We got here on a 7 hour bus ride from Chetumal, which covered the whole southern part of the Yucatan and most of the Gulf coast. Normally, these 1st class bus rides are great. But this one was a little different as we had a very odd driver. There is a large TV right above where the driver is and it shows movies constantly. This driver kept looking straight up, off the road, to see what was happening with the movie! We had a good view, as Amy and I had the front seats. When he wasn´t looking straight up at the movie (the three movies were The Namesake, Paul Bart, Mall Copp, and Hotel for Dogs) he was listening to his Ipod and drumming away on the steering wheel. Occasionally he would look at his cell phone to check his messages!
But after 7 hours we made it to Campeche alive. Only one little problem. I´m carrying around one of my nice Panama hats because this is Panama hat country and I thought it would be nice to wear it here. When I got on the bus I put the hat (this is a fino Panama from Ecuador, a really nice fedora) in the upper storage area, trying to tell myself DO NOT FORGET THE HAT. Then I thought nothing of it for the rest of the trip. We arrived in Campeche, we got our luggage and then the taxi and as we were heading into town I suddenly remembered I´d left the hat on the bus!! Thank God I had Amy around. We went back to the bus station, Amy went in and when she found our bus, the driver was walking across the parking lot with my Panama in hand!! He must have felt very lucky when he spied Amy and had to give it to her. Whew!!!
Believe it or not, there are Mennonites all over the Yucatan. When I first saw them, I was really wondering, what the heck are they doing here? The Mennonites all are caucasian, wear the exact same clothes (overalls, a blue shirt, and a straw cowboy hat for the men, a dark blue prairie dress and a flat brimmed straw hat for the women) and look pretty inbred. So the story goes that they came here in the 1930s from Canada and the USA because of religious intolerance or whatever and made some kind of deal with the Mexican government...and I am not making this up...that they wouldn´t have to pay taxes if they made good cheese. Heck, I would take that deal!
Anyway, back to Campeche. This place has AMAZING food. Today for lunch we were in this nice little seafood restaurant. We weren´t all that hungry so we just ordered on thing, chiles stuffed with crab. The waiter brought an appetizer of freshly made tortilla chips with two wonderful dips, a black bean dip and some kind of chick pea dip with spices. Then the main dish arrived, a spicey green chile stuffed with crab and cheese, covered with a red sauce with cheese in it. OH MY GAWD!!! It was fabulous. Just the right amount of spice and the crab was great. Tonight we went to a restaurant out of the tourist district, but only by a few blocks, called La Piguoa. It had some good write ups in our guidebooks. We had the most delicious octopus (pulpa) I´ve ever had, with a slightly spicey sauce made with olive oil. The other dish were these coconut prawns with an apple sauce dip which was unbelievable. We washed it down with a chenin blanc from Baja. Unreal.
Amy and I today took a nice walking tour, from the Lonely Planet guidebook, that takes you by many of the nice places in town, including some original town walls, a few old forts, some churches and the local market. The market in a Mexican town is always one of my favorite places as that is where the real life of the town is. In this one they had a great fish market with real characters selling fish and dancing to some music that a couple of local guys were playing. Here is one of the forts here...
Right at the base of one of the old walls is a really cool old bar, the Rinconsito. This has so much atmosphere, really looking like an old west Mexican bar, that they used it in some Anthony Banderas movie. When we came in I said outloud, ¨Wow, what a cool bar!¨ when I noticed a Mexican guy at the bar, with a cowboy straw hat who was quite borracho (3 sheets to the wind, potatoed out of his tomato, toasted, really drunk). It was noon. He turned to us and said, ¨You got that right, amigo!¨ He had obviously been drinking since about 9am. Amy and I had a couple of Coca Lights when he came over to our table to talk to us. He wanted to practice his english, but between him being so toasted and also forgeting how to speak english, he was having a hard time. But he was able to communicate that he lived in Sascatchewan, Canada for awhile doing something (we couldn´t quite figure out what ) with cows. He kept pointing his finger in a horizontal position and when his amigo said that he was a veterinarian, it dawned on us that he was in Canada artificially inseminating cows. To see his picture, check out our Facebook page. He was quite a character.
Tomorrow we will try a couple of other good places and tomorro is our last day here as we are heading up to Merida. We will also be taking a little tour out to another Mayan ruin, Edzna.
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