Mexico & Belize 2012

As we taxied on the apron to the Cancun Airport terminal, the Westjet flight attendant announced “the local time is HAPPY HOUR” and then we glided through the seamless Mexican immigration and customs. While the other flight passengers got into vans and coaches to resorts, we caught a hyper-comfortable ADO bus into Cancun City and to a new comfortable city hotel. And, before we knew it, we were eating “panuches” in the Plaza des Palapas (Cancun is too young to have a central plaza but the park serves as such). Many know Cancun as an endless hotel strip along the beach, however it's also a city and a major transportation hub.

Our first destination along the Maya Riviera was the village of Cobá , where we lazed in an upstairs restaurant watching tour groups coming and going throughout the day. The following morning, the anticipated rooster chorus did not live up to expectations, although a neighbouring hog did snore as loud as John Blight. We went into the Cobá ruins in the morning with the groundskeepers and tour guides. We joined a Mexican school group on top of the highest pyramid and were on a 2^nd class bus to Tulum before the daily tourist wave arrived. Gone are the “chicken buses” of the Yucatán peninsula; even the second class buses are as comfortable as Greyhound (but no wifi). The flat Yucatán landscape is incredibly dull and with nothing to look at inside the buses, except perhaps a movie, the bus rider's attention is often drawn to elaborate resort entrances and billboards, advertising tourist parks.

Tulum town was once larger than Cancun. Many package holiday tourists don't realize that there is more to Tulum than pretty ruins and a beautiful stretch of beach. Tulum town is nonetheless touristy, but offers plenty of local shops and eateries. “Collectivo” service and bike rentals make easy excursions to beaches and “cenotes” (sinkholes connected to sub-subterranean rivers). Akumal is a particularly pleasant white sand beach offering palm tree shade and a shallow sea grass bed that brings turtles in numbers. The local snorkeling guides advertise their services and guarantee turtle sightings which is akin to guaranteeing cockroaches in a cheap Bangkok hotel. While most of the major cenotes along the Mayan Riviera are plundered by the daily horde of resort staying holidaymakers, Grand Cenote is relatively quiet, even mid-afternoon. It was our first cenote experience and we found it surreal, exploring a flooded cave environment.

The scale of resort tourism is staggering in Quintana Roo. The population of Cancun town in 1974 was reportedly 3; now it is over 700,000. We found that mass-tourism brings plenty of money and creates jobs, and it fundamentally changes the character of an area. It can be entertaining to watch coachloads of holidaymakers spill out on to a tourist destination, but it sometimes feels more like a tsunami than an ocean roller. Tourism can be good for people watching, bringing life to a sleepy, dull Mexican town. Seeing tourists wandering the town main street with a beer in each hand at 10:00 a.m. can make you smile and be appalled simultaneously.

We rode into Belize on a Bluebird bus from Chetumal to Corazal. We were immediately struck by the change from mono-cultural Mexico to the multicultural Belize with Caribbean, Mayan, Creole, Garifuna, Chinese, Mennonites and a splatter of ex-pats (including John McAffee on the run). Clapboard buildings and friendly greetings on the street are most common in Corazal. We met a quirky older crowd of Westerners drinking at the hotel bar. We took another Bluebird bus a further three hours to Belize City and caught the half-hour boat ride out to Caye Caulker.

It was our first visit to Caye Caulker (and Belize, for that matter) so we arrived on the Caye with some trepidation. As Caye Caulker is so accessible, we were half -expecting another casualty of mega tourism. But, instead, we found a still-laid back place with streets “paved” with sand. Prices were somehow the same as a three-year old guidebook indicated and the place was charming. Some small-scale up-scale developments have risen, but they are in the minority. Wooden clapboard buildings remain firmly in the majority.

Caribbean style local eateries are just off the main tourist street. We stayed 12 nights and got to know some of the local characters and frequented the bakery, fruit stands, chicken stew kitchens, local breakfast haunts and had a delightful time. We became the “are you still here?” people. Locals are easy to talk to and very generous. We would sometimes buy dinner from Rose, who sold delicious home cooked meals from a cart. Once, we decided to share a single meal, when Rose heard that, she simply piled more food onto the takeaway container.

We snorkeled right off the cay and our efforts paid off on our last day, when we found a seahorse in the mangroves. Of course, the real action is on the reef; we snorkeled with Juni from his hand-built sailboat. Juni's nine siblings emigrated to the USA, but Juni prefers to live on his island paradise and makes a living taking tourists to meet his underwater friends. Juni is a fish whisperer. In the water, he looks like a “pied piper” with a string of fish and tourists following behind him. Before we knew it, we had stingrays laying on top of us; it was a very interactive, hands-on snorkel trip! Our dive trip out to the reef seemed dull by comparison. Whilst the coral canyons offered topographic interest, the main attraction of diving was the multitude of inquisitive nurse sharks. Photography was difficult because the sharks often approached too close.

With heavy hearts, we left the Caribbean and jumped back on the travel merry-go-round and retraced our route back into Mexico and then along Highway 186 to the village of Xpujil. We nabbed a 2^nd floor room at the Hotel Victoria, it seemed to offer everything. In the evening, huge speakers outside the supermarket below us attempted to lure shoppers with mega-decibels, a food stand outside offered hotdogs “exquisitos” and trucks on the Cancun-Central Mexico highway challenged the dead from sleeping well. Xpujil offered so much character that we stayed two nights. Oh, we used Xpujil as a base to visit the awkward-to-get-to, in-the-middle-of-nowhere Calakmul Mayan ruins (UNESCO World Heritage site).

Campeche was our first colonial city of this trip. Other than the occasional coach tour that stopped at the beautiful central plaza, Campeche was notable for the lack of foreign tourists.

Mérida was another colonial city but more vibrant and also heavy on traffic. Sundays in Mérida are special days; some of the central roads are closed to traffic and bicycles take over. Even the winter sun was strong enough to broil these two chickens on the Paseo de Montejo and drove us to seek relief in the guesthouse pool most afternoons.

We booked a rental car for a couple of days (we couldn't resist the $11/day price tag). Within an hour of leaving Mérida, we were seeking directions and then bumping along an unmarked dirt track (fortunately, no charging elephants) and we found the little-known, interesting Kankirixche Cenote. Of the cenotes that we visited on the trip, it was the only free one and the quietest of the bunch, not a soul to be found. Clearly, road signs and admission fees bring in the tourists.

We gawked at a series of fascinating Mayan ruins, including Uxmal and the Ruta Puuc, then we poked around a series of small colonial towns which offered little of interest to the casual visitor.

In Izamal, we made a rookie mistake and booked into a recently refurbished hotel on the central plaza. There was a fair going on outside. Like many small Mexican town fairs, there was a lot of loud music but very little actually going on, especially in the way of sleep.

Chichén Itzá is also know as Chickens Itchy after petting a flea-ridden hotel cat. Chicken Itchy is the Western-most reach of the Cancun resort day-trippers. The ruins are considered as one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World” which drew criticism from Egypt (Pyramids), Cambodia (Angkor Wat) and USA (they didn't get any wonders). Nonetheless, the New Seven Wonders label is good for business and the rock star of the Mayan ruins often pulls in 5,000 tourists away from the beach per day. On some days, 1100 vendors are on-site, so it makes for a colourful visit. The site is strangely vacant till about 11:00am while vendors set up their wares. The first coaches arrive just as the sunshine hits full stride and chickens head for the shade. By late afternoon, the sun illuminates different facets of the ruins and the carnival atmosphere continues. Even if you are “ruined-out”, it makes for excellent people watching.

Valladolid was another beautiful surprise; a small vibrant colonial city, just two hours from the Mayan Riviera, but a world apart. It was a nice base to visit a couple of über cool nearby cenotes. If you need a barber, let me know and I can recommend one in Valladolid.

Isla Mujeres was once more of a fishing community and it served as a backpacker destination but it has been largely swallowed up by the Mexican Riviera. Four and five story hotels have gone up behind the island's nicest beach, Playa Norte. Day trippers from the Cancun flood the island daily. It is nonetheless, a pleasant place to end a 6 week trip with. The local Mexican community lives cheek by jowl with the tourists so tortillas are easy to come by. We always enjoy cross-cultural mixtures; at the Isla Mujeres Christmas pageant, men wearing white bear costumes danced “Gangnam style” beneath palm trees.