We drove to a little restaurant near the access road for Calakmul, a set of ruins deep in jungle. The access road is about 60 kilometres and we had read that it could take about 2 hours, so we wanted to spend the night close and then head in early in the morning. We started to set up, then immediately had to move to another spot, as Derek noticed a tarantula escaping into its hole right beside our camper steps!
We drove to the coast making a quick side trip into the outskirts of Cancun to visit the bank, then headed south towards Puerto Morelos. We had decided to spend a night at Acamaya Reef Hotel & Cabanas, where they let you camp in their sandy parking lot for the night. We knew it was going to be expensive, but we decided to check it out. 660 pesos for the night, about 45 Canadian dollars. It was a cute little place sandwiched between two small all inclusive hotels, and one of the few places along the strip of beach that wasn’t an all inclusive resort. The family that owns it is sitting on a gold mine!
Chichen Itza is maybe one of the busiest archeological sites in Mexico, so we knew we wanted to get there early. We found a great little spot for the night camped in the parking lot of a small hotel and restaurant a few kilometres from the site. Hotel Delores Alba had two nice swimming pools. We were able to camp next to a large palapa beside this cool pool. It had a natural floor that consisted of sand and limestone that was lit up at night with lights that cycled through different colours.
There are a lot of cenotes in the Yucatan peninsula, and after our first experience we knew we wanted to visit more, but we were not so interested in sharing cenotes with bus loads of cruise ship people. We decided to visit the lesser known, but still touristy, Three Cenotes of Cuzama.
We headed back to the coast for a couple of days of beach time, staying at a place called Balenario Zac-Ha. There were flush toilets and outdoor showers, and we had the place almost to ourselves, save for when a bus of cruise ship people came in for a few hours. The beach was not perfect, there was a lot of sea grass washed up on the beach and a fair bit of plastic litter, but our camping spot was awesome…..We read, we lay in the hammock, we walked on the beach…
Mérida is the capital of the state of Yucatan. We had had a hard time deciding where to camp in Mérida. There were some places close to the old city centre, but the entrances sounded like they might be tight for our truck and camper. We ended up deciding on a campground on the northern edge of the city and we were happy with our choice.
Just 45 or so kilometres from Uxmal is a small cenote on private land owned by a local family. I had read that for a small fee you could camp there and enjoy the cenote.
For those that may be unfamiliar with cenotes, here is the official definition that I found on line (thank you wikipedia):
Uxmal, an archeological zone in the state of Campeche, allows trucks to overnight in a grassy field near the main entrance of the ruins for a fee of 131 pesos per night, not 130, not 135…131 pesos. Not sure how they came up with the number, but that is the price, less than $10 Canadian.
Campeche is the capital city of the Mexican state by the same name. The city was founded by the Spanish in the 1500’s on top of an existing Maya village, but they kept getting attacked by pirates and buccaneers (familiar names like Francis Drake, Henry Morgan and Jean Lafitte are just a few of the sea captains and privateers who attacked the city) so in the late 1600’s they built a wall to surround the city. Much of the original wall is still intact, and the rest has been restored.
The closer we got to Palenque, the more roadside vendors we saw. Every time there was a tope in a small town forcing the truck to almost come to a stop, we were approached by locals trying to sell oranges, nuts, dried bananas, coconut water, etc. At one point several small children jumped onto our running boards trying to sell us food items, and when we said “No, gracious”, they asked for pesos instead. Derek tried his tactic of chatting them up, which we have found often distracts them from trying to get something from us, but they were pretty insistent that we should give them some money. All the while they hung from windows on the running boards in the middle of the highway. We, generally, don’t give kids money. Others ,wiser than us, have told us that it promotes a begging society and discourages them from going to school. So, eventually, Derek had to start inching the truck ahead to get the kids to let go of our truck…it felt yucky, neither of us liked having to do that, but it was the only way we could figure out how to get them off of our running boards.