Saying goodbye is hard (part 2)

Days in México: 122

I wasn't sure where the bus was going when we left Boca del Rio at 8am on Friday morning. I was with 13 other exchange students so they explained that we were going north-east on the Ruta Tajin.

We were all excited and talked a lot for the first half an hour, then we slept the rest of the way because there wasn't much else to do. The trip to the hotel took about four and a half hours and everyone was glad to get off the bus when we arrived. The first thing we did was pick our cabins. I was with Emma from Finland, Maike from Germany and Céline from Belguim. I shared a room with Céline.

The cabins

Belgium and Australian flags above our beds

After lunch we were given free time so we went in to town. Papantla is a small town with not many shops. The main building that stood out in the town was the church. It was a prominent style of architecture and was really big, but we didn't stop to have a look inside it. We found a nice cafe and I had a really delicious Oreo frappe.

Corpus Christi church in Papantla

My delicious Oreo frappe

It was raining a lot so we mainly stayed around the town centre which was marked with an outdoor, two level structure. We took lots of photos while we waited for the rain to stop...

Céline (Belgium), Emma (Finland), Me (Australia) and Maike (Germany)

 We were then joined by some of the other exchange students...

The design on the roof of the sheltered area

The rain eased off a bit so we went to the markets which were in the lower level of a building across from the town centre. The markets were a maze of stalls and passages that all looked the same. Surprisingly, it wasn't very busy. We then went back to the hotel because it was raining really hard and didn't look like it was going to stop.

Saturday was another rainy day. We all went by bus to Tecolutla which was about an hour away. The original plan was to go on a boat ride on the river but it was raining too hard for that. We took some photos in the brief pause of rain before walking down the road to the aquarium.

The river

Emma, Maike, Céline and I

A map of the region

The aquarium was small and had animals that you wouldn't normally find in an aquarium like birds and rabbits. In Australia, I'm pretty sure keeping animals in these conditions would have been illegal and I didn't like it.

We still had an hour and a half before lunch so we went to a turtle conservatory on the beach. Hundreds of baby turtles had hatched earlier that day so we were allowed to pick one up and name is. I named mine 'Squirt', which is the name of the baby turtle on Finding Nemo (a movie set in the ocean off the east coast of Australia.)

Squirt

Lots of baby turtles!

We went back to the hotel after lunch and the rain stopped so we relaxed by the pool. We were enjoying the sunshine until more clouds came and it started to rain again.

On Sunday morning we went to the Tajin. The Tajin loosely translates to 'The City of the Thunder God' and was build around about 600-1200 A.D. It is a World Heritage site but only about 35% of it is open to the public. There were quite a few pyramids on the site and there was a lot of walking involved. Before the entrance there were markets for souvenirs and food which we had a look at after walking around the pyramids.

The markets at the Tajin

The main pyramid is called the 'Pyramid of Niches' and has 7 layers of niches (large indented box bricks.) There are 365 niches in total, one for each day of the year.

Looking up from the base of the 'Pyramid of Niches'

The back of the 'Pyramid of Niches.' You can clearly see the 7 layers and the individual niches

There was a hill that overlooked most of the Tajin. From the top was an amazing view!!!

Out the front of the Tajin was the Voladores de Papantla (Papantla Flyers in English.) At first it looks like a pole with a square structure at the top of it, but then I realised that there are five people at the top and four of them had their feet bound by rope to the corners of the square at the top. The one person who wasn't attached by rope stood in the middle and played a drum. One of the 'flyers' accompanied him on the flute as the four attached by rope fall off the structure backwards. The rope that was attached to their feet was curled around the pole beforehand so they swung around the pole as they descend. I had my camera and iPod with me so my right hand was filming with my iPod as my left hand was taking photos on the camera.

We returned to the hotel to pack our bags and say our final goodbyes to three of the exchange students who weren't catching the bus back with the rest of us. We were all so tired from walking around at the Tajin so almost everyone slept for most of the trip back to Veracruz.

We used our flags as blankets on the bus. This is someone from Germany sleeping.

Some of the Brazilian exchange students had a bag of lychees, which is a type of fruit. I had never eaten fresh lychees before so I tried one. I remembered they were my Ouma's (grandma in Afrikaans) favourite fruit but I've only ever seen them as canned fruit.

A lychee

 To eat a lychee, first you peel off the outer shell to get to the white, fleshy fruit.

You then eat it, being careful of the black seed in the middle of it. I didn't mind the taste of it but it was a bit too sweet for me.

Part of the route we took coming home was along the coast. The scenery out the window was mainly rivers and fields of corn plants. Surprisingly, I didn't see any cactus plants.

Rivers leading to the sea

Corn fields

We arrived back in Veracruz at night and we said our final goodbyes. After spending the weekend having an amazing time with the other exchangers, it was hard to say goodbye, knowing that we will probably never be together like that again. It's bittersweet having friends around the world, it's nonstop fun when you are together but you live a thousand miles apart and hardly get to see each other.

Ruta Tajin, District 4190 2013-2014