Mexico Blog, Merida

5.11 saturday

Today we were pretty early on the move. I brewed morning coffees before 9am and started packing “work back back” for the day. At first I had small changes to get to climb in nature wall and shoot it, but that plan fell in a lack of participants. As a back up plan we shoot other stuff at the RockSolid.

I tested RockSolids house chilaquilles verde, which was very tasty just about right spicy. At one point when I was taking a break from shootin I talked with a RS customer and got some tips for our trip to Zocalo “aka Mexico Citys Downtown”. Already got some of those at my visit a physiotherapist on friday, but it is cool to get tips from locals 👌🤌🏼

With Juha we extented my material bank for making videos by transfering data for my external hard drive, but as it happends I forgot my power adapter for my laptop and ofcourse the transfer did not make for the end. Luckily got the most of the videos. Should get me by and started at Merida, untill Juha gets in the hoods there.

10.11

Yeah.. Again a bit long break from writing. Suprisingly exhausting these heats while the main way of moving around is by walking. We visited at the Mexico Citys Center on sunday the 6th. We took an Uber to metrostation and from there metro and jumped off at 14th stop, in Bellas Artes of which is a walk away from Zocalo.

Firstly when we got out from the station there was this very neat park. A lot of marbletiles underneath feets and these really beautiful trees. I just can’t get over of how cool these trees are here!!! The Bellas Artes -museum, of which was recommented to visit, was easy to locate. It was just besides the station and park. There was no entry fee but camera permicion was 30pesos. I paid it cause I was awaiting for stunning arts.

The main attractions the was these huge wallsized paintings. Obviously works from nation artist, of whom was also friend of Frida Kahlo. Although they were impressing, they did not have much of an wow effect for me. Couple of good pictures I got out of there and a good experience. I can say that I was more impressed of the building than the art.

National Museum of art – Munal, was also recommented a lot beforehand. Bit boring place what comes into art. Guite a lot church related stuff. But the curch art had really cool frames. But the building itself.. It was cool. From these two places we got a bit plane taste what comes to art.

But then there is Temple Major museum of which is in its own class comparing to these two previous. There was ruins, skeletons and other interesting history. They even had english translations of the art descriptions of which shined in its absence. In my opinion the best part was the ruins and snake statuie. Most striking were the human skulls and these two huge stone carved wall ornaments.

11.11.

On thursday we woke up early. We booked uber for the morning so we make in time fore our days program which is… Skuba diving course. Uber took of 9.35am infront of our place. Booking infront cost about 160pesoss. The uber was in time as agreede and he was a chill hombre. We talked this and that in spanish. The hombre told us of one place we should visit and that he had been living here in Meride since 2020. Before that he had been Mexico Citys boys. He told that Merida is  a peacefull haven and that there is no crimes here. About what I had experienced. Altough we didn’t see anything related to crimers in Coyoacan. Only kind of a experience was infront of Bellas Artes when this boozer noted that we spoke in finnish and at one point started asking of my phone. We just left.

We had book the skuba diving course on tuesday and in the mail that I received after said that it will start 10.00am. When we started walking inside the Diving Yucatan there was greeting us employer speaking english. We sat infront of the desk and we where asked how she could help us today. And we ofcourse replied that teach us to dive on which we were replied that when would be okay for us. We wondered a bit couse we surely had a course booked for 10.00am and showed her our booking confirmation informations. Obviously the info hasn´t passed to them, but we got forward in this matter 😆 We filled some papers and wached some teaching videos for about an hour after which we was told to watch the rest back at our place. Then was time to put the wetsuit on and get ready for prepairing the diving equipment and that first dive in little pool 🤌🏼

The heat was infernal when wearing the wetsuit but luckily we didn´t need to hassle with the equipment for long before we got in the water. And ofcourse I took my Gopro in my band in the first dive. Felt really confusing to adjust your depth with just your breath when trying stay still. Took about 15min and couple of extra weights before I got in some touch of it. We practised these differend skills for different situtations. For example, draining your scuba goggles when water enters there. We also took the goggle of our head and put them back. We tried to use the spare regulators, tried to give our buddy our spare if buddy runs out of air. Then the instructon acted as he was in panic and out of air. At first I was confused but the second time was the charm 😂 Really good acting. All in all it was really cool experience! On the next day was planned a diving trip to the Cenotes.

After this two or three hours course we were starving. Luckily there was a small restaurant just next to Diving Yucatan. There we got to try Cochinita Bibils. And that was cheap. Two dishes was like 160 pesos including two pepsis. We gave 30pesos tip, because the service was very warm and welcoming, which made us on even better mood. Btw for people not from tipping cultures, it is here and you are kind of supposed to leave some.. At my first coffee buying trip I didn`t know what probina was and in the confusion of the moment I managed not to give it 😅 But after that we have given almost everywhere 10% depending on the service.

Well, the Bibils where okay. Not mind blowing. No that we have something to compare on at some point we have to try out the place Juha had mentioned. Now that we had eaten we took another Uber. We tried to get the Walmart closest our place. We checked from the maps that the adress is Calle 60 342. Infront of my eyes in the Uber app was only 342A, but hey it must be right next to it. Ride came after 15mins and we were off..

In Merida the naming of the streets is extremely weird and unlocigal for me. We live in Calle 9, closest crossing street is calle 40, next street along that is Calle 7 to north and south is like Calle 11B. WFT. No even number and some B streets without A or C. Couple blocks along Calle 9 there is Calle 60 crossing. From this I get to there when we started wondering in the Uber ride that it seems that we are going some where else. I looked from the app and so it seemed. The Calle 60 342A was nearly 4km away from the Walmart that we wanted 😂

As it happens, this adress where we were going wasn´t far away from a place that you can rent bicyckles. So we headed there. The place was like someones house, but usable bikes in reasonable price. 1100 pesos a month for a bike. In finland you get a bike for a day at the best. Okay, these are not new bike but still. Only but there was that they took only cash but it was easily fixed. There was plenty of cajeros (cash atms) near by.

We had to try tree ATMs before we got any money. It seems to be quite common for these to run out of cash. But we got the money, it exhanged owner and we got bikes with helmets and locks.

Meridas Paseo Monteho ”main street” is really nice to ride a bicyckle along. We got some what feeling of freedome now when we can move in this heat with a bit of a breeze. And we save surely the Uber moneys and more in a month.

When we got back to our place we studiet and watched some instruction videos. After 10pm I tried to stay awake but couldn´t hold my eyes open anymore so we went to sleep. The start to the Cenotes was 8.30 infront of Diving Yucatan. It takes about 15min with bicyckle.

I slept poorly the night but Maija even worse. Obviously during the diving training there had gone some bacteria from the water in her eye. The eye iched all night and was seemingly swollen. We texted the instructor that could we re-schelude our dives and it luckily was okay. For me it was also more than okay because I was very tired. First thing in the morning we went looking for allergy medicine. In the farmacy they gave some antibiotic eyedrops. Later on I found amtihistamins from Walmart cause the antibiotics didn´t help the itch.

I got chance to take necessary data tranfer and batteries loading moment. After that I started editing the pictures that I had taken. There was a buch from Coyoacan and from our day trip to Zocalo. First I edited the Zocalo pictures and left others for later. A few pictures I had already taken from Merida.

This blog is a bit all over the place but it paints a picture from my train of thought 😆 It is even more obvious when I haven´t written down anything for a while. But in Mexico City it was hard for me to find a quiet enough place to focus. The apartments were really small and when you went somewhere else there was alot of noice around.

Juha asked after the Dia De Los Muertos video on 8th day. I had prepared it a bit, but had not had a chance to start really doing it. But I had started with picking roughly the clips and settling the resolution at 1080×1920. I chose that ´cause it fits in Youtube aswell and because I had taken the videos vertically. There was quite a lot of color correction neeeded due to nice varioety of ligths. I made the video as one minute long so I made the clips short, about 2sec a clip, to keep a nice flow and interest going on. Few longer parts was included. After color correction I through correction layer in premiere and chose a LUT that had nice looking settings. Sure I could have done all this myself but preset is a preset.

Few rends for testing and finished in my iPad for adding the musics in Lumafusion. As usual the fitting song was found really fast. Finished video to Juha, Isaak and Pao. Juha Answered fastly that it was really good and no need for shorter. Isaak and Pao agreed. 

I feel that there is plenty in this post so I just add the pictures and done!!

Muchas grasias and greetings for my friend