Sunday 21.02.2021
I went all in. I had a beef sandwich from a street-food stall and followed it with a coconut-juice where the seller used a bucket to get my portion from another container. I trusted the higenic standards in Mexico.
I rented a car and met Marika in Valladolid in a small restaurant in a small unspectacular neighborhood. Still, a lot of tourists passed by. We discussed about what to do. Marika has discovered some Mayan archeological site near Merida and was not excited about seeing more of the same. Chichen itza is the largest site in Mexico but I couldn’t convince her to go there. It was also too hot to be outdoor in that hour of the day. We decided instead to go to a nearby cenote. Wait, what is a cenote? I didn’t know what it was, Marika has visited one yesterday and she then explained to me that it is like a cave under the ground with water in it where you can swim. So we went and it was one of the highlights of my travels so far!
We paid around 120 pesos to access two Cenotes. The first was called Samula. With some wooden stairs you go through a hole into the underground as if you are going into a mine. The basic infrastructure includes also the mining spot lights. It was a big cave with crystal clear water and one opening in the top where magical sun rays sneaked into the cenote. It was surreal. Thankfully forced to wear a life jacket, I could compensate for my in-prpgress swimming skills. The place was mainly full of locals and families and only a few tourists. We took a few photos but I also leave you with a YouTube video:
We also visited the other nearby cenote which was dark and kind of creepy. Since these cenotes had been there for thousands of years, I was sure there were dead bodies underneath. If we were to dive deep enough, we would have probably collected some material for the anatomy lessons!! I actually guess not. Maybe the government has sent divers at some point to sanitize the bottom of the cenote.
The Yucatan peninsula, which is where we are now in Mexico, is full of these cenotes. It is thought that they are thousands connected by a network of underground rivers. It is still a mysterying how they were formed. One theory is that a meteorite hit the earth millions of years ago and created a big explosion and changed the geography of this place, and created cenotes. I chose the following two short videos as well.
We then wanted to go to Tulum, a paradise beach 2 hours from Cancun. But on the way back there is a small archeological site in Coba that we thought we could spontaneously see. As we arrived there and we parked the car in the empty parking meadow, another traveler told us that the site was closed and that he also missed the opening time. We chatted a bit and then decided to go altogether for dinner.
Our fellow traveler, M. from Croatia is travelling around Mexico then will go on his yearly trip to Peru where he studies in a jungle with the Masters of healing, shamans, using the “sacred” ayahuasca plant. He is an alternative medicine therapist in Croatia and believes the the plant has cognition. He says they believe that with the plant you have access to the knowledge of the universe and that through drinking the ayahuasca infusion, you somehow get connected to the plant and also get this access. This is supposedly a process that takes years and they have masters. In the therapy ceremonies, both the “patient” and the healer drink the infusion, then the therapist would be able to see the bad organs. They would even see to the vessel precision. No need to tell your story or your problem. They would simply see it. M. seemed to deeply believe in this. He says he knows many people who got cured after such treatment. We listened attentively to him in what seemed to be a lecture. He didn’t seem to want to know anything about us and focused in passionately conveying his ideas about the metaphysical world of ayahuasca.
We have no idea what cognition is. We have theories, but how we think what we think and our very subjective experience that defines who we are is far from being scientifically understood. Psychedelic drugs alter our perception of the world. Whether they pseudorandomly generate patterns of experiencs or grant us some access to usually-not-accessible inputs, we can not tell. I stay between my skeptical attitude of metaphysics and my personal experiences along with the experiences of some friends that are hard to explain with a sole scientific approach. Besides, who doesn’t like a bit of mystery?
M. told us we have to visit Chichen itza.
We bid our new friend farewell and drove to Tulum. A destination of breathtakingly beautiful beaches and good vibes. We booked our accommodation because it was supposed to be full of travelers, probably with many stories as exciting as that of our friend M. It was indeed full of travelers but mostly around 20 years old with many tattoos and half naked. I might be a bit judgemental here but they didn’t seem to be our kind of folks. We drove to a street food stall where Alejandro and his two assistants prepared us wonderful Tacos. The neighbouring stall with Goumi prepared us a wonderful quesadilla.