VINTAGE VENTURES: I write my travel journals to look back and remember our ventures. A secondary reason is to allow me to organize all my trip photos. I have thousands of photos. Organizing them into a cohesive story makes sense.

Campeche is my favorite Mexican city. It is undoubtedly the most beautiful city we have explored in Mexico. The only thing it needs is a swimming beach.

DAY 19, Wednesday, February 21, 2018

CAMPECHE 

We had to cancel breakfast to catch our 8 am ADO bus to Campeche. We were up at 5:50 am, flagged down the metro bus to Centro, and walked the rest of the way to the CAME terminal to catch the ADO bus direct to Campeche. The ADO bus took a little more than 2 hours to reach Campeche.

The inter-city bus system in Mexico is modern, inexpensive, and efficient.

We have grown to love Mexico. However, Mexico, including Yucatán, has pockets of poverty; abandoned and deteriorating buildings and houses; an old infrastructure; and more litter than I care for. Not Campeche; it is modern, clean, colorful, well-maintained, and the prettiest city I have seen in Mexico.

After being dropped off at Campeche's modern ADO bus station, we took a taxi to the Historico de Centro (central historical area). We immediately noticed that in Campeche, stop signs were only a suggestion.

Having always been a prosperous town, Campeche had once been plundered by waves of pirates. I always thought pirates only raided commercial ships, but apparently, they also raided seaside towns. To combat this, the city built a wall around the original downtown.

This wall is still there, and nestled inside the wall is a beautifully preserved historical and colorful commercial city center. Nicknamed the Rainbow City, Campeche’s historic walled-in city center is colorful. Each smooth plaster-faced building is painted a different pastel color. The preserved landmark shops are low-key, with little signage, and the area is immaculate. The entire historic site is at least a square mile, and we zigzagged the whole area. It was very laid back as it lacked the crazy chaos of downtown Merida.

Above and below: The central plaza in the zona historico. The taxi dropped us off here. It was a perfect place to start our walking tour.

The plaza was anchored by the largest church in the historical center.

The colorful historical center is nicknamed the Rainbow City.

Above and below: The historical center had tons of churches. This church seemed to be the most ancient.

A wall surrounds the entire central historical area. This was built to protect the city from pirates that plundered the city in the old days. The white arch in the background is a gate through the wall. Outside the wall is a thriving modern city.

This homemade tuk-tuk fascinated me. It seemed to be built to haul stuff. The scooter it was built with was split in two. It looks like two people were needed to operate it. One to stand up and steer. The other to sit and shift. I am only guessing on this.

We stopped at a Mayan archaeology museum at one corner of the wall. There were more Mayan preserved artifacts, including a large, perfectly intact double godhead stone sculpture. Many godheads at the ruin sites have broken noses and weather-worn features. This sample was gorgeous. I was delighted to learn that it was original and not a reproduction. It would have been amazing to have seen these Mayan cities when they were in their prime.

Above and below: A beautifully preserved godhead.

Some of these reliefs are weather-worn and difficult to make out. This stone slab has a man on the top and an animal, maybe a rabbit, on the bottom.

This figure appears to be adorned with a fancy headdress and clothing.

In front of the historical center was a long walkway spanning the entire oceanfront from one end of the city to the other. Campeche turned out to be much larger than I had thought. My original plan was to use this walkway to visit each end of the city, as there are forts at each end located on hilltops commanding great views.

Unfortunately, this day was insanely hot, 95 degrees. The walkway, as nicely laid out and landscaped as it was, provided no shade, and sadly, there wasn’t a beach along this long oceanfront. It became apparent that we couldn’t walk the oceanfront to the opposing forts. By now, my worn-out shoes were badly rubbing my feet in several places, and we started to get concerned.

Above and below: The oceanfront walkway. This walkway spans the entire width of the city. It is about 3 miles long and connects two fortifications on either side of the city.

Plan B was walking past the fishing harbor to the grass hut seafood restaurants lining the oceanfront just past the fishing boats. I had read that these restaurants serve the freshest seafood anywhere in the world. Intrigued by that boast, we wanted to check it out.

As we walked past the concentration of seafood restaurants, the competition for our business became intense. One ‘barker’ after another desperately tried to lure us in using laminated pictures of gorgeous seafood plates as bait. Wanda has this thing when choosing restaurants – she picks the one with the most patrons as it probably has the best reputation. I read reviews in blogs and travel books. It turned out that the restaurant with the most patrons also got good reviews, so that was where we parked ourselves.

The waiter, a large Hispanic man, treated us like royalty, serving us tons of terrific tapas just as he promised when we first walked past. His recommendations were spot on. Wanda got large sautéed shrimp smothered in a wonderful sauce, and I got a tender, flakey grilled fish. Rice, garnished potatoes, and tropical veggies rounded out the dishes. We got the usual zillion tortillas, guacamole, beans, sauces, and plenty of tortilla chips and other tapas. Wow, it was a feast. The bill, with margaritas and tip, was $25 US - a little higher than we were used to but reasonable for a gourmet meal.

The fishing harbor. The fishermen provide the city with the freshest catches. The nearby restaurants take advantage of the freshness.

After supper, the sun was setting. We walked a little way along the oceanfront before heading to the mall. Both Merida and Campeche still have robust malls.

We started to look at some new shoes for me. After browsing the mall, we hailed a taxi to return to the bus station to catch our ADO bus back to Merida. Both taxi rides were cheap. If we ever returned to Campeche, we would use taxis to get around.

We would start at one fort, then taxi to the other fort, then taxi to the historic city center, then taxi to the fishing harbor and restaurants. We would also stay a couple of days so we could take a colectivo to the Edzna Ruins, located some 30 miles or so inland. We had heard many good things about these ruins.

Barb, our Airbnb host in Tulum, gave us many more tips on great-sounding places to visit in this area. Unfortunately, with my feet killing me and Campeche being much larger than I thought, I didn’t plan this visit very well. Oh well….

Back at the ADO bus station, a group of police with police dogs roamed the station for a while. They were serious and businesslike as they walked around with purpose. We speculated that they were looking for drugs.

On the ride back to Merida, we saw more police checkpoints, and at one checkpoint, our bus was pulled over. The driver was told to open the baggage compartment. One black-clothed, assault rifle-toting cop grabbed a large suitcase and brought it on board the bus. He asked whose bag it was and took the man and suitcase back outside to search it. It was about 9 pm, so the police had tons of lights set up on tripods. I could see several other cars and trucks being searched. After nothing illegal was found in the suitcase, we were back on the road.

It was 10:30 pm by the time we returned to Merida. We slowly walked to the city center; my feet were getting worse. The plan was to catch the Carranza metro bus to the Airbnb. It was late when we reached the bus stand, and most buses seemed to be done for the day. We flagged down a taxi, as I couldn’t take another step.

Dave and Wanda

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