The Yucatan - There and Back Again. "Bacalar, Chetumal, Calakmul and Campache"

Bacalar. Lake of seven colors. Pueblo Mágico. We were starting the last leg of our Yucatan journey. It got hotter and hotter on the bus as the sun rose and we went further south. We arrived to our camp site on the shore of Bacalar only two hours after we left the bus station in Tulum. The lake stretched out in front of us, calm, waveless, and blue. We decided to go for a swim as soon as we could, walking along the wooden dock then jumping in. A pair of snail kites few in low over the water, eating from the tall grasses along the shore.

Bacala lagoon from our camp site.

After a refreshing dip we started walking towards the Cenote Azul. The tourist maps in town showed the cenote to be only about a kilometer outside of town, an easy twenty minute walk. The tourist map wasn’t to scale. At the beginning of the walk several cars pulled up and asked if we would like a ride. After the mornings bus ride we thought it would be good to walk it. Regretfully, several hours later, we finally arrived to cenote azul. Again, needing a refreshing dip, we dove in. Afterwards, we took a ten minute taxi ride back to the camp site. We spent a romantic evening on the dock, watching the sun go down, the birds come in, and French guy practice his Spanish, and German and English. He was definitely hitting on one of us, maybe both.

Cenote Azul

The next morning we headed to Chetumal, the furthest south we would get on our trip. Chetumal is a town with a lot of potential, located on a protected bay on the Caribbean, part of a manatee reserve, bordering Belize; what could be better? Well, the town center was busy, but mostly with discount shoe, liquor and jewelry stores. Being a border town, it was a tax free zone. The coastal walkway was long, but empty, save for a few small mangrove patches full of warblers. On one end of the walkway we found a new condominium development. It looked more like a Super 8 Motel; three stories, pitched roof, grey vinyl siding, and a massive parking lot in front. It was adjacent to a Walmart. From purely an aesthetic point of view, I wouldn’t put a Walmart on the Caribbean with an ocean front view. But from a Walmart point of view, they sure scored some prime real estate.  Probably got some tax breaks too. The northern end of the ocean walkway wasn’t much better. There was a large incomplete statue of jesus, or, well, a skeletal metal frame on a man-made island that resembled something religious. We walked for several hours looking for a restaurant but they were all closed. There were several drive through beer stores open and busy though.

Jesus of Chetumal... I think.

At 4:30am the next morning we left our hotel and went to the nearby bus station, ready to leave Chetumal. The bus was supposed to be there. The bus station wasn’t open. We waited. Then we waited a little longer. Finally we asked a taxi driver what was going on. He said that we were at the wrong bus station. So, after going to the right bus station, verifying that we had in fact missed our bus, we got in a cab and headed into the jungle, leaving the Caribbean behind us.

The sun was coming up as we entered the nearest town to Calakmul, one of the Yucatan’s most expansive and least visited Mayan ruins, located in the heart of a biosphere reserve on the border with Guatemala. We quickly checked into our hotel, ate breakfast, and asked about how to get to Calakmul. At 8am we got in a new taxi and headed further down the highway:  60 kilometers to the turnoff, then more 60 kilometers south to the ruins. 

We walked through the ruins by ourselves. Unlike the other laces we had been on the trip, Calakmul really felt untouched. The forest had long ago consumed this former city. Trees grew out of the different structures. Many ruins were still just that: piles of rocks that slightly resembled pyramids. Our only companions were the howler monkeys in the trees overhead. 

One of the pyramids surrounded by forest.

After several hours we had reached the first of two tall pyramids. At the top we had a 360 degree view of the vast Mayan jungle. Except for other nearby pyramids, the greenery stretched uninterrupted over a vast flat plain in all directions. The only sound came from the howler monkeys fighting in the distance.

Our only campanion at th top of the tallest pyramid.

The next day we took a bus to Campeche, a walled city on the southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico with a long history of sea trade, conquest, and pirates.  The small stone homes in the historic center were all beautifully painted in different pastel colors. It was the last stop on a circle around the Yucatan that had started almost two weeks earlier. We spent one night in Campeche then took an overnight bus back to Puebla the next afternoon. 

Campeche homes

A church in Campeche

The Yucatan - There and Back Again. "The First 48 Hours"

We left Puebla at 9pm on a bus that wouldn’t stop until we were in the Yucatan the next afternoon. A fifteen hour overnight bus ride sounds like torture, but with comfortable seats, a fair amount of leg room, and movies, I figured it’s still better than two hours in a bus to Mexico City, two hours waiting in the airport, and two hours in a plane.

The beach at our first restaurant.

After 12 hours of not really sleeping, but not really being awake either, we finally stopped at a restaurant on the southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. We had thirty minutes to order, eat, and get back on the bus. Ana and I picked a table towards the back of the restaurant that was quickly filling up with other bus riders. We put our bags beneath the table. Another woman sat next to us and began making small talk. She seemed nice. After we ordered, I left the table to go look at the beach behind the restaurant and the shorebirds that I had noticed. When I came back, Ana and this other woman were eating, but my food still hadn’t come. The woman kept on about where she was from, where she was going, what food she liked, and asked us questions about ourselves as well. She even complimented my Spanish. Ana finished eating and then went to see the beach. I kept waiting for my food. The nice woman suggested I go up and ask for it again. The clock was ticking. I was a feeling lazy, and so didn’t get up. Ana came back, and still my food didn’t come.

The bus engine started up, the signal that it was time to go. We got up, grabbed our stuff, said goodbye to the woman and went to the front of the restaurant to pay for Ana’s food and to cancel my order. The cashier included the nice lady’s bill in ours, but we told her that she wasn’t with us. We looked back at the table and she was gone. She had skipped out on her bill. As we got on the bus, I slowly realized that the nice lady had been trying to get Ana and I to walk away from our stuff underneath the table. Like her meal, she was probably going to steal our bags. This was an ominous way to start our trip around the Yucatan.

Three hours later we were in Merida, the capital of the state of Yucatan. When we got off the bus at the station, we decided to buy our tickets for the following day’s trips just in case the bus became sold out. We asked around and discovered that we had to go to a different bus station to buy tickets. After walking around lost for several minutes we found a cab and were soon at a new bus station buying tickets: 8am the next day for Celestun, and 8 am in two days to Chichen Itza. 

The church at the center of Merida.

When we got to our hotel, we woman working the desk said that she couldn’t find a record of our reservation for a private room. I told her that I had already paid for the room and showed her the receipt. Still, we didn’t have a reservation and had to stay in the dorm, which wasn’t a big deal because we ended saving some money. We spent a short evening walking around Merida’s center, then taking a “turibus” around its mansion district. 

Being exhausted, we went to sleep early, around 9pm. About four hours later, Ana woke up in pain. She was sick. She called our Peace Corps doctor who groggily suggested we go get some medicine at a nearby drugstore. Then our phone ran out of “saldo”, minutes on a pay as you go plan. We emailed the doctor and asked what exactly we should get, and waited for a response. Finally, the response came, and at 3am in Merida on our first night in the Yucatan, we walked towards the center in search of a drug store. The central plaza was eerily empty, except for a few young men installing new sidewalks. It didn’t take long to find a drug store, get Ana’s medication, and put some more money on the phone. After not sleeping much for over 24 hours, getting to sleep in that crowded dorm room was quite easy, for me at least.

Ana and I woke up the early next morning. I was hoping she was feeling better, but she still wasn’t quite right and we missed our bus to Celestun. We decided to wait around, and by 10am, Ana feeling better, we caught a later bus.  Three hours later we were arriving in Celestun, a small town on western side of the Yucatan on the Gulf of Mexico. We were there to take a boat to see the flamingo colonies in the nearby biosphere reserve. 

When we got off the bus, two Spanish women approached us and asked if we wanted to form a group to save costs on the boat ride. The Lonely Planet recommended that we group up, so we decided to go together to haggle the boat driver. Before leaving the bus station a man approached us offering the boat trip for 200 pesos per person. This seemed like a fair price, although he said we would be sharing the boat with several other tourists. The guide book said that we would pay by boat, not by person, so we thought the overall price seemed too high. We walked to the beach without him, looking to make our own deal. 

When we arrived to the beach the same man greeted us and tried to hustle us into the boat, offering no signs of wavering on the price. I tried to argue but he ignored me. He also ignored the Spanish women we were with, which was a mistake. One of the Spanish women started arguing with him, getting louder and louder, until even I was trying to distance myself from her and join the group already on the boat. It became uncomfortable, and given that I really just wanted to see the flamingos, and this guy’s boat was the only shop in town, I just handed over my money.

Flamingos in Celestun,.

The two hundred pesos was worth it. We saw several thousand flamingos in less than two hours. And so, after the boat ride back to the beach, a quick lunch, some sitting in the sand, and then a three hour bus ride, we were back in Merida. Our first full day in the Yucatan was over. We had left Puebla 48 hours earlier, and I still hadn’t really slept.

Celestun at dusk.