Getting Around

Hola Amigos!

I've officially been in Merida for five days, and I'm just starting to feel like I can navigate the city and start to find my way around. Between the different colonias or neighborhoods, the bus system and no street names things can get a little confusing around here.

For starters, the streets in Merida run on a grid system and all of the streets, except for three, have numbers instead of names. Odd numbered streets run east-west , even numbers run north-south, and the numbers increase as you move north and west. Sounds easy right? Well it is, as long as you're only talking about one neighborhood. The problem is all the different neighborhoods have their own separate grid systems. So there can be like, eight different calle 25's or street #25's.

None of the neighborhoods are all that defined either, except on the street signs. They all kind of run together so unless you can find a street sign, you're not really sure if you're still in your neighborhood or not. And even then some of the neighborhoods have new subdivisions, so for example my colonial is Col. Miguel Aleman, and a few blocks over is Col. Nuevo Miguel Aleman (meaning new Miguel Aleman), which can also be confusing, especially when you're riding a crazy bus system with no real stops and trying to read the street signs as they fly past (the names of the neighborhoods are written very small under the street number).
Addresses are kind of easy though, once you find the neighborhood, they give you the street and the two cross streets its in-between. So for example, my address is Calle 21 entre 22 y 24, or Street 21 between 22 and 24.

The bus system though is another story. There are no bus stops in Merida. Its not even guaranteed that the bus will even stop, as Luke and I found out the other day. I'm not really sure there are real bus routes, even though they say there are supposed to be there is hardly any time the buses follow the same route twice. Luckily all of the buses go through el centro, the downtown area at some time except for three of them, which all say circuto something and circle through the neighborhoods, but they're easy to avoid. If I want to know where the bus is going I usually just flag one down, wait till they open the door and yell where I want to go (usually el centro or Colonial Aleman) and wait for them to either drive away or nod and stop for me to get on.

To stop the bus, you have to flag it down, from anywhere on the street, like a taxi but they don't always stop (like we discovered the other day- Luke was literally waving his hands over his head and the guy drove right by us). Then you have to jump on quick before they drive away because they won't wait long for you. Once you're on the bus driver starts driving right away (I've experienced a few rolling stops getting off) so if you don't have your money ready you'd better hold on- it’s a bumpy ride. The buses are only $6 pesos for a normal ride and $3 for students with a student ID, but only if the bus driver feels like giving you the reduced fare (some sort of disagreement between the reduced fare the government set and the bus companies I guess). When you want to get off, you just have to stand up and tell the driver you want to get off (I usually just yell aqui or here, and they stop eventually), and then get off quickly.

The next step is to figure out how to get around to other neighborhoods. I have a feeling that’s going to take some trial and error. Luckily all the buses make circles so I'll eventually end up back where I started… I hope.

I have really gotten the hang of el centro and Col. Aleman (my neighborhood) though. I can find the grand plaza, the big markets and our bus stop easy enough downtown, and in my neighborhood I know the area around our park, the way to Luke's house and how to get to school. A little limited but we're exploring a little by little (we found our neighborhood's water treatment center today- fun I know).
Hopefully this weekend we can get some exploring in on our free days on Saturday and Sunday, and I can get some more pictures of the city! I'll try and get some more pictures and another post about the city this weekend- it’s a beautiful place, with soo much going on and people everywhere! Even right now at 8:00 pm, on a day so "cold" (a.k.a. 60 degrees- people are seriously wearing hats, coats scarves and mittens. I wore shorts) some places cancelled school (if only they could see Chicago right now) I'm sitting in the small park in my neighborhood ( using free wifi provided by the city), and there are people everywhere- food venders, carnival rides, kids skateboarding, playing soccer, everything. People seem to spend more time out of their houses here.

But more about that this weekend- time to go to the Disco (club)!! I promise I'll have a least one number to add to my shot count. Buenas Noches!