DIY: Tech Fix for Fraying Cell Phone and Other Devices' Power Cords

 I ODed on watching YouTube DIY videos. While I tried to save the video links and make notes of some of the ideas in the videos in order to give credit, I can't find the video where I got this idea. It's a great idea to save the wear and tear on personal devices power cords.

Mine were in pretty bad shape and this repair has given them a longer life.

 

Basically, you wrap the cord tightly with a strong, thin string, or strips of cloth, or ribbon starting from the top and past the damaged area. I had to tape the top and bottom to hold it in place.

 

DIY Tech Fix for Fraying Power Cords

Original

 

Repaired

 

 

Original

 

Repaired

 

Freaking Frugal: A YouTube VideoLog of a Dumpster Diving Couple

Freakin Frugal: A Dumpster Diving Couple on YouTube

 

I started watching Mr. and Mrs. Freakin Frugal because I wanted to understand Dumpster Diving.

I have watched a lot of their videos at:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR4u4zBm37-uODgDlvsu7Bg

 

They are genuine, funny, and offer great ideas and information.

 

Mrs. Freakin Frugal is the video producer, Mr. Freakin Frugal, her partner, offers a different perspective.

 

I enjoy their exchanges, it's so Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. But, I do appreciate his focus on tools and machinery because he gets some good dumpster finds, Mrs. Frugal might miss. Plus, he is adorable.

 

Mrs. Frugal not only offers videos on their dumpster diving and Curbside Treasures adventures as well as a discussion about their finds, she offers cooking tips, recipes and other perspectives on how they use their finds.

 

I would love to know more about their donation efforts and how they are planning for their future.

 

Below are just two links to the Freakin Frugal videos:

 

This one is more of an intro video where Mrs. F talks about herself, her family and her approach to making videos and more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWXf6XO9kQk&feature=youtu.be

 

An example of Mr. and Mrs. Freakin Frugal dumpster diving:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBjizEQiW8g&feature=youtu.be

 

A Visit to Seye, Yucatán, México

A Visit to Seyé
Yucatán, México

I got a chance to visit Seyé, a Mayan pueblo, in Yucatán, México near Mérida.

During my visit, my host, Lucy, showed a friend and me a working henequén farm and factory, and a Tortilla Shop that made fresh tortillas.

A quick history of henequên in the Yucatán focuses on the large Spanish Haciendas or henequén plantations where workers farmed the agave plants, harvested and transported them to a factory where the plant fibers were made into different types of rope.

Until the invention of synthetic rope fiber, the Yucatán was once one of the few sources for rope.

The wealth from henequén products can be seen in the remaining haciendas in outlaying areas and the mansions in the city of Mérida, particularly on Paseo de Montejo.

Some have been renovated and are used as hotels, homes, or businesses.

So, it was a real joy to visit a working factory.

The huge pieces of equipment reminded me of Margaret Burke-White’s photography and some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s industrial designs.

The story of henequén in the Yucatán is a large part of it's history.

A few references:

Henequen industry in Yucatán

All in the Family: Railroads and Henequén Monoculure in Porfirian Yucatán

Later in town, we visited a Tortilla Shop and the owner, Thelma Rodriquez, was kind enough to let me take pictures of how they made tortillas from a corn flour mix.

Thelma says the tortillas are multi-grain.

A Puttering Passion

I use a lot of yogurt.

Here in Mérida, yogurt comes in a variety of sizes from small snack cups, to the popular 8.5 oz drink size, and to larger container sizes.

(Popular brands in Mérida: Yoplait, Danone)

I had a persistent problem. Often, I do not use all the yogurt in the 8.5 oz bottle and want to restore it in the frig. The little aluminum cover often tears, so it doesn't not work as a lid.

I have been looking for lid alternatives for years.

 I found one, today.

I use a cough syrup that comes with a cap you use as a measuring cup for the syrup. It fits perfectly as a yogurt lid.

 Hurray, for Puttering Passion!

While I save lots of plastic containers, I am not advocating for a lid for this yogurt. If you ever watched the film, Albatross, it really makes one want to eliminate all plastics.

Uh Oh, just one search for yogurt brands in Mexico and down the rabbit hole I go.

It makes me think of Yogurt Wars, whose brand makes it to the store shelves?

Found a recipe for making Yogurt that I can try.

Smashwords COVID19 Crisis Promotion

 Only 4 Days left!!!!!

Smashwords Authors are offering many of their books at discounted rates or for free to help you get through the COVID19 Crisis.

Check out Ria Stone's books at:

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/RiaStone

Don't forget to check Smashwords Forum authors too:

https://smashwords-forum.proboards.com/ 

Including the Smashwords Writers Anthology:

Tales From Indies

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/SmashwordsForum

Stay home, stay safe!

Becoming a Tightwad

Becoming a Tightwad

Anyone who knows me, knows I love books. My interests range from mysteries to scientific non-fiction. I also like self-help books. Several self-help books have enhanced my life. One book saved my life, The Tightwad Gazette (TWG) by Amy Dacyczyn.

If you are not familiar with the Tightwad Gazette, let me briefly describe it. It is a book about money, how to save it, how to spend it wisely, how to understand the power of compound interest and the power of setting financial goals.

Sounds like more dry text about math, stocks, and mutual funds doesn’t it?

Well, does saving vacuum cleaner lint, storing cans of tomatoes under your bed, buying pounds of chicken on sale, or yardsaling with a map, thermos, and a packed lunch sound like dry complicated math?

These are just a few tactics from thousands of similar tips offered by the author, Amy Dacyczyn, and her readers, to save money.

Conversion to becoming a tightwad was a joy. The book made me laugh. But conversion to becoming a tightwad was not without its mishaps.

One fundamental of being a tightwad is cooking your own meals from basic ingredients and not buying ready-made foods, or eating out a lot. I am not a cook, So, I learned to cook, sorta.

When I got the TWG in the mid-1990s, I had one cookbook, a rice cookbook. I made a lot of rice dishes. Having only a microwave also limited my cooking repertoire. But, hey, I could do potatoes five different ways.

Plus, I made muffins. Of course, I had to experiment in order to get them right. It amazed me how recipes try to describe the correct consistency for dough mix. I made probably thirty muffins before I got it right.

Then I went and made over 100 muffins and ended up offering them to anyone who would take them. I finally stopped making muffins when my consumption dropped and the muffins turned green.

Two other TWG tactics I use are the once a month shopping routine and the price book. You enter the price of items from receipts, or from direct mail advertisements into a small notebook to carry with you to compare prices when you are out shopping to determine if you are getting a good price. What a wonder, I had no idea how many sales were not really sales.

Using the price book idea also added a sense of intrigue to the task of grocery shopping. In the States, when I was in a grocery store comparing the prices of various gallons of ice cream, I found myself blushing as if I were doing something illegal. When what I had discovered was I could get ice cream cheaper at a competitor’s store.

Though I already had ceiling fans, used cloth napkins, and bought used clothes, books and various household items, I still felt like a failure as a tightwad. I didn’t salvage items from alongside the road, or bargain with yard sale entrepreneurs for a reduced price. It felt like I paid full price compared to the deals Amy got, like tennis shoes from a freebie box, or a blouse for a quarter because it had a small tear.

I did learn to make pickles, apple crisp, and use leftovers in various ways.

Using the price book as a guide, I held the line at .99 for a pack of four rolls of toilet paper. You have no idea the joy in finding toilet paper on sale for less than .25 a roll.

I had to figure out what fruits and vegetables were in season in order to catch sales at their peak, it was like surfing a monetary wave.

I’ve got good at making milk from dry powder and I would go out of my way to buy juice concentrates on sale. I had enough shampoo to last a year, several boxes of raisins in the refrigerator, and tubs of butter in the freezer I got on sale over a year ago.

Amy also suggests saving 10% or more of your salary. While I was working, I did this. As my savings grew, I was able to put some of the cash into certificates of deposit, which at that time, paid higher interest rates.

Mexico Update

The above article was written in the late-1990s. Today, I still struggle to be a good tightwad. Yet, it is because of the TWG I was able to travel to Mexico to get good, affordable, accessible health care and survive on my emergency savings.

When I look at the various frugality posts on my blog, I see I could do better. For example, I could find a bank where I can get an ATM card and make withdrawals for no fee. Banking in Mexico is complicated.

When I started a new “frugal” hobby, making my own earrings, I hesitated to begin a new hobby because I had a bad habit of buying supplies for a new hobby and never investing time into the hobby.

But, I love earrings (aretes), so after spending $900MX (~70.00US), I have made more than 80 pairs of earrings, so far.

In the marketplace, street vendor or retail store, aretes (earrings) can run from 20pesos to hundreds of pesos.

What is also great about my hobby is if I need a gift for someone, I make a pair of aretes. Or, if I want aretes to go with an outfit, I just make a pair.

I think my aretes now cost about 12 pesos a pair. So, you could say my hobby has already paid for itself.
 
But, I could go more often to open food markets or flea markets to buy food, or household items, spices, clothes, and other items for less.

I could learn to “haggle”, to negotiate for a favorable price with a vendor. I have heard that “haggling” is common in Mexico.

I do research and attempt to understand the local economy. Because the minimum wage is low, I am not comfortable “haggling” for a lower price. Usually, if I do not like the price, I do not buy the item.

In the case of a taxi ride, I do know how much it should cost to go from A to B, so if the taxi does not have a meter, I ask the driver what the price would be to go to B. If the price is too high, I decline the taxi.

Living between countries puts pressure on my limited tightwad abilities. I still haven't figured out the an easy, frugal way to travel.

But, that is part of what it means to be a tightwad, to me. It's means you continue to experiment with, explore, and research ways to save money that will enhance your life. I can't paint, dance, write poetry, or other artistic endeavors, but I can creatively save money. Being a tightwad is a creative endeavor anyone can do.

TWG Tip for Conserving Shampoo and Bath Gel

I get excited when I find a new idea for saving money.

As a fan of the Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn, I follow many of her money-saving tips.

One of Amy's tips to save money is to dilute your dish soap and shampoo. For years, I have done this.

I can make a 760ml bottle of shampoo last a year or more by constantly adding water to the bottle as I use it. I buy the least expensive scented mid-range shampoo. The shampoo brand scents range from $25.00 to $40.50MX, today.

I also buy several bottles at a time, if the prices is right, and store them for future use.

As a treat, I also bought bottle, 250ml, of Plum body gel on sale at the Body Shop for about $200MX.

The new idea is to put the shampoo and the Bath Gel into a spray bottles and add water. I like this idea because I think it allows you to be more precise in the amount of Shampoo or Gel you use.

 We shall see.

Pennies Matter

Quick Post:

One of the takeaways from The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn is pay attention to the pennies, they add up.

Inflation is happening all the time and everywhere.

As an example, these are recent changes in size and price of four rolls of toilet paper:

Date / Price / Number of Sheets:

10/2019 24.53 / 350
5/2019   24.50 / 400


Note: It is a common practice for manufacturers to change the size / volume of products and to keep the price the same or to increase price.

 

Print on Demand -- Some of My Experiences in Self-Publishing

Print-On-Demand - Some of My Experiences in Self-Publishing

Writing Gina's Dream and self-publishing it as an eBook on Smashwords was an education in: writing; formatting; finding and working with editors and book cover designers; learning new software and applications; ISBNs; distribution, and promotion.

Producing El Sueño de Gina continued my education in POD publishing and translation.

I was lucky, a friend had his book published through The Write Place (TWP), after a bit of research, I thought they did a good job printing and distributing his book, so I published El Sueño de Gina through them as a POD, in a dual book format, at a reasonable cost.

The dual book format is old school but as time goes on, it becomes new, again. Half the book is Gina's Dream, in English, the other half is El Sueño de Gina, in Spanish. It has two covers, one on the front and one on the back. Flip the book and you see the other version.

My education expanded into finding and working with a translator, producing and proofing a manuscript in Spanish and I don't speak enough Spanish to order a sandwich, so it was like diving into the unknown. But, it turned out well, particularly because I had a great translator and TWP handled the job professionally and with ease.

But, things in the POD/eBook Publishing world continue to change rapidly. That was in 2015, now in 2019, I re-researched my POD options for Recetas de una Mujer Maya Modern, a Spanish cookbook, by a friend.

I got a quote from TWP, while it was a reasonable quote, it was too much for me, for a small book.

Essentially, to save money, a self-published author needs to juggle a lot of tasks and learn a lot of skills in formatting for various publishing software and more.

A self-published author is not only a writer, but, an editor, publisher, researcher, marketeer, accountant, web/blog/graphic designer, administrator, and more. If you can't handle these tasks well and have to contract out for any of these services, that's how your costs increase.

Yet, these are decisions every self-published author faces, especially if they feel they have created a "bestseller."

In articles, surveys and reports on Self-publishing, it is often the "Best Sellers" that garner the attention but these same pieces often note that most self-published authors do not sell many books.

As seen in the Wikipedia's Topic on Self-Publishing :

"The largest, by far, percentage of authors are making less than $500 a year self-publishing, because there’s a glut. There’s over 350,000 books being self-published every year and readers are not finding them. There’s just no way to expose people to all of these books. — Novelist M.J. Rose in 2012” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-publishing)

Unless, the author makes enough income from their book sales to cover the expenses in creating their work and more, whether it's an eBook or POD, it is still vanity publishing.

For example, according to the Authors Guild's 2018 Survey of authors, it claims while the number of self-published authors has increased, their income has not, in fact, it has decreased.

"While self-published authors were the only group to experience a significant increase (up 95% in book-related income from 2013 to 2017), self-published authors as a whole still earned 58% less than traditionally published authors in 2017.

Among the authors surveyed who ranked in the top decile for author-related earnings, self-published authors earned 50% less with a median of $154,000 compared to traditionally published authors in the top decile who earned a median of $305,000. Note that the median 2017 author-related income of $10,050 for self-published romance and romantic suspense writers is almost five times higher than the $1,900 median author-related income for the next highest-earning self-published genre category of mysteries and thrillers.

Moreover, the median author-related income for self-published romance and romantic suspense writers was only $50 more in 2017 than in 2013, which may indicate that self-published romance writers as a group have reached a plateau for earnings under current business models."


Authors Guild 2018 Survey (survey based on 5,000+ published authors): (https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/six-takeaways-from-the-authors-guild-2018-authors-income-survey/)

Yet, the number of self-published authors is increasing.

According to Bowker News, self-published print (POD) books increased 38% in 2017:

"Self-publishing of print books increased by 38 percent in 2017 for a total of 879,587. This is the fifth consecutive year of print growth – driven by a 50 percent increase at CreateSpace, a self-publishing platform. Self-published ebooks decreased by 13 percent, continuing a downward trend for the third successive year. Two service providers, Smashwords and Lulu, accounted for 105,037 ebook titles, 81 percent of the ebook total of 129,601." (http://www.bowker.com/news/2019/New-Record-More-than-1-Million-Books-Self-Published-in-2017.html)
 

I had already published Recetas de una Mujer Maya Modern as an eBook on Smashwords. Now, I wanted a POD publisher.

So, I continued to search for a POD publisher. I went through the usual suspects like: BookBaby, Blurb, CreateSpace, D2D, EBM, Gumroad, Ingram, Kobo, Lulu, and others.

Many of these vendors had made significant changes to their processes and offerings since I last visited their sites. Some had stopped offering PODs; some were too costly for me; with some their POD software was too complicated or had been suspended; and some did not make PODs in other languages.

But, one, Blurb, made a suggestion after I complained about my difficulty with their template. They referred me to MagCloud. I had never heard of MagCloud.

When I visited MagCloud's site, at first, they appeared to be a photo book publisher as well as a business publication publisher. But, they offered the option of producing a "Digest" sized book that fit my needs. Also, they offered saddle-stitching. All this and there were no upfront costs.

All I had to pay for was the copies I bought plus shipping and handling. In addition, MagCloud offered worldwide distribution. Many POD publishers leave it up to you to handle sales and distribution. I went forward.

MagCloud offered templates for a variety of wordprocessing formats including Apple's Pages. After downloading their template, I formatted Recetas de una Mujer Maya Moderna for publication with MagCloud. The template was easy to use.

While I did have a bit of a learning curve translating pixels and points and margin dimensions based on their format, I got it done.

They had an interesting online "Preview" option. You look at the final layout in an electronic proof format.

Using MagCloud's template and website illustrate how self-published authors/publishers are faced with learning to use unfamiliar software or apps. For myself, no matter how much I learn, there is always a learning curve as I get acquainted with various software, apps and websites.

I bought two copies of Recetas de Una Mujer Maya Moderna. One for myself and one for a friend.

For one copy of Recetas de una Mujer Maya Moderna, including one digital copy, and shipping and handling to MX, the cost was $16.81 US. That's steep for a saddle-stitched, 56-page (including cover) booklet, in black and white, and a PDF. But, it is available as a booklet for the enthusiastic book lover outside of the U.S.

The other copy was sent to a friend in the states. The cost was $13.51 US for printing, standard shipping and handling. It took 8 days to reach her. She said it arrived nicely packaged, in good condition and well-made.

Now, I am preparing another booklet for MagCloud publication. I do this because people ask for a physical book of my works.

For the second book, I only encountered one snag. I got confused about MagCloud's character limit in the description text. Once that was fixed, the process continued smoothly.

In addition, MagCloud's email support has been prompt and so far, my concerns have been addressed.

I will talk about MagCloud's promotional options as well as internet visibility and sales, in another post.


Resources:

Authors Guild Author Income Survey 2018
https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/six-takeaways-from-the-authors-guild-2018-authors-income-survey/

MagCloud
http://www.magcloud.com/

MagCloud / Recetas de Una Mujer Maya Moderna
http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1581681

Bowker
http://www.bowker.com/

Bowker News
http://www.bowker.com/news/2019/New-Record-More-than-1-Million-Books-Self-Published-in-2017.html

Smashwords
https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/category/1

The Write Place
https://thewriteplace.biz/

Wikipedia - Topic - Self-Publishing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-publishing

Cooking on a Bootstrap: Over 100 Simple, Budget Recipes by Jack Monroe

I was trying to buy Jack Monroe's new book, Tin Can Cook.

Whew, but nothing is simple anymore.

Without going into detail, using my devices has become a nightmare. I can not do one thing without a problem or interruption. And I do wish other recipes sites would stop throwing stuff at their visitors, like popup boxes and multiple moving videos, it makes the site look unprofessional and I run like hell from those sites.

Anyway, while I have a copy of Jack's book, A Girl Called Jack, I had it delivered to another address, so I have not seen it yet.

When I went to try and buy the Tin Can Cook, Kindle version, Amazon would not let me buy it, probably because I am not in the States at this time.

They let me buy the Kindle version of Cooking on a Bootstrap: Over 100 Simple Budget Recipes.

And I am enjoying the heck out of it.

I love how Jack adds her personal experiences into her recipes, like not having the time for breakfast as she rushes out the door with a banana blackening in the bottom of her handbag.

While I have skimmed the book, my cooking life is in a twirl. I have spent a whole week looking for recipes I can cook, including some in Jack's book and most of the time I am missing a crucial ingredient, like say, yeast.

What do I eat while I am trying to figure out what to cook?

Well, I have eaten several dead bagels for two days, hard-boiled egg scrambled egg accidents, local rotisserie chicken with rice, carrots with peanut butter, with salad dressing, celery with peanut butter, Beans on Toast, successful blueberry pie filling tarts, and Baked Salmon Balls with DIY tartar sauce. There's always cereal.

My struggles with cooking and food are complex. I am poor but where I live, I can stretch a dollar. But, I don't have a car, so that limits my food choice options, but on the other hand, I do have many options, but I am trying to cook American or British or Indian recipes in a place where most of the ingredients available are for Spanish recipes.

Go to a nearby mom and pop convenience store and you won't find Sunflower oil. I was fortunate to go to a government grocery store and find Canola oil.

I am not complaining, really. I eat well. But, I still can't cook. So, I depend on Cook/Authors like Jack to guide me through the jungle of terms, processes, utensils, ingredients, substitutes and more to inspire me to keep trying to make healthy food within my budget.

The funny thing is as I listen to Bollywood's top song hits while I search for recipes etc., and read Jack's book, my eyes roll back in my head because I have to convert grams, liters, milliliters etc., and sometimes there are terms I just don't know like sultanas (I am assuming they are raisins) but that is why I spend so much time on the internet trying to figure things out. Anyway, my brain is being "stretched" as it seems I am trying to live in four worlds at the same time.

Which is also why I laughed when I read that Jack has gone to the library to research ancient recipes and found a recipe for "Worts" which she altered and improved. Going to the library is always a good idea.

Also, I love Jack's stories about her thrift store finds like her 20p Royal Doulton glass. 

I feel like I passed Amy Dacyczyn's "Tightwad Gazette "Course" with a C+ and have moved onto Jack's Budget Kitchen Classes.

Anyway, I appreciate Jack's mission to help people eat well on "peanuts."

Staycation - Fiesta Inn

3/12 Staycation: Fiesta Inn

Fiesta Inn
Calle 5 B #290A x 20A y 60
Colonia Revolucion
https://www.fiestainn.com/en/web/fiesta-inn-merida
999 964 3500
443 137 8728

Being a tourist in your own town is one way to see and do things you have on your to-do list but didn’t get around to.

Vacations are also often full of surprises and Staycations are no different.

For all my research and planning, I forgot my pajamas, one of my OTC medicines and a few other things like the tour company did not take credit cards. Luckily, I could use another piece of clothing as sleepwear, Chedraui’s was right next door, and my friend had enough cash to get us through the weekend.

Expectations can be useful or counter-productive. I had high expectations regarding my stay at Fiesta Inn in norte Merida but found the stay a bit odd.

It started with the entrance. You enter the hotel from the street and need an escort to the reception desk one floor up, because until you get your key card as an official guest, a key card is need to put into a slot in the elevator to get it to function. I do understand that the system is part of the hotel's security operations.

The first floor is the reception area, lobby area, the bar, the cafe, and the business center.

Then, once in the room, another 3rd floor room, my lucky floor, you see the wash basin sitting outside the bathroom with a sliding mirrored wall set in front of it. At first, it seemed innovative but even if I carefully washed my hands, water still spilled onto the counter that held the hospitality items, and the mirrored wall was eventually shifted aside and hardly used.

The card system was frustrating. You had to leave the card in a wall slot near the door to keep the lights and AC on. When you wanted it dark, you had to turn off the lights individually, but if you turned off the light over the basin, you could not use any of the lights in the room. The only way to use the bed light was to turn on the basin light which can be too much light for late evening reading. Plus, if you didn’t want AC, you had to turn it off manually. It got confusing.

Fiesta Inn has the smallest bar I have ever seen. It is an island right next to the reception desk and serves as part of the entrance to the cafe just beyond the bar.

On the plus side, the floor staff, room service staff and reception staff were prompt and helpful. Also the room was clean and the AC worked well.

More pluses -  Fiesta Inn is next door to Gran Museo Maya. Chedraui, a grocery store, is one block over. Gran Plaza and Merida Gallerias, two shopping malls, are close by and Costco is nearby, if you like shopping. Also, you can catch a bus on Calle 60/Avenue Technologico to centro.

Norte Merida is a modern development with highrise buildings, good sidewalks, but little else to see. Can't help but think it is rather sterile.
 
On my first night, the kitchen provided a great dinner: Sopa Xóchitl (shredded chicken breast, vegetables, rice, avocado, and savory spices), Fajitas de Arrachaera Pollo o mixtas with refried beans and guacamole. Room service is one of my favorite pleasures when away from home.

I usually check out the cable channels on the hotel’s television. I guess I am hard to please because even with 34 channels that featured soap operas, “News”, movies, cartoons, comedies, history and nature channels with some shows dubbed or subtitled, I found little of interest.

But, I got lucky. I had just watched the movie “New Year’s Eve” at home on DVD, it was showing on one of the channels, dubbed in Spanish. Since I was familiar with the movie’s various stories, I enjoyed watching it again, in Spanish.

Another positive, there was a coffee maker in the room and you could call room service for more coffee packets. But, they did not have decaf coffee packets.

Friday night was spent exploring the area, while I had a great walk, there was not much to see other than shopping malls. While the sidewalks were great, the area is not designed for pedestrians. Be careful crossing the streets.

Saturday morning, I went out again to explore before my friend arrived. When she arrived, we took a swim in the hotel's outdoor pool. While the pool was not very deep or long, it was clean and pleasant. Towels were provided. I love hotel pools.

After the swim, we visited the Gran Museo Maya.

The El Gran Museo del Mundo Maya is a wonderful building. I appreciated the design in many ways. The architects beautifully incorporated a walking ramp with a staircase.

Various plantings dot the wide upper and lower plazas. The entrance and foyer are open and combined with the windows that surround the building give a sense of space. Friendly security guards assist you with interactive exhibits and guide guests along the wide corridors from one exhibit or other areas.

The outer design of the upper portion of the museo is symbolic of the Ceiba tree, central to Mayan mythology.

"La Ceiba and the sacred tree connects the world with the underworld and the sky and the shadow as ineffable value in a sun-scorched land but refreshed by the breeze." -- Designlike)

I spent most of my time in the first exhibit about the Chicxulub crater, a crater formed on the Yucatan peninsular by the impact of a giant meteorite or comet billions of years ago. The impact caused major changes in the environment causing of the extinction of the dinosaurs and more. The crater had been "discovered" several times in past but it's existence was not officially announced until 1981 by Glen Penfield and Antonio Camargo, Pemex employees. (See wikipedia link below.)

For more information, consider visiting the Crater museum at Parque Cientifico Technologico de Yucatan.  

At the exhibit, I saw my first meterorite. The displays were attractive and informative. Several were interactive.

Then we moved on to the Mayan exhibit. I still find it hard to grasp the scope and diversity of the Mayan civilization. It is going to take years to really understand Mayan history.

The exhibition is well done. Several exhibits are interactive and some displays are beneath the floor under glass. There are replicas of Mayan writing on stone and in rare book form, and various representations of Mayan life. The wall plaques are in Spanish, Mayan and English and some exhibits feature recordings in Mayan.

From the upper windows of the museo, you can see the Fiesta Inn.

One surprise find was a statue outside on one of the museo's lower plazas, it is dedicated to Yury Knórosov who deciphered the ancient Mayan language. What made the find more surprising was the man in the statue is holding a cat.

We had an early dinner in the hotel’s cafe. We were their only customers, so we got a lot of attention. My red snapper with steamed vegetable was very good. My friend enjoyed her “special” fajitas and margarita.

On Sunday, Tours Sol de Turquoise picked us up for a tour of Dzibilchaltún and Parque Arqueologico de Xcambó, two ruins less than a hour from Mérida. We spent a lot of the day walking but both sites were fairly easy to walk.

Dzibilchaltún (Lugar donde hay escritura en las piedras/“place where there is writing on the stones,”) is my favorite ruin. I've been there four times already. On each visit, I have had a different experience.

On my first visit, I was there at 5:00 in the morning to watch the sun rise and shine through the windows and door of the Temple of the Seven Dolls. This biannual event, on the Spring and Autumn equinoxes, highlights the skill and knowledge of the Mayans who studied astronomy, math and other topics. The cenote was closed and the museo was under construction.

The Temple of the Seven Dolls got its modern name because of the seven small carved figures found during excavation of the temple.

On my second visit with my niece, we walked the whole site and saw lots of iguanas and butterflies. We climbed the seating areas and were shown a small alcove where a carved stone had been found and was now in the museo. We dipped our feet into the cenote and fish nibbled our feet.

For those with trouble walking, the main pathway, called a Sacbé, is a roadway made of white stones which may be difficult for those in a wheelchair.  Getting down to the cenote is difficult.

Then, we went to the museo. I like the layout of the museo. A person in a wheelchair may have difficulty coming down the stone path leading to the museo but the building has wide doors and a wide floor plan and there are bathrooms at the site.

In the museo, there are many examples of carved stones and graphics that tell stories or glorify Mayan gods. The seven figures found when the Temple of the Seven Dolls was excavated are displayed.

On my third visit with my sister and her husband, we walked the site, inspected the stelaes and the Spanish chapel set in the Mayan game field. They went swimming in the cenote. From where I sat, I could see fish and other aquatic life in the water.

On my fourth visit, I treated two Méxican students studying English to a tour. Getting to the site was an adventure because on the day I choose to go there were no tours or autobuses going to the site. We ran to a calle in Centro to catch a collectivo to Chabekal, a town near Dzibilchaltún. From there we took a motor taxi.

I enjoyed showing them the site.

Sacbé

On most of my visits, I have taken a picture of a particular cactus.

March 2018

On this visit, the area around the Temple of the Seven Dolls had been cleaned and you could get closer for a better view of the temple. I loved it. It was as close as I had ever been to the temple.

This time I saw a turkey buzzard come to its nest atop the temple and a red raccoon-like animal (could be a coatimundi) burrowing into the soil for grubs.

Set back from the sacbé is a replica of a Mayan home with a yard, and various everyday tools on display. There is more to see and I have yet to see it all.

From there, we went to Techauc Puerto to see Parque Arqueologico de Xcambó, one of the lesser-visited ruins in the Yucatan.

As you approach Parque Arqueologico de Xcambó you will see salt ponds alongside the road. Xcambó residents harvested salt thousands of years ago and many still do today. Xcambó was a Mayan fishing village as many of the villages along the Gulf of Mexico are today.

The site surprised me. It is big. It is set in woodlands with mangroves nearby.

It runs lengthwise, so when you see the first part of the ruins you are not prepared for the various stone buildings and steps you find further as you walk down the road from parking area. While the walk is easy, wheelchairs may have difficulty with the stony road.

As I walked among the various "rooms," it made me wonder how the rooms were used.

Visiting Xcambó made me want to understand the various types of stone construction methods used by the Mayan over time. It seemed to me that these structures were made in a different fashion.

I loved the woods. Walking about the ruin surrounded by trees gave me a sense of peace.

We completed the tour with lunch at a Progreso restaurant where we had delicious soup and hardy fish and shrimp tacos.

Sunday evening, my friend and I kept running down the hall every 30 minutes, in our nightwear, to look out the window trying to see the lunar eclipse. I got lucky, for a few seconds the clouds cleared and I caught a glimpse of the early phase of the eclipse before the clouds blocked the view. The cloud cover was impressive, it went on for miles.

As with vacations, I came home exhausted and dizzy with a brain full of wonderful experiences.


Other Resources:


Gran Museo Maya

https://www.granmuseodelmundomaya.com.mx/
http://yucatan.gob.mx/?p=museo_mundo_maya 
https://www.archdaily.com/326274/gran-museo-del-mundo-maya-de-merida-4a-arquitectos/
https://designlike.com/great-maya-world-museum-of-merida-in-mexico/


Chicxulub Crater

Parque Cientifico Technologico de Yucatan
http://pcty.com.mx/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater


Dzibilchaltun

http://www.yucatan.gob.mx/?p=dzibilchaltun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzibilchaltun
http://yucatantoday.com/dzibilchaltun/?lang=en
https://www.afar.com/places/dzibilchaltun-yucatan


Coatimundi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-nosed_coati
http://www.yucatanwildlife.com/species/mammals.htm


Parque Arqueologico de Xcambó

http://www.yucatan.gob.mx/?p=xcambo
http://yucatantoday.com/xcambo/?lang=en

Updated 1/29/19, 1/30/19