Jonathon in Cancun

Jonathon won "Best Postdoctoral Talk" at the regional SDB meeting in February. The prize was a travel scholarship to attend the International Congress for Developmental Biology meeting in Cancun, Mexico. He was gone for an entire week (believe me, if I wasn't 8 months pregnant, I would  have been there with him). Most of the time was spent in meetings listening to presentations, but Tuesday afternoon was open, so Jonathon and some others were able to get out to see some of the sites. Here is what happened on their little adventure in his own words...

When we found out that Tuesday afternoon was free, two BYU professors (Dr. Barrow and Dr. Bates), a BYU student named Derrick, another postdoc at the U of U named Eric, and I decided that we wanted to go to see Chichen Itza, a Mayan site on the Yucatan peninsula. We first looked into tours where you ride a bus out and get a tour of the sites, but they were all far too expensive. So, we looked into car rentals and found that Hertz rental was only 1/2 a mile from our hotel and had cars for less than $20 per day. Perfect!

The next day, we all piled into the tiniest little five passenger car that you could imagine. This car couldn't have been much larger than a VW bug and had manual windows, manual transmission and no radio. It did have air conditioning, but we couldn't use it much because it kept steaming up the windows. We also couldn't find the seatbelts for the back seat, but it was such a tight fit that it didn't seem to matter. We all had a good laugh about the car and drove through Cancun to the toll road.

The tiny Mexican car

We got onto the toll road and drove a while until we reached the toll booth (Toll was about $20...no wonder nobody else was on the road). We paid our toll without any problems and drove through to the police checkpoint on the other side. There, the police officer stopped us and asked us where we were going. Derrick had served a mission in Uruguay, so he did most of the talking for us and explained that we were going to see the Mayan ruins. The officer then asked to see our driver's licenses, he told us we couldn't show our passports, only our licenses. As I look back, I think it was so we had to pull out our wallets, but we didn't think of that at the time. We just wanted to keep him happy so he wouldn't arrest us and create an international incident. After we showed our licenses, he asked Derrick to step out of the car and talk to him by his police car. He explained to Derrick that he was in trouble for not wearing his seatbelt (but conveniently didn't care that the other two in the back weren't either). According to him, that is a $100 fine in the U.S. and in Mexico you would be arrested for 36 hours. However, he would allow Derrick to pay whatever he could, and he would let him go. Derrick paid him $20 and we were off. We were also building our "good story" list. Tiny car, check. Bribing Mexican cops, check. But the list wasn't done.

After the checkpoint, we continued down the toll road in what was increasingly heavy rain. Suddenly, there was a loud BANG and the car pulled to the left. We pulled off the road and got out to find that our tire had blown out. The entire tread had actually torn off and in the process had cracked the front bumper and headlight (cheap car). Hertz had given us a car with a completely bald tire and it had simply burst. We opened the trunk of the car and luckily found both a spare tire and a jack. While Jeff and I worked on the tire, the others went and picked up the pieces of tire on the highway so we could show the car company what bad shape it was in. Anyway, about half an hour later we were back in the car hoping that our "good story" moments were done.

The shredded, bald tire

We finally made it to Chichen Itza without too much further incident and pulled up to the parking booth. We rolled down our window to find out how much parking was only to hear the attendant say in rough English "Is closed." What!? Our trip had taken longer than we expected, but it was only 4:30 in the afternoon. When we read about it on the internet, they hadn't mentioned closing and several people had even mentioned that there used to be a light show. We figured that it would stay open until at least sundown. But, no. They were closing at 4:30 pm and there was nothing we could do about it. We asked the attendant if we could just go look through the fence to see if we could at least see something from afar, and he let us go in and park. We parked the car and went to the entrance to see what we could see. While we were there, Emily and Derrick started talking to the security guard about how it was closing so early and he said, "Do not worry, we open again in 15 min." We were confused, but he repeatedly assured us that they have "special tours" for people who don't want to fight the crowds. We waited for all of the other tourists to leave and then the security guard opened the ticket window and took our payment for tickets (cash only and no receipts, of course). He then told the 5 of us and 2 Belgians that had also shown up late that we could go in. We were to stay with another security guard who was our chaperone, not a tour guide. We were just happy to get in by this point, or our good story would have had a sad ending.

Inside Chichen Itza was awesome. We had the entire park to ourselves. Tourists apparently not only have to fight the crowds of tourists, but are also normally hounded by throngs of vendors lining all of the paths throughout the park, but they were packing up and leaving and we were the only tourists there. It was quite serene standing there in the empty space between several buildings. It also turned out that our chaperone was of Mayan decent and very proud of his heritage, so Derrick translated as he basically gave us a complete tour. He even let us climb up on some ruins that are normally off limits. It was amazing to hear about the Mayan games and how the winner got sacrificed to the gods because they wanted to offer the very best. We also learned about the calendar and how the pyramids make shadows of snakes on the equinoxes. It was really cool.

 In front of a Mayan pyramid (notice the completely empty park!)

Our Mayan security guard/ personal tour guide

The court for the Mayan ball game-- winner was sacrificed

As the last vendor was leaving the park, the chaperone said it was time to go and we got ready to leave. In retrospect, I think that the security guards have to watch to make sure the vendors don't hurt anything as they leave, so the guards make a few extra bucks on the side letting tourists in while the vendors pack up. Anyway, we piled into our car and headed back to Cancun where we spent the next day arguing with Hertz over whose fault it was. The attendants, who of course have no power to do anything told us that people will sometimes rent the car and then take it to a buddy who will switch out the new rental car tires for old ones. Go figure. Anyway, they finally saw it our way and accepted the car without charging for damages.

All in all, it was a great week. I was able to learn a lot, get some new ideas and do some networking at the actual meeting, but nothing was nearly as adventurous as our little trip to the Mayan ruins. Here are some more pictures from the trip:

Our hotel on the oceanfront

The beautiful blue water of The Gulf of Mexico