Campeche Yucatan City by the Sea

Welcome to Campeche, land of Mayans, Spaniards and Pirates. This statue gives the impression that the Spaniard got the blessing while the Mayan got to row the boat.

Campeche is also a huge fishing city.

The city is walled and has many forts to keep pirates and other bad people away.

The Malecon (boardwalk) is 5k long and is outside of the city walls

                                     There's also a massive market that seems to go on forever

Acres of fresh flowers

Every vegetable that's ever been invented

Fruit too die for

                        I'll get mine at the market, thank you. I mean the other kind of market.

Everything is grass fed and organic, but still...

                                                          Fresh off the boats

Whatever you want, you can get here.

 One of the prettiest cities I've ever seen. Clean, colorful and polite drivers who actually stop to let you cross the street.

                                              Nice hotel with a little cafe on the 2nd floor overlooking one of the many  squares that came alive at night.

                                                    Too many beautiful churches to count

                               Campeche has a tremendous amount of Colonial residential areas. Real estate is quite costly. the inside of these houses and courtyards are massive.

                                              Had the coconut shrimp at a cool outdoor cafe. So good.

 Furthermore, Campeche gets a very high rating for a romantic and beautiful city to visit from Mike and I. It's about a two hour bus ride from Merida with the R/T busfare costing about 14. pp. Next time we'll stay overnight.

Chichen Itza

Here's a little bit about our recent trip to the ruins of Chichen Itza.

 As once said by someone, you can never go back. Although we adored this place and highly recommend going to it, it just didn't hold the same magic as it did the first time we went.

 Sometime in the early 80s and before Cancun and Cozemul were what they are today Mike and I rented a little VW Cabriolet and drove around the jungles of the Yucatan. One of the highlights of the trip was Chichen Itza. At the time it was fairly undiscovered and un-peopled. You could climb on and go inside the ruins. There also weren't vendors or those awful (Sorry, folks) busloads of people from the Mayan Riviera or cruise ships.

 Ah, almost the first people in the park. The trick is to get there just as the doors are opening up at 8am to beat the crowds and the heat that is guaranteed to come by late morning.

 The alarms didn't go off as planned. We got up at 5:55am for a 6:30 bus that we had to run 15 minutes away to get to. Made it with time to spare - not. ADO bus Merida - Chichen Itza's front entrance 1 3/4 ride $18. RT - Like most of the buses here it was very luxurious and comfortable. Sometimes over air conditioned but that's ok. Bring an extra long sleeve shirt.

 Kululcan's Pyramid. Fascinating stuff. This is built on top of 2 other temples. It's also depicts the genius of those who were the originators of the calender. What's most impressive is the depiction by shadows of the serpent going into and exiting the ground at equinox time.

 The outside of the ball court. one of the biggest and most important in it's day. Apparently wars were solved here.

                                      The basket for the ball. Losers lost their heads.

                                   Very large ball court with a place for spectators and royalty.

                                           Rumor - A nice place for a virgin sacrificing. Bones and other interesting things have been found in the bottom of this cenote. To the displeasure of many Mexicans, all the valuable stuff that was found in the bottom of this are now housed at Harvard.

                 Workers still after more than a century meticulously putting ruins back together

                                             These guys were everywhere

                           It's probable that these 1000+ columns were a market place, sauna and contained housing

                       Vendors were everywhere. Some had some nice things, others had reproduced caca. Having them between the ruins, using odd noise makers for attention, etc. sort of took the ambiance away from the ruins.

                                               The astronomy observatory

Despite some of my complaints this is a must see for all. The pictures barely give an idea of how immense and impressive the place really is. Put this place on your list.

Escaping the heat at El Chorchito

Another hot day here on the Yucatan - low 90s. To get away from it all we decided to check out a hidden little gem called El Chorchito. We took the bus from Merida to Progreso $2. RT then another $2. for the cab to this hidden treasure. Once there we took a short boat ride to the sanctuary.

               Upon arrival Pepe gave a a little bit of a tour and a handful of animal crackers for the critters                        

                                                    Coatimundis

Once the critters were fed we got right to biz and jumped into one of the fresh water natural cenotes. Cool and refreshing

 There's 4 of these crystal clear cenotes on the property

After school activity for Mexican children. Not a bad way to grow up.
After freshening up we went to Progreso for shrimp and ritas. Then back to Merida. It was a good day.

The new gym

Being that I gain weight at the drop of a hat and stiffen up if I don't move too much, one of the first things I did was search out gyms, Spin and Pilates studios. This wasn't easy because of the language barrier. That and many places here don't advertise online too much. Unfortunately many Gringos don't seem to exercise much (not sure why that is). Anyhow, there's not too many people to ask.

I found places too far, too costly, too era Jack Lalane (seriously old and rusted equipment that looked meant for pulling cars with ones teeth).

A relic from the past - you get what you pay for

 One of the costliest sport's facilities was about 124. per month with a 500.+ initiation fee as well as some other yearly fees. We found another real nice gym for about 70. per month. This place had it all - Spin and Pilates reformer rooms, every piece of equipment that's ever been invented, a boxing rink and a pool. They even had these interesting bikes that go into the pool for classes. Never seen those before. Both those and a few other high end gyms were too costly for our budget.

Anyhow, my new friend Amber informed me of a new place (Thundergym) that's about a 25 minute walk from our house. I figure the walk is part of my cardio until Spin classes start.
This place is 300 pesos per month. That's somewhere around 25. It's a smallish place but has a good assortment of machines and weights. Classes will be coming soon.

This new gym  is much better than some of the meathead places that Mike and I checked out prior.
We found out that middle aged Gringos going into some of the meat locker gyms do get some funny looks. Perhaps it was only because these guys weren't used to seeing middle aged women in their bulk up gym, I don't know. It is indeed sometimes a different culture.

 In any event, I had about 4 people helping weigh me at the new gym (they like to weigh you in before you start). I nearly died when one of them shouted my weight across the gym. So much for DH not knowing my weight.
 I mean, if he doesn't hear the number that means I'm skinny - right? We do like this new gym. Even Mike has gotten into going.

Dogs and Cats

                                                                           Tony

Vinnie

We sorta already miss our pup Tony and 2 kitties - Not on my home PC and have to look for a picture of Natasha. With that in mind we decided to walk the dogs at;
 http://www.evolucionyucatan.com/index_ing.php

We ended up meeting up with Ken, Allison and the gang who pick us up and bring us to the shelter. Hate to say it but some Mexicans are behind the times in animal care. This place not only takes them in and gets them healthy they do everything they can to find homes. Mike and I simply walk the dogs. I want them all. Evolucion will pay their way to the US if you're interested. want one;

In regards to our pets. We found out after the fact that our indoor cat Vinnie got out and was lost for a couple days. What a panic. Anyhow, thanks to the local Paws Watch people he was trapped and brought home.
Thanks Kris.

The house has a funny set up. One part of the house is in the front. Living room, dining room (this will become my art studio when not eating) a kitchen with a screened opening to the sky on one side (yes, it rains in there) - nice breeze, though. A bathroom, a second bedroom - come on down. After that you walk through an open courtyard and 'my' hammock. The master bedroom with a nice king bed is in the back in a different building. how weird is that?
Going outside to get back inside to the bathroom took some getting used to. So didn't the sometimes hot and mostly cold water. more on that later.

The next day we took a house tour from the Merida English Library. there's enough expats here to have a call for a English library. It's a wonderful resource. 
http://www.meridaenglishlibrary.com/

anyhow, the houses were to die for. These houses were restored Spanish colonials in Centro Merida. There's hundreds (maybe thousands, I don't know) of these amazing houses.

Some fairly modern and some exact replicas of Merida's glory days.

Typical Mexican kitchen - lots of handmade tile or cement countertops

Bathhouse under construction - Seems like everyone except us has a pool here

Cement sofa supports - This is an outdoor living room

This pool belongs to the above house

After a few starts and stops and running over a coyote (oy!) in Fall River, Ma. (glad I was in the back seat and didn't see it) we made it. Thanks for the ride Sam.Geez, what time did we leave - 3:30am? What kind of fool fly's this early?

We saved some extra flying time and $$$ by flying into Cancun (around 375.rt) and then taking the super clean and roomy ADO bus (28. one way for a 3hr ride). It would have cost us 585. to fly into Merida and we wouldn't have arrived until 11:30pm. We were at the door of the rental by 5:30pm and more comfortable on the bus than the rotten plane.
Tourist - Course, we had a few over priced Ritas outside Cancun airport to welcome ourselves before getting on the bus to Merida. We paid way too much for the Ritas but they were so worth it.

Once in Merida we took a cab to our rental.
Tourist - Sadly, we paid way too much for the cab ride. We're learning. Take the metered cabs. The ride should have been about 2.50 and we paid 15. Tourists.
Anyhow, our rental looks exactly the way it did online. Actually a bit nicer.

Here's the link to it;
http://solylunayucatan.com/rent/sol-y-luna-yucatan-real-estate-presents-casa-laura-for-rent/


We ended up paying 650 per month + electric after a bit of negotiating.