Activity Summary
Sunday 30th April - Day 241
Travel to Campeche
Outing to Campeche City
Calle 59
Walled City
Sunset at El Ángel Maya
Monday 1st May - Day 242
Edzna ruins
Stroll around Campeche City
Summary
Campeche
The walled city and area along the coast was a really nice area. The colonial style city centre was nice to walk around, quiet and picturesque while the coast was a nice change from the landlocked cities & towns we had spent most of our time in. Although the sea was pretty potent and right along a main road so not amazing by any stretch.
Not a whole lot to do here bar Edzna and some of the museums (we were told).
Edzna
Turned out to be one of Luke’s favourite ruin sites. While not being an overly large complex or having standalone impressive temples such as Big T or Chichen, it was super quiet and the main intact temple area had a substantial connected segment that could be traversed to get a good look from high and at different angles.
We weren’t here for long but it was worth the trip to see Campeche and Edzna.
Transport
Campeche
Palenque hotel -> [walk] -> ADO bus terminal -> [ADO bus] -> Campeche ADO bus terminal -> [cab] -> Hotel
Edzna
The collectivo bus ‘terminal’ was at the corner of Calle Nicaragua and Calle Chihuahua which just so happened to be right around the corner from our hotel. The bus fare was $40 return each and didn’t take all that long to get there and back.
On the way back it seemed to be a simple wait and see game for a collectivo to turn up at the Edzna car park which worked out pretty well in our favour.
Accommodation
Campeche - AMBAR rooms
Number of nights - 2
Price per night per person - £12
Pretty small and simple hotel with a basic kitchen we decided to make use of while here, helped by the decent supermarket right around the corner.
The room was absolutely fine. Two king size beds, although Luke ended up having to use his sleeping bag liner as they (wrongly) clearly thought we would like to share a bed, aircon and private bathroom with hot water. The owner was also really nice and tried his best to give us suggestions and advice when we needed it. Can’t complain.
Diary
We were up at a reasonable time, ate some cereal from the comfort of our room and walked over to the ADO bus station where we were sitting around for only a short time before boarding in the same streamlined and simple fashion.
It was about 5 hours to Campeche with a mini stop over somewhere random that meant people could get some food / stretch their legs. Luke had run to a takeaway Nandos chicken joint the day before so we were well stocked with chicken, rice and wraps. Eating these on the move in the bus was logistically not the easiest despite having shredded the chicken into a lunch box already and making use of Luke’s coffee cup to store and decant the refried beans that were initially in a flimsy plastic bag. We made it work although the wraps were pretty dry when not warm. As an additional snack Nicola opted to purchase one of the bags from a crisp vendor that had boarded the bus temporarily - turns out they aren’t half bad.
We were on the bus with Steve and Lee again and on finding out we were both staying at Ambar Rooms in Campeche we tried getting a taxi for the four of us. Coincidental crossings in the smallish cities are one thing but the consistency at which we got the same buses and now a random small hotel in a city was pretty hilarious.
The ADO bus station was a little out of town and there wasn’t a single cab in the taxi rank, just what seemed like an orderly queue you would expect in the UK. Our plan to share a cab went out the window when taxis started turning up that were more akin in size to a Fiat 500 than a normal saloon car which would not fly with the size of our travel bags. One older couple (seeming to be Western) saw an opportunity to jump the rustic queue that had formed so naturally being British, the both of us started yelling at them for their slight. This had the hilarious impact of making them think twice, get out of the cab and rather than the driver pull forward and pick up the first in the queue they simply drove off with their boot open. The whole ordeal was a bit unreal.
Eventually it was near enough our turn in the ‘queue’ and when a local at the front didn’t move once ushered by Luke, he swept in and claimed it once Steve and Lee had given their blessing. It was a relief to be out of that unorganised chaos but we then had the same old problem of trying to direct a cab driver to our hotel who knew nothing about where it was. Once again, Luke very clearly showed him on a map and put it into Google for the cab driver to say he didn’t know where he was going. Luke initially gave him his phone with Google maps running before we made the switch in his phone. Of course he was doing this all while driving rather than pulling over. We wondered whether Steve and Lee had this problem but it turns out it was just our cabby. Frikin useless breed.
$70 later, having felt like we’d done 50% of the work, we were at the hostel and checked in. The owner was very nice and gave us a ton of suggestions but we really didn’t make much use of any of them.
As we had a kitchen and having had a look at restaurant suggestions in the area we not overly fussed about spending to eat out. There was a decent supermarket around the corner so we stocked up on lunch stuff and the goods for a very basic pasta dish which we had quite a big craving for.
The rest of the afternoon we spent in Campeche city. The central city area is pretty unique in that it is enclosed by an old wall with an old colonial city vibe. It was a pretty city and heads and shoulders nicer than the rest of Campeche once outside of the walled area. Calle 59 was a nice street with the coloured buildings, hanging lights and al fresco dining on the walking street. Temperature wise it was a whole lot more comfortable than Palenque with that sea breeze.
We went into a tour office to find out about tours to Edzna, with the hope that there would be one big day outing which would encompass Uxmal (closer to Merida) as well which would save us time going forward. The tour alone to Edzna was $600pp just for a drop and pick up service with no guide and didn’t offer the comprehensive package Luke wanted so we swiftly ran away from there.
We grabbed some Oxxo ice creams, sat on a bench with a view of the walled city and double checked our Edzna research. Turns out Luke had gotten a little confused between Edzna and Uxmal, the latter being incredibly difficult to get to via Collectivo whereas Edzna was pretty straightforward so our plan for the next day was solidified.
By the time we’d sorted all this the access up to the wall by us had closed so we instead went over to the seafront for the first time since the US. There were absolutely no beaches overlooking the Gulf of Mexico but the El Ángel Maya had a nice enough concrete pier with seating so we sat there for a while.
Naturally Steve and Lee ended up in the same spot 10 minutes later so we all sat, chatted and watched the sun start setting. By the time the sun was about to disappear under the horizon it was far too cloudy to really see anything spectacular sadly.
Once back at the hotel we cooked up our incredible pasta and tomato sauce with sweet corn and could not have been happier for the stable and inoffensive food. Steve & Lee had a similar idea but put us to shame a bit with a more jazzy stir fry - after socialising some more we retreated back to our room as the corridor was an absolute furnace.
Nicola’s stomach wasn’t her friend this evening but fortunately it was an isolated event that didn’t travel to the morning. The two super king size beds really did nicely replicate the separation we would have when ill and back home.
To try and beat the heat we were up and at the Collectivo stop just after 8am. There was a near enough full bus just about to go but on pulling up the equivalent of bar stools and setting them in the aisles for us, we swiftly said hell na. We perched in the one behind with far more reasonable seating, the trade off being we would end up sitting here for 45 minutes before full and taking off. The system this time seemed a bit odd as there were a number of Collectivos waiting at the ‘stop’ each with a fair amount of people in them that if reshuffled would have meant a quicker departure for us - but we couldn’t work out where any of these buses were going and when Luke went to investigate the hold up was simply told our bus was going to Edzna.
It was shorter to drive to Edzna than wait for the bus. Luke ended up with a woman more or less sitting in his lap as they well and truly crammed as many in as possible and Nicola being on the sun side got a bit of a cooking but at least it was only 30 minutes.
We were the only ones to get off at the ruins and after paying the $90pp fee we more or less had the ruins to ourselves. There were about 10 people max walking around the site, one of which was kind enough to take a picture of us as a happy couple.
The ruins were pretty cool. Having them so empty was pretty nice and the way they had maintained a lot of the connectivity between the structures made the walking around quite interesting.
There were a ton of lizards running around the floor, temple and up trees which was very entertaining.
We spent less than an hour walking around which was really all we needed. While waiting for the collectivo we sat in the car park on a bench under a tree and watched as swarms of birds started getting closer and closer above us. From the undergrowth came the biggest lizard we had seen all day and he was a ballsy fucker - Luke ended up having to stand up and stare him down in order to protect his sweetheart.
We were only there for 10 minutes before getting picked up and on our way back to the hotel. After a quick pit stop we went back to the walled city area for a slow walk around - there was little else to do anyway in the city but as it was 1 May and a bank holiday not much was open.
We had some ice creams, walked along the sea front for a while before getting too smelly and around the inner walled streets before going back to the hotel.
Continuing on the pasta hype, we had exactly the same meal as the night before but treated ourselves with some dry fried onions and peppers. Not the greatest but it padded out the meal a bit better and meant we had lunch for the next day; something we had been struggling to prepare / purchase our entire time in Mexico. Tesco meal deals cannot be underestimated.
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