Just over five weeks ago we cruised into Mexico from Belize and started our quest to replace Cuthbert’s cracked windscreen. We hunted across the Yucatan peninsula… Chetumal, Cancún, Mérida, wherever… and whilst waiting for replies, we had plenty of time for exploring Yucatan. The Yucatan peninsula is dismissed by many as “too touristy” and “full of cruise-ship visitors”. Well… it’s true, we cannot tell a lie… it does have its ‘mega-hotspots’ to which many thousands of tourists fly or cruise in every week. But that’s not to say there aren’t great places to explore away from the mass tourism. And we have a rather freaky sequel to our Day of the Dead experience too!!!
More of the same… and some Chicken Pizza Exploring Yucatan
Regular followers may recall we previously wrote about visiting several cenotes and the north coast. Since then, our time here has continued along remarkably similar lines… more of the same. We found yet more beautiful and undeveloped coastline to explore and our great-cenote-hunt continued with more visits to these spectacular underground crystal pools. We don’t tire of these lesser-visited parts of the Yucatan peninsula.
More beautiful, deserted coastline
Although we were very much aiming to avoid: a) the tourist crowds, and b) getting ‘Mayan’d Out’ by the ubiquitous piles of ancient rubble in this part of the world, we did have on our ‘to do list’, the ‘Top of the Mayan Hit Parade’ – Chichén Itzá (or as Marcus says… ‘Chicken Pizza’). I had visited Chichén before in the mid-90s. Back then, one of the highlights was to climb the main central pyramid for views across the site and the jungle canopy. It’s no longer allowed to climb on the ruins, but it’s still very much worth a stop. To avoid reaching saturation-point with immersion into the many Mayan ruins of Central America, we highly recommend selecting a few key sites to see, then arriving early to avoid the coach-loads. Even the humongously-visited Chichén Itzá isn’t too bad for the first half an hour after opening.
Chichen Itza – Doesn’t look much like a chicken pizza
With yet more time to waste waiting on windscreen news, we felt that the city of Merida might merit a little more exploration. We spent a few more days there wandering the streets where Marcus took the opportunity to try eating the local delicacy of fried grasshoppers. Call me Mrs Fuddy-Duddy, but I passed.
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- Grasshoppers…
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- Chomping them down!
Between seeing the sights, Marcus had a bit of luck with his long-standing idea of a little ‘up-grade’ to Cuthbert’s braking system. Our new overlanding friends, David and Carol from UK had just flown home for a short visit and were kind enough to bring the parts that Marcus needs back to Mexico. This gave geek-boy a great excuse to spend some time where he is happiest… in overalls under the vehicle 😊. Cuthbert now has a new, improved (not strictly essential, but ‘nice-to-have’) braking system. For the curious geeks amongst you, a techie-blog will follow at some point to explain.
Day of the Dead… the Sequel
We were lucky with our time here that it coincided with Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations. We reported it all in these very pages (click here), but sometime after the main event in Mérida, we had a curious and slightly freaky sequel to Day of the Dead in the village of Pomuch near Campeche. Remember how we explained that for Day of the Dead (or Hanal Pixan as celebrated here) the deceased symbolically become part of the community again, awakened from their sleep to share celebrations with their loved ones? Well the good people of Pomuch are unique in taking this symbolism one critical stage further…
Here in Pomuch, they don’t merely symbolically bring their loved ones, in their hearts, minds and images to the celebrations…. no. Here, they actually exhume the bones of the loved ones! A minimum of three years after burial, the bones are removed from their graves, cleaned up and displayed in a box on an embroidered white linen cloth. And some of them are not simply just cleaned up. Some of the skulls are even dressed-up, with wigs of real human hair to help them look their best. For the first year for a corpse, the bone-cleaning exercise is a major task. In following years, they are simply brought out, dusted-off and re-presented on a clean new cloth.
We had read about this curious practice and were a bit unsure whether to go see it or not. But some 10 days after Day of the Dead, we happened to be driving right past Pomuch on our way to Campeche. Our curiosity got the better of us and we pulled over. In the ramshackle cemetery we saw the boxes on most of the graves, the bones displayed to varying degrees of neatness. Some of the graves had family in attendance, neatening the display of their loved ones’ bones and straightening the wigs. [click here to read a bit more about the Pomuch tradition]
We don’t quite know what to make of it all. It’s obviously very alien to our culture (and is indeed alien to the rest of Mexico) but for us it’s an education. Culture is a fascinating thing. Learning about it is one of the many reasons to travel. And I’m certain we have aspects of our culture that the Mayas of Pomuch would find equally curious. Normally we’d follow the mantra ‘live and let live’… but maybe the ‘live’ bit isn’t so appropriate here…
The Wait’s Up… We’re off…
Campeche… nice town
Our final stop on our way out of the Yucatan Peninsula is the fab town of Campeche. It’s not big on the tourist trail but it’s a great place, certainly our favourite (of our limited time 🙂 ) in Mexico so far. The historic buildings, town fortress-walls and house facades are beautifully restored and maintained. It has a great sea-front promenade, the streets are clean and colourful, there are great museums and street cafes. It’s also a very forward-thinking town, with well thought-out facilities for the visually impaired and disabled. We really liked it.
Anyway… time to move on towards central Mexico. Much as we’ve loved the Yucatan, the heat and humidity down here are relentless. It cools down at night, so we always get good sleep, but we’re really hankering after some higher ground and cooler air.
After almost six weeks, we’ve seen everything we want to see in the Yucatan peninsula and we’ve given the motor-trade there more than a fair chance to rob us of money to replace Cuthbert’s windscreen. We had lots of positive vibes and “Sí, sí claro… no problema ” from the specialist suppliers but so far nothing, nada, zilch has materialised. If we’re honest, from the second the crack happened, we knew we had a bit of a prob on our hands. Iveco doesn’t sell anywhere in North America or Central America north of Costa Rica. With pretty much any other part of the vehicle that could break or need replacing, we could either source a suitable substitute in-country or, worst case scenario, have a new one shipped in by DHL. But a truck-sized windscreen is just not that easy to ship.
It’s frustrating that after over 160,000 km of driving, much of which has been on gravel roads in countries where it would have been relatively easy to source a new one, we just happen to get the damage on a tarred highway in a region where replacement is very difficult ☹. BUT… taking a ‘glass is half-full’ kind of approach… it’s not a show-stopper. We can keep driving and we live in hope that another city might bring another opportunity. It’s all part of the overlanding ‘fun’. Tune in soon for the next instalment of “Where’s that windscreen?” 😊
More of the same… Exploring Yucatan Photo Gallery
