We arrived in Campeche refreshed and ready to hit the beach as Campeche appeared to be on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and so, naive as I am, I thought it would have a beach of some description.
At Campeche bus station, which was really clean and well organized we jumped in a cab, which for an incredibly cheap price offered to take us to the Hostel Monkey. I can't remember whether Tania got uppity about spending the money on this cab but we made it to our hostel with out much to-do.
Later, if she arked up about money at an inopportune moment, say, when I am just getting off a bus or trying to speak Romanian and I was just not in the mood for being frugal, i would glare one of those glares that would mean €200 is spent without ANY to-do.
This was the first of at least 2 accommodations we stayed at on this trip which involved hauling luggage up insane stairs either plentiful or steep or both.
Campeche itself was a welcome respite. The buildings had all been restored and colorfully painted making them look somewhat un-Mexican, but gorgeous none the less. It was hard to find the local stores as the facades were clearly the tourist attraction and were not befouled with the advertising or branding of the globalized world in which we live. Noted, I was still reading that book about Consumerism so I was prepared for a lengthy discussion on how its rare not to see Coca Cola or a telecommunications company logo for one entire block. Not that anyone really cared - These facades were really cool.
It never ceases to amaze me how corner stores the world over have coca cola branding, varying from the flashy to the imitation - the imitation branding, as hokey as it is, its kind of weird in that they're trying to convey coke cred to sell bread.
We wandered around, tried to find the beach only to find that there was no beach! Campeche was some kind of port, or bay, and the only thing they had by the side of the water was a walkway, a wall and some nasty looking rocks below. I do not understand why no one on city council did not think to haul sand in from, I dunno, anywhere - and place it here. At that moment, I needed a beach, even if it was a "bay beach". (pfft).
The skies looked ominous as we continued our walk along the bay - it actually started looking quite scary. I mused about how this is hurricane season and we were in hurricane territory and then had half a thought that we should have checked out the weather, or done something to ensure the safety and comfort of our holiday.
Next time I travel I almost definitely will look into the weather, and whether the place I am staying has stairs.
Tania met some locals and broke into her stories, in Spanish, which from what I can gather was saying the place names with the right accent and saying how nice and pretty it all was. Simone and I, not stupid - realized the heavens were about to open and ditched Tania with her 4 gentlemen friends & we found some hokey awning styled shelter just after the heavens opened.
The storm looked like a hurricane altho it wasn't that bad, I guess the palm tree's are used to swaying like that.
Tania caught up to us, with her local friends, who appeared more disinterested in her pronunciation of Latin American cities and more interested with the prospects of a drunken gringo later that night. I don't recall them featuring in any later stories so she some how must of ditched them somewhere around that awning - no easy feat.
So.. feeling like sewer rats after a hurricane, we resorted to the only other thing we seemed to do in Mexico - shop. Tania was hell bent on getting through all the shops in record time, lest they not open at a desirable hour the next day, while Simone and I went about finding some food - which we found, and was delightful. Its amazing how fulfilling a bread roll and salad with salad dressing can be after 2 weeks of refried beans.
We weren't sure what to do that night, given we had 2 potential touristy things to do - one was to see a "spectacular sound and light show" at one of the local pyramid ruins, the other was the Campeche Musical Fountain. The lady at the hostel who spoke little to no English almost had us on a very expensive taxi to catch the "spectacular sound and light show" but the kindly Swede working the night shift managed to catch Tania's attention as she was running for the taxi, advising her that the "spectacular sound and light show was not on that night".
This random American from Kansas told us in his incredibly slow drawl that the sound and light show was better at Uxmal anyway, and if we can get there, its definitely our best bet. So the fountain it was!
The rain had almost stopped, but later turned into a relentless drizzle which made the short stroll to the Musical Fountain not such a bad idea after all, as the hostel people had told us they can hear it from the hostel, meaning it must be close. We picked up this Canadian chick from the hostel who was also keen on seeing the fountain, and she ended up having about as much personality as a drowned beaver and we huddled under umbrellas and made awkward conversation as we walked through the picturesque main square of Campeche.
"You been to Canada?" ...
"uh..."
*Weird Awkward*
As the story goes, Simone fell down a hole. It was a pretty nasty, un-announced hole in the ground and she fell right in and managed to get a really nasty graze down her leg, not to mention the shock of falling a few feet into an abyss. While she was going through the worst of the pain, the pithy little fountain near where she was recovering ("Nah, that can't be it") roared into life and the most un-original big-orchestra oom-paa music started blaring.
Sad little streams of water rose and fell with the music and some of the lights changed colour at the same time. The streams crescendo-ed with the music - almost in time - and this said to me that we must be at the wretched Campeche Musical Fountain.
I could definitely put on a better performance by inviting everyone into my bathroom while i play Ravels Bolero while flicking the lights and flushing the toilet - almost in time.
Why any town would be proud to have this as a 'local attraction' with prime billing in all the tourist brochures is beyond me - its kind of like how people tell you to visit Federation Square when you go to Melbourne and when you finally do (after the excitement of catching a tram or marveling at the pretty lane ways which are really just convenient storage for expired food from local restaurants), you wonder if that's really it and then it dawns on you that the whole Fed Square experience is profoundly underwhelming in the grand scheme of things.
We wandered around a bit more, taking in the local cathedral, which had a statue of Jesus covered in many Lanyards - that was pretty funny - and then ended up at a local restaurant which a few locals told us was the local outlet for Ice, as Simone needed some for her leg. Double bonus - the restaurant had free Wi Fi and the WEP key was something really easy like "1234" which can be conveyed without a marathon game of charades, so I was happy too.
I went back to the room to read a book and chill out and the girls walked around to see what else was to be seen (which was nothing) and lo and behold, they bumped into "The English". In hind site I really wished I had stayed out as The English would have been really fun to get pissed with! Ah well..
The next day, we got up and caught the "tourist tram" (it was really a bus) around the small town with a bunch of school kids who were about as bored as we were, except we could make smart arse comments without copping a lecture from the teacher. Even the tour guide chick seemed a little bored in her explanations of it all - "here is some architecture - here is some more - and some more... pretty hey?"
After that we walked around a little - the girls hit the shops (again - more range by day) and i tried vainly to shop but was pretty bored of the offerings, except they had a cool BB gun in one of the shops and I really struggled to think up a good justification for any of the border crossings I had ahead of me, as to why I was armed.
That whole "end of days arm yourself and stockpile" justification does not necessarily translate well (I know in French it is "finisterre") and i had a few more countries in between, such as the US, which are pretty uppity about people being armed at the borders. Isn't it ironic?
So I ended up in a hammock. That was nice, I had a great view of the cathedral, and a great book - and really, that's about all Campeche had to offer.
We caught the bus to Merida which was again, uneventful and first class the whole way and I don't remember much about this trip except that I was sat next to this incredibly fat Mexican woman who would shift in her seat every once in a while, and the most abdominal smell would occur. This was funny until it wasn't, and that she kept diving into her bag for more food said that it was "ALL SYSTEMS GO" on that front (or back) and I was well impressed when we arrived.
Everything looked like even in the 70's, it would have been considered in poor taste. We got into our hostel, which was kind of charming from the outside. However, we discovered inside the room, the bathroom had this particular acoustic that meant everything was double amplified.
Poor Tania unintentionally reinforced how much discretion we should employ while using this facility in the future.
Thankfully, after a dispute with the room booking relating to our penchant for private bathrooms, Tania ended up calling the hostel worker a "fuck wit" ensuring that we had to find somewhere else to stay the night, if only to keep our dignity in tact - I was pretty sure that had we stayed we would have had a rough night of it.
Plan B (which i'd like to point out was my original Plan A) was a hotel which offered 5 stars and a pool for mere dollars extra per night. We found the hotel after midnight, after some aimless walking, got offered a good rate and we were in!
The joys of air conditioning, a pool and an insulated bathroom are never quite understood until its too late!
Merida was another clusterfuck of disorganization and despair at what to do, but following the sage advice from the Kansas Redneck we quickly hired a cab and got our Spectacular Sound and Light show at the Pyramid experience started. At one point, I had suggested we hire a car as Uxmal seemed to be quite a distance, but the Taxi quoted about 1000 peso's and as we were told this would be worth it, we decided to go along in the taxi.
The Taxi driver was quite funny and Tania sat up front and entertained him by saying the Latino Americana city names using the proper accents while Simone and I made small talk, occasionally trying really hard to understand each other over the loud Mexican folk music that was playing on the radio. We stopped at a servo on the way for some food (HOORAY!) and made our way out into the Mexican country side.
Let me just say this - the Spectacular Sound and Light show - it was worth it for the laugh at the very least. This "spectacular" show made the fountain in Campeche look positivley magical! Basically - at the beginning they lit up the various ruins sites, which was pretty amazing, but then we had to sit through nearly an hour of a story in Spanish of why everything was so important and how the people lived. Lights came on, they went off - they were sometimes red, sometimes green.
I kept commenting to Tania "this is soooo spectacular" and we giggled alot and when that got boring I burped, which raised the ire of the school kids around us who were equally as bored (and they spoke the language). It became double funny when one of them took the rap for my burp.
Then, being so so so bored, when they turned some of the lights off at a poignant moment of the long-winded story (think: Abe Simpson in Spanish) I started clapping, which made more people laugh. The taxi driver, who forked out however much it was for entry (30 pesos - what the hey? he just made 1000) was killing himself laughing at me, which as anyone who knows me knows - this makes me be even more outrageous. I'm not sure whether i was just too tired or exhausted but this time I decided to cool it , I felt bad for the school kids who were getting in trouble for my shenanigans (think: Bart Simpson).
When we left, I think Tania and I were the first people out. When I was pretty sure the "sound and light" part had ended, even before the "ambient exit light" part began, I was out of there. We found a gift store and decided that might be worth a chuckle and it was as we found a version of the Karma Sutra entitled "Mayan Sutra" and had various pictures, including a drunken fat man trying to hit on a latino princess, and that was just the icing on the cake for an otherwise shitful, excruciatingly boring and expensive afternoon.
The next day we went back to the erstwhile Hostel where we had booked a day trip to the Cenoté's (said 'Snotty'). Now, if ever there was something worth doing, it was this - and it was really cheap at like 300 pesos. We were picked up by a mini van which had more passengers than it could fit - no worry, a fold-up chair is all that is required. This was pretty funny. In Mexico where there is a will of making money, there is a way to make it happen.
It turns out we were travelling with 2 guides, one of the guides family (brother, parents, grandma), and a random Mexico City guy. We mainly spoke with the English speaking guide altho I am sure given half a chance in the commentary Tania would have wow'ed them with her correct pronunciations of ciudad's de latino americana but we were really wow'ed by the whole day so the small talk mainly focused on that.
Firstly, a trip to an "authentic" Mexican market place which smelled like shit and had so many flies and food that they really could have been selling shit - and then onto Cenoté number 1.
Amazing.
A hole in the ground, and in that hole, gloriously beautiful natural spring water. I climbed down the ladder, navigated the slippery rocks and jumped in first. Simone followed and Tania had a bit of a spac about the height of the jump, but eventually came in. We tooled around on our underwater digital cameras, snorkels, goggles etc.
We went to the next Cenoté which was just as spectacular and had this amazingly rickety ladder to climb down to gain access. I of course, went down first and the girls followed. Later in that swim we took turns at climbing the rickety ladder and jumping into the Cenoté from various heights.
Simone said she saw a dead bird in the Cenoté which momentarily concerned me that I would come down with a rare strain of Mexican Flu, however I started being a shit to Tania by telling here there was actually a dead horse in the Cenoté (it was really an under water rock formation) and various local small and furry animals such as Pisoté.
Dead Pisoté in the Cenoté!
After our time in Cenoté number 2, we climbed out and dried off as best we could. The tour guides (most ancient Mayan) grandma started laughing at me and the only words I could understand were "haha...Baños...hahaha". HOW DID SHE KNOW??? Maybe the girls chiding me for my earlier indiscretions had some how transcended language barriers, and the old girl was certainly not stupid.
At least she found it funny!
After Cenoté 2 with its dead horses, birds, pisotes and baños humour we made our way to a traditional Mayan Restaurant / Souvenir Shop and had a pretty nice traditional lunch, then back to Merida.
Later in Merida we bumped into "The English" another time, and I was dying to go out and get pissed with Jayne and Steve-o but due to a big night in Campeche and what Jayne claimed was food poisoning (for the second time) from fast food - they had to pike. I was SPEWING (well, not as bad as Jayne) but glad we got to catch up albeit briefly :)
The girls and I ended up in a variety of Meridan night clubs including a Karaoke bar which had the most awful sound system which actually hurt my ears, but as promised at 10pm they started playing House music even tho it was ear bleed by default. We then went to the hot spot club which really was warm and steamy inside, but it all kind of sucked big time and no matter how many shots I had it didn't get any better.
Not much else happened that I can remember, tho I am sure we had many experiences which will be told and re-told and embellished over a few drinks, like that time i saw a dead horse in the Cenoté... Spectacular!
Campeche
Campeche Storm
Campeche Cathedral
In the Cenote
Jumping into the Cenote (I am in this photo!)VIDEOS!!
Awful Sound & Light Show at Uxmal Ruins
How to use the Mayan Toilet (From Palenque)
Cool Nightclub (from Mexico City)
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