(Post 229 of 263)

Thursday was my last day in Campeche, but with my bus being at 4:20, I still had a full day of tourism! First thing I had to do was figure out what to do with my luggage between the noon checkout and 3:30, when I’d have to head to the ADO station. The hotel offered to keep my suitcase behind the desk, but it wasn’t a secure area, so I had to pack a day bag with all my valuables and then get everything else into the suitcase. It was a tight fit!

I went around the corner to Luan for breakfast. I ordered an americano and a juice of strawberry, pineapple, and… orange? I think. So refreshing!

Breakfast was a croque madame, hold the egg. I was surprised by the mustard, rather than nutmeg, in the béchamel. The bread was excellent. So delicious and a nice change from the Mexican breakfasts I’d been having all week.

I decided to do like Wednesday and go out to a fort, this time Fuerte San Jose and the subaquatic history museum, then walk back into centro for lunch.

This fort was up a couple of really steep streets the likes of which I have not seen since Oaxaca! Like at San Miguel, this was a two-for of the subaquatic archaeology exhibits and those about the fort.

I learned about how chocolate was only used in religious rituals, not consumed by regular people, and was not only bitter but very spicy. This is a chocolate serving pot.

There were tons of artefacts rescued from the bottom of the sea.

This was a great little museum. I was just a little frustrated that there was a lot of specialized vocabulary I did not know and I could not easily do translation research. I had to go up to a guard tower on the roof for cell service and shade to do my research.

Next stop was the Mirador, scenic viewpoint, and the Benito Juarez statue that watches over Campeche.

I had to return to Santo Taquito for my last meal!

I got back to the hotel around 3:20 and requested a taxi, which did not show up until almost 4:00, and my bus was at 4:20! We FLEW to the bus station… where I learned all the Mérida buses were delayed! Thankfully, my delay was only about 30 minutes.

The ride home flew by. The only excitement was a military checkpoint at the state border (the first since my drive to Yucatán), but there was no document check.

It was chaos around the bus station as we came in as streets were closed and there was a police roadblock. A taxi driver thought he saw a mark and wanted to charge me $150 to get home. Uber wanted $70, but when I changed my pickup pin by a block, they doubled the price. Didi was $90, but the texting function was down again, so I was not able to tell the driver which side of a busy street to pick me up. Total chaos. I was truly home! I ended up getting in around 8:15 and my lovely housesitter had dinner waiting.

My five days in Campeche already feel like a dream. They did me a world of good and it felt terrific to be back out in the world.

(Post 228 of 263)

Wednesday, I had thought to do another all-day tour to see dolphins and a cenote, but it would have been just me, so the cost was very expensive and, frankly, it didn’t sound like much fun on my own. Spoiler: I ended up being happy that I stayed in Campeche as I had a perfect vacation day.

Campeche has two forts high up on either side of the city. I decided I would take a taxi to the western one, Fuerte San Miguel, which also hosts the Campeche archaeological museum, and then walk back into the city via the Malecón.

First, though, was breakfast at Origen again as I had to have those chilaquiles again! This time, they did not have green sauce but could offer me a smokey “slightly spicy” red sauce. It was delicious and not even remotely spicy.

I went to Plaza Principal to try to get a taxi and ended up getting in one colectivo-style, where the taxi is full of passengers. I ended up getting an impromptu tour of the city, complete with the driver pointing out landmarks to me and treating it like a guided tour, before making it to the fort, for the low-low price of only 70 pesos. What a great start to the day!

The fort was reminiscent of similar structures in Canada.

The fort was great in that you have the fort history to learn as well as the Mayan museum within that had tons of artifacts. The space wasn’t huge, but it was easy to spend an hour there.

This Mayan calendar display blew my mind. They had an agricultural calendar and a religious calendar that worked together like gears to create a cycle of time of 52 years roughly equivalent to how we use centuries to mark time.

Their numbering system based on 20 broke my brain but kinda sort makes sense.

After a quick break, I headed north out of the hotel to go to the bank.

This was a day to get back on the Balkan pizza diet of walking a lot and breaking up the day with a giant pizza! I did some research and Patroni’s, where I’d had the shrimp pasta, seemed my best bet. All of their pizzas sound amazing and gourmet and it was hard to decide. After the server came back a third time, I said, “Almost there, I’ve narrowed it to two!” “Perfect,” he said, “We’ll do half and half!” Genius move to offer that!

The left side of my pizza was their “California” with a white base, blue cheese, Serrano ham, and fig jam. OMG. The right side was their “Aspen” with sundried tomato, roasted garlic, and Italian sausage. OMG. LOL!  This was quite a big meal, but the California side was a bit overbaked, so I did not eat most of the crust on that side. The crust on the Aspen side was chewy and amazing. The salty sweet combo was perfect. I think either pizza alone would have been too much of their respective type, but half and half worked great. I’m definitely coming back to Patroni’s next time I am in Campeche to try more of their pizzas!

Campeche historic centre has almost no cell service, oddly enough, so I went to the tourist info centre to ask about museums. You would have thought I was asking for directions to the moon. They had no idea about museums in the city or why I would even be looking for such a thing. Very odd. I ended up finding the small but interesting museum of Mayan architecture and then the city museum (next door to each other) on my own.

The info in the Mayan architecture museum cannot be condensed in a blog post. It was so informative. I learned about the four types of construction and daily life. Like all museums I visited in Campeche, it was tiny, but really well done. Most museums have some English, but not everything is translated.

The city museum was next door across from Plaza Principal and was the first place with free entrance (everything else had been $65). This museum was spread out across the building, so you had to follow the yellow arrows around, which was fun, almost like a treasure hunt to find where to head to next.

As time passed and the native, mestizo, and European populations continued to integrate, you could see the influence of the cultures in the clothing. These are traditional native and mestizo dress with European cuts.

I learned about logwood, Campeche’s black gold, a dye that allowed Europeans to achieve purples, blacks, and other colours more cheaply than with European methods.

There was a display of the original market in Campeche and all the people who worked there. I was amused by the tortilla lady. Some things never change. You can see her in Mérida at the Chaya Maya restaurant making tortillas exactly like this, on a little stool.

I was very tired after my day of walking, so I headed back to the hotel for a few hours, showered and changed, and went back out after dark to get an ice cream.

There was a 9PM walking tour about Campeche legends that sounded interesting, so I decided that I was going to do that! I bought my ticket, went back to my hotel for another rest, then headed out for the tour, which should have been 90 minutes but was a full two hours. I was beat by the end of it! It was very interesting, but unfortunately the guide spoke very fast and had some odd intonations that meant that it was hard to understand him. It was the first time of my entire trip that I really felt like I was travelling in a foreign language and not able to get enough to fully enjoy the experience. It was still very fun and there were some great jump scares.

I thought I could get a late dinner after the tour, but everything shut at 11PM, so I went back to my hotel and had peanut butter sandwiches!

Wednesday was an absolutely perfect vacation day. I’m pretty sure I haven’t put in that many steps in a single day since my Balkan adventures. I brought great footwear to Campeche (all Clarks brand sandals) and rotated them out throughout each day so I was never footsore.

(Post 227 of 263)

I somehow managed to wake up at 6:30 without an alarm on Tuesday. First up was breakfast. Most restaurants open at 8AM or later in Campeche, so I asked the front desk if they knew of one open earlier than that as I didn’t want to only eat peanut butter sandwiches all day! Turns out there is a restaurant called La Parroquia near the cathedral that is open 24/7!

I had to deal with a mini crisis at home while breakfast was going on, so no pics, but let me just say my breakfast wasn’t really anything to remember. I had panuchos, typically a favourite breakfast of mine, but these were really greasy and bony! Not great at all. I did appreciate that I was offered coffee the second I sat down, that the coffee cup was magically refilled at one point, and that the coffee was good!

I was picked up at my hotel at 8:00 on the dot. It was just myself and one other guy, so we went in a regular car. It was very luxurious to be on a semi-private tour! The plan for the day was to hit up three pyramid complexes, Edzná, Hochob, and Dziblnocac. I’m not going to get into a lot of details in this post. If you’re interested to learn more, the Mayan Ruins Website will do a much better and more thorough job of it than I could. I downloaded their page about each site (links above!) to my phone so I could consult it on site, a rather genius movie, as my housesitter said!

We were at Edzná about an hour and a half, the perfect amount of time.

Our next stop was much shorter, but also much smaller. I never felt rushed all day.

Hochob is when the other guest and I finally broke the ice and started enjoying our day together! It helped that he hadn’t thought to bring a lunch and I’d packed enough peanut butter sandwiches to share!

It was then time to go to our final stop. Yes, I can write Dzibilnocac without looking it up since we have Dzibilchaltun north of Mérida that has gotten me used to spelling the first part!

The new camera makes for stunning pictures, no? I cannot believe I have an entire phone period of ownership where I essentially have no travel pictures. For y’all, I pretty much jumped from my 6 (which was already a huge improvement over the 5C that I went to Europe with) to the 14 Pro Max, skipping the middling camera of my XR.

One of my favourite things about Tuesday was being out in nature. I don’t get enough of that in Mérida.

We had a 2.5-hour journey back to Campeche and had been in the sun all day. I joked that I could go for a cold beer. I was equal parts horrified, amused, and grateful when my guide asked a villager where we could get beer and then we detoured to get it! The other guest paid for my beer and it wasn’t until much later that I realised it was the thank you for the sandwiches! Beer tastes exceptionally good when being chauffeured in a fancy car after a long day in the hot sun!

We got in around 4PM. I showered, changed, and went out in search of dinner!

I ended up at Bastion off the main square, which was mostly a mistake.

Things started off very promising with this spicy coleslaw and totopos…

And crostini with garlic sauce.

Dinner looked great — vegetables are a nice change from no vegetables in Mérida, and the xcatic pepper sauce looked so pretty. But the shrimp were overcooked and over salted. And then it wasn’t until after I left that I realised I’d gotten scammed on the tip — they included it in the bill and I didn’t clue in when I wasn’t asked if I wanted to add one since I was paying with my credit card and I left a cash tip as well. Oh, well, it’s not a real trip unless you’ve been scammed at least once, right?

I was super amused, though, that as he brought my dinner, the server said, “You look like someone who wants tortillas with her dinner. I’ll be right back.” Maybe because I tore through all those botanas? LOL!!!

No picture, but I remember that after dinner I headed back to El Michoacano for the second time since my arrival to get an ice cream. This time, it wasn’t very busy and the server had time to tell me what all the flavours were when the first time, I just went with the obvious choice, cookies and cream. This time, I was delighted to learn that they had pistachio, so I went with that. Do not confuse this ice cream parlour with La Michoacana, the national non-chain of ice cream that while not franchises per se all have basically identical ice cream, kind of marshmallowy and a bit watery, with some flavours being better than others, all in all offering a middling ice cream cone. EL MichoanO was not that. This was quality, creamy ice cream with premium ingredients.

Tuesday was another early night. I did try to see the pirate show, but would have had to wait until 9PM to even know if it was on and I was ready to call it a night around 7! I went back to my hotel room and did the Sunday post on my iPad then decided I was not doing any more posts on my iPad! Handling the pictures is too finicking.

What an amazing day! I feel immensely privileged to now call this part of the world home.

(Post 226 of 263)

Like in the rest of Mexico, Monday is the day that most touristy things are closed in Campeche. So I didn’t have big plans for my first day. I just wanted to get orientated, figure out a few things to do on Wednesday and Thursday, and also have some good food!

My hotel, H177, was in a prime location, just north of the Plaza Principal, Campeche’s main square, and right off of Calle 59, a pedestrian street lined with cafes, restaurants, and bars. On a map, it looked a bit far from everything, but once I was there, I couldn’t believe how my hotel was always just minutes away, so I could pop in and out during the day.

The first stop Monday was Origen, a cafe just around the corner. The menu was a bit egg-heavy, but I had no trouble putting together a delicious breakfast!

I ambled for a bit. Like other centro historicos in Mérida, the house are all stuck together and colourful.

While at Plaza Principal I found a tourist attraction that was open, a tram tour! I was told to come back a little while later as they were having trouble filling one. So I headed out to the malecón. While beautiful, I found it very difficult to access as you have to cross a four-lane avenue with only a few pedestrian crossings.

By the time I got back to Plaza Principal, there was a tram-load of people, so off we went. Our first stops were to travel through the ancient barrios of San Francisco, Guadalupe, and San Ramon. After the city was fortified, the mestizos and natives lived outside the fortifications in these barrios.

The tram tour was excellent. A problem with these open-air tours is often you can’t hear what is played over the loudspeaker, which was the case despite the audio quality being very good. But they also had an excellent English narration by a native English speaker, so between the Spanish and the English I was able to understand everything.

Next up, I needed ice cream by the water! I was told this is THE place for ice cream in Campeche, but while my cone was pretty good, I think that El Michoacano had better ice cream (I ended up there three or four times!).

Next up was to visit the Bazar Artesanal, where you buy directly from artisans, with the purpose being an earring restock!

The two butterflies are similar, but I like having one set as studs and the other as dangles. The sting rays are so cute. And ones with the blue gems are incredibly lightweight. I forget what kind of metal and gem they are, but I never thought I could have earrings like that that would not feel like I had rocks attached to my earlobes. The top two pairs were in my usual earring budget of $50 each, but the other two were a splurge at a total of $600! Remember, I live in pesos, folks, so those are pesos, not dollars! 😉

After a brief rest at the hotel, I headed for lunch at one of Campeche’s top restaurants, Maria Cocina Peninsular. A cold Pacifico really made me feel like I was back in Mazatlán!

I had to ask for picante at every restaurant I ate at. Most brought me commercial sauce, usually El Yucateco, but Maria’s had this gorgeous creamy homemade habanero sauce. I enjoyed it with my beans and totopos and asked for a topup to go with my lunch!

Lunch was some of the best coconut shrimp in my life, served with an incredible tomatillo marmalade that definitely needed a little heat to cut through all the sweetness. This was my first time being served potatoes (and roasted radishes!) with this dish rather than rice. I definitely prefer rice, but the salsa came to the rescue.

Their espresso did not disappoint.

I went back to my hotel for a bit. I had an excursion the next day for sure and maybe one on Wednesday, so I decided to try out Campeche Rappi to get some food to avoid paying the Oxxo markup. I was able to connect to a Chedraui and get a loaf of bread and some peanut butter, plus a few other items, for my picnics. I even remembered to order sandwich bags and a butter knife!

Night comes early in the tropics, so it was dark when I headed back out. There was a pirate show I was eager to catch, but I ended up not being able to see it as there were never enough people for it to be put on. Still, I enjoyed wandering around in the evenings, with the area either bustling or dead calm.

Well, I wandered so much and so late that I eventually did want dinner! To my surprise, I wanted pasta, something with shrimp. I had a look at menus as I walked up the pedestrian street and this restaurant had a shrimpy pasta on the menu.

My garlicky white wine shrimp fettuccine with feta was incredible. I even liked the spinach chips! I was a bit shocked to discover that my wine was nearly the cost of my dinner, though!

It was then time to head back, enjoy the amazing shower water pressure, and get an early night as I had to get up at 6:30 to be ready for a pickup at 8:00! It had been a great day and I was exhausted from all the sun and exercise, plus the rich food, so sleep came quickly, a sign of a day well lived.

(Post 225 of 263)

After 33 long months, I’m back out into the world seeing new sights! I even managed to take some time off for a proper vacation. Being pretty burnt (and financially tapped) out from another year of renos, then adding in that the pandemic is still raging outside of Yucatan, I decided I didn’t want to go to far or commit to too much. A quick jaunt two and half hours to the city of Campeche fit the bill.

Saturday, my house and cat sitter arrived so that I could leave without too much worry. Sunday, I took the 10:30 bus out of town.

We arrived in Campeche at about 1PM. It took a moment, but I finally got a cab to take me to my hotel in the centro historico.

I’m not going to get into a lot detail about the history of Campeche — there’s plenty of resources out there — but the city was founded by the Spaniards in 1540 and the amount of original colonial Spaniard walls and fortifications remaining in the city have made it a UNESCO World Heritage Site. What is now the historic centre was fortified against pirates, with Spaniards living inside the walls and the natives outside in what are today the barrios of Guadalupe (whose church is 500 years old), San Francisco, and San Roman.

I checked into my hotel. I got a really good deal through booking.com, all those bookings from Europe still counting for something. The room is small and not much to look at, but it is clean and quiet, the bed is comfy by Mexican standards, and the shower water pressure is positively luxurious. At only $4,000 for four nights in a prime location, it’s a veritable bargain.

My room does not have windows to the street (intentional — I sleep better in interior rooms), so I did not realize that it had started to rain while I was unpacking. The streets were flooded and it was a nightmare to get around as the high narrow sidewalks were crowded and there were no bridges across the flooded streets.

I eventually made it into a drier area and started to wander. I just wanted food at this point, but couldn’t help but marvel that Campeche looks a lot like my first home in Mexico, Mazatlan. I immediately felt comfortable here.

I eventually made it to the main square where I spotted a tour agency. I figured I’d get food and then come back to ask about tours to local ruins. Well, luck would have it that a gal from the agency intercepted me as I crossed the park. We ended up gabbing for what must have been a full hour and I booked a tour for Tuesday all day. She also told me where to go for lunch, so my next stop was Santos Taquitos y otros milagritos (holy tacos and other little miracles, LOL!). OMG, this place was well named.

I started by ordering a horachata that was perfectly seasoned and not too sweet.

The highlight of the menu is 3 tacos for $130, each presenting an iconic dish of the area, all served on handmade tortillas. I ordered (top down):

1) Camarones al pastor — al pastor-style shrimp cooked just like the pork version with achiote

2) Camarones al coco — coconut shrimp with strawberry sauce (!)

3) Cochinita pibil, Campeche style, a pork dish I frequently eat in Merida. I was told that it would be different here, but I didn’t see a difference, other than not being excessively greasy.

They were so good I had to order another round! I switched to this dark beer that had chocolate in it! I’ve had several beers with espresso but never chocolate. I was amused that this brewery is about 10 minutes from my house in Merida!

Round two were, from left to right:

1) Shrimp ceviche (shrimp ‘cooked’ in lime juice)
2) Fried fish
3) Pan de cazon, which is a Yucatan staple that originated in Campeche. Cazon is dogfish, a type of shark. This was the only taco I wasn’t crazy about as it was a bit too fishy for my tastes. But at least I could say I finally tried this iconic dish!

I then wandered down to the malecon and an interesting park across from it, but was worried about the rain so I meandered my way back to my hotel.

The tour operator sent me information on evening shows, so I went back out after a nap to see if I could get a ticket for one of the shows. I discovered the hotel is around the corner from a wonderful pedestrian street full of restaurants and bars.

Despite it drizzling the show went on as scheduled. It was a light and sound extravaganza about the history of Campeche. Absolutely stunning. We started off having to climb up to the top of the fortification (up a steep drive and then down narrow steps) and were surprised by pirates along the way. Then, we went into one of the gated areas to watch what was essentially a pantomime. The story of Campeche played out over a loudspeaker with excellent sound quality — I could understand everything but for a few words I’d never heard before. The production values were stunning, including firing guns and scaring all the guests!

Heading back to a hotel, I popped into a quiet bar playing my kind of music (‘80s and ‘90s rock). The beer selection was disappointing, but a Victoria still hit the spot.

I ambled to the end of the pedestrian street and caught some Christmas sights at a market.

It was a very good first day in Campeche and I looked forward to getting properly orientated Monday morning.