Day 11: Campeche to Villahermosa, Mexico
Campeche at
mid-dayWednesday, July 5th, 1995
Campeche at
mid-dayWe sleep well- even with the tailgate down we experience only a minimal insect presence. The sun is as hot as ever as we change and eat a breakfast of Snackwell's Strawberry Bars and apple juice. The old lady ambles out into her yard with gardening tools and gloves on. I take the last seven pesos to her and we start talking. In the morning light I see that she's not actually European, but of probably Mistizo descent. She's not fluent in English, but she communicates with us easily and eloquently. I wish for a tape recorder as she does so. Her deceased husband was from Colorado. He became disenchanted with things there, moved to Campeche, and took this woman as his wife. She looks off into the distance as she tells us he died of liver trouble 40 years ago, and she kept up the house and began catering to campers passing through the town. She speaks of Campeche: "No one molest you in Campeche. They are a peaceable people here."
We tell her of our journey, and our impending return trip to the states. She wishes us luck and warns us to take care. "Watch your step, my husband used to say. Watch where you step."
We thank her and head into town after getting directions to the local market and a good bank to change some money. While sitting in the bank, a Mexican tourism agent approaches and hands me a glossy pamphlet on the Mayan ruins of Edzna. The pamphlet is written in extremely poor English. We decide to head there after leaving the city, as it's only about an hour outside of Campeche in the direction we're headed.
The town's cramped interior reminds me of Paris (photo above). Unfortunately I never get a picture of the narrow streets jammed between two-story stucco flats. Wrought-iron railings ring the little balconies. We drive out of the walled portion of this beautiful city and find the market. Pedro, covered in mud, looks sorely out of place sitting on a street corner next to the shiny little taxis.
The market is
absolute insanity. Miles of narrow walkways snake this way and that
through the market, creating a labyrinth crowded by little women with their
children. Young Mexican men cart merchandise quickly through the
aisles. We walk through acres of rented stalls and temporary tents,
most of which are covered by tarps held up by a spiders web of ropes.
I am never quite able to make out what the ropes are tied off to, but suspect
they are somehow suspended from one another.
I eventually see that this market is tailored to meet the needs of the native people, not visiting foreigners. It takes me a while to realize why I am having so much trouble negotiating the cramped pathways. Merchandise hangs overhead down to a height of perhaps 5 1/2 feet, as 5-foot Mexicans zip around beneath us. I come to realize that we are literally a head above the crowd. I catch the corner of a big bag of grain in the nose as a Mexican man carries it past perched atop his head.
Edzna is a quick, easy drive with the A/C cranking. We enter the deserted parking lot, pay the N$14 admission fee, and enter the site. We are immediately attacked by the most vicious mosquitoes I ever hope to encounter. They swarm around us like flies on , well...tourists. We run back to the truck and cover up with long pants and shirts and a liberal dousing of insect repellent. We enter the park again, and aren't bothered much except by the incessant droning in our ears as the little blood-suckers try to locate a lucrative landing spot.
The ruins are spectacular, and the pictures we take should reflect this. Being the only people in the park, we roam the structures freely, our photos devoid of Ma and Pa Griswald and their whining kids. It is truly moving to climb amid these majestic buildings.
Me at Edzna
The heat finally drives us out of the site, and on towards Ciudad del Carmen. We approach a long bridge where I come up behind a double trailer truck that can't be doing more than 25 kph. I can't see any reason why he would be going so slowly, so I blast right by him. Between our speed and poor Spanish, we don't understand the warning that he yells to us as we pass.
Half way across the mile-long bridge, we pass a police truck carrying a couple of screaming, waving Mexican cops. Damn. They turn and follow us with lights flashing to the far end of the bridge. On the way, Sean prepares my wallet for the encounter by pulling out the fat wad of bills and leaving a few select pieces of currency. N$50, US$3, and BZ$5.
When we stop, a cop approaches and hands me a message scrawled in Spanish on notebook paper. Something about my doing 70kph in a 30 kph zone being an 'infraccione Policia.' The bottom line: N$150. I open my wallet real wide so he can see what's in there, pull out the N$50 and give it to him. He smiles at his partner. "O.K.," he says, and waves us on.
We drive through
a cool little Gulf town which we later dub 'Topeville' for the plentiful
speed bumps. We make bad time, slowing for the many turns and straining
to see with the sun in our eyes. Finally, we roll into Villahermosa
as the sun sets.
Villahermosa seems about the size of Greenville, SC- a sprawling metropolis for Mexico. Driving through here is every but as chaotic as in Paris, to my mind. Traffic circles come up quickly and often. Buses change lanes randomly, oblivious to any other traffic. Our size is an advantage, as we are able to push the little taxis around, and people move out of our way under fire of the bright front lights. We opt to hotel it here, and find a sky-scraping Best Western offering an air conditioned double for N$150. Very posh.
I park the truck and arm the alarm. The porter helps us carry our single-burner propane camp stove up to our luxury room. We enjoy a meal of beef stew and Nutter-Butters. I slurp some water from the hotel tap before noticing that they provide purified bottled water for guests. Oops. I guess we'll see how pure that tap water was...
We take a swim in the hotel's ritzy but not-so-clean pool, then fall asleep watching 'Beavis and Butthead' with Spanish subtitles on MTV.
