July 31st, 2009
Campeche
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Portales Del Centro, Campeche
Bruce and Mary have settled into a routine here in Mérida that actually involves working. They have paid their dues at ICUC and now only work M-F with weekends off. With some money coming in and not needing to rely upon their original spend down M.O., they have decided to explore the Yucatan and their first weekend venture is to Nixon full movie Campeche, the capital of Estado Campeche.
Our ICUC shifts are done at noon today so we quickly pack and are out the door at 2. We take a taxi to CAME, the first class bus terminal and we get ripped off for the first time in awhile. We usually take Taximetros, metered taxis, but this time we hail the first one we see and we forget to ask for a quote (which would be 30P, we’ve taxied to the bus depot many times) so, naturally, when we get to the bus terminal the driver, who Mary had been chatting up says, “Cincuenta” 50P. My blood pressure spikes but what do you do? We end up getting ripped for all of a $1.50, but it’s the principle.
We shell out the 144P each, about $11, for tix and board a posh ADO bus. We get to practice our Spanish as a dubbed Dolph Lundgren shoot-em-up movie comes on the overhead screen. The scenery outside is the same old boring low scrub jungle of the Yucatan for the first hour but then we get into the Puuc hills which is much more interesting viewing. As we are coming into Campeche I see what look to be watchtowers up on the left side of the road. As we drive by I find myself gawking at the first prison I have seen in México and a shiny new one at that. I’m a little surprised at myself, because of course, like every other country, México has prisons. Our life in Mérida has conditioned us, excepting the Narcos, to the fact that there is virtually no violent crime here.
We debark at the new and modern bus station. The very nice tourist info gal assures us that the Pirate Hostel download An Angel for May Yonkers Joe full movie , where we are staying, is not walking distance like the website had said. So we hop a city bus and the driver’s assistant (never saw that in Mérida), after meandering through Centro and stopping at a Mercado for a bit, tells us when to get out. We cross Circuito Baluartes, the Centro ring road, to La Plaza de La Republica. As we’re taking in the sights a hawker outside a bar on Calle 8, right in front of us, tries to get us in the door for some tequila. I holler back, “Mas tarde”, a little later, but where is the Pirate? And for probably the 100th time in México we get directions that are exactly the opposite of the right way. After walking the extra 6 blocks we do find our little hostel and the lobby is pretty piratey with an eye-patched swash buckling mannequin in the corner watching over the pirate boat artifacts. It’s pretty neat. A gal at the computer station in the wide hallway beckons us through into the courtyard where we find reception and the clerk. We are in his computer so he quickly grabs the keys and ushers us up the stairs across the gangplank that spans the courtyard, down a short hallway that opens onto the rooftop overlooking the street and our room is the last one on the right. This is the smallest hotel room I have ever seen! Later I pace it off and it is about 9’ by 9’, including the bath and shower. I’m told there is no other room available with a private bath. Oh well, we’re only going to sleep here, anyhow, we tell each other.
We pay our deposit and buy 4 Coronas (IMHO this is the worst beer in México, but it’s all they have and still beats the hell out of any American beer) and head upstairs past the dorm to the rooftop palapa common kitchen with adjacent patio. The sun is setting, I have fired up my Cohiba Cubano cigar, we’re chugging Coronas and the view is spectacular! It doesn’t get a lot better than this. The city of Campeche is tucked into a bowl on a bay in the Gulf of Mexico; the rising brightly colored houses remind me of Tangier from the movie “Bourne Ultimatum”. This city has almost a Mediterranean feel to it.
It’s time to eat and our friend Larry, knowing I like seafood, recommended La Pigua, a sister restaurant to a restaurant of the same name in Mérida, only this one is better, we’re told. Our clerk at the desk tells us it is about 8 blocks away, but does allow that these blocks are not anything like the never-ending blocks of Mérida and he is right. Our walk takes us by the Parque Principal and people are gathering for Friday night festivities. Campeche is a UNESCO city and all services are underground and signage is strictly controlled. Every building we see is in excellent repair and the cobblestone streets are immaculately clean. This city is really quite beautiful.
At La Pigua we are escorted through chrome and glass doors to the dining room. This building is very modern with Caesar’s Palace quality restrooms (without the attendant) but it has a strange architecture. With its open air, steeply sloped roof with ridge running the length of the room it has a ski chalet feel to it. We are served by a team of white shirt and tie servers who are very serious about their business. We order a couple of beers and relax, looking at the menus. The ambience is marred somewhat by the American elevator background music.
Mary orders the Fettucini, she hates fish, and I order the Pescado Relleno del Mar, a fish stuffed with ground up shark, octopus, squid, and snail. It comes accompanied by broccoli and cupcake sized mounds of garlic rice and mashed potatoes. It is absolutely sumptuous. Mary’s pasta would have been better if they had remembered the parmesan and had used a little salt.
We settle the bill, 364P, about $27 for two meals and four beers at a high end place, not bad. On the way out we inquire as to their hours, Larry had warned us that Campeche shuts down early. He wasn’t kidding, it’s 9:30 and they close in half an hour.
We wander up to the ocean front but on the way spot a San Francisco de Assis grocery store and thinking to buy some beer to surreptitiously drink (we have noticed that there is no public drinking here, same as Mérida) on the Malecon, but we are shut down, no liquor sales after nine. We cross the coastal highway to Malecon Justo Sierra Mendez. The retainer wall rises about 6 feet from the surf and provides about a 2 foot high ledge on the Malecon side, providing perfect perches for families and lovers. I peer over the ledge and the surf is mild lapping up against jagged rocks. Our friends were right, Campeche has no beach. We walk along the Malecon on this moonless night which is very people friendly with a pedestrian and two bike paths. The atmosphere is quite serene, with the mild surf in the background the locals are content to nibble on their snacks and make quiet small talk amongst themselves.
I’m bored. So we head back to La Parque Principal and seat ourselves at the circular restaurant right in the middle of the park (you don’t see that in Merida) and order up a couple drinks. The server moves languidly and we do finally get our drinks but that’s fine, our mood is tranquil and the people watching is great. We settle up and it is time to head to our room.
At the desk we buy a couple of Coronas for the roof top and make our way across the gang plank. It has cooled down to almost comfortable but when we open the door to our room, the lack of ventilation that the tiny window supplies is evident. It is at least 90 in here. We have our beers overlooking the traffic on the street and we finally hit the sack about midnight.
The ceiling fan is stuck on low, and the bathroom has flooded. We contort ourselves on the postage stamp size bed so as not to touch each other and turn the lights out. Mary, world class sleeper that she is, is soon softly snoring.
Thank God the sun is finally coming up. I avail myself of the continental breakfast of bananas, watermelon, and toast with marmalade, and The Narrow Margin movie download good strong coffee. Mary is right behind me and after our nourishment we quickly pack our gear and check out. We have come to the conclusion that the Pirate Hostel is a great hostel but a rotten hotel.
It isn’t until our fourth stop that we find a hotel with a vacancy, the Colonial, only a couple blocks from La Plaza Principal and Conchita at the desk just shrugs when we ask her what is why all hotels are booked. Evidently this influx happens every weekend. We pay her the 210P, about 16 bucks. We are pleased that our room is actually big enough to accommodate a chair! The toilet is “manual” in that we have to turn a valve to make it flush, but what the hell, it works better than a lot of automatic toilets we’ve dealt with down here.
We quickly shower up and after breakfast at La Marganza on Calle 8, we follow Conchita’s instructions and look for a bus with “Lerma” on it’s windshield destination menu. Our plan is to visit Playa Bonita and on the way check out Fuerte de San Miguel.
After about a 15 minute wait we are rewarded and we board a Lerma bus. It winds through the colorful southern quarter of town and eventually finds the coastal highway.
We debark and see a sign stating we have a 600 meter walk and it is pretty much straight up. We don’t have to worry about our cardio today. We enter the fort by way of a drawbridge over a dry moat and we find that they do charge (we’re so used to free culture in Mérida) for the Museo de Cultura Maya contained within the fort. At this point I have had it up to here with Mayan artifacts but it’s only 37P each so we ante up and enter the fort. The barracks, storehouses and kitchen house the artifacts and they are kind of interesting but finally we climb the stairs to the bastion. This is what I’m talking about!
Mary Guarding the Fort
The entire fort is constructed of stone and from the bastion you can see the entire city and bay. On the perimeter, there are easily 20 gun placements; rusty cannons with about a 6” bore, on remarkably well preserved wheeled carriages. It’s pretty cool, looking out the slits of the half dozen turrets. After about an hour we’ve had our fill and we hike down the hill and quickly Gigantic psp pick up another Lerma bus and we soon discover that Lerma is a suburb of Campeche. This particular Lerma bus is an intercity bus for the Pueblo and winds up and across the high rising hill that Lerma is built on. We’re finally back on the coastal hwy and the driver informs us that this is as good as it gets for getting to La Playa Bonita so we debark and start walking. It is hot and we are quickly sweating profusely but it is only about a kilometer or so to the beach.
La PLaya Bonita
The beach is about a half kilometer of bright white sand dotted with palapa shelters with tables. It is bounded by a row of restaurants and the gulf waters, which are greenish blue here, and frankly don’t look very inviting. But our first order of business is beer. We pick out a small, friendly looking joint and order up a litro of Superior, which happens to be our house beer. Not only is this litro really cheap at 25P but it is a super litro, veinte siete mas, 27% more! Happy days! And, as glass is not allowed on the beach, the gal is happy to put our beers in separate cups, with plenty of ice, and carefully measured out so that each of us have the exact same amount. We laugh at this.
We stake out a palapa and I shed my sandals. I quickly find that this sand is about one grain thick and spread over the limestone shelf that is the Yucatan. The swimming area is quartered by sand bag riprap and I see most of the swimmers actually lounging on the riprap and I soon discover why as I wade into the water. At about mid-calf depth the bottom becomes not only rocky but slimy with weeds and I don’t even think of a cooling dive but quickly as I can I tiptoe back to shore to on my bruised feet. So much for swimming, but we can still have lunch and enjoy the scene. Back at our friendly joint we order a chicken tamale type thing for Mary, which she loves and I order the pescado frito, the deep fat fried whole fish. In this case it is pargo, snapper. I can’t believe the price, only 35P. The cheapest I have ever found in Progreso is 60P. And of course we order another litro of Superior.
Our favorite pastime, people watching, is very entertaining. We discover they have Hutterites or whatever they are, here, too. It is so incongruous in this setting to see these pale skinned, bib overalled, straw hatted alien beings walking the beach.
It’s time to leave and we, for two pesos each, visit the central banos, and then head to the road to pick up the bus. The bus takes us directly up the coastal highway to Centro and we debark a couple blocks from our hotel. After a shower and a nap, we hit the streets again and we entertain ourselves by bar-hopping the late afternoon away.
The setting sun finds us on the second level balcony of a bar in the Portales de Centro complex overlooking the park. The park is filling up with families, lovers, and tourists and we hear bongo drums, salsa bands, and the cathedral is intermittently ringing its bells. As the daylight fades away we see flame dancers accompanied by the bongos. The thunderheads rising in the north threaten but only deliver a cooling breeze. I am puffing away on a cohiba and sipping a martini, while Mary is enjoying her beer. We are planning our early morning getaway and commenting on the eye candy the scene is serving us. We both agree that we are happy to give Campeche a two thumbs up.
Thanks for visiting, gentle reader. If you have any questions about Campeche (or anything else for that matter) please feel free to comment. Bruce and Mary plan on more of these excursions and will be happy to give their reports. In the meantime, Hasta La Vista, baby!
