Son of a beach

It took a few days, but I’m finally writing this from the beach again. The last 24 hours have been a struggle to reach this point and it feels good to be back near the ocean. My last entry was posted from our campsite just north of Mexico City and we’ve hammered out a substantial amount of distance since then.

The group had a phenomenal Friday morning. Our deal with the Mexico City police on Thursday left a sour taste in mouth, so it was quite refreshing to deal with the RV park owner. She was a very nice lady who offered us no end of navigational advice. We were set on seeing the pyramids at Tahicuouan. It turned out that we were not more then a few minutes car ride from there. We piled into her pick-up (she was kind enough to drive us!) and soon arrived at the pyramid site.

None of us quite knew what to expect and we were all surprised at the size of the pyramid - which is said to be the largest pyramid outside of Egypt. As if this wasn’t impressive enough, they had reconstructed the entire religious center of the city which was centered around the Temple of the Sun. It was abandoned about 700 AD and was treated as a sacred site by the Toltecs and Aztecs who followed later.

By the time we finally hit the road after our enjoyable morning, it was about 11 AM. Our drive was quite pleasant until we hit an impenetrable traffic snarl. After three or so hours, the fog set in. After we left the fog, the rain set in. We lost about half a days worth of travel and didn’t make it to a hotel until 7 or 8 PM.

We found a beautiful hotel right off the highway. Each room was quite sizable and had a private garage stall. Another unique feature was a dumbwaiter that allowed the occupant to receive food without opening the door. Once we saw that the hotel offered rooms in 4-hour blocks, we began to understand why they offered so much privacy and discretion....

Which brings us to today. Today was our longest single driving today, in which we covered 400+ miles over 10 hours. Luckily, the roads were good and we managed to cover all of the planned distance. Tonight our campsite borders a lagoon on the Gulf of Mexico.

We got some travel advice from the owner of our campsite and we’re altering our route. Today was an intense travel day so we’re abandoning our plan of visiting Campeche and instead we’re driving to the Mayan ruins of Calakmul. Not only is this a shorter drive for us, but the road to Calakmul was only paved last year so it hasn’t been inundated with tourists yet.

Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,
Chuck