Coba (not Cabo)

While the Tulum site feels much like a golf course, the ruins at Coba feel like the set of an Indiana Jones movie. Set in the jungle about 45km west of Tulum, this was easily the most enjoyable set of ruins of the three. Very few people actually stay in the town of Coba (pop. 300), so they don't arrive at the site until later. 

There are signs all around Lago Coba warning about crocodiles, but I never saw one.

From about 8-9:30 a.m. I and a few other hearty souls had the run of the place, including access to the 42-meter-high pyramid, the highest (or second highest, depending on where you read) Mayan structure on the Yucatan.

Nohoch Mul, the grand pyramid, stands 42 meters tall

The other advantage at Coba is that you can climb on some of the ruins, including the pyramid. The view looks out over the jungle and is quite breathtaking and, once you're outside the ruins, you can climb the tower for the zipline and see the pyramid poking through the trees.

The ruins at Coba are older than other nearby sites, dating back to the 9th century AD.

 The area is divided into three sections, each about a kilometer apart. One, right by the entrance, features the main sports arena and a smaller pyramid. A second is spread out over a few acres culminating in the giant pyramid. The third doesn't have the grandeur of the other two but is impressive nonetheless and, being a kilometer down the path, less crowded than the other two.

The best part of the site is how the ruins have been left in the middle of the jungle. 

There are bicycles and guides for hire, and the people cycling (or being cycled) does detract from the mystique, but unlike Chichen Itza the vendors are all kept outside in the parking lot, which leads to a much more pristine atmosphere. The constant shade keeps the temperature within cool, which may not be the case in summer but certainly was pleasant in January. There are also a few smaller paths to wander around, where you can run into lagoons or just take shortcuts to avoid tourists. Probably some allow deeper exploration of the jungle as well.

The thriving metropolis of Coba (pop. 300)

Valladolid

I only ended up with a few hours here during a bus change, but it turned out to be time well spent and is a good reminder of the luck of a long layover, one I wish now had been longer.

Templo de San Bernardino, with the Convento de Sisal off to the left.

As it turns out, Valladolid is where I should have stayed when going to Chichen Itza rather than Piste, the city about a kilometer from the site. About 45 minutes east, this is the cleanest city I've ever seen in Mexico. The streets, like most colonial towns, are narrow and the colors very vivid along the walls. The city has around 50,000 people, but feels much smaller.

The town has a pair of large churches, parks and more trees than most places in the Yucatan -- they make an effort to grow them in the center squares of each city block. The atmosphere is very calm and quiet. All the streets in the downtown area are one way, which is nice. The town also has a large cenote (underground cavern with water).

Catedral de San Gervasio

This is also the best jumping off point for another set of ruins I didn't get a chance to see, Ek Balam, which Lonely Planet says rivals Chichen Itza. I was hoping to get back there, but doesn't look like I'll have a chance.

Las Ruinas

The giant pyramid at Chicen Itza

If the Mayans are right, and I don't think anyone on the Yucatan Peninsula is too worried, the world will end on December 21. That makes this about the last good time to see what brought them to that conclusion. As it turns out, the date has no real connection to the Mayans.

What the Mayans have a great deal of connection with is ruins spread throughout the continent, in all shapes, sizes, colors and presentations. I've tackled several of these sites so far, and they each have their own character.

Down one side of the pyramid. At about 4:45 at the vernal equanox every year, the sun shines and makes the edge of the pyramid look like a snake.

The inner wall of the grand juego de pelota at Chichen Itza. The donut shaped thing attached is what the ball must pass through to score a point. Keep in mind players are not allowed to use their hands, head or feet. 

Chichen Itza is the most famous of the sites, with good reason, but the fame has also brought with it so many tourists and so many vendors it has a bit of a Disneyland feel to it. If you come without a tour group, an hour wait to get in seems about average. Trying to get a picture without a tourist in it is practically impossible. Still, the completeness of the structures is quite amazing. 

Many of the stones feature carvings that tell elaborate, often gruesome stories.

Definitely stick around for the evening light show, which is about a 45-minute presentation of the different historical parts of the site. They light up in different colors the area they are discussing. The other interesting feature of the area is the acoustics, both by the pyramid and the sports arena. Hand claps reverberate noisily and conversations at normal volume can be heard 100 meters away.

Tulum has the distinction of sitting out on a outcropping of rock just above the beach, which makes for a spectacular view of the ocean from the site, but compared to many other locations the ruins themselves are not particularly grand. El Castillo is the largest and most complete, but because it is on a hill at the edge of the water there is no way to see it from the front with the ocean in the background except from a helicopter. It would be a spectacular shot, though, and I'm sure a quick internet search would come up with one. 

Ruins at Tulum. On the far right is part of el castillo, the largest structure on the site.

El Castillo, from afar.

A couple of iguanas hanging out.

 More ruins coming in future posts.

Cancun

Greetings from the Yucatan Peninsula. Cancun isn't the worst place to spend a New Year's Eve, though if you want a quiet relaxed time silence can be a little hard to come by.

Most of the people swimming in the ocean in Cancun seemed to be locals. The gringos seemed to stick mainly to the beach and the outdoor swimming pools near the beach.

This guy was nice enough to pose for several pictures.

The city is divided into very distinct sections. The hotel district, down by the Caribbean shore, is the part they call more Vegas than Vegas (in clever ads at the airport anyway). Every hotel has its own little area of beach, and though the entire beach is public, there are only a few access points through which to get to the sand. A little walking can eventually land you a fairly secluded spot, usually behind some hotel that's gone out of business. An enormous Mexican flag waves down at the south end of the beach.

Looking at the South end of the beach from afar.

Taking leisure and laziness to a different level. 

The second main section is el centro, which is the commercial part of the city. There are still some gringos here, mostly because the hostels and the bus station are here. It's about a 3km walk down a very nice, palm tree-lined running path to the edge of the hotel district and the public access to the beach. Most of the locals who aren't working don't seem to make it much further than this.

Who hasn't taken down Christmas lights until after New Year's Day?

El centro is just bustling just about every night. The center square, about a block off Tulum Av (the main drag), has booths selling food, vendors, usually some type of of performance and is just hopping with people. On the other side of Tulum Av is another big outdoor gathering area that still, even after ringing in the New Year, had the Christmas tree lit up and Santa posing with the kids. A big stage with some sort of dance competition attracted at least 500 watchers and they have, I kid you not, an outdoor ice skating ring. In general, Mexicans are not swift of skate -- most had an vice-like grip on the wall as they edged around the rink. Given that the temperature ranges from 80 and humid in the day to about 60 and kinda humid at night, I can't same I'm surprised.

I liked Cancun more than I was expecting. Outside the hotel district, it feels like most Mexican cities with tourist options. But two days was plenty. Will be back in a few days with tales of Mayan ruins.

La lista de los mejores 10 (o 11) de Ecuador

On Dennis Miller's old show (the one before he went careening over to the dark and, tragically, less funny side), Dennis would end his interviews by asking "What did we learn?" ... from whomever he interviewed that night.

So what did we learn from three months in Ecuador? So many deeper, philosophical things to ponder it would make for an unbearably tedious read. Instead, here are a few basics.

1. The shortest distance between to points is not always a straight line; or, if you are traveling from the Sierra to the coast, and you are anywhere south of Quito, just go through Guayaquil.

2. If you are going to teach anywhere in Ecuador with a whiteboard, bring your own markers.

3. You can buy watches at every market, but no one uses them, so why bother?

4. A frightened sheep will take off at full speed regardless off the rope tied around its neck. 4a. They're not fast enough to do themselves real harm when the rope abruptly stops them.

5. Barking dogs are all cowards. And most of them are morons as well.

6. High tide shifts about 45 minutes per day. This is important to know when planning your runs and your lessons.

7. Buses will pick you up just about anywhere. They will also leave you off just about anywhere, so it's good they pick you up there too.

8. When it comes to almuerzo (lunch) in a market, and you ask what the segundo (second course) is, you are just asking what will be on the eighth of the plate not covered with rice.

9. The climate is cool, the sun is hot. Be prepared for either at any moment.

10. The stuff in the trash can at the front of the bus is going out the window in five minutes. If you have trash, pack it out with you or just throw it out the window.

11. For a country about the size of Oregon, there is a spectacular diversity to the climate, terrain, vegetation and culture. It's well worth three months of your life. Thanks much to Anja, Jim and Magus, Paola, Anna, Donna, Francisco, Lauren, Robert, Alicia, Emma, Jared, Ingrid, Jade, Carlos, Zuzi and everyone else at Pachamama, all the kids (and adults) at Katitawa and Clara Luna, and the thousands of helpful and friendly Ecuadorans (and even the couple dozen who weren't that helpful) for a spectacular time. Back with more posts next year from Central America.

Clara Luna/Cafe de Lenguas

Teaching right at the edge of the ocean can present a unique set of challenges. A high tide crashing up within 10 meters or so of the classroom can make it difficult to hear or be heard, especially in different languages.

But, of course, you are teaching right on the beach, which makes it hard to complain about anything.

Clara Luna / Cafe de Lenguas

The view from the ocean

Parked at the south end of the Malecon in Puerto Lopez, the Clara Luna Language School is as different from Escuela Katitawa as Puerto Lopez is from Salasaca. While Salasaca is made up primarily of farmers and artisans, Puerto Lopez residents almost all make their money from fishing and tourism. The tourism ebbs and flows, but the fish never seem to. (For more on the Puerto Lopez, see the Ruta del Sol entry earlier).

The mission of the two schools is completely different. While Katitawa is the primary school for its pupil, Clara Luna's purpose is to augment the English education the students are getting during the school day. The difference between teaching students who want to learn and those sitting in a class they are required to attend is night and day. Add in the difference between teenagers and youngsters and you have a completely different teaching experience.

The classroom and the library

The school has three different classes at the moment -- a children's class that meets Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 4 p.m. Ecuadoran time (which means almost no one is actually there on time and the class begins around 4:30) and two different "adult" classes which meet at 6:30 (Ecuadoran time again). The majority of the adult students are high-school age. The beginners meet Tuesdays and Thursdays, the intermediate group on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

The kids' class

The frustrating experience at the Clara Luna School, at least in the three weeks I taught there, was the attendance. Rarely were all the students present and often half or more would not show up, making it very difficult to build upon a previous lesson.

Paola Martinez, the owner of the school, teaches Spanish to tourists during the day, and that's where the majority of the school's income comes from. The English lessons are just $15/month, which works out to just $1 per hour (except that the students never show up for the first half hour of the 90-minute class, so they're really paying $1.50/hour. Still a good deal).

Paola (right) with a student

She is currently building a small house way on the other side of town for volunteers, with the hopes of having it ready by January. At that point she will have room for more English teachers and presumably more classes. For more information, visit www.claraluna.com.ec

Los Voluntarios

Robert, the owner of the Katitawa School, estimates about 250 volunteers have cycled through the school in the past few years.

Since I've been here, about half of the volunteers have been from the United States, the other half from elsewhere. At the moment I write this, we have people here from the U.S., Canada, Czech Republic, Portugal, Holland, Brazil and France. In the past month we've also had volunteers from the U.K. and Australia.

Kevin and Alicia pose while the other Kevin watches Jared practice for music class

Donna (right) works with Francisca in the garden.

 Most of the volunteers are in their 20s (I'm the old man by a few years). Most stay for a month or two, though some are here for a bit longer. A lot come right after college or while they are taking a year off. Others like me have quit their jobs and are traveling before finding another job or going back to school. For most this is one stop of many in their travels.

Brinn enjoying her final day at the school.

Lauren gives Eric a ride on her shoulders.

 We all live at Hostal Pachamama (Mother Earth in Kichwa), and for having anywhere from eight to 15 people sharing a house at any given time, I am amazed at how harmonious the group has been. New people are quickly assimilated and pick up the routine, and everybody is very considerate. I'm sure having someone who cleans the house for us is a big factor as well, but it really has been an easy place to live. We have communal dinners and often take weekend trips together as well.

Hostal Pachamama

It takes the kids about five minutes to warm up to new volunteers, maybe less. They are very used to having new people show up and instruct them, so beyond the usual difficulties of getting 6-9 year olds to concentrate on anything, the turnover doesn't seem to faze them.

Francisco loaded down with Kevin and Francisca as Valeria tries to figure out of there's room for her anywhere. No volunteer has ever left Katitawa School without knowing that "Carga me" means "Carry me."

Kichwa

The residents of the community are mostly Kichwa, one of the native "tribes" (for lack of a better word) in Ecuador. They have done a good job of maintain many of their traditions. Many of the people still wear the traditional garments, which for me consist of a white shirt and trousers covered by long, solid black poncho with white stitching around the collar and across the shoulder. The poncho goes down to about the knees.

The children at the school sometimes wear contemporary clothes (like Wamari) while others like Luis come dressed in the traditional Kichwa garb

For women the traditional dress is a white blouse with embroidery around the collar, a black skirt held up by a cloth sash wrapped around the waist. On top they wear a shawl (usually crimson or green) that goes down to about the elbow.

Girls dance in traditional Kichwa clothes (minus the shawls) at the Kulya Raymi festival marking the vernal equinox, which in Ecuador marks the beginning of the summer.

The Kichwa language, which is taught in our school, is spoken as commonly as Spanish. It would be harder to find someone who doesn't speak Kichwa than someone who doesn't speak Spanish, though most speak Spanish at least as well as I do. On a side note, I was informed by one of the young men I am tutoring in the evening that there are three fluent speakers of English in the area and one of them works in the United Nations (the student said was Ecuador's ambassador to the U.N. but I have not been able to confirm that).

Kichwa (also spelled Quichua) is part of the Quechuan language family of languages spoken throughout Ecuador, Peru and Columbia. It has only been written in recent years (not sure how long) and so words are still being changed and it is not uncommon to find multiple spellings of the same word. Salasaca is often spelled Salasaka, for example.

Signs at the school are often posted in three languages.

 The people have a dark, weathered look that may owe more to lives of hard work than genetics. As best I can tell, the most distinguishing feature is they are quite short and have flat noses and roundish faces.

Salasaca

Volcan Tungurahua, and that is steam, not a cloud, at the top. The Volcano has had two serious eruptions the past 12 years and spouts off a little hot air from time to time.

 Salasaca, the pueblo that is home to Escuela Katitawa, is a very spread out community of 2,000 people divided into smaller districts, nestled between Ambato (the fourth largest city in Ecuador) and Baños (named for baths, not bathrooms) in the central highlands. The elevation here is about 9,000 feet, so while it gets warm when the sun is out during the day, evenings are fairly chilly, though not cold.

A woman in traditional Kichwa garb spins wool as she walks, a very common occupation. Often they will spin the wool while loaded down with big bundles of grass to feed the livestock -- multitasking, Ecuador style.

The area is beautiful and the view from the hilltops is incredible, as is the case for much of Ecuador. On a clear day we have a view of the highest mountain (Chimborazo) and highest volcano (Tungurahua) in Ecuador. Both are close to 20,000 feet.

The view (on a rare clear day) from the balcony. Chimborazo is the tallest mountain in Ecuador. Below is Ambato, about 20 kilometers away.

"Central Salasaca" and I chuckle even using that term, is about three blocks worth of shops along the highway. Most of the people live east of the main road, working on farms. There is a second paved road that heads East, and one that branches off from there down a large hill to another group of farms nearer the stream.

This bridge is kind of the designated marker for "Central Salasaca" which is really just the junction of the two paved roads.

Looking down road No. 1, the one that goes toward Baños

This is the other road, the one that heads toward the rest of Salasaca, including the library and the hostel.

Transportation is by collectivo (pickup trucks), and a dime will save you a 20-minute walk down the other paved road to the library where we volunteers spend much of our time (I will describe this in a later post). The rest of the roads are dirt, and we walk on small paths trampled between the farms.

It is common to see mules, bicycles and even elderly women walking down the main road loaded with as much grass as they can carry to feed livestock. Pigs, cows, sheep, donkeys, chickens, roosters and llamas are common sights on the way to school, and dogs roam free.

No, this is not George Clinton. It is a very common sight to see people (more often women than men) bent over under the weight of a large amount of feed they are bringing back to their livestock.

 The houses are made of adobe bricks for the most part and are often intentionally left with an unfinished look on purpose because property taxes are less for a house that is under construction. A one-story house will often feature the foundation of a second story and a set of steps that lead up to a second story, one that the owners never intend to build.

This is a shot from of what I can only describe as a city council meeting in the parking lot of the library. Computers had been stolen from the Salasaca City Hall the night before, and this group was preparing to go around to all the houses in this section of Salasaca to look for them. To the best of my knowledge, the computers have not been found.

The (dis)Organization

For those of you who are teachers, the next post may read like a nightmare. I write this mostly for you, but also to give everyone an idea about the way the school is run. Stepping back, it strikes me as fairly interesting, though it is quite frustrating when surrounded by it.

As none of the other volunteers have taught in Ecuador before, we have no way of knowing what you are about to read is common here or whether this school is, to put it kindly, informal. This post is not a complaint -- all of us are enjoying are time here and I would highly recommend for anyone to volunteer here.

As with much of life in Ecuador, the Katitawa School functions on reaction as much as planning. Unfortunately, that does not serve the kids well. Classes here begin and end on Ecuadoran time, which means they start when everyone gets together and end when the kids' attention span dictates they can no longer retain information.

When I arrived, the schedule was (and still is, for that matter) is broken down into a block of 90 minutes, followed by a half-hour for snack and play, followed by a 2-1/4 hour block, then lunch for 45 minutes. The afternoon consists of a 90-minute block and a 45-minute block. I use the word block even though the schedule dictates each of those should be a single class.

We changed this, at least for the volunteers' purposes, into eight 45-minute (or so) periods. We still teach the same subjects in the same proportions, but no volunteers are required to come up with 2 hours, 15 minutes worth of English or music lessons for children whose attention spans are equal to that of the ferret. The school administrator is completely unconcerned with what we do as long as the kids are being taught something, which is part of the problem, but at least we are not meeting resistance.

As I mentioned a couple of posts earlier, discipline is a fairly foreign concept. Students (most between the ages of 6 and 9) are allowed by the full-time teachers to wander around the classroom and it is not uncommon for a student to walk out of class without the teacher commenting on it.