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Published: August 6th 2007
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27/03/07 - 30/03/07 Pastel Streets and Jungle Ruins
Arriving at Campeche, we first glimpsed the Mexican Gulf and a huge Mexican flag flying over the town. Campeche is a historic fortified town and UNESCO world heritage listed site. It was founded in 1540 by Spanish Conquistadores and soon became a wealthy port. Due to its wealth, pirates and buccaneers attacked it regularly and so to counteract this the Spanish fortified the City with huge walls. The remains of the fortifications still exist with numerous bulwarks and walls but the real beauty of the town are the narrow streets of multi-coloured pastel-shade houses, often with rows of coloured Beetles parked outside.
Our ‘Hotel del Mar’ in very Miami style had balconies with sea views over the Gulf of Mexico. In the morning, I opened up the balcony doors and immediately a huge black beetle bug type thing with ginormous legs came flying in and crawled under the edge of the bed covers. I called for the girls to come see it and then gingerly lifted the edge of the covers where I’d last seen it. It obligingly crawled back out and then scurried across the floor towards my bare foot.
I jumped out my skin and physically jumped to avoid it and then we all charged out of the room. It was time to check out - our room was no longer safe!!
We wanted to ensure that we were never driving after dark to avoid damaging the car with unseen speed bumps or potholes and to avoid having to recount any night time bandit stories so we left with plenty of time to reach Palenque, the furthest point on our trip, but an Indian Jones style jungle ruin that we had to include on the itinerary.
The ruins in Palenque were definitely worth the drive, and this time you could climb the steep stone steps. Descending the steps was much trickier, especially in clompy hiking boots. Once again it was very hot and humid and the site was quite spread out, particularly through the jungle sections down to the museum and back. The air con of the museum was a welcome relief before the steep climb back up to the higher ruin sections where we all arrived exhausted.
A school party of children from the local region were visiting the ruins but seemed more fascinated with
us then with the Mayan history. We felt like superstars, having our photos taken over and over again and in huge group shots with the whole class. The teachers joined in too with their cameras and seemed to encourage the kids more. It was quite bizarre but hilarious run, if not a tad embarrassing as to why they would want pictures of us all hot and sweaty in our scruffy traveling clothes!
The highlight of Palenque was the highest level of ruins where 3 large step pyramids stood, the Temple of the Cross, Temple of the sun and Temple of the Foliated Cross with views across the main plaza and Palace building.
After a morning of exploring ruins in the heat it was time to cool off, so we drove to a nearby waterfall ‘Cascades Misol-ha’ famous for being the spot where Arnie battled against the alien hunter in the 80’s film ‘Predator’, and took a dip in the cool water.
Driving to Chetumal, we were frustratingly close to both Guatemala and Belize, and although it would have been tempting to sneak over both borders and add 2 more countries to our personal world lists, the car
wasn’t insured out of Mexico and it was a long way to any towns of note across either border so we had to let them go.
We had passed many military police checkpoints during our trip and always just waved on through but now due to our proximity to other countries and direction of travel we were stopped momentarily whilst the boot and glove box were searched and we explained in broken Spanish where we’d been and where we were going. The soldiers seemed mildly interested in searching for guns and contraband and far more interested in whether Jeanette and Rebecca were available and posing for photos with them!
Chetumal is the capital of the state of Quintana Roo but was fairly non-descript save for a visit to the Museum of Maya Culture where the museum is thoughtfully laid out on 3 floors depicting the Mayan belief of the three realms of existence with a giant Cieba tree connecting the center of the earth with the heavens and the underworld. The Mayan beliefs of the underworld were remarkably similar to other cultures, including the crossing of an underworld river with a ferryman.
Heading North up the peninsular
to Tulum, we had one more Mayan ruin to visit but from now on we were concentrating less on old stones and more on relaxing by the sea!!
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