Hot Merida

For some strange reason, I have virtually no recollection of our 2003 visit to Merida, John very little either. This time, our initial march into the city center looking for hotels left us rather unimpressed. After trampling around the city for a few days, we decided that we like it rather well, in spite of the 100 degree weather which even made the headline in the local paper. We can catch heatwaves well, if not festivals.

Merida has all the elements that we love about Mexican cities. Its squares are particularly spacious and graceful, and it has a good number of Art Deco buildings. While "Domingo(Sunday) en Merida" is over touted by guidebooks, we had fun watching people cycling on streets closed especially for the weekly occasion. Most important of all, the local people in Merida are very friendly, considering Merida seems to have the most number of international tourists per capita of all the cities we visited. One day John and I were in the middle of navigating with our map, a young woman stopped in her track and said to us "you are on 68th street and the city center is that way." I need to work on my geniality.

Getting things going in Merida with a fine meal at Savia Vegetariano.


And more good eating at 2012 Mayan.


Not to mention that we ordered takeout pizza 4 night in a row. The guy with glasses is a pizza genius.




"Transportable murals" by Fernando Pacheco in the governor's palace.


The zocalo.


Dancers on the zocalo.


Parque Santa Lucia.


The Cathedral completed in 1598 out of stones from Mayan temples has gigantic stone columns. Here are two views.




Downtown with Cathdral as seen from the rooftop of Las Monjas Convent.


The Contemporary Art Museum MAYAC had 11 artists in exhibition. We liked the works of Esmeralda Torres...


...and Fernando Pacheco.


Two views of Iglesia Santiago.




Cathedral with streetlights.


Domingo en Merida.

Patagonia summer - my coldest winter

Actually, it is not that cold. It just that every hotel room we have been in has a radiator that gets turned on at least at night or all day. It puts out more heat than our heat pumps in Raleigh. Maybe the title of this port should be "the warmest winter I ever spent was a summer in Patagonia". I hate to think what real winters are like here. Yet the days are long. Every day we go to bed at or before dusk, and the sun is already above the horizon when we get up.

Weather here is highly variable. It can be anywhere between sunny and hot to rainy and cold. But we can always bet on wind, the strongest we have experienced. Throughout the day we are always putting on and taking off our wool hats, fleece jackets, windbreakers, and sometimes rain pants, a million times. The wind makes my nose run, but we have managed to stay healthy -- knock on wood.

Tunja is cold

We are in Tunja, 9200 feet above sea level, on a plateau. Unlike the previous towns, it is not surrounded by mountains. It is a very vibrant city and has some of the oldest (second half of 16th century) houses and churches on the continent.

At 9200 feet and 5 degrees north it is hot in the sun, but the mornings and evenings are fairly cool. People are dressed in every which way, from short sleeve t-shirts, to woolen ponchos, to winter coats. Ladies wear sandals in bare feet to knee high boots and everything in between.

Now that I had a taste of Tunja, I can just see I will want to buy some warmer clothes (maybe a hair dryer) later in Bolivia, maybe even in Peru. I do have a little headache today. We are going down 600-700 feet to Bogota tomorrow. Maybe my headache will go away.

Plaza Bolivar.


Street scene.


Casa del Fundador (House of the Founder). Built in 1540.


Casa del Don Juan de Vargas. Built in the late 16th century.


Statue of the Virgin del Rosario in a side chapel of Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzman. Construction started in 1559.

I am amazed by the weather in VDL

Villa de Leyva is at 5.6 degrees North and 7200 feet above sea level. For reference, the highest point on the east coast, Mount Michell is just under 7000 feet. We are both doing well with the altitude, no headaches or sleepless nights. The only problem I have is when we go hiking up the hills, our "family mule" has to haul the pack the whole way up.

What took me by surprise is how cool the weather is here, considering close we are to the equator. Daytime high is around 70. We are wearing our fleece jackets in the mornings and evenings. At night we sleep under a heavy blanket. In fact, on the third day the maid added a second blanket on the bed. We were not too hot.

Tomorrow we are going to Tunja, another 1700 feet higher, 38 km away. I hope we don't freeze. Stay tuned.

The Family Mule taking a break on the old road to Tunja.

Heatwave

It's been hot the past week in Tamil Nadu. Hot, sunny, and sticky. It's affected my photography as quantity and quality are both down. Just don't have the energy to always strive for the perfect shot(s). And the strong midday sun makes it harder to get a good exposure.

But you say it's supposed to be hot in South India. Well this heatwave has made the newspapers. Schools have been ordered to close early. We spent two days this week in Bhubaneswar and each day the temperature was 40 C or 102 F. The second day we went on an AC bus tour of Konark and Puri... Of course the AC stopped working at 10:00 AM. Sigh. We did get a partial refund. Woohoo!

Yesterday we arrived in Calcutta and it's much cooler. The high today was only 88 F. We spent the whole day around Sudder Street, the so-called backpacker's ghetto, looking for a better hotel (we decided to stay put), trying to contact a travel agent in Kathmandu (no luck), eating, and shopping (I bought a set of 5 pens for 10 rupees). Tomorrow we start seeing the sights.

Into the Jaws of Ike (UPDATED)

A few years ago, the Chinese Embassies and Consulates in the United States stopped accepting visa applications by mail. You must now appear in person or use a visa service. So you may have guessed by now that there is Chinese Consulate in Houston, Texas and we sent our applications and passports to a visa service there earlier this week... Oh my... I'll keep you posted. Our fingers are crossed.

UPDATE: Made contact with the visa service. They went back to work on Monday the 22nd and they have our passports and forms. Woohoo!

Bad weather

Weather has been not so good for us the lately.  The climate here is humid to start with.  When it's sunny, it's 34C/90F and muggy.  When it's rainy/cloudy, it's 18C/60F, damp, though this is rising each day.  We had two whole days of rain over the weekend and had to abandon our plan to trek to a village near Congjiang, Guizhou. 

On a very hot day near Rongjiang we are still in good spirits.


The view from our hotel balcony on a cold and rainy morning in Fenghuang, Hunan Province.

Tropical rain

Even though it's the "dry" season, we had several thunderstorms in
Xishuangbanna. The kind of magnitude seen only during hurricanes.

During one morning downpour in Jinghong, the steet in front of our
hotel became a small river. It even hailed! Hail in the tropics?!

Later in the day, we passed by a government office for "Hail
Prevention." We guess that the local cash crops - tea, rubber, and
bananas - must regularly be damaged by hail.

Weather watching in Yangon

It's hot (90F/30C) during the day, and cool (AC does not seem to come on) at night here. We had a day of showers yesterday here. We have been watching the storms and travel nightmares in China on CNN Asia, NHK International (Japan), and Phoenix (Hongkong). We hope our friends and family won't be too adversely affected.

Good weather in Kunming

The last four days the sun came out around 10-12, warmed up to ~20C,
stayed up until after 6.

We had a wonderful overnight (2-night) visit to the Stone Forest and the nearby town.

KM has been fun too, fantastic food.