Theresa's Travel Tips

We just returned from vacation so travel is on my mind.  We had lots of interesting experiences, several of them not exactly what we had planned or hoped to do, so I thought I would write some about the places we visited, how we traveled around, mistakes we made, and how we improvised.  Don't worry, though, because our improvisation did not include any sleeping on the sidewalk!

Our first visit to Mexico, about eight years ago during the summer, was to Mérida, the capital of the Yucatan state, and to several other locations on the Yucatan peninsula.  Twice since then we have spent the Christmas holidays in Oaxaca, and we have also visited a number of other cities/towns in several other Mexican states, all to the south of Mexico City.  So for this Christmas holiday, we decided to go back to the Yucatan to visit places we had not been or that we had hardly been, and to see how our perceptions have changed. 

Here is a map of Mexico to give you some idea of locations I'm referring to;
Unfortunately, not all are labeled.  The highlighted areas, from left to
right, are Oaxaca, Villahermosa (little dot), Campeche.  Merida is to the right of
Campeche.

One of the places we wanted to go back to was Uxmal, an archaeological site.  On our first trip, we went with a large group from a conference to Uxmal for the evening “light and sound show”, thus, we really hadn’t seen the site.  If you ever have the opportunity to go to one of the light and sound shows at an archaeological site in Mexico, I encourage you to take a pass if you have anything else you could do that evening.  Anyway, Uxmal was definitely on our list of places to revisit, as was Mérida. 

We have been to a number of other archaeological sites in Mexico, places that were once cities or ceremonial centers for prehispanic cultures.  The various groups (Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec and others) built in different styles and in particular used different styles of decoration. 

Here's an example of decoration from
Kabah, as site near Uxmal

Several different languages were spoken (and still are—Spanish is a second language for a number of indigenous people in Mexico and another percentage don’t speak Spanish at all), but there was some interaction among the groups.  Thus, their religious and ceremonial centers also have similarities.  The sites usually have pyramids and one or more ball courts where a game was played with a ball.  The game wasn’t for sport or entertainment, but instead was a ceremony that included the sacrificial death of the winner.

The oldest sites belonged to people who are now called Olmecs.  They are distinctive for having altars (and other stone pieces) in the shape of heads, both human and animal.  We call these the “big, giant heads”, not, of course, a technical term. 

This is one of the big, giant heads
from La Venta

To give an idea of the scale,
here is us with one of the
big, giant heads (not the
biggest one even)

To make a long story shorter, I learned that there was a museum/park that contains most of the heads from an important site that was endangered by drilling for oil.  This is in the state of Tabasco, in the state capital of Villahermosa.  The site is called La Venta and it still can be visited.  After we saw the park with the heads, though, we decided not to take the two-hour bus trip to see where the heads used to be. 

Since we weren’t going to have to get up early to start out on that day trip, we decided to go to the hotel’s bar for some wine.  We were staying at a Quality (pronounced “coo-al-i-tee) Inn, so expected a small, quiet watering hole.  It ended up being a very enjoyable evening of people-watching and some live music, complete with backup singers and costume changes.  There was one group of about six or seven couples that reminded us of Tony Soprano out with his buddies and all of their mistresses.   There wasn’t really a dance floor, but people got up and danced anyway.  I love the dancing here and I really want to learn how to do it. 

When I had planned our itinerary, I first thought we should fly to Villahermosa and then rent a car to drive to the other places we were going.  Doing a one-way rental, though, was going to be a bit expensive, plus add the stress of dealing with driving in uncertain conditions.  So my next thought was to fly from place to place.  I axed that plan, however, when I realized that there are not direct flights between the cities we wanted to visit (Villahermosa, Campeche and Merida), but that we would have to connect through Mexico City.  Check out the map above and I think you'll agree that didn’t make sense, so I started looking at bus options. 

Day two in Villahermosa we spent finding the bus station, waiting in line, and buying bus tickets.  Oh yeah, and finding decent coffee (somehow the free continental breakfast at Coo-al-i-tee Inn had only decaf!) and seeing a bit of the town.  Finding decent coffee wasn’t really a problem—we had seen a coffee shop fairly close to the hotel.  However, after drinking our coffee, we weren’t in a very good location to get a taxi.  This was also one of the times when the travel guide book we were using was less than helpful.  The bus station was located, the book said, “a few blocks from the center” of the town.  It may have also said in which direction, but there was a discrepancy with what it called the main north-south street and the main east-west street (which seemed to have those directional orientations only where they intersected each other, and otherwise to be more or less parallel).  Also, it was hot and humid.  I know, I should not complain that it was hot when most of my readers were probably enjoying 38 degrees with a steady drizzle.  We started walking uphill toward the center of town.  We could tell it was toward the center of town because we could see the belltowers on the cathedral.  Every town we have been to in Mexico has a central plaza of some kind and a big church near it.  Did I mention it was hot?  Oh yeah, well it was.  After walking for 15-20 minutes, we finally saw a taxi discharging passengers and solicited transport to the bus station.  The taxi whisked by the cathedral (finally!) and then drove what I would consider to be more than a few blocks, dropping us off at the bus station. 

Christmas display that seemed
out of place because
otherwise everything
looked like summer

Now, the travel books will tell you that there is a website where you can buy tickets for most buses in Mexico.  I have actually used a website to buy bus tickets here a couple of months ago.  However, before we left Mexico City I had tried to use two different websites (one directly with the bus company that has routes in that area and one more general one), neither of which was functioning.  I try to do as much travel planning and arranging as I can via internet.  One reason is that bus stations are somewhat confusing.  There are several different bus companies and different classes of service.  Sometimes a particular class of service has its own ticket window, as do different companies.  Trying to figure out which line to get in is a challenge!  We wanted to have a departure time that was not too early but that would get us to Campeche before evening.  From my previous reservation attempts, I knew it was at least a five or six hour trip.  You can’t always buy tickets in advance because if the bus originates somewhere else, the company doesn’t know how many seats there will be at your location until the bus gets there.  The agent at the ticket window showed us her screen of what was available.  There was a departure at 10:30, so we said we would take that.  It was a different company than we had used previously.  She warned us that it was an “economical” bus with no bathroom.  I asked if it was air conditioned—yes.  Okay, let’s go for that one. 

Now, if one were an astute bus traveler, she or he might have realized that this was a second class bus, which make frequent stops and perhaps have seats in poor condition.  Unfortunately, we were not astute bus travelers.  The next day we discovered that you couldn’t check baggage ahead of time, but had to scramble with other passengers to get the luggage loaded into the bottom of the bus.  Also, the luggage area already had quite a bit in it.  One family or group had so much stuff in suitcases, boxes, and large totes that it wouldn’t all fit and they brought a lot of it with them onto the bus.  When we bought the tickets, the agent had showed us a screen with the seats available and we selected ones near the front (we’re astute enough to know this is a good idea; we also were prepared with Dramamine).  However, when we got on the bus, there were two women in our seats.  They "politely" assured us that seats are not reserved and they weren’t going to move.  The only two empty seats together were the row behind them.  One of the seats they occupied appeared to be broken in that it was leaning back practically in Doug’s lap.  I was not very happy about the seating situation but soon realized that we were lucky to have seats (!), as there was at least one person standing in the back of the bus.  He was later joined by other people standing in the aisle as the bus stopped and picked up additional riders.  At various points of the journey, there must have been 15 or more people standing in the aisle or the front of the bus, including a woman holding a baby.  When the bus would make a stop, vendors got on selling snacks of various kinds and soft drinks.  Contrary to the movie version, however, I’m happy to report that there were no farm animals inside the bus.  We eventually made it to Campeche as did both of our bags.  It was more like nine hours than five or six, however.

Downtown Campeche

Campeche historically was a port city.  It still is a fishing port.  It was a base from which the Spanish mounted their attempts at conquest of the Yucatan peninsula.  Because of pirate attacks, a wall was built around the city so that it could be better protected, and two forts also were built in strategic locations. Parts of the wall have been preserved, as have the forts.  These, and the colorfully-painted, restored colonial buildings of the walled portion of the city, are the primary attractions. 

This fort retains its ancient canons

We decided to visit one of the forts, which currently houses a museum of Mayan artifacts.  The fort is several miles south of the city.  The guide books suggest taking a taxi to get there and then picking up another taxi for return to the city.  It's often the case that taxis are available at historical sites.  As our luck would have it, though, there was not a taxi in sight when we were ready to leave the fort.  We looked for some shade where we could consider our options:  1. ask the museum staff to call a taxi for us; 2.  walk back to the main road where a taxi was more likely to pass by; 3. hitch a ride with other visitors returning to Campeche.  We tried option #1--staff said they didn't have the phone number for taxis (why didn't we think to have the phone number with us, or better yet, my Mexico cell phone AND the number?).  We considered #3 as we waited a while to see if a taxi would show up.  Then we decided to walk back to the main road...where there was a bus stop.  We hopped on a bus, not knowing really where it was going (but it was heading the direction back toward town).  Typically, local buses have a listing on the right side of the windshield of places along their route.  This will usually be on hand-lettered signage or painted on the windshield.  There's not much time to look at the sign, what with fumbling with change for the fare and negotiating the steep climb into the bus while the bus has already started moving again.  We were in luck this time, though, because the bus was headed--at some point--to El Centro (the walled portion of the city).  The bus driver was road-raging a little bit, stopping beside another bus, opening the door so he could yell obscenities at another bus driver.  When we saw one of the gates on the town wall, we got off.  We were kind of proud of having developed enough cultural competence to ride a bus, even though we didn't know exactly where it was going, and have it get us close to where we wanted to be.

Doug--"Dramamine, please"
on the way to Merida

Back on the road again we soon went for a short (2 hr.) ride to Merida. 

Christmas Day we spent on a tour to Uxmal.  I mentioned earlier that we were retuning because it's an interesting site and we hadn't really gotten to see it on our previous trip.  Doug was also interested in Uxmal because one of his "academic ancestors" died in a fall there.  The tour group consisted of three people from the US (us, of course, and another man we'll call "the hippy, dippy guy"), and four people who spoke Russian (a couple who had immigrated to Australia in the 1970s and two young women from Russia).  When the Russian Russians, who were in the front of the van, heard the Australian Russians speaking Russian to each other in the back seat, they both whipped around and embarked on an extended conversation in Russian.  Some tense moments, and a renewal of the Cold War, took place when the Australian Russian woman said to us, "I hope you don't think we're being rude, " as she leaned across a seat between Doug and the hippy, dippy guy, "but we haven't spoken Russian to anyone in such a long time." 

Why did we call him the hippy, dippy guy?

The hippy, dippy guy acknowledged as to how he actually did think it was rude to make all other conversation impossible.  That's when the Cold War began.  No more conversation of any kind until after we reached the first site we were visiting.  Things had thawed by the time we were returning to Merida, though, with one of the Russian Russians talking to me most of the return. 

Uxmal

We were interested to see whether our perceptions of things had changed--the food, the city, etc.--now that we have a great deal of experience with Mexico and speak Spanish.  For instance, we wanted to see if the traffic would seem as wild and chaotic as it had the first time.  We also wanted to test out our language improvement by visiting the anthropology museum again because last time everything was labeled in Spanish.  So, while we were in Merida, we ate Yucatecan cuisine for most meals. It is some of the most wonderful food and we tried several dishes that were new to us.  The traffic seemed much calmer, but we think that instead of a change in our perception, there has been a change in the city (more upscale development, a little less gritty).  We were much more comfortable interacting with people, now that we speak Spanish, but also experienced more people trying to speak English to us than we remembered.  In our final language test, we were disappointed to find that the anthropology museum has had a makeover and the displays now have both Spanish and English text.  And, in a demonstration of how small the world really is, I ran into Grace Johnson, an Ohio State colleague, on vacation with her family, at the anthropology museum and later on an excursion to a nature preserve on the gulf.

We shared a boat on the last tour and a table at lunch with one couple from the US and two couples from Mexico.  We spoke (almost) as easily in Spanish to the Mexican couples as we did in English to the "Americans".  What had previously felt so foreign that we couldn't figure out why all the streets were named "Calle," feels quite comfortable now.