theroadworriers-blog - Tumblr blog

theroadworriers-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Una vez mas en Mexico (One more time in Mexico

The temperature is somewhere between 75 and 80 degrees F. I am sitting at a table on a covered terrace facing the pool. Behind me, I can hear the waves of the Gulf of Mexico gently licking at the sand on the beach. The day began with some promise but now clouds are invading the sky and I doubt we will see much sun. Stil, I KNOW we won't see any f**king snow and that's a good thing.

We are presently in a little village near the nortwestern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula called Chelem. It is located on a long sandy spit just 11 kms from Progreso; a fairly well known sun destination.

We are ensconced in a large-ish studio apartment on the ground level of a beachfront villa. The villa features two one-bedroom apartments at the foot of the property beside the gate with the owner's residence situated at the beach end. The property is owned by a Canadian gentleman named Bob who happens to hail from Ottawa. The villa is nice looking and has promise but is in sore need of refurbishing. It happens to be up for sale and, after a little more than 36 hours in Chelem, I can say with certainty that we would not buy this, or any other property in Chelem,under almost any circumstances.

We flew out of Ottawa on Saturday February 18th. The weather was perfect. After a terrible aeroport breakfast of hard-poached eggs on a sliver of toast we arrived at our gate to see our plane at the gate a posted announcement that the flight was delayed by about 75 minutes 'at the request of Air Traffic Control'. The alarm bells begin to go off. You see, we were flying into Cancun and the Cancun aeroport is notoriously busy on Saturdays. It turns out that the volume on this particular Saturday was so great that Mexican authorities had requested (demanded??) that flights be delayed to spread out the traffic. Okay so no big deal.

Our Westjet flight was one of those without any form of in-flight entertainment (unless, of course, you find listening to screaming children and watching frazzled parents entertaining). Instead, you have to download the Westjet app which allows you to access music, films, etc. Now I have, in fact, downloaded this app but, being dinosaurs from the Ikea age, this last thing we wanted to do was huddle over a 10-inch screen to watch a film we can barely hear. We had lots of reading material and we survived. For some inexplicable reason, the flight attendants handed us the wrong immigration forms to fill out before arrival. The ones they gave us were for Mexican nationals, were entirely in Spanish and did not include the mandatory visa portion. So we had to fill out new forms in the (barely) controlled chaos of the terminal. Then the fun really began.

Our plan was to rent a car and immediately set out for a town called Rio Lagartos, situated roughly halfway between Cancun and Chelem, which is the home of Mexico's world famous and justly popular pink flamingoes. Had everythng been on schedule we would have landed at 3:10 and been on the road heading out of Cancun by about 5:00. Unfortunately, we arrive close to 90 minutes behind schedule and, because of all of the staggered arrivals, the terminal was full of people being told to step out of line to fill out the proper visa forms. The volume of people and vehicles outside the terminal made it difficult for the shuttles to the rental agencies to easily get through. Once at the car rental (which shall remain nameless but has the initials 'Thrifty') we had to wait 15-20 minutes to get to an agent and he took 20 more minutes to process our request which, let us not forget, had been booked in advance. Sigh! We love Mexico but loving Mexico means accepting that things are often done at Mexican time. Once processed, we waited close to an hour - AN HOUR - for them to bring us our vehicle. A new standard, even for Mexico. By now the sun had set which meant we would be driving close to three hours in darkness. And it has been years since I have driven a vehicle with so few 'extras'. No power locks, power windows, cruise control, power seats, nothing. Even the trunk is opened with a key. I guess that's what rentals of $2.00/day will get you. But here things began to change.

Most rental agencies advertise themselves on their vehicles. Thrifty is more subtle than most as the only visible sign is a 'Thrifty' frame around the licence plate. The problem is that those agency identifiers also identify the occupants as visitors or, in other words, prey. Our car, luckily, had no such identifier. I think Thrifty was too embarrassed to proclaim that this was one of their cars. Still, that lack may spare us some irritation in the coming weeks.

The first half of our drive to Rio Lagartos was on the well-maintained four-lane toll highway to Valladolid. From there we had to take a two-lane road north for more than 100 kms to Lagartos. Roughly half way up this road is a large town called Timizin. They have fire and the wheel in Timizin but it seems that the notion of 'a straight line' has quite reached there yet.. To travel from the south end to the north involves several twists and turns and, inevitably we missed a turn and wound up going the wrong way down a one-way street. And two municipal cops pulled us over. Neither spoke a word of english or french but we muddled through with my spanish and, after only a minute or two, the policemen offered to lead us out of town. It took a while and there was at least one time when Diane and I both thought that they were leading us to the jail (or worse) but eventually we reached the northen town limits on the right road (with a sign indicating Rio Lagartos). As we made our way uninterrupted through town, with one of the policemen flashing his red and blue lights and no one daring to cut in or pass, Diane said that it felt like we were the President driving slowly through town. I guess they REALLY wanted us out of town. At the end we thanked our new friends who replied that they were happy to be of service and we went our separate ways.

We finally arrived at Rio Lagartos at around 9:30 local time (10:30 our time) having eaten nothing but a few chips since noon. Our fear was that the hotel would be closed for the night. That fear was unfounded. As we pulled up a young woman received us, checked us in while I apologized for our late arrival, showed us to our room, bade us good night, and then proceeded to lock up the hotel. The kitchen at the local restaurant was closed but they served us a very good guacamole with two satisfying adult beverages and we called it a day.

There are two claims to fame for this area of Mexico. One is the habitat for the pink flamingoes and the other is the salt lagoons; also pink. To see the pink flamingoes involves a three-hour boat ride. We were tired and we had forgotten to set our clocks back one hour so, thinking it was already a little late, we decided to pass on the boat tour. We did, however take a short detour to see the pink salt lagoons. The water was bright pink. So CHECK on the salt lagoons.

From there we had to retrace our route to Timizin where we failed to encounter our new police friends (nor did we go the wrong way down one-way streets for that matter). We went west a ways then turned north to a little place called Dzilam el Bravo where begins a coastal road that takes us right to Progreso. I looked at a map and was assured that Dzilam el Bravo is not, in fact, at the end of the world but I swear you can see it from there. Anyway, as we drove west along the coast there is a lot of marsh and, eventually, a large lagoon. We stumbled onto a few more salt lagoons and then, suddenly, there were around 40 or so pink flamingoes. From the Department of useless trivia; flamingoes are born grey but they feed in briny water (which tends to be pinkish) and the creatures on which they feed contain a particular mix of chemicals that causes them, and eventually the plummage of the flamingoes, to become pink. So we saw the flamingoes feeding. CHECK!

All along the road to Progreso there are visible signs of construction as more and more wealthy people, many of them expat Canadians and Americans, build villas or condos. Paradise lost? When we arrived in Progreso one of the first things I did was start down the wrong way on a one-way. Luckily I noticed immediately and corrected my error. I suspect the locals knew then that we were turistas even without the Thrifty logos.

Progreso is a fishing village that is being converted into a tourist centre, in part due to the proximity of Merida some 40 kms away inland. The sea here is shallow so they have built a giant pier that extends some 6.5 kms into the gulf. The main reason for this was to draw cruise ships which now make Progreso a regular stop. There are apparently a number of decent restaurants in Progreso which we will try to sample over the next couple of days. When we arrived Sunday there was at least one cruise ship in town (so to speak) and thousands of people were strolling the beachfront malecon. At first glance the beaches were not as impressive as the ones on the Riviera Maya south of Cancun or even as attractive as those near Puerto Vallarta. Traffic was incredibly slow. Between Progreso and Chelem is village called Yucalpeten. It features a large sheltered marina and' I believe, a small shipyard. Apart from the marina (if you like marinas) the town does not appear to have any redeeming qualities except, maybe, low prices. I suspect Progreso and Chelem have become too pricey for the locals and many of them now live in Yucalpeten.

Our instructions were a little vague and, being without a working phone for the moment, it took a little while to navigate our way to our lodgings. The owner has two small black dogs. One, mostly scotch terrier, is aloof and barks a lot. The other looks like a pug-bulldog mix and is very sociable. His name is Yogi. Diane is allergic to dogs which seems to serve as a magnet for Yogi, who whined at our door for Diane this morning. I know this because he all but ignored me as I stepped outside.

Yesterday was a lazy day of checking out the beach in front of the villa (it is badly eroded and probably not a lot of fun to swim in) basking by the pool and catching up on our reading and sleep, in no particular order. Today we will brave the masses (there is another ship in town) and explore Progreso a bit. Tomorrow will probably be more of the same. Thursday we head to Merida to celebrate Carnaval and explore some more. Guy

0 notes