Filipino bureaucracy

Getting a drivers license can be a pain in the ass. We thought to make it easy for ourselves in the Netherlands: let's get an international drivers license. Done in 5 minutes. But not good enough for the Filipino ANWB. They want a translation of the embassy with official stamp. The nearest embassy is in Manila, so that's not gonna happen. Solution: you buy a temporary student license for a month and after that you do a theory exam and a practical exam. Nice detail: you only have to do the practical exam if you bring your own car, since do do not have cars of their own. You do have to pay for it though, even if you do not do the test. Sounds easy, just pay and you have your temporary license. But no, that is not how it works. After 5 hours which included 4 hours and 55 minutes of waiting and 4 minutes of walking to 6 different counters we walked out of the office again and we can repeat the whole exercise next month for the real license.

Of course if you now the right person in the office you can also pay thrice the amount of money and you just get your license, no exam, no drugs test, no medical test and hardly any waiting. Apparently we already now two of those persons through different friends...

Ok, you have a drivers license. The next step is a car. MCP has a second hand car since a couple of weeks. We have been driving around happily for 5 days and then the problems started. We have a month guarantee on the car, but unfortunately that does not guarantee that the mechanic will actually fix the problem. We are now in a state of mind that we wouldn't be surprised that the car will fall apart on day 31 (figuratively speaking of course), so we have to pay the mechanic for multiple problems.

Good mechanics are hard to find and even if you have one, the cheap Chinese parts they use to replace the old ones are not really helpful because they tend to malfunction after a couple of months/weeks/days according to your amount of luck. And that is were the real problem lies. Second hand cars come from Korea or Japan and are usually stripped to the bone in the Philippines and rebuild again with the earlier named cheap Chinese parts. From the outside everything looks fine and the first few days actually everything is fine. But a new car costs a fortune and will eventually break down at some point as well and the same song starts all over again. Who do people have cars here in the first place? From my mildly aggressive tone you have probably figured out by now that we some slight issues with our lovely car. Fortunately our motorbike is still working properly. 

I am happy to inform you that I wrote this particular part of the blog 1 week ago and the car is still functioning.

Not everything we do is frustrating though. We had a four day ReefCheck training Mid-December given by the developer of the training. We were incredibly lucky that this training was planned at the place were we are staying now and that we could join in. With a group of 20 participants including students from the Siliman University, different dive shops and Marine Conservation Philippines we followed an interesting program of lectures, diving and snorkeling.

With ReefCheck surveys you measure the abundance of human disturbances by looking at different indicator species of fish and invertebrates. You also look for abundance of coral and damage to coral trough for instance dynamite fishing, anchor damage or typhoons. In each area you want to research, you make two transects of 100m at a shallow depth and a bit deeper. Monitoring takes place as often as possible.

Since this research is simultaneously done in over 90 countries, Reef Check is a good tool to look at human disturbances worldwide. It is a relatively easy method to learn because it focuses only on a limited amount of species, which is also the disadvantage. Ecologically more interested species are left out, in favor of heavily over fished species or edible inverts. You do not very often see a Bumphead parrotfish or Humphead wrasse because they are well liked on the dinner table and grow quite big. Other common fish you find on the reef, like rabbitfish or angelfish are not part of the survey. Still, it can be quite difficult to recognize all the different kind of snappers and to not confuse them with other fish species!

MCP will be using Reef Check for part of the research and so it is useful for us to be qualified as Ecodivers from now on. We can use the Reef Check methodology and upload to data to the worldwide database. Our next step is to become official Reef Check trainers so that we can train our volunteers up to Ecodivers. For now, we will be using the extended documentation material and powerpoints to train our volunteers so they can help with the surveys. We will add some extra species because we are interested not only in human disturbances both also in the actual health of the reef ecosystem.

With the now existing Reef Check group of about 20 people we will be doing surveys in Dauin, Masaplod and Zamboanguita four times a year, starting already in January with a practice survey in Dauin. As MCP we will develop several more transects in Zamboanguita, both in- and outside Marine Protected Areas to see how bad the human disturbance is in our area and whether there are any differences inside and outside MPA's. If we find any human disturbances, we will try to find the cause and see if we can prevent or diminish it by looking for solutions with the local community, municipality and other involved parties.

The unfortunate cocks

In the end, the typhoon Ruby/ Hagupit only caused one night of rain and a few days of overcast weather. Nothing scary. The day after the typhoon we found out that if the typhoon does not come to you, it doesn't mean that it will not affect you. We wanted to get our Filipino drivers licenses, but that was not possible because they could not make internet contact with the head office (?? We had internet). Their working hours are already interesting. We were warned not to come before 9 (computers are still off) and not after 11 (early lunch time), but even within this limited time frame we were told to come back another day. That was the start sign of 2 days without internet, which gave Dolf the time to mess around with our new second hand car. After blowing some fuses he did manage to change the car radio all by himself. All other small stuff which had to be repaired was done by the mechanic (who does not necessarily do a better job than Dolf).

I forgot to mention that I visited the national sport in the Philippines a few weeks ago, the cock fighting. This is a brutal fight between to cocks, who both wear a knife at one of their legs, so they can slice open the other cock. I went with Marvin, the dive master of Bongo Bongo, who used to work there before. Taking an insider with you definitely improves your understanding.

Each Sunday afternoon, there are cock fights in the pit, the stadium. Dauin only has 5000 inhabitants and is not very rich, but the pit is some like a small concrete football stadium with a ring in the middle for the fights. Before each fight the most interesting part of the process takes place. Everybody starts shouting like crazy to place bets on other one of the cocks. A bet on one cock can be has high as 20.000 pesos (around 400 euros, all bets combined) on a normal Sunday. Before the betting starts, both owners of the cocks show how aggressive their cock is by letting him pick at the other cock three times and let the cock prance around on the ground for 30 seconds.

The actual fight can be over in less than 30 seconds if one of the cocks jumps on the other and slices open his whole belly/ neck/ other body parts so the wounded cock can't do anything anymore and sags through his legs. Both cocks are picked up from the ground and dropped again. If one of them does not attack anymore, there is a winner. The looser ends up in the owners frying pan in the evening. After watching 8 fights you get the general idea and it was time to leave again.

Because you are sitting 5 m from the ring and the arena is surrounded by a 1.5 m plastic wall it doesn't look that bad, because you only see the feathers flying around and only a limited amount of blood. After each fight, the blood and feathers are swept away and the blood is removed from the wall. If you visit an illegal cock fight in the garden of the neighbor, it looks a bit more bloody. The looser was showed around with blood leaking from him and the entrails hanging out...

On Super Sunday which is once every 1-2 months, cock fighters from a much bigger area come and fight, sometimes even from Manila. The entrance alone is already 500 pesos (the average payment for a job like construction worker is 300 pesos a day) and people (males) wager their whole salary on a fight.

When your house is on fire, you first save your cocks and only then your wife and children. This common joke shows how important cocks are in Filipino society. Half of the families in Dauin have 5 or more cocks in a cage or on a leash in their garden.

When you see a large group of people making a lot of noise you think they are watching a fight between two people, but most of the time it is just trading or selling cocks or an actual cock fight.

Watch out for falling coconuts

A week ago we explored the bays of Zamboanguita with Tony, the coastal resource manager (CRM) of Zamboanguita. I did not get to post it earlier due to lack of electricity and illness. Our work at Marine Conservation Philippines will be mostly together with him as a representative of the municipality, who manage the Marine Protected Areas (MPA's) of Zamboanguita. Before I explain what we did I first need to explain an MPA more in detail.

In the Philippines, there are several hundreds of MPA's, ranging in size from a few hectares till hundreds of ha. An MPA often has different zones of use. The most important part is the marine sanctuary. This is a no take zone, which means no fishing, no collecting of clams or crabs and no tourism. The sanctuary is surrounded by a buffer zone, where sustainable fishing is usually allowed (which is line fishing, or fishing with small nets). Within the MPA, other areas are usually designated for tourism, fishing and recreation.

With an MPA it is possible to protect all sea life and the coastal habitats, like mangroves, coral reef and sea grass. This is also beneficial for the fishing industry, because the number of fish will increase as well as their size and fish do not take the boundaries of an MPA into account which means they will also populate the area around the MPA.

Example of an MPA (green part). Bigger boats are only allowed outside the MPA in open water.

The CRM has already designed a whole plan for the Zamboanguita area, but because of lack of finances, manpower and tropical storms destroying buoys and coral, part of the plan is still in the implementation phase. Which is a good opportunity for MCP to jump in and help.

Yesterday we met some of the key people of the area; the head of the village and the head of the fishermen association and we visited a mangrove area which was replanted by local people. They only speak Visayan, so it's time to add another language to our repertoire otherwise we will be never able to communicate without Tony or another intermediate.

Unfortunately people only speak Visayan in the Visayas (makes sense), the official language next to English is Tagalog. It gets even worse, on the island of Cebu, which is part of the Visayas they speak Cebuano. The vulcanizers who repaired our bike on our holiday only spoke Cebuano. Visayan spoken in Bacolod (the capital of Negros Occidental, 100 km from here) is different than the Visayan they speak here. Some words have a different meaning, are used in a different way or pronounced different. Then there are some 150 other languages spoken in the Philippines. Needless to say, if you speak only English and you want to speak with the locals, you need to learn some additional languages. One small advantage is that the languages have taken over several Spanish and English words, but made their own version of it. At least we can already count, since they count in Spanish both in Tagalog and in Visayan...

Our little trip to Zamboanguit brings us to the title of the weblog. Since the whole coast area is lined with coconut palms, you are bound to pass when it is harvesting time. The palms are often more than 15m high, so you need some agile climbers. To make it a little easier, most of the trunks have 'stairs', little cuts out of the trunk for hand- and foot holds. When the palms are close to the road, they warn the traffic by laying some palm leafs on the road and thus 'blocking' one side of the road. You better stop, because at any moment one of the guys can drop a few coconuts from the tree and you don't want to get them on your head. Of course they have no control of how they fall, so sometimes one bumps one the other half of the road where traffic is just continuing. Well, they need to come down at some point anyway, because if the nuts are not harvested they will start to fall off by themselves at a random time which is even more dangerous.

We encountered our first tropical depression last week and the next one is coming in two days. The Philippines developed an alarm for typhoons, from phase 1-5. Today (last week Tuesday) we are in phase 1, tropical depression, which means just a lot of rain and a deliberate power cut. So, when we were walking along the beach with Tony, in the pouring rain, a fisherman told Tony that it was phase 1. Tony just continued walking like nothing was going on, so we guessed that phase 1 was not so bad, which is indeed the case. Depending on how bad the weather predictions are, schools are canceled as well. So, right now it feels like we're back in Bolivia during the rainy season: everybody is in sleep mode, because there is not much else you can do. The roads are mud pools, depending on whether they are paved or not, we cannot dive because the sea is too rough and even my e-reader abandoned me (you only have the charge the thing once every month, but it was almost empty yesterday evening). One more hour before my laptop runs out of battery and I will join the rest, do nothing, find a book which is not electronic, play games on your phone till the battery is dead or sleep... you just have to go with the flow.

In the end, we had only a two day power cut. Dolf won the bet on how long we would be out of power. One tree fell down in the whole village and of course it had to drop on the electricity poles. Other villages were less lucky with raising water levels and more trees falling down.

Now we are preparing for the next typhoon, which will fortunately be 250 km from here. We bought storm lamps, we have enough beer and rum (apparently the local habit is to have a party just before the electricity goes down) and food to survive a new power cut of a few days and the local people were already cutting branches from trees to prevent that trees will fall down on their houses. To prevent accidents, electricity is will be cut during storms and of course antennas are vulnerable because they stick out. No phone, no internet and no electricity at least on Sunday.

Holiday on a motorbike

We took a week off to explore a bit more of the Philippines. After all, up to now we hadn't seen more than Coron were we only explored the wrecks under water 6 months ago, Manila and Dauin.

Since we are already renting a bike anyway, a holiday on motorbike was an easy solution. We started on Negros, the island Dauin is on and drove 180 km up to San Carlos, explored the nearby hills and then took the ferry from San Carlos to Toledo, on the is land of Cebu. From Toledo we drove to Balamban were we crossed the mountains to Cebu City. From Cebu we drove down to the ferry in Lilo-an and back to Dauin again. We drove some 500 km and only had a flat tyre twice. With a gps on the phone it is pretty easy to plan your trips and see where you are in a big city. You can always stop your bike somewhere to check were you are. All the traffic stops randomly anyway.

It is nice to tour to the country side, we were the only foreign tourists during most of the route and some people were pretty surprised to see us passing by on a motorbike. The roads were well paved, except with part of our tour through the hills in San Carlos were we drove some 30 km off road or on roads that were once paved (a very long time ago).

We admired rice paddies, the 'small' Chocolate hills near San Carlos and some wonderful mountain views on three different day trips and the Tumalog waterfalls near Oslob, as well as the many villages and views along the road.

We planned to go to Bohol as well, but in the end we decided to do that some other time and rent a moped on Bohol instead of taking it with us on the ferry. There are several ferries were you can take your bike or car, but depending on the size of the ferry there is an interesting trajectory before you can put your bike on the boat. First, there is the normal charge for passengers and bike. Already the bike is twice as expensive as a passenger. Then some police checks your id. There a helpful guy was assigned to us who showed which offices we had to visit to pay some additional fees. Harbor fee, small bribe for some person, another fee in some office at the other side of the harbor, some more fee..., pay the helpful guy who made you pay all the fees, which adds up to more than three times the price of a passenger. Interestingly enough, the other ferry from Lilo-an was much easier. You just pay once and the fee includes one person.

Riding a bike was not that hard, except in Cebu city with all the jeepneys, tricycles, trucks and normal cars. On a motorbike you weave in and out of the waiting lines and try to maneuver to the front. By now Dolf is quite an experienced driver. Driving in Manila is still a bridge too far though.

It is no problem if something is wrong with your bike during the trip. Along the road there are vulcanizers, or mechanics every few kilometers. They have an interesting way of setting up their shop. It is usually a bamboo shed and most of their tools are self made from different truck or car parts. Everything will be reused, so they throw nothing away. The tire is fixed by putting some sticky rubber on the hole and then heat that part either with a self made ironer which they put on the aluminum foil of a packet of cigarettes or they lit some oil in a big sparking plug which belonged to a truck. Then they put the whole construction under a bench screw made from the shaft of a truck and let the whole contraption stay there until the rubber is firmly attached to the tire. And they ask the shocking amount of 30 pesos (75 euro cents) for the repair, which was probably still too high.

Cebu city is much nicer than Manila, because it is smaller (800.000 people) and it is surrounded by hills on three sites and the ocean on the other site. Downtown is a bit crappy, but we had a nice hotel in the northern part of the city close to the mountains. We visited a beautiful Taoist temple in the hills, the most important basilica (devotion of Filipinos has a complete other dimension if you compare them with catholic Dutch people; they kiss and touch all important statues when they walk by) and they Yap house, a wooden house in its original state from the 17 century from a Chinese merchant.

We also bought some electronical parts for Dolf. That was quite a challenge. We knew in what neighborhood we had to be, but walking in 35 degrees, with an overpowering sewage smell in your nose and honking cars everywhere make your senses a bit overstimulated. We did find what we were looking for, so I was happy that we could mingle ourselves in the traffic once more. The traffic looks extremely chaotic as you look to it from the side, but when you're right in the middle you actually discover some system where traffic lights and advice from police offers do not necessarily have to be followed.

We were back in Dauin after 6 days, so we could join in a dive trip to Aligay, a small island before the bigger island of Mindanao (there is no main land in the Philippines, so I always have to talk in islands). We did some nice dives on pristine reefs (divers hardly come here, because it is pretty remote). We spend the night on the island. The group was pretty big (20 people), so we din't have enough tents. That would not have been a problem because we slept on a grassy area, but the weather did not agree with us. In the middle of the night it started to rain big time. We scrambled into one of our tents, were two people were sleeping and we managers to sleep in the 2 person tent with 6 people, 3 in the inner tent and 3 in the outer tent. Fortunately it stopped raining after an hour and because we were lying so nice and cozy our sleeping bags actually dried overnight. If you look on the facebook page of Bongo Bongo divers, you will see a nice picture of a sleeping Dolf with his head sticking out from under the tent (6 people was a bit too much after all).

We saw pilot whales and dolphins near the boat both on our way to the island and back.

Now it is time to do something useful again, so I am sitting outside with 35 degrees and sweating behind my laptop while a big ventilator tries to get the temperature down. As long as you just sit quietly or drive on a motorbike the temperature is ok. In these 6 days our coloring improved amazingly, even with factor 45 sunscreen.

We already have some pictures of the trip on Dolfs facebook. We'll add some more and add them to the blog as well.

Treasure hunting

We spend last week in Dauin, a village between Dumaguete (the big city) and Zamboanguita (the probable MCP location). We are renting a moped so we can see something of the surrounding and stay at Bongo Bongo Divers, a nice place close to the beach.

Of course the renting of the moped did not entirely go as planned. We drove from Dumaguete to Dauin, and after a few kilometers I started to smell burned plastic. There was nothing wrong while driving, so we just continued. In the end, it turned out that the back brake was a bit stuck and during the 15 km drive we actually achieved in demolishing part of the brake. The smell was the rubber of the brake which was totally gone. Luckily, the shop found it no problem to drive over to our place and change the moped.

Today we drove to the Siit arboretum near Zamboanguita, which is one of the options for MCP's location, together with Soren and Helle, our future 'bosses'. It was nice to visit the location. It is very green, with a lot of trees and situated on the top of a small hill. That's also the more difficult part, because the see is 1-2 km downhill and part of the road needs some construction before we will be able to drive up and down all day with the volunteers and the dive gear.

We marked out the places were the huts for the volunteers and us should be build and now we are hoping that the constructor is indeed going to build two huts in the coming two weeks as he promised to do. It would be nice if he keeps his promise so that we can officially start with MCP, but of course you never know what's going to happen. If this will be MCP future location, we will be very nicely situated. The huts are in the middle of a large garden, with lots of (fruit) trees and it is in the middle of a rural area. Along the main 'highway' are a lot of rice fields and waterbuffalos and it is less populated the further you are from Dumaguete.

Dunaguete itself is a friendly city with a 100.000 inhabitants, a movie theater, a big supermarket with all the western necessities (yoghurt, muesli, cheese) and a mall with enough American restaurants when you do not want to eat rice or noodles for a change. Luckily, Filipinos eat bread as well, so there are plenty of bakeries, although the bread is mainly sweet.

We also did some diving near Dauin. The quality of the reefs is good, except for the parts hit by the typhoon Yolanda last year. Visibility is quite good, especially in the morning and certainly much better than the usual 5m in Cambodia. There are a lot of different fish and also large fish as well, which is an indicator that there is not much overfishing. Which is good, since this is a Marine Protected Area, which means that people can only fish in a sustainable way. No dynamite or cyanide fishing, or big trawlers which destroy the bottom with their nets. Also no particluar fish or invertebrate species who is dominating the area, which is also a sign of a healthy reef. In Cambodia the bottom was crowded with diadema sea urchins, but here you see them very little.

If we want to go diving, we can just grab a tank and walk into the water. The reef is only a small swim away. We also went to Apo Island, a famous place for diving in the Philippines and in viewing distance of where we stay. Unfortunately, half of the dive sites are destroyed by the typhoon, but the other half of the reef is still intact and beautiful with coral gardens and lots of fish and green turtles. I think we have broken our turtle record on one dive, because at one point every five minutes we saw another turtle.

Yesterday we went on an interesting quest. Supposedly, between Apo Island and the big island Mindanao there is a hidden shoal, an elevation of sand in the ocean. Very few people know it exists and supposedly it is very beautiful down there. Fisherman told (of course) different stories of the location, the depth and what you can catch here. A 100 kg grouper, for instance. Two local fisherman joined us on the boat and with 15 people we went looking if we could find this secret place. Including some rough navy maps with depth data Dolf was able to collect and 50 m of rope and 40 m of anchor line but without depth finder (stuck at customs in China) we started our exploration.

The first group went down on a location which was pointed out to us by a fisherman sitting in his small boat fishing in the middle of nowhere. After 55 m of descending they saw the bottom, but it was very deep. There was a slope going up though. Group 2 went down a bit further up the slope, we were part of the third group and still could not reach the bottom, because it was at 70m. The rest of the area is 300 m deep, so maybe we did find the shoal after all. No big fish or other interesting things to see of course.

It is interesting though to go down the anchor line into the 'blue nothing'. When you look up you can see much more compared to when you look down. 50m down, we were still able to see the rope of the anchor, all the way up to the surface. When you go down, you only start to see the bottom when you're more than 30 m down. It is beautiful to look up and only see the sun and the water. The anchor was drifting above the bottom however, and not touching the ground at all.

There was hardly any current and if you just continue to hold on to the anchor line going up and down and keep an eye on your computer it is perfectly safe to go down that deep. Because the rope is near you cannot get confused which side is up or down. Usually, it is not so interesting to do that because you can only stay that deep for not even a few minutes before you have to up again. On the way back we did another dive at Apo Island, to see at least some coral and fish.

For Magnus, the owner of the place were we are staying this was already attempt 2 for the treasure hunt. To be continued...

On the move again

After visiting the Netherlands for almost 2 months, it is nice to be on the move again. We were glad to spend so much time at home, so we could visit family and friends and enjoy some Dutch food and Belgium beers.

Our first stop was Hong Kong. Compared to what we have seen so far of Asia, this city is very efficient. Of course we knew that space is the limited factor in Hong Kong. The airport is made on an added strip of land. On the bus drive I noticed an area with only one floor of stores between all the skyscrapers. I wondered why, but then it turned out a big parc is build on top of the shops.

Although the website of the hotel mentioned our room would be 11m2, it turned out to be around 7m2, including bathroom. Not a lot of space when you arrive with two suitcases, one big backpack and three smaller bags. They solve part of the problem by elevating the beds, so even our luggage fitted in the room.

Hong Kong is highly efficient. Each metro arrives about every two minutes. The taxis have virtually now business from the airport. You take the train to the central part of the main land and from there, free shuttle buses bring you to various hotels. And here we are, at the 16nd floor of our 7m2 room, with a 'lovely' view. Well, we still have a window. A lot of the cheaper rooms are just boxes without window. We are surrounded by three skyscrapers with aircos sticking out next to each window.

After visiting several dive shops (that's what you get when you are small, wetsuits are not made for people with short arms and legs), we also had time to enjoy the view on Hong Kong. Unfortunately, taking the tram up to the hill is the most popular tourist attraction, so we waited an hour to get up and 2 hours to get down, but the views were worth the waiting.

After spending a lot of money of dive equipment we flew to Manila. Fortunately, we were allowed to take our 80 kg of luggage and 20 kilos of hand luggage with us (maybe a bit too much...) Manila, what can I ay about it. I was not very positive on our first visit, but somehow it has improved a bit. Why I cannot say, because there are a lot of slums, the lines for a taxi at the airport had increased to 5 hours of waiting because they are working on a new Skyway (road above the old road) and we squeezed ourselves in the metro at rush hour were we really felt like sardines. Good the airco still functioned because this was bad compared to rush hour in the trains in NL.

We are in a friendlier neighborhood than last time, with lots of restaurants close by. We visited the dive shops to now what they have here, bought some more equipment for the camera (never ending story) so we can use it under water as well and made some visits to interesting organizations for our new job. Which means we're still in Manilla after 5 days, because making appointments is not that easy in tropical countries. At both organizations we were very welcome though, so our time is well spend.

Unfortunately, Marine ConservationPhilippines doesn't have a location as of yet, which means we have to find some other work for a few weeks, which we are trying to organize at the moment. But our hotel is nice and cheap and we get to know Manila better. If people are ever going to visit us, we advise them to bypass Manila though and fly from Bangkok or Hong Kong to Cebu. Much closer, and probably a lot cleaner.

Old cultures and new habits

Oops, I discovered this blog a bit late, but it might still be interesting to read for people.

In the last two weeks we have been looking at several old d cultures and the highlight of the current culture in Mexico, lucha libre fights. Staring at the lucha libre fights, those are the fights of big muscled people wearing masks in a boxing ring. Usually you have the goods fighting against the bads. Everybody in the audience picks a favorite each fight and then they start. Almost everything is allowed so people jump on each other and it looks like they are slamming each other hard. It is all fake though. The first fights you see that clearly, but the last fight are the most experienced fighters and they do the most spectacular stunts. Taking pictures was unfortunately not allowed. It is nice to be part of the audience, because part of the Mexicans are really fanatic, scream a lot and even bring instruments (like a Dutch dweilorkest, but then better adapted to this situation). Unfortunately we were put in the tourist corner were the noise was less pronounced. You can buy lucha libre masks anywhere and a lot of kids went home with a doll or mask. Mexicans are great lovers of buying useless stuff. When we visited Teotihuacán we saw one family with fake obsidian dolks, bow and arrows, annoying flutes which roar and small statues. I think the Mexican tourists buy more than the other tourists.

It is unknown who built Teotihuacán in 800 AD, but the Aztecs were so impressed by the city 500 years later that they took over part og the gods and the building style and told themselves they were descendants of these people. The complex is well renovated (although they discovered later that one of the biggest temples had a platform too many). The main temples are the temple of the Sun and the Moon. The first temple is a breathtaking climb up, but you get rewarded with stunning views of the surroundings and a breeze. All the platforms of the many temples (over 40) have been rebuilt, but only one complex has been restored, including murals. We only had a guide book as background information because the guides are the most reliable. One question of a tourist was: Why are the stairs uneven? The answer of the guide was that during the building of the city they not take any measurements because they didn't know how to do that. That seems a bit unlikely with 40 platforms in perfect rectangles or squares. Maybe the stairs have been a bit corroded after 1200 years of use? Anyway, after this answer we decided to do all the exploring of the temples on our own.

Fortunately we had visited the anthropology museum the day before. This is a huge museum, of which we only saw 1/4 in a whole day with the beginning of life in the Americas, Teotihuacán, the Toltecs and the Aztecs. It is a good museum with a lot of information, displays and rebuilding life size or small size of temple complexes and if you want you can spend 3 days in here. We already had to skip the Mayas. It was good to understand which culture arose in which time and who met who.

In Yucatan we spend two weeks diving and visiting some Maya ruins in between. The ruins were nice but not spectacular, compared to Tikal in Guatemala and Copán in Honduras. The most famous old ruins of Yucatan, Chichen Itza and Mayapan were too far away but the museum partially made up for this. Tulum and Cobá on the Yucatan peninsula are old Maya ruins. Tulum is a 'recent' city, with its decline just before the Spaniards arrived and is different than other ruins because it was build on the coast and probably even had a lighthouse. Cobá is from the same time as the city of Tikal in Guatemala, with its highlight around 1000 AD. Not much is known of the city however and a big part of the temples are still under a layer of trees. We climbed a 42 m high temple and all the hidden temples were still visible in the forest from our viewpoint. We explored the city on a bicycle (smart guys, to rent these out) in the early morning. By the time we were finished, the tour groups came in. Sometimes it helps to get up at 6 AM and catch the first bus, which we learned after visiting Tulum at 12 in the morning when it was so hot that we sometimes needed to stand in the shade to cool down a bit.

We will definitely come back to Mexico, not Only to visit Auke en Yolí, but also to see more of the country and the history.