Richard's Travel Blog

It’s windy and rainy here today, plus I really don’t feel like going out. I might as well finish up with San Miguel.

My time here has been mostly social. The people at this hostel have been good company, but they are all leaving Saturday except one who is moving to a house sometime soon. It’s a good time to go. If a photo op arises today, I’ll take a picture of us.

Meanwhile, here are a few shots of town. San Miguel is attractive in it’s own way, but you may get the feeling you’ve seen these pictures before. Here’s around the cathedral…

… and here are street shots…

… Here is the front of my hostel. Well, at least the red door is the entrance.

And here is the front of a cute little church next door. I don’t know how many churches are in most towns, including this many, but it’s a lot.

I’m off to Guanajuato tomorrow. Talk to you from there. Be well, all of you.

There’s a really nice botanical garden/nature preserve on the edge of town. I went there yesterday and it was really very nice. It covers about four square miles and I spent about 3 hours walking around there. Let’s go for a walk.

It gets hot there, but there are many cute places in the shade to sit.

There are ruins of an 18th century hacienda. I felt like being Joe Photographer. Didn’t really work out, but you can picture the place.

This park is on the edge of town. Here’s a shot of town from behind the ruins.

Here are the remains of a 16th century waterwheel and what’s left of the adjacent building.

Below the reservoir is a canyon with a green pond in the bottom.

Nearing the end, you come around the side of the high ground and get another view of San Miguel.

You had to be there, I guess.

I’m not that busy here, so I thought I’d just post these. Why not? I’m leaving for nearby Guanajuato in a couple of days. I’ll post something more about my time in San Miguel de Allende before I go or as soon as I get to Guanajuato. Until then…

You may want to fly through this post, or skip it altogether. One of the reasons I came to San Miguel de Allende now was to see this soiree. It was a hoot. Actually, it’s a religious holiday honoring St Anthony of Padua who lives from 1195-1231. Right here, I’ll insert a thing I copied off the net about Day of the Crazies. Then comes my practice at uploading many pictures at once.

So Loco: The Day of the Crazies in San Miguel de Allende

Pascual Baylon Yubero was born into a peasant family in 1540 and spent his youth toiling in the fields of Aragon, Spain, tending his meager flock of sheep.  Consumed by devotion to God and commitment to prayer, Pascual joined the Franciscan order as young man and dedicated his life to veneration of the eucharist and abnegated service to his Franciscan brothers as shepherd and cook.  Numerous miracles on behalf of the poor and aggrieved were attributed to him, and following his death in 1592, Pascual Baylon was beatified by Pope Paul V and canonized as a saint of the Catholic church by Pope Alexander VIII in 1690.

It is said that San Pascual Baylon’s passion for prayer was such that he was given to ecstatic visions, most notably of the Holy Eucharist, which appears in most representations of the self-effacing saint.  In reading up on San Pascual’s legacy, we were moved to wonder if his visions had ever come to include, say, a mariachi band made up entirely of Bart Simpsons, or perhaps a bright green outerspaceling in full Santos Laguna football kit.  Sound crazy?  Oh, it’s crazy: It’s the Day of theCrazies in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico — el Día de los Locos — and it’s loonier than an extremely loony mountain goat.  Here’s how San Pascual got the party train rolling:

Although he was actually designated as patron saint of eucharistic congresses by Pope Leo XIII in 1897, since much earlier San Pascual had come to be known as patron of field and kitchen workers, for his lifelong labor as shepherd and cook.  Since the 17th century, pilgrims from around southeastern Spain have gathered in the village of Orito on May 17, San Pascual’s feast day, for the Romería a San Pascual, a celebration in his honor featuring music, dancing and revelry.  Over in the colonies, the relatively recent converts to Catholicism were keen to get on board, and in the central Mexican town of San Miguel the agricultural workers, known as hortelanos, initiated a tradition of dancing to their patron each year on May 17.  According to tradition, the hortelanos danced to flute and tambourine, some dressed as scarecrows, and gave away fruit and vegetables from their fields to the townspeople who gathered to see them.  One version of local lore holds that in time, members of the higher social classes, eager to beseech San Pascual for favors, began to join in the dances.  To avoid being recognized in such a vulgar pursuit, the social strivers would conceal their identities with wild disguises, thus the “locos” or crazies.

But San Pascual wasn’t the only saint in town.  He was outranked by the venerable Saint Anthony of Padua, who had been canonized in 1232, served as patron saint for a veritable grab bag of themes, and was represented in old San Miguel by the Church of Saint Anthony of Padua, located on Saint Anthony Plaza along Saint Anthony street in the Saint Anthony neighborhood.  The parishioners took their San Antonio seriously.   So when the feast day of San Antonio de Padua rolled around on June 13, up went the streamers along San Antonio street and out came the tambourines and flutes, and oh, they danced.  Such was the fervor of the Feast of San Antonio that in time it snowballed into a serious rager, joined by various cuadros, or platoons, of merrymakers from other neighborhoods.  These came to include a cuadro that danced “El Torito,” a traditional folk dance from the nearby town of Silao which featured costumes simulating ranch hands and an ill-tempered bull; the Los Locos cuadro fresh off their own feast day the previous month; and others such as Los Gallos, La Danza Grande and Los Jardineros.  By the early 20th century, the two saints’ celebrations had largely morphed into one, and as the years went by, the costumes of the revelers became ever more barmy.

Today, the once humble offering by agricultural workers in honor of their patron has come a long way.  The event now takes place each year on the first Sunday following June 13, and city government has issued guidelines for the parade to maintain order and safety.  Parade representatives work together with the departments of Public Safety, Transportation and the Municipal President’s office to closely coordinate the festivities.  The over 1,000 costumed Locos are organized into four large cuadros, named Cuadro del Parque, Cuadro Nuevo, Cuadro Antiguo and Cuadro del Tecolote, according to veteran Loco Emigdio “El Gordo” Ledesma, who has danced in the parade for over 50 years.  Mr. Ledesma told us that each cuadro is made up of 16 groups, each of which may include up to 40 or so dancers and chooses a theme for its costumes each year.  The costumes, ranging from simple to astonishingly elaborate, are made largely by the dancers themselves in the weeks prior to the event.  The dancers ride on or alongside colorfully festooned floats upon truck beds, and these days many include advertising for local businesses sponsoring the groups.  Music booms from speakers rigged precariously to the trucks, and the hortelanos’ gifts of fruit and vegetables have long since been replaced by candy, much to the delight of local children.  Throngs of locals and tourists from other parts of Mexico and around the world clog every bit of available space along the parade route, straining for a view of the eye-popping Locos.  The event reportedly drew some 80,000 spectators this year.

With some costumes channeling Sponge Bob or the Na’vi from Avatar, one might be tempted to conclude that the original traditions have been lost on younger generations.  Fortunately, this appears to be far from the case.  For every Bob Marley or Transformers-inspired costume, medieval figures and scarecrows still  abound, many adorned with hand-sized rakes, trowels and hoes in honor of the field workers of old.  Listening to the youthful dancers from the Cuadro Nuevo recite to us the story of San Pascual Baylon as we joined them for chicharrón and frijoles charros after the parade this year, we felt confident the saints and hortelanos will remain an integral part of el Día de los Locos for years to come.

It was a good idea to come Morelia. I was trying to be in a good place while waiting till this weekend to go to San Miguel de Allende, and people said it was good. Turns out, I agree with them. The cities I have visited so far have  a few 18th century stone buildings and lovely pastel colored 19th century buildings in their historical centers. Morelia’s historical center is about 20 square blocks of stone buildings and is deservedly a World Heritage Site. Anybody can enter many of them free, which is nice, and on Sundays practically everything is free. Typically, these grand old buildings were residences of officials, or administrative or church property, with column-lined courtyards.

Just walking the streets is great. One of the great things is you can walk for quite a while, as the district is so big. It’s not like you’ve done the whole place in an hour. These are not pictures of the same church and surrounding areas taken from different angles. There must be a dozen photo-worthy churches just in the historical district. The whole area is like this.

As is often the case, I didn’t mingle with anybody or go deep into this place. I spent a lot of time in this hostel completing, FINALLY, uploading seven years of travel photos onto the cloud. I am so glad to be done with that, plus, now they are in safe keeping forever, or at least until some post-apocalyptic cyber war crashes everything and civilization returns to woodblock prints. Anyway, for most of the days I’ve been here, I was the only guest in this hostel. I talked with the guy who runs it, actually learning a lot, did my uploading, and made most of my food in the kitchen.

Tomorrow, I’m heading for San Miguel. Tonight, if it doesn’t rain too hard (There are thundershowers every evening), I’m going to go see the 18th century aqueduct at night. LP says it looks good all lit up. It looked nice enough during the day a couple of days ago.

This plaza is next to the arches which I was stating under to take this picture.

I think that’s going to be it for now. I’ll keep this as a draft, and if I take a photo tonight worth sharing, I’ll add it before publishing this. In any case, I’ll say bye before doing that.

…….  Well, the arches were okay, but I didn’t bother taking a picture. The cathedral is lit up nicely, though.

Be well, all of you.

Though some might say my travels are slow, to me they are sometimes whirlwind. I just came to Morelia, Michoacan, after spending a measly two weeks in Oaxaca. In Oaxaca, I went to the two places “everybody” goes to, the beaches of Mazunte, San Augustinillo and Zipolite, Oaxaca City and some places near there.

It is the off season for tourists everywhere in Mexico, so even if I wanted to party down at the beach, it isn’t happening. There were very few people at the beaches and most of the businesses catering to tourists aren’t even open. Even the main beach, Zipolite was practically empty. This is fine with me. I’ve been to many beach resort areas, and empty beaches are just fine with me. I hung out at at cliff-side hostel above Mazunte for a week doing almost nothing but uploading onto Snapfish my pictures since I hit the road in 2006. The uploads are slow, so I am still only about halfway through that project. It was particularly slow with the ultra slow and sporadic internet connection in Mazunte. But slow was fine with me. I just sat and read on my porch and wandered down to one of the resort areas from time to time. Here is the view from my porch.

If you think I’m holding out on telling about what I did, don’t. I was the only one at my hostel. I was in my own private Idaho the whole time, only occasionally talking with the owner. So, all I can do is post a few pictures from down by the water and move on to talking about Oaxaca City.

Mazunte beach isn’t particularly photogenic, so here are pictures from the next beach over, San Augustinillo, about a kilometer east. There are some nice looking places to stay above that beach.

When I walked there, my doggy companion and I would chill out at this chair and watch the surf. This is the Pacific coast, so the surf comes in pretty hard.

Just for the record, here is the beach in front of a kilometer of beach hostels, shacks and dive bars on Zipolite. On-season must be a lot like Koh Samui in Thailand was many years ago, with overlapping loud music and partiers. The beach is famous for nude sunbathing. Now, Zipolite is dead as a doornail.

I finally got bored with that and wanted to upload photos onto Snapfish faster, so I went straight to Oaxaca City.

Oaxaca City is smaller than I imagined, about 270,00. Like the other cities I’ve been to, it has a nice historic center. The historic center isn’t that great, but here are a couple of pictures.

As usual, the zocalo is nice.

And, of course, there were nice buildings. Inside the second one were good murals.

My hostel was very nice, right across from this park.

Near Oaxaca City are some interesting sites. One is the ruins of Monte Alban which date back over 2000 years.

There’s a nice restaurant up there with a nice view from the patio tables.

Another place “everybody” goes is Mitla. It’s a very old city with even older ruins of it’s own. Here’s a shot of one of the churches from the ruins.

Here’s one of a church built right on top of the platform of what was an ancient temple.

I went to Mitla and the other place coming up, Hierve de Agua, with a couple of the guys from the hostel on a tour. It’s just easier that way and hardly more expensive than patching together time consuming colectivo rides. We went to a place famous for weaving. The photos from there are lousy, but here are a couple. Those of you who have traveled at all to places like this have seen this. Hand weaving is done nearly the same everywhere. The wool (or whatever) is spun…

… and dyed. Here is all natural dye. The colors are mostly variation from a red dye produced as a by-product of a worm which is put inside a kind of cactus which turns the insides red. The other colors are from other plants and minerals.

Here, the guys work the looms, not the women.

Let’s see, we were also taken to an artisan mezcal “factory”. Small batch, practically hand-made mezcal is popular here. Mezcal is similar to tequila. No pictures of that. I think I forgot, as there was unlimited tasting. Nothing like several snorts at lunchtime to make you lazy.

The last place we went was Hierve de Agua, a place where cool water bubbles out of the rocks making  pretty pools on the rocks.

There’s also a mineralized (no water at this time) waterfall. I’ve never seen this before.

There’s plenty to do in and around Oaxaca, like, there’s an art scene, but I decided not to stick around and partake in any of that. I hung out with a group from the hostel, making up for the isolative self I was at the beach. Three of us left Oaxaca together and made for Mexico City. They planned to stay there, while for me it was just a transfer point for Morelia, Michoacan, where I am now. This time, I stayed with them at the most popular hostel there, right behind the cathedral. Here is the view out our window.

So, that’s it for Oaxaca, at least for now. I’m in Morelia now. From here I will go to San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato. After that, I don’t know. It doesn’t look like Myung will be joining me anytime soon, as she is getting little interest in taking over the lease on her shop space. I had hoped that she would join me while I am in Mexico, but who knows what’s going to happen with that. I may head back south to Guatemala, or maybe I’ll decide to do more here.

Until next time, be well, all of you.

It was a real pleasure to stay in San Cristobal for a week and a half. It’s the first place I’ve been to in Mexico where I could plunk down. If I wasn’t likely to return on my way back down toward Central America, I might just stay here longer. It has just about all I’m looking for. At over 2000 meters elevation, it’s much cooler than anywhere else I’ve been, no more than about 30 degrees C. There’s a cool breeze much of the time, no mosquitoes at all, it’s big enough to have everything but without the big city feel, it has a large and alluring historical center which is especially good if you are a foodie, and the people seem nice though the indigenous people all around are stand-offish.

As far as “things to do” goes, one could say it’s a four day town. Unless you are talking about a place like Mexico City, where the is so much going on you cannot run out of urban things to do, you could say that about anywhere I’ve been so far in Mexico. So, living here would be a regular life, for the most part.

There are the usual pastel colored buildings, stone streets including three nice pedestrian only streets, great places to eat (cheap or expensive, as you like), churches of course, new age stuff if that’s your thing, lefty political vibe if that’s your thing (the Zapatista movement started here), colorful indigenous people around the city and dominant in some of the outlying towns and villages, some caves, and a beautiful gorge with 1000 meter walls about 40 km away near Tuxtla Gutierrez. It’s good. No wonder it’s so popular as a tourist destination.

Time for some pictures. Here are a few of the walking streets. Check out the Tzotzil women carrying their woven goods to sell mostly to tourists and the guy in the San Francisco Giants hat, my kind of guy.

These streets are definitely touristy, but it is not oppressive. Oppressive is when you are badgered by the shopkeepers, street vendors or restaurants to buy their stuff. Oppressive is t-shirt shop after t-shirt shop or some such thing. I can’t stand the hard sell or being taken for a mark. San Cristobal has some class. Speaking of class, I sat at a balcony seat in a restaurant (from where this picture on the left was taken) and treated myself to a truly perfect pizza, a salad with bleu cheese, walnuts and raisins, and nice wine. First pizza since I came to Mexico and I am not making excuses. It was gooood.

I stayed in a hostel that was really a pension. Basically, you stay with a family. There are four bedrooms upstairs where the guests stay, and the family lives downstairs. The woman makes a real breakfast like you are a guest, but the area is really theirs. You can use the kitchen, but it’s best to avoid the area when family is around. The treated me like family during my stay. If they don’t like you, well, you are out of there. For no reason, they kicked out a perfectly lovely American couple. The owner woman got an irrational fear, and that was that. That felt bad. The good was the first batch of tourists there when I first got there. We were a jovial group. The owners are opening a new place, and we had a big housewarming party. Very good vibes then. I made that gimongous guacamole dip in the middle. Avocadoes are perfect and cheap here.

As for things to do in San Cristobal, there are some entertainment options, places with all kinds of dinner music, art studios, clubs if you are into that. The most popular tourist destinations are some caves which I didn’t go to and a long thin lake which used to be a rushing river till it was formed by a hydroelectric dam. This Sumidero Canyon has walls up to a thousand meters high. It’s popular to take a launch with about 25 people and go for a couple of hour ride down this waterway. It’s no 8th wonder of the natural world, but it’s nice, with interesting shapes, lots of trees, animals and birds.

I have no idea why pelicans are there.

There are many towns and villages around San Cristobal populated by indigenous people. They absolutely HATE their picture taken and don’t even offer to have their pictures taken for money. Even at a distance, if they see you taking a picture in their direction, they turn their heads or cover their faces, especially the women who wear the colorful clothes you’d want to take pictures of. I went to one nearby town, Chamula, where mostly Tsotzils live. Here are some pictures I took there.

There are no photos allowed inside this church, but it would have been interesting for you to see. Many of the indigenous people practice a hybrid of Christian and traditional religion. Inside were groups of people who set up rows of candles, at least a hundred, and when they finished lighting them all, sacrificed chickens. It was halfway humane, I guess, putting them in plastic bags then squashing them between there knees and chest. I guess that broke their necks. Then while the chickens were dying for about five minutes, they prayed over the twitching bodies. Then they picked up their candles, their dead bird and their stuff, and left. That’s about the only happening thing in Chamula, though I heard there’s a Sunday market that attracts a lot of people and is fun to go to.

I think that’s about all I have to say about San Cristobal. After there, I went to the capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez, about an hour away. That’s where I am now. I will be spending my second and last night here. It’s a fairly pleasant place. Nothing much going on, despite it’s size. The thing to do here is to go to the nightly marimba music in El Jardin (garden) de Marimbas. I was going to go tonight, but I heard they weren’t going to play tonight because tonight is the Mexico championship football game. There are a bunch of people here watching it right now. The other thing would be going on the river canyon ride I told you about. That’s only 10 km from here in Chiapa de Corzo. Today I went back there to see the ruins there. I went to more ruins because these are especially old and I like especially old things. These buildings were built 2700-1900 years ago. There’s not much to see now, but it was free.

Tomorrow I’m going to Oaxaca. I’m only going halfway, as five hours in a bus is all I’m up for. From that waystation, I’ve decided to hit the beaches the next day. After that, I’ll probably go up to Oaxaca City. Then I don’t know what.

Be well, all of you.

Calakmul didn’t happen. I got to Xpujil around noon but soon found out it was highly unlikely I would find other tourists to share the expense of getting to Calakmul. The guy at the tourist kiosk at the bus station said there were maybe no tourists in town right now. The woman at the nearest hotel to the station, one which would be the choice of some of the tourists, said she had no guests at all. I decided to simply catch the next bus to a transportation hub halfway to Palenque, sleep there (where I was the only guest), and head for Palenque.

Most backpacker types stay a few kilometers outside Palenque at El Panchan, which is between the city and the ruins. This part of Chiapas is jungle, or was jungle before development. El Panchan is in a patch that is reforested. In there are about 10 places with rooms, cottages, camping sites and even a tree house. It’s hardly the deep forest, but you can get a feel for the jungle by staying there. I stayed at where the internet indicated was the most tranquil. I stay away from the party crowd these days if I can. Margarita and Ed’s was just fine that way. Margarita said they don’t take “hippies”. What a sweet gal she is! Here’s their cheapest cottage, where I stayed.

There are a few rooms in their hotel-style building.

There are a couple of palm-thatched dive bar/restaurant establishments, but almost everybody goes to the really quite nice Don Mucho’s. It’s got an extensive, fair priced menu, candle lit tables at night and nightly live music. Here it is through the trees and at night, with the candle lit tables and the music on the left. Check out the little lamps along the path so you don’t step in the muck at night while you roll your wheelie suitcase to your place. Wheelie suitcases and muck to not go well together, and muck there was, as there were a couple of ferocious thunderstorms while I was there. The rainy season is about to start.

The other places to stay are back in the trees up this path.

Some hardened travelers scoff at these kinds of places, but I think it had something for everyone. It wasn’t in the city at least, with the trees, colorful and noisy birds, cicadas and howler monkeys. It had nice stuff for the people on two week vacations from the office. The cottages would be great for couples who might prefer not to share a common wall. The food was good at Don Mucho’s, though I ate mostly cold food from town to save money.

I stayed there for three nights. One day I went on a waterfall/river/swimming hole tour. It was a steamy 104 degrees F (40 C), so that was nice, as well as it being quite pretty.

I didn’t go swimming at this place, just walked behind the falls to the other side. Most of the others swam there while I chilled out at the opening to a grotto on the other side and under the falls. It was nice and cool there. Besides, the tour only stopped there for about a half hour. A schedule is the disadvantage to going with a tour.

Then we went to this other place which was even nicer. We stayed there about three hours. I thought it might be a stretch to want to stay so long, but you walk up the river to view the views and swim as you like in many swimming holes. Beautiful series of falls, beautiful river, not too many people, cool water on a hot afternoon. Very nice. Our group got along well, also.

The second full day I was there, I went to the ruins when they opened at 8. Considering the heat and the number of tourists, I was surprised so few people go there early. It’s nice there, as you will see. The ruins are surrounded by lots of trees, though the main part of the site is well-groomed. There’s a very nice little museum there, too, which you shouldn’t miss if you ever go there. As usual, I’ll dispense with the history. All this archaeological history makes me dizzy. Suffice it to say, most of this is about 1500 years old, built during the Mayan heyday.

I managed to linger around there for about four hours. There are many paths off to obscure areas where one can hang out in peace.

The rest of that day was nothing. There’s ultraslow wifi internet at Don Mucho’s and a couple of the hostel/cabana places, but not at Margarita and Ed’s. Don Mucho’s charges 25 pesos per hour, but it’s so slow I only bothered with it one hour. You can’t even voice only Skype on it. So I read and studied Spanish on the books and Spanish course I have downloaded. That’s about it. The next day I went to San Cristobal de las Casas, where I am right now.

San Cristobal is very pleasant and I plan to stay a few days. I’ll write about that when I’m finished here. Until then, be well, all of you.

Tulum is also a popular destination for tourists. It’s close enough to Cancun that you can get there, and back if you can handle about seven hours in a bus coming and going, less if you are with a group tour that doesn’t stop. You can do a poor man’s Maya Riviera thing, like on the Cancun strand, or stay in the nearly regular town itself. The nice hotels are also far away from the regular town, like in Cancun, so you don’t have to mix.

I stayed there for a couple of days. One day, I walked the 10 km or so to the ruins and back along the beach. The ruins site is manicured and just so picture perfect. You can see why it’s popular. The downside is the buildings themselves are cordoned off and you can’t get close to most of them.

Part of the downside is there are no good angles to see the ruins in their lovely oceanside setting.

 My original plan was to take a collectivo there and maybe walk the beach and cliffs back, but I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy doing that in the heat. So, I settled for this picture and walked the road back.

I stayed an extra day in Tulum. The owner said his brother lives in an isolated hamlet on the coast south of Tulum and before Chetumal which is on the Belize border. He thought his brother was coming and, if I wanted to kick back there, I could go with him. I was going to go, but the brother wasn’t coming after all. So I went to Chetumal the day before yesterday with the intent to go west toward Xpujil, back in southern Campeche. From there, I am hoping to get to Calakmul, another Mayan site. We’ll see how that goes, as there is no public transportation. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll gt back on a bus for Chiapas.

I decided to spend a day in Chetumal. Again, a nice hostel was the reason. Also, Chetumal seems to be a pleasant place. I walked around town and along the waterfront with a Chinese woman staying here. That’s about it. No pictures, except for this one of Olga, the owner, Ming, the Chinese woman, and me.

Right after posting this, I’m off to try to get to Calakmul. The town everyone bases themselves for visiting the ruins in the area is Xpujil (Eesh-pu-HEEL). The internet says accommodation is expense or super-basic, and getting around is expensive. Like, taxis. If I can pull it off, with some other people probably, I’ll mosey around there. If it’s a hassle, I’ll just move on to Pelenque, Chiapas.

Until then, be well, all of you.

As for Cancun, I can say I’ve been there. If your thing is Miami Beach or Waikiki, Cancun would be great. Cancun itself is basic big city with many budget options for vacationers. The beach strand is east of a big lagoon. It’s only two or three hundred meters wide in most places, with the beach strand on the east. Along there is about 10 km of upscale hotel after upscale hotel with the beach on the other side. anyone can go to the beach, though you generally have to go through a hotel to get to it. For sure, it’s great beach. Hanging out at the bar or jacuzzi on the deck seemed to me like it’s like taking a cruise ship, only it doesn’t go anywhere.

One afternoon was enough of walking the beach, lounging on the hotel lounges, cruising the shopping centers across the street, and considering eating at Chili’s, Hooters, Hard Rock Cafe, Outback, or some such place.

On the other hand, just a 20 minute ferry ride from town is the rather nice Isla Mujeres. It’s touristy, but not oppressive. There’s no traffic around, and the atmosphere is chill. I hung out a couple of days there, swam at the beach, sat under the palm trees and read, had some decent coffee in the mornings and splurged on a 700 gm ribeye steak and red wine. It was fine.

Under the right conditions, a drink on the beach watching the sunset would be great. Too bad there weren’t any clouds to give the sunsets character.

As  I said, it’s something I can say I did, but I don’t need to go there again anytime soon.

From there, I went to Tulum, about three hours south of Cancun along the east coast of the Yucatan peninsula. A short blog about that is coming up.

Campeche was nice, really. I hung out there for several days. As usual, though, I know when it’s time to go, so on to Merida I went.

Normally, the guesthouses, hotels and hostels I stay at aren’t worth mentioning. I gotta say this hostel, Nomadas, in Merida is about as good as it gets. Except for the flimsy bunks that wobble every time your bunkmate moves, this place is outstanding. It’s 11 USD which is about right here in Mexico, but it’s got a big pool, comfortable hammocks and tables and chairs, a better than average breakfast, wifi and house flat screen computers, a good kitchen, air conditioning in the dorms plus your own fan, free cooking classes (20 pesos if you want to eat the food you made), free yoga, salsa lessons, live soft dinner music, a curfew they enforce, a good location, and it’s clean.

Here we are making tortillas with some kind of spinach-type chopped veggie I forgot the name of, which we fried up into chips to go with pureed pumpkin seed/tomato/chili dip. We had that with chicken fajitas. We used plastic bags to keep the uncooked tortillas from sticking to the tortilla presses.

I didn’t do the salsa lessons, or yoga. Merida is nice enough, especially for a big city, but I was content to chill out around here much of most days.

As for things to do, you can go to the museums, which are nice enough, look at the typically colorful buildings around the historical district or take in any number of cultural events. I don’t have much to say about that stuff. It was fine. One day I went to the beach in Progresso, maybe 25 km from there. It’s not photo-worthy. The best nearby attraction is the famous Chichen Itza Mayan ruins. They are quite nice, though there were even more vendors than Teotihuacan. Of course, these ruins are so popular because of their location in Yucatan, about equidistant from Merida and Cancun. Since Cancun is such a tourist mecca, zillions of people go there. Here are three pics I uploaded.

I have more, but ruins is where it’s at in this part of Mexico and I’m about ruined out myself. I was thinking of going down to Tikal in Guatemala and looping through there and back to Mexico, but maybe I’ll stay in Mexico. I don’t know.

I did finally go to a ballgame. Turns out Campeche has a team, the Campeche Hairy Pirates, but I didn’t know that then. They played the Yucatan (Merida) Lions. Here’s the big but decidedly minor league ballpark. Behind it is a little arena, about the size of the one in Stockton. The seats aren’t reserved, so I plunked down behind the plate, like you might at a Stockton Ports game, and watched some California League level of baseball. There were a few Americans on both teams.

That’s it for Yucatan. The other part of the Yucatan peninsula is Quintana Roo, where Cancun is. That’s coming up. For now, take care.