Mexico: 15 - 25 April, 2011

…Part 1 – Cancun to Campeche.

Mexico is a brilliant country. When we left Cuba, we flew to Cancun on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, and travelled West to Merida, Campeche, Palenque, and then finally San Cristobal in the Chiapas region.

Merida is a vibrant city of about 800,000 people and is considered by many to be the cultural capital of the region. There are many museums, theatres, parks, markets, and street performers; and as well as this, there are plenty of places to eat and drink – and most of them are very cheap. We stayed in a hostel/bed and breakfast right on the main square – the Plaza Grande. It is a great big old house with many high ceilinged rooms and wide veranda’s that look down onto a central courtyard. Overall a great place.

Campeche is a town about 3 or 4 hours West that is situated right on the Gulf of Mexico. The unofficial logo of Campeche is a skull and crossbones, referencing the fact that literally dozens of pirates raided, raped, and pillaged their way through the town as some point during the 16 and 17 hundreds. (In honour of this memory, we decided to stay in the Pirate Hostel). After one such savage raid in 1704, the Spanish colonisers decided to increase their security in the town and built 10 metre high stone walls right around the outside of the city. In some places these are about 10-15 metres wide, and following construction, no pirate was able to launch a successful raid on the city – with the exception of William Walker was able to take the Governor hostage, went into the city, took all the gold, and made his escaped without harming anyone.

Dog-hat Woman

The city’s walls still largely exist, however parts of them have been demolished to make way for roads that now circle the old town. As well as this, in the 1970s/80s the local council quite literally decided to make the town bigger. So nowadays, instead of the Gulf of Mexico lapping the sides of the old city walls, there is now land from the walls edge about 100 metres out to where the shore now exists. On this land there are hotels, restaurants, and lots of car parks. The old town of Campeche is a tight enclave of perfectly restored pastel buildings, narrow cobblestoned streets, fortified ramparts, and well-preserved mansions. This area was added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites in 1999.

Our next destination was Palenque – our first stop in the Chiapas region. This region is largely made up of indigenous Mayans, many of whom still hold on to their ancient traditions of things like unique natural medicines, ancient tattoo’s (and tattooing techniques), and most widely seen, their language.

Palenque is a town that seems to have sprung up around the tourism that came about due to the Mayan ruin of Palenque that springs up out of the jungle about 7 or 8 km from town. Palenque town doesn’t offer a visitor a huge amount, however the ruins are absolutely amazing. More on that in another post.

Our last stop in Mexico is the city of San Cristobal de las Casas. Both of us agree, that we could easily live in this city – it is beautiful. The city is about 2,000 metres above sea level, and set in a valley surrounded by pine forest mountains. The drive from Palenque is only about 100-150kms, however it takes over 5 hours as the roads are ordinary, and extremely windy. Add to this either a large speed bump or deep trench cut into the road, and you get a trip not to be forgotten – particularly if you get car sick.