While I had taken Valladolid to my heart at first sight, the exact opposite happened with my first impression of Mérida: loud, crowded, relentless traffic and not a breath of air under the searing hot sun… No, the supposedly beautiful (?!) capital of Yucatán will not be my favourite place!
We did strike gold with our AirBnB, though! Despite its very central location it was an oasis of calm. A lovely courtyard separated our room from the street, so that for the first time in Mexico we could sleep entirely without earplugs. Although ‘room’ is a real understatement, since we also had our own bathroom and an anteroom, and not least breakfast was included in the 20 euros a night!
I notice more and more that the Mexican climate is gnawing at the limit of my heat tolerance. While there was always a light breeze on the coast, in Mérida the air simply stands still. Prowling the streets in the sun for hours is simply not on. So here are the few impressions of the city we picked up between our rest breaks.
Right at the top of my travel bucket list is: see flamingos. In their natural habitat, of course. And from Mérida the moment had come!
But no highlight without a price: our alarm went off at 5 to start the 2.5-hour bus ride to Celestún. It is only 100 km away, but in the wooden class it takes a little longer…
We could easily have travelled later, since a bus runs to Celestún from Mérida every hour. But I did not want to risk the flamingos being chased away by all the other visitors… That risk does not exist when visiting ruins…
Once in Celestún we hired a boat on the beach. One of the fishermen promised us over a thousand flamingos. Yeees! Soon we were racing towards the lagoon past many pelicans and cormorants. But this time we had no eye for those.
And there they were as promised! Flocks of pink flamingos! We were allowed to approach to within about 10 m so as not to startle them. A flamingo needs 12 hours a day to take in enough food. After our hungry Te Araroa days we have particular sympathy for that.
Sadly the limits of the phone camera keep showing here, since it logically cannot zoom properly. I wish I had brought my camera after all…
November and December, incidentally, are flamingo high season in Celestún, when up to a hundred thousand of the birds are said to gather in the biosphere reserve.
Afterwards our captain took us into a mangrove lagoon with a ‘water eye’ (a spring bubbling up out of the ground). Well, honestly, we would rather have spent the time with the flamingos!
31.03.-04.04.2017
After three days in Mérida we travelled on to the former colonial town of Campeche (properly San Francisco de Campeche), a good two hours from Mérida. Campeche is the capital of the state of the same name, which together with the neighbouring states of Yucatán and Quintana Roo forms the popular Yucatán peninsula. In fact tourism drops off rapidly west of Mérida. Good for us!
Back to the sea, we thought when choosing Campeche as our next destination. Well, wrong. It does lie by the sea, we were not quite that mistaken. But sadly there is only a harbour, no beach. A small misunderstanding: the state of Campeche is said to have stunning, untouched, kilometre-long beaches; its capital of the same name does not.
Our AirBnB host’s greeting accordingly fell more into the category of “And what exactly were you thinking, wanting to spend four nights in Campeche?!”
Campeche was so relaxed from the very first moment! Especially compared with loud, crowded, stuffy Mérida. Breathing freely in a city, who would have thought it?
In the evening there was a folklore festival on the market square followed by an impressive light and music show (similar to the Karlsruhe palace festival - only without a palace) telling the history of the city.
Campeche has an immaculately preserved colonial centre. Supposedly the best preserved in the whole country. And since during our stay in Campeche we visited neither the ruins of Edzna nor those of Calakmul, we had plenty of time to explore the historic little town at length. As far as you can explore anything at length in an average of 38 degrees…
Because the heat gets to me in particular, we had to find a few activities for the lazy:
1. Cinema
We went to the cinema for the first time on our journey! Not to any old one, but to the VIP cinema with hugely wide, comfortable armchairs, legroom and service at your seat for - brace yourselves - 6.50 euros. At 12 midday there is also not exactly a rush for a film in the English original. Perhaps that was down to the film…
2. Shopping!
For four months, or strictly speaking since kilometre 600 of the Te Araroa, I have been walking around in the same pair of shorts. I bought a sleeveless merino top during our last days in New Zealand for warm South America. So for four weeks I have been mastering the same outfit every day challenge without withdrawal symptoms.
So more for fun I tried on a pair of denim hotpants and a non-technical shirt at the shopping centre. What a new feeling of being alive! Bought!
3. Little tourist train
In Campeche there are small open carriages that chauffeur tourists through the centre - combined with interesting facts about the city’s history. I assume they were interesting, at least. The tour is only in Spanish and by the time I had deciphered which year was being talked about, I had long since lost the thread again. Mil novecientos ochenta y nueve…
Campeche is definitely a city for the eye. I could spend hours prowling the city taking snapshots of the ice-cream-coloured house facades and historic buildings…
Yes, Campeche really is as lovely as my pictures lead you to believe!
Now we are about to get on the bus to travel 300 km to Palenque in the state of Chiapas. The timetable allows 6 hours for it…