even today. I would not be brave enough to go scuba diving there!

Here is a link to the path we took, showing Progreso and the town of Noc-Ac. The tiny towns we drove through were very poor. It's amazing how things change as soon as you get a few miles from big cities like Merida, which are very modern and urban.

After going to the cenote, we drove to the house of my boss, Marie-Claire, who is the older sister to Yves, who has been showing me around the town. Marie-Claire has 2 young children, and it was great fun to see the kids running around playing together. Afterward, we went to a small taco stand that Yves' friends recommended; I bought sopes and tacos there for 9 pesos (that's about 9 cents!). I also got to try a delicious drink that I cannot find the name of... it was something like "machacador," but since that gives me no Google result, I don't think it's right. It was essentially a snow cone - shaved ice, but with fresh fruit of your choice, and condensed milk to make it more creamy. I ordered one in guanabana (soursap in English, not a fruit you find in the US normally), and it was super delicious.

On Sunday, I decided to explore Merida a little bit. A little history: Merida is called "the white city" because many of the buildings are painted white (stucco), and also because the streets and buildings are kept very clean. I saw a woman sweeping a dirt road, which I found hilarious until I realized that it was actually a paved road she was trying to sweep clean! One guide I read said that Merida has the lowest per capita crime rate in all of Mexico... hopefully some of you find that reassuring. Most of the buildings in Merida are of the Spanish colonial style; for many years, Merida was the rich city in the Yucatan where all the Spanish owners of haciendas had their huge palaces. The main crop was the fibers from the agave, which were used to make various things... I'm not totally sure what. However, owning the plantations for these fibers was extremely profitable, and many of the rich owners had huge mansions along Merida's main street, el Paseo Montejo. This a a beautiful street; when I drove by at night, all the trees were lit up with lights. I read in a tourist guide that there are open-air markets on weekends in the downtown area, so I set off in the afternoon on Sunday. Here's a picture of the Paseo Montejo, followe by a couple of the huge mansions along it. They all look like they're still in use, but they're in varying states of disrepair. Very cool.

Unfortunately, the afternoon on a Sunday turns out to not be the best time to visit downtown Merida; most of the shops were closed, and rightly so, as it was way too hot. After walking round for a while, I happened upon Santa Ana Park (note to Texans: I could not tell if this was a park in honor of THE Santa Ana... the only statue there was to another guy, who was a governor of the Yucatan). All over Merida are these amazing trees that are blooming now in solid orange. The locals tell me they are "flamboyens" which translates to, you guessed it, "flamboyant trees." The picture below doesn't do them justice; some of the ones I saw were solid orange flowers. I am in love with these trees... if they will grow in the US, I want some in my future yard.

Since I was unbearably hot after a 20 minute walk in the sun, I decided to stop at the first open restaurant I could find. This turned out to be an Irish pub on el Paseo Montejo. The bartenders there were super nice (I guess being a young girl in a nice dress doesn't hurt), and I was able to cool off before heading back to my apartment. I drove through downtown Merida on Saturday night and the place was bustling... many of the streets were blocked off to cars; people were eating and shopping and listening to music everywhere. I guess I need to go back in the evening, as the afternoon seems to be time for un siesta! All in all, it was a pleasant and exciting weekend. I'm sure the work week that follows will be far less exciting.

The Journey Begins

Well, here I am in Mexico. I could start this out like most travel blogs do, by introducing myself, but I'm going to assume that everyone reading this is a friend or family member of mine, so there's no need for that. If you are not in one of these groups, I a) doubt you will find this interesting, and b) don't think I owe you any introductions, so hah!

The flight to Merida was short and easy (though on the flight to Houston I was sitting next to a fat man with an impressively long rat tail who took up a few inches of my seat as well... gah), and I got to my hotel easily on the first night. Of course, I did manage to forget what numbers are in Spanish (I believe that's somewhere around lesson 2 of year 1) and tried repeatedly to give the taxi driver 18 pesos, followed by 80 pesos, until I finally got it that he was saying 180 pesos. Oops. Also had a good moment when, while taking the elevator down to leave the hotel, I pressed 1 for the first floor. I got out and followed a sign that looked like it might be "lobby" right into some woman's office, where I stupidly stopped and asked, "Uh, is this the way to the lobby?" She politely walked me down to the GROUND floor, which is under the FIRST floor. Sorry, but I think our way makes more sense.

The people I will be working with all seem wonderfully nice... everyone has been friendly to me, although I always feel sad having to tell them where I go to school. Unsurprisingly, I have not yet met anyone in Mexico who has heard of CMC, but I haven't given up hope yet.

They've got me working in a conference room separate from the rest of the office. To get there, you have to cross this cute little courtyard. I feel a bit isolated, but there wasn't any room in the main building, and I do get this nice view of the courtyard out my window, so it's not too bad:

I'm still not completely sure what I'm gong to be working on. So far, I've talked with a couple of Nature Conservancy (TNC for short) people who have given me TONS of information about the projects they are working on. One is the REDD+ initiative, which is a forest conservation program that is part of the UN climate change program. The idea is to pay people for preserving forest, therefore covering the opportunity cost of not using it for timber or agriculture. In non-economic-speak, it's incentivizing protection by making conservation pay more than farming or logging would. There are some problems with this though - what if the people weren't going to cut down the forest anyway? If that's the case, you're essentially wasting your money. To sort out where the payments will do the most good, they're developing a model that predicts what the main drivers of deforestation in the area are. It'll be GIS based, so they will evaluate the inputs from the maps - elevation, proximity to water, whether it's located in a poor area, etc. - to see what affects whether it's now forest, agriculture, degraded land, etc. This seems really interesting to me (because I am a nerd who thinks economics combined with maps is cool), but the work may be over my head, so I'm trying to learn econometrics quickly... we'll see how that goes.

Another project I'll probably work on is an effort to get a region, called the Sierra de Ticul, declared a state protected area. This is a dry forest that is fairly undisturbed, and one of the few hilly regions in the mostly flat Yucatan. It's apparently got five (5!) species of cats living on it, including jaguars and mountain lions (thought they're pumas here), and is an important wildlife corridor between two other protected areas. Problem is, since it's a DRY forest, it's, well, dry, and therefore not very pretty or awe-inspiring, so it's harder to get places like this protected than it is rainforests. TNC is trying to come up with some reasons to protect it - both the real ones, and the flashy publicity ones. So I might be helping with that too.

The office for the Nature Conservancy is only a few blocks from my little apartment... in fact, because I'm awesome, you can use Google street view to walk down the path from my apartment to the office! My apartment is the pink building at A - the yellow one across the street is apparently the bullfighting arena (!!!). The Nature Conservancy building is white with a tile roof and set back from the road at B... if you look closely you can see the sign on the outside.

The apartment itself is really quite nice. The bathroom was WAY cleaner than I expected; the tile in it looks almost new. The only downside is the cockroach that crawled out of the drain while I was taking a shower this morning. Not gonna lie, I screamed and jumped, then almost slipped and fell, which would not only have been painful, but would probably have landed me right on the cockroach. Luckily, I manged to hide in the corner until it drowned. I had to keep an eye on it the rest of the shower, though, just to make sure it didn't suddenly spring to life and come at me. Luckily, that did not happen, as I likely wouldn't have survived the encounter. I'm totally cool with bugs, but roaches in the shower... not cool.

The kitchen (pictured below) is simple, but has a little glass stove. I don't have a frying pan, though, so that's a bummer.I also don't have dish soap, so there are a lot of dirty dishes in the sink... it's off to Walmart tomorrow, eh?

I even have this cute little balcony. Problem is, it faces out onto the street, so it's not that pleasant (though there are some nice trees there), and my air conditioner vents out onto the balcony, so it is even hotter than the rest of outdoors - 100 with 70% humidity is tomorrow's forecast. So I'm not sure how much use the balcony will get, but it's still nice to have.

So for now, I'm just trying to settle in and get adjusted. I feel pretty lonely in a foreign country where it turns out I don't speak the language even as well as I thought. One of my main issues is the fact that I have NO idea how to find and meet people my own age. I'm thinking of trying some clubs or bars, but I'm not much of a bar/club person, especially on my own. The other option I see is to wander around on the local college campus yelling "I am Erin! Will anyone be my friend?" but I suspect that will work about as well as my other attempts to solve problems by yelling ("This is me yelling!"). I'm planning to get out this weekend and walk round the town a bit; hopefully by getting to know the area better I'll feel more at home.

I'll stop here because I know this is probably way more than anyone wants to know, but that's why I know better than to keep a blog normally. Hopefully the next update will have real adventures instead of just me blathering. Adios!