El Centro (Downtown)

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We grabbed a taxi to El Centro for $8, instead of killing ourselves walking all the way there. We had driven around it briefly when we had our rental car the other day, but now time to explore in more depth.

Shops and stores line the streets, tourist trinkets like T-shirts, vanilla and woven goods. Tons of restaurants, cigar and tequila stores, and lots and lots of artisan goods. There's a district of a couple of blocks completely dedicated to art - paintings, sculptures, pottery and blown glass. There's a town center square still with a few Christmas decorations lingering on and a large yellow church that originally served as a mission. As usual, there are people on the streets outside their stores trying to lure you in, "We have what you need, just have a look, you need cigars and tequila my friend." We smile and decline, they don't hassle you here as much as Cozumel where they can get quite aggressive, but generally most stores offer the same items so we pass most by stopping only if we spot something of interest. The main streets have good sidewalks, wide and level, but as soon as you go down a side street, you really have to watch where you walk, there's no building standards, curbs come out of no where, sidewalks end abruptly without warning.

Ian picked a little restaurant for lunch called Yvur with a nice courtyard, it was fine, nothing special. Looked higher end than it turned out to be. We were lured in by their 2 for 1 special then had to ask the waiter at the end to adjust our bill since they charged for both - typical Mexico.

We caught the public bus back to the Mega, my step dad Gary would be proud, it cost 10 pescos (about 80 cents). Then we picked up some pork ribs and walked the 1 km back to the condo. How can we be so tired from doing so little? Maybe the heat, it was sunny and hot, about 28c, good thing there was a nice breeze off the ocean as we lounged by the pool for the rest of the afternoon.

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