Campeche Mexico

This morning we get up early to catch the bus to Campeche where we will spend the night, week-end for Wendy.  Looking at a map we decide it is too far to walk for the bus so catch a taxi right outside our house.

Off to the bus station, we may have gone to the more expensive side, but it was nice to do a 2.5 hour bus ride with good air conditioning, a bathroom and a movie.  Nothing like watching Men In Black 3 dubbed over in Spanish, no English subtitles. 

Uneventful bus ride and arrive in Campeche at a decent hour.  We had read that it was a long walk to the historical part of town where we are staying so took a taxi here again.  Jacinthe sat in front and basically the driver gave her a whole tour of the city in Spanish, which she was nice enough to translate for us not understanding one word that he told her. 

No chicken bus here

He speaks Spanish very well, no accent at all

Taxi driver telling Jacinthe all about the city in Spanish.  Notice the wiring, steering wheel and nice green carpet

Taxi driver dropped us off right outside our hotel, we were too early to check in, so we got all sunscreened up and ventured off to start exploring.  First impression this is a very fancy hotel, the lobby was very nice, and a beautiful looking restaurant.  We peeked at the pool, we think the pool at our house is just as big, we are spoiled.

Campeche is a beautiful city with lots of coloured houses.  A law was passed that 2 houses beside each other could not be painted the same colour, makes for beautiful pictures.  This is a city that was surrounded by a wall, as well as a nice malacon along the water.  We walked through the main square towards the Malacon.

The street the hotel was on, going towards the Cathedral. Love the colour of the houses.

Procession outside main Cathedral in square.  We will see this hanging later today

The bench was too hot for Wendy to sit on it

We could hear live music and followed the music until we found a full band of young kids standing out in the heat of the day playing instruments.  We could hardly stand the heat, I have no idea how they did this, most of them had jeans on.

It is so hot here, can't believe they are out standing in the sun doing this

We then went to check out the Malacon, not much happening it is just too hot.

Part of the wall around city

We tried to get on a little tram tour, but the English one was full so will come back later this afternoon for a tour.

We have been given cards by 2 different people to go to a restaurant for lunch.  It is a couple of miles away but they come by van to pick you up and drop you off if you go there.  So off we go, only in Mexico would we hop in a van to go to some restaurant somewhere that we hear is air conditioned under a palapa, this doesn’t even make sense?  Anyway turns out we have a fantastic lunch.  We all wanted the whole fried fish, this restaurant they bring out the fish for you and you get to pick which ones you want.  Very excellent, a couple of margaritas and we are good to go.  It is nice eating on the water.  Campeche is on the water, but more of a fishing city, no beaches.

Here are a couple of pictures of the view we had while we eat lunch.

Someone was in the water catching something

Cormorants

The van drives us back to the city and we ask him to drop us at our hotel as by now we should be able to check in.  It is also getting very hot so time for a shower and a siesta before we go back out again.

We headed to the main square again to catch our train.

Trolly Train

This afternoon we started with a train tour.  It was really interesting to see around the city.  Parts of it we had seen when we arrived on our taxi ride, but nice to see more around and see what we would like to visit tomorrow.  We did get a break to get off the train at one point to visit a church, and lucky for us there was an ice cream shop across the street from the church.  Definitely spent more time in the ice cream shop than the church. The cost of the tain was around $100-$140 pesos each

Interesting that cannons marked that you are moving into a different colonial in the city

Fisherman roundabout

After the trolly tour we walked over to see a replica of the city that we had only seen from the trolly

We also did a quick visit of a museum that was in the main square.  Can't even imagine wearing all those clothes, plus they probably had corsets on too

Mexican Bingo. Numbers are in the Ball. When a number is picked, the caller uses a lookup card and call whatever the number says. The cards only have pictures and no BINGO like we have. For example if number 5 is called it may be a Parrot, so the caller would call Parrot. 

Walked back to the malecon to see the sunset.  So many people out here now enjoying the beautiful malecon that is around 5 miles long.  We basically walked to the malecon and sat down and enjoyed the sunset and people watching for a while.  We understood this was all reclaimed land, really nice feature in the city with walking, running and biking lanes.

That's a lot of beer! to bad 2 out of 4 does not like beer.

Yes, a liter of beer for $3.00 Canadians

Tonight there is another light and sound projection in this city.  This one is projected on the library, which is an amazing spot.  The colours are fantastic, I loved the part where the library books are flipping.  For me this is the best show we have seen so far.  Plus there is not a huge crowd and you can watch from many different places in the square.

Band playing before the light show

They had about 5 projection like this of Local People and this is only 1/2 of the width of the display, great idea.

For supper we planned on going to a restaurant that a man had really helped us out in the main square was working at.  He gave us his card, but we were really not hungry at all after our big fish lunch.  Outside our hotel there is a little square that all kinds of small restaurants are set up at, our tour guide on our train tour had told us it was a great place to go eat traditional food, so this is where we decided.   

Banner on church now after procession we saw earlier

Great spot for dinner, right outside our hotel

Off to bed, it has been a really fun filled day.