Pirates, discos and bagels: The joy of budget accommodation

We’ve covered a lot of Mexico in the last three days - 915 miles to be precise. We’ve moved from the sweltering flat lands of the Yucatan to the mountainous silver towns of the north. Spending so many hours (27 to be precise) watching dubbed films on buses is tiring business. We have therefore been lucky to find some gems of places to rest our weary heads.

We started in Campeche, a pastel crayon coastal town of blistering heat (too hot even for me to sunbathe), where the Maya traded before the Spanish invaded and pirates pilfered. We were staying in the Hostal de Pirata (I won’t translate). We were greeted by a skeleton in complete pirate costume, a chest of skulls with googly stuck-on eyes and two empty rocking chairs eerily rocking. How very apt. The owner was, however, not a pirate (he merely extorted 270 pesos (£13.50) for a night’s accommodation) but an architect. It was therefore a little unexpected to find ourselves stepping over one another in a tiny box room only a metre larger than a double bed with just a sliding screen separating our ’living’ space and the bathroom. The room was hot, and having the windows open only made it hotter. So we closed them and turned on the fan, which creaked like a pirate’s plank.

The hostel was creatively designed, albeit not with space for backpacks in mind, with a wonderful roof terrace. The views across the city to the sea were incredible, although it was too hot to even stand at look at them. To take refuge from the heat we would hide underneath the palm leaf shelter on the roof or stand in the street. It was too hot to be inside. Even though most windows in Campeche don’t have glass, only bars, even the locals found it too hot to be inside. So instead we all stood outside our respective pastel coloured doorway watching each other trying not to move for fear of breaking out in a sweat.

It was a relief to get on our air-conditioned bus and bed for the night. Bedtime viewing was Are We Done Yet? featuring Ice Cube building a house. If an ex-gangster rapper DIY film dubbed into Spanish isn’t enough to send you to sleep nothing will. I slept surprisingly well waking outside a restaurant near Veracruz where I stood watching forlorn cows (the ones with droopy ears) chew maize stalks before getting back on the bus and watching a film about Italians going to the New World to swim in milk with jumbo carrots. Or was I still dreaming?

We got off in Puebla, delirious and not looking forward to, but desperately needing, our next bed, which was in the only hotel with rooms available from the ‘basic’ range touting ‘dingy, dungeon like rooms’. Puebla doesn’t do hostels - the guide book descriptions led us to believe that you either get hell holes or the Hilton. We were therefore rather impressed by the Hotel San Miguel. It wasn’t a dingy dungeon at all, but instead a decorous disco palace. It was a time warp and we had just walked into the 1970s. The Hotel San Miguel had a lot of brown, a lot of Formica and a lot of gold trim. It was a treat. The lobby and lift played the Bee Gees and similar disco hits around the clock, moustachioed Mexican men lounged around on faux leather sofas smoking cigarettes and the lift had large clunking buttons that popped out when you arrived on your floor. I had one of my best night’s sleep of the whole trip here - the room was quiet and the floor length, brown curtains blocked out all light, we even had a (brown) reading lamp. For World in Slow Motion, this was hotel luxury.

Hotel San Miguel is not representative of Puebla. We shimmied out of the door and into a very sophisticated city. Puebla held onto Spanish tradition longer than most Mexican cities and you can see it in the buildings. They are tall and grand, many with ornate and tiled facades and wonderful arched colonnades. Scattered around the streets are seventy Catholic churches and the tallest cathedral in Mexico. With the highland altitude this city definitely felt cool in attitude and clime.
We were up and out early the next morning on a Primera Plus bus to Guanajuato. By choosing a different bus company we were hoping for a different selection of films (I’d actually seen the milk and giant carrots one before with ADO) and weren’t disappointed. Following a BBC wildlife documentary (oh yes!) we were treated to an Indian film - The Namesake. Irritatingly the bus arrived before we found out how the film ended. Such are the hazards of bus travel.

Guanajuato, as we discovered on arrival, is also known as the City of Kisses. No wonder then we had had such difficulty in booking a room on Valentine’s Day. So that is how we came to stay in a bagel bar, well not actually in it, but above it.

Again, slight trepidation upon arrival - there was no hostel entrance, just the bagel bar. Were we going to stay in the store room amongst sacks of flour? Was the hostel heated by boiling bagels? Such was our joy then when we were shown to our room, or should I say apartment. We were the only people staying in a grand old building with floor length windows and wooden shutters with a choice of three showers and a kitchen.

Bagel Cafetin is a gem of a place at only 250 pesos (£12.50) a night. It is stuck on the side of the Templo San Francisco - that’s it glowing on the right in the picture. We awoke in the morning to the sound of congregational hymn singing and the chiming of church bells. Very Sunday.

Luckily we hadn’t gone to bed late the night before, too tired from Digital Video Bus movies (DVB for short) and needing to escape the romance of the City of Kisses. Guanajuato is the most beautiful town we have visited in Mexico, with narrow streets, overhanging balconies and immaculate plazas it feels positively European. A very suitable setting for our romantic Valentine’s dinner of chorizo tacos on a bench. We did steal a kiss in Kiss Alley though, along with the other hundred or more couples queuing to get their picture taken (we refrained). Kiss Alley is so called due to two forbidden lovers who took rooms on either side of this street which is so narrow that their balconies nearly touched and they could sneak furtive kisses. They got caught of course.

The other alley way excitement in Guanajuato is the callejoneadas, which literally translates as alley-men but is nearer in meaning to wandering minstrels. This merry band of velvet bedecked musicians wander through the streets playing instruments (including a double bass) like Pied Pipers, with a merry band of tourists following behind. We tagged along until the point when they asked for tickets, then we scarpered. We wouldn’t be able to understand the stories and jokes anyway, and besides we wanted to get back to our bagel beds.

All three towns have been picturesque, all three accommodations quirky and accommodating and all three showers the best in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. We’re off early again tomorrow to sample Omnibus de Mexico’s film selection on the way to Zacatecas where I have high hopes for the Hostal Villa Colonial.
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The Yucatan - It ain't half hot

Excuse me while I melt. It’s hot. Ridiculously hot.

As I tap away on our laptop, writing this on a rooftop overlooking the historic port of Campeche, the wind whips around me as if someone’s pointing an enormous hairdryer in my direction, basting my body and slowly cooking me in this merciless heat.

There’s no escaping it. Down on the street the heat bounces off walls, incinerating our bodies with casual brutality; inside in our room it hovers just above our bed, making a mockery of the feeble efforts of our ceiling fan, noisily protesting its way to its last pitiful rotation.

I fan myself with my panama, glug down another gallon of water and remind myself that this isn’t for long; within a few days we’ll back heading back up north and suddenly diving for our fleeces once more.

High thirties to single figures in a matter of hours: such is the nature of Mexico’s varied climate and topography.

And I feel instantly cooler when I consider the climes awaiting us beyond that when we leave the tropics and return to the temperate zone of North America, a world of seasonal weather where many of our destinations next month currently sit freezing their proverbials off.

With this in mind we’ve made the most of our last bit of warmth as we’ve travelled across the steamy hot flatlands of the Yucatan peninsula.

A week before we crossed the border back into Mexico, leaving the piece of paradise they call Belize.

It was, naturally in this part of the world, a most relaxed procedure, Belize providing surely the most friendly border officials in the world and Mexico the most laid-back, where soldiers lounged against sandbags and tried to stifle their yawns.

They weren’t expecting to see any action, unlike their ancestors up the road at Tulum, where the ruins of an ancient Mayan fortified city crumble slowly on gnarled limestone cliffs above the Caribbean sea.

It’s in an almost impossibly beautiful location: palms swaying in the sea breeze as beautiful azure skies gaze down upon fine white powder sand which looks as if it’s been provided by Johnson's baby powder.

Onto it lap the inviting turquoise waters of the Caribbean, where waves break just offshore onto the reef and beyond, the waters stretch out over the horizon towards Cuba and Jamaica.

It stands in stark contrast to the tourist honeypot of Cancun, where half-built hotels await the end of the global ‘credit crunch’ and the offshore island of Isla Mujeres offers wall-to-wall triple T (tacky tourist toot) to hoards of wealthy Americans.

Disappointed, we swiftly bowled along the well-worn route to the mighty ruinsof Chichen Itza, arriving at dusk to a spectacular demonstration of quite why the former inhabitants chose this particular location.

The sun, a large blazing disk of orange sank below the purple horizon as the moon rose up opposite, it’s huge full face casting long shadows onto the walls of our posada.

We stood in wonder the next morning at the site, taking in the astronomical knowledge of the Toltec-Mayans who built this city.

The Pyramid of Kulkukan stands as a physical manifestation of the Mayan calendar, its stairways, platforms and top adding up to 365 days; the triangular shapes on its slopes cast shadows which, on the exact dates of the Spring and Autumn equinox mimic the path of a serpent creeping up and down the steps.

How did they achieve this? Some answers lie in a mighty impressive observatory which allowed them to track celestial bodies with great accuracy, giving the ability to measure time and determine important dates such as when to plant crops.

We gazed into the spooky depths of cenotes, natural limestone sinkholes, many of which connect right out into the sea, and which functioned as sacred wells for the Maya where they deposited the their dead.

And we visited the Maya’s own sports stadium, the ball court where two teams contested a form of proto-football and losing captains were sacrified (an honour, apparently - try telling that to David Beckham).

Once more we pondered on the fate of this incredible civilisation and the origins of the apocalypse that wiped it out.

A newspaper headline predicted similar catastrophes for our own contemporary civilisation as we entered Merida, ‘apocalypsis economico’ it screamed above usual gristly images of the aftermath of the latest police gunfights with drug gangs.

It wasn’t the first blood to be spilt in the capital of Yucatan state, where the buildings echo the long years ofSpanish rule and often serve as grim reminders of the horrors of their occupation.

In the city’s zocalo the Cathedral stands, built on the site of the Mayan’s former temple, the locals forced to build it out of the temple’s stones.

Across the square stands the remains of the former home of the Montejos, the notoriously brutal conquerors of the region.

The 16th century frontage remains, complete with a charming depiction of two Spanish soldiers in pointy helmets, brandishing halberds and trampling on the heads of subjugated Mayas - a rather graphic remainder, if any were needed at the time, of the consequences of any further resistance to Spain.

Still, they called the local beer after the infamous family (and rather agreeable it is too).

Other, rather more pleasant legacies have been left behind by the Spanish, from the colonnaded walkways and beautiful buildings to shaded plazas and intricately tiled walls and tables.

It’s incredible to think that these were not all a direct legacy of the Spanish themselves but rather the result of influences themselves acquired from centuries of Moorish domination in southern Spain.

North Africa in Mexico, via Moorish warriors and Spanish conquistadores, over the course of many centuries.

Not to be outdone the natural world managed to dazzle us as well, a visit to the coast of the Gulf of Medico at Celestun allowing us to explore the shallow waters of extensive mangrove-fringed lagoons.

This delicate ecosystem holds an abundance of wildlife, from ospreys, egrets and herons to crocodiles, white pelicans and kingfishers.

Stars of the show though are the flamingoes, some 15,000 of them, all dressed in the most outrageous, vivid shades of pink and orange, strutting about like anorexic Pat Butchers.

Already baking the thermometer ratcheted up still further, topping 39 degrees. No wonder the local Maya dress so lightly, the women wandering round in what resemble flimsy nighties, embroidered at the square-cut edges and all of them white to reflect the sun.

Heading back into town we passed through thick clouds of smoke drifting across the road, their source the fires blazing away on either side of us. No-one seemed unduly concerned - par for the course in these parts.

Further up the road the bomberos trundled past, seemingly in no hurry to dose them out.

We headed on south, making for the state of Campeche. Our bus passed little roadside cafes selling tortas and tortillas, and rickety shacks selling colourful hammocks made of locally-grown sisal.

We drove through little towns where squat, moustachied men pedalled front-laoding rickshaws through the small streets, and stopped at more army checkpoints where bored-looking soldiers chewed gum and casually checked bus and baggage for drugs and firearms.

A private yawned as he poured over bulging sacks of vegetables and battered suitcases. He earns a great deal less than the men of the drug barons; so much for the ‘war on drugs’.

Criminals past greet us as we enter our present location, the old town of Campeche, the ghosts of pirates stalking the streets they once terrorised in the pursuit of Spanish gold, silver and other plunder.

The attentions of buccaneers, Englishmen such as Drake, Hawkins and Morgan amongst them, compelled the Spanish to fortify the city with great bulwarks and battlements. They now encase a dense grid of narrow little streets, where colourfully-painted houses stand with their doors open in an effort to cool their interiors down.

In the sticky night air we slipped along the smooth pavements in a bid to cool ourselves down.

A policemen wobbled past on an old bicycle, his armour padding and machine glinting under the streetlights, wandering dogs barked at each other and a small electric van crawled past, delivering the ubiquitous five gallon water bottles to thirsty households.

We peeked inside them, the windows we pass by affording fleeting insights into others lives. A different scene played out in each one: raucous locals downing cervezas in a noisy bar; a lonely woman sitting in her dingy front room, with only religious icons for company; a family at a table, crowded round mole and tortillas .

Each room glowed with a green fug cast out by television as a football match played out between Mexico and their deadly rivals, the USA. A World Cup qualifier, the match has been billed as the ‘guerra fria’ - the cold war.

Shouts of encouragement and desperation echoed along the streets as the plucky boys in green went down lose 2-0. Sven failed again.

Back up on the roof, the keyboard feels as if it’s melting and I start dreaming once more of the cooler climes of the north. I hear it’s minus 20 in Minneapolis…

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