Mexico, Mexiiiiiiiico!

I have known Mexico well since my childhood. There, you will find a bright blue sky with a huge golden sun that sings. And moreover, the people have incredibly good mood, like Luis Mariano, who sang inimitably about the advantages of Mexico. In France and Belgium, the Spanish Basque with the strong accent, when he sang (as usual) in French, and the wonderful laughter in his voice became an absolute superstar, mainly with operettas that were based on the wanderlust of the 1950s. If you are curious: Here he sings his most successful hit in his native language for once. By the way, there are a bunch of singers in Colombia who still imitate Mariano and his music to this day.

In Mexico, all men wear sombreros. I know that from Stefan Coneye's wall masks, which I have been collecting for many years. They also date back to the 1950s, and they also romanticize or kitschify the 'exotic' countries that were still far away vacation destinations for people at that time. Mexicans (masculine) and Mexicans (feminine) are the two motifs of Coneye's heads that you can find most frequently and cheapest. They hang in our kitchen above the refrigerator.

So Mexico. No, we are definitely not going there, that was clear from the beginning. Not to a country where you (as I have known for a long time, although not from Coneye and Mariano) get robbed or temporarily kidnapped if you get into a taxi without taking special precautions; where you can't venture out onto the streets after dark; where bloody drug gang wars reign everywhere (with intense shooting on the streets); where you always have to lock your suitcases in the hotel room, etc.

Actually, it is not always sunny in Mexico. Today, for example, it has been raining more or less all day, although at a relatively mild 21 degrees. The people here are friendly, but not really joyful. I haven't come across a single sombrero wearer. And the fact that we are here again is once again (as in Guatemala and Honduras) the fault of the Maya. Although we have decided to skip Mexico City, the capital of armored private cars, but since we are already here, we have also included the pyramids and temples of other indigenous peoples in addition to the architectural legacy of the ancient Maya - and we will not have stayed in any other country as long as here in Mexico: five whole weeks.

We started with a strip of Maya archaeological sites located in the south of the Yucatan Peninsula, not far from Guatemala. Here you will find the so-called Rio Bec style (ca. 600-900 AD), whose most striking feature is entrance gates in the form of wide-open monster mouths. The buildings of the (smaller and medium-sized) cities are also adorned with relief panels depicting highly stylized animal heads: snakes, cats, jaguars, crocodiles. These stucco decorations are usually not particularly finely crafted. Sometimes they remind me a bit of the ghost trains at the Prater ;-) - and they are just as fun.