Club Náutico

What do you get when you cross The Shining with Gilligan’s Island? The Club Náutico y Deportivo de Campeche.

Our hotel in the city of Campeche being indifferently comfortable (the Maya Campeche Hotel: clean and convenient, but cramped and dark), we decided to hit the road. Through a web search, we discovered an RV park not far from Campeche that seemed to accommodate camping. We couldn’t tell much from the website, but now that we are experienced campers, we knew we could make do if it didn’t work out. We loaded up Rocinante and set out.

We passed through the busy city. The road grew winding and the scenery forested. Sooner than we expected, we arrived at the whitepainted entry gate to Club Náutico. Sure, we could camp with a tent, the gatekeeper said, No problem! We paid the entry fee and drove in.

A gracefully curved drive led us past a baseball diamond and tennis courts. As we rounded the last curve, the Gulf of Mexico sparkled below us, and we saw a long, low, bright white building with a circular drive and carefully tended landscaping.

Just beyond the club building was a long, broad expanse of asphalt RV parking slots, interspersed with grass and waving coconut palms. There must have been at least 30 slots, and all but a handful were completely empty. The few RVs that were there were closed up, gear stowed, and clearly not in use. The grounds were immaculate: there were no fallen palm leaves, no stray candy wrappers, no rotting coconuts; the lawn was mowed. We picked a spot near the trees and far from a streetlight and parked.

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Before setting up the tent, we wandered over to the clubhouse to have a look. It, too was immaculate, with gleaming tile floors and a tiny atrium garden. Large faded photos of 30 years of Club Náutico beauty queens decorated the walls of the entry. Beyond was a huge game room, with perhaps a half dozen each of pool tables, ping pong, bridge and poker tables. Some were clean and well-kept, but others were covered in plastic. The tables were there, but the games were not; we couldn’t find any balls, cues, or paddles.

In the lounge area, decorated with giant leather sofas and fake tropical plants, we found the sole occupant, a man, totally occupied with the huge flat screen television on the wall. He waved at us in a desultory way and went back to the tv. We figured out later that he was the caretaker.

Beyond the lounge were the restrooms. The men’s was indicated by a picture of a captain’s hat with the letters “WC,” while the women’s had a picture of a mermaid. I pushed open the door to the women’s and entered a huge echoing room the size of a school gymnasium. Its contents: an enormous mirror with an ornate frame, an 8’x10’ rug with a bright geometric pattern, a set of rusty lockers, and a flowered sofa. Off to the side were rooms with showers, toilets, changing rooms, and a sauna. All were dark, dry, and empty.

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In the back was a terrace overlooking the gulf. Tables, chairs, and chaises longues surrounded an absolutely gorgeous pool with iridescent tiling and in-water seating areas. A broad set of stairs beyond led to a sandy playground with a swing set and slide, and a tiny beach with sugary soft sand. Cabañas and lounge chairs dotted the sand. Again, everything was spotless; the plastic chairs were new and unbleached by the sun, and all abandoned.

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We spent a very pleasant night there, without catching sight of a soul other than the caretaker. Joe swam in the pool, and we spent some time throwing rocks at the coconuts in the trees until we realized there were a couple of ripe ones that had already fallen. For dinner we had a cold collation with fresh coconut for dessert.

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The caretaker told us it was busier on the weekend, which must be true, because how else could the place stay afloat? It was such an odd combination of dereliction and luxury.

In the morning, while I was brushing my teeth in the mermaid restroom, a cleaning woman came in with a wide broom. While I attended to my morning routine on one side of the dividing wall, I could hear her on the other side, sweeping back and forth, back and forth, in that empty, spotlessly clean, cavernous room.

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A candy-box town

We spent a day in the exceedingly picturesque walled city of Campeche. Mexico seems to be crawling with UNESCO World Heritage sites, and this is one of them. See for yourself:

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And Joe made a new friend:


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Costco México

Costco in Mexico is pretty much exactly the same as Costco in the States. Same giant jugs of detergent, giant boxes of Cheerios, huge pumpkin pies. You can even buy a neon sign for your shop, just like at home. A few details are different, though:

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Progress

In Chochola, Yucatan:

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Us and the great outdoors

The last time I went camping was 20 years ago, on a luxury safari in Kenya. We rode camels through the savannah from campsite to campsite, looking for elephants and wildebeests as we ambled along. After a few hours we would arrive at a fully assembled camp, with commodious tents waiting for us, cots made up with clean sheets, and a little washstand with warm water in a thermos and fluffy white towels.

That wasn’t what our first night camping in Mexico was like.

There aren’t many campgrounds here. Most people who camp just find a secluded spot off the road and set up there. When we finally got out of Mérida yesterday, it was already late afternoon (so to speak – afternoons are very short here and it gets dark surprisingly early and suddenly). Our plan was to get halfway to Campeche, and camp.

After driving for a couple of hours, we pulled in to the village of Chochola. In the dusty town square was a little tienda, so we stopped in to stock up on water and ice for the cooler. «¿Ay un lugar cerca de aqui donde podemos acampar?» I asked. “Camping?” the girl behind the counter said, puzzled. (I’m translating.) “Noooo….nothing. Hey, Sylvia!” she called to the back of the store. “Do you know anything about camping around here?” “Camping! What? No, of course not!”

We had noticed signs in the square advertising “San Ignacio Cenote and Restaurant This Way!” Since there didn’t seem to be much of anything else in Chochola, we followed the signs; they led us to a fenced-in park-like place that looked promising, but was about to close for the night. “Okay,” we said to the employee at the gate “but do you know any place to camp around here?” “Camping?” he said, puzzled. “Noooo…there’s the grassy area around the church in the main square. That’s the only place I can think of.”

We piled back into the van (now known, thanks to Elizabeth Moss, as Rocinante) and headed back to the highway. After a few miles, a large palapa came into view; it had a palm leaf roof and a neon sign announcing Good Food, and several trucks were parked in front. A young man, dish towel in hand, was leaning against the doorframe. We pulled in and asked again, “Do you know anyplace we could camp around here?” “Camping? I have no idea. None at all.” We thanked him and headed back toward the car. Behind us, we could hear him, as he turned to go back into his restaurant, shouting, “Hey, guess what! Those people wanted to go camping!!”

The third time’s the charm: we learned to stop asking. We got back on the road, drove very slowly in the right lane, and kept an eagle eye out for little lanes leading off into the scrub. The first one we tried went about 100 feet off the road before it was blocked by a gate. It wasn’t visible from the road, but it there was litter around, and no appealing spot for the tent. The second lane we tried, though, led about 100 winding yards into a pleasant, scrubby, flat clearing, before it was blocked by a (much more attractive) gate. There was even an area bare of grass with plenty of rocks to make a firepit. Perfect!

By this time the sun was getting very low indeed, so we set about unloading Rocinante at a brisk pace. Joe and Henry set up the tent while I went gathering firewood. Since we had crammed everything in the van willy-nilly in our rush to get moving from Mérida, it was quite dark by the time we had our campsite more or less organized. It was then that we realized we didn’t have any matches. Luckily, I had bought, for no real reason, on one of my pre-trip gear-shopping expeditions, a magnesium and flint fire-starting gadget.

You scrape off a little pile of magnesium shavings, and they ignite when you strike a spark into them. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that make it look like the easiest thing in the world to light a fire with this thing. I can tell you it’s not. First Henry tried. Then I tried. Then Joe tried. Then Henry tried again. All told, it took about 45 minutes to get a nice fire going. It turns out that little bits of toilet paper are quite flammable.

There is a bed in the back of the van; Joe made himself a cozy nest and spent a relaxing evening reading and then got a comfortable night’s sleep. Henry and I slept in the tent, which is almost all mesh, so you can watch the stars all night long while you shift around trying to find a position that doesn’t involve a rock wedging into some sensitive part of your anatomy. We saw many shooting stars, and the air was fresh and good, and it was very pleasant, if not exactly comfortable. And we did actually sleep.

When we got up the next morning, we discovered something. We were, all three, quite astoundingly grubby. The campsite was situated on some rocks, and some grass, and some of the dirtiest dirt I’ve ever seen. We had plenty of drinking water, but not enough to get clean with.

So, back to the San Ignacio Cenote and Restaurant. They weren’t open yet, but they let us in anyway, and if they noticed how grubby we were, they didn’t say. The cenote was down a narrow set of cement stairs; here’s Joe descending.

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And then: Look at our bathtub! It’s all natural sweet water, part of a much larger cave. It really is that clear and that beautiful. And we had it all to ourselves. We luxuriated in the water for the better part of an hour, and felt a brazillion times more refreshed and relaxed and happy as we set off for Campeche.

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And we’re off!

Yay! We have the van! Only a week later than we anticipated….We’re off!

Oh wait – we have to get insurance. Henry’s doing that now. All we need is a scan of the registration. And our drivers licenses. Which means we need a scanner…or a very steady hand with the camera on the phone. And we have to pack up all our stuff and fit it in the van. It’s astounding how much your stuff expands when you live in a hotel room for a week. And then we have to stop at Costco again, because we left all the vitamins and things we bought there the other day in the trunk of the rental car when we returned it. And I need to unpack the coffee-making kit, because this will require more caffeine.

I can’t say that things didn’t go smoothly this week, or that anything went wrong per se. The van is terrific, the money transfer came through just fine, there was plenty to do here in this nice place. But we did fail to adjust our expectations to tropical time. We were vaguely expecting that everything would happen in a day or two and we would be on the road. Lesson duly noted.

I’ve packed all the stuff, Henry’s on his laptop and phone with the insurance company, and I’m about to go check the room to make sure we didn’t leave anything there.

In the meantime, Joe has made himself a nest of pillows in the van and is sitting there, in the sun, waiting to go to Campeche.

Posted in Itinerary, Preparation, Time | 5 Comments

Cooling Our Heels – Updated

The van is almost ready. The seller has been as thorough and frantic about putting it into the best possible condition as Elizabeth was about making our house nice and clean and tidy and fixed for our friends staying there in our absence. In the case of the van, this involves cleaning various parts of it (he washed the engine(!) the other day), sorting out all the extras he’s including (cooler, propane stove, tables and more) and getting a few small items fixed, mostly electrical.

It’s greatly appreciated, as each thing fixed will be one fewer item for us to have to wrestle with and/or work around. But also it delays our departure from Mérida. We are anxious to be on the road to parts yet unexplored. And the hotel and rental-car bills keep on ticking.

On the other hand, there are far worse places on Earth to be stuck. None of us is anxious to be away from here, just to be on our way to other wonderful places.

Update 5 November 2012 10:30pm – Just got back to the hotel after picking up the van. The deal is done. We’re out of here in the morning, heading off to Campeche. On the road!

Mérida to Campeche

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Mérida downtown

Here are a few shots of shops in Mérida, for your delectation. Colorful place, isn't it?

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Hogs at the Swimming Hole

When we came to the Yucatán three years ago, among the many things we saw, previously unknown to us, were the cenotes. Basically, a cenote is a cave in limestone rock, formed when so much of the rock is dissolved away by ground water that what remains collapses, leaving a domed bubble of air in the middle of the rock, with water at the bottom. They were sacred to the Maya, being hidden sources of fresh water, even in the dry season. To modernity, they’re just very cool.

Joe was wild about them, insisting that we visit every one with fifty miles of wherever we were at any given time.

Some things don’t change much. Before we left Ann Arbor, Joe learned of a cenote about twenty minutes north of Mérida, at Dzibilchaltun, the site of some Mayan ruins that we hadn’t seen last time. He’d been champing at the bit to get there since before we arrived.

Yesterday we went to Dzibilchaltun, only to discover that admission to the ruins and cenote close rather early, and that we had missed it. But we went back today in plenty of time to swim and to visit the ruins. Cenotes are unusual in that they’re underground swimming holes; this one is unusual in that its top is gone, and it’s exposed to the open air and light.

It was even more unusual today in that it was the site of a major gathering of Harley-Davidson owner/rider groups from all over the area. An official told us that around a thousand motorcycles were there. When we arrived, shortly before two o’clock, the bikers were in the process of heading out, although many still remained. They seemed to be enjoying the site as much as everyone else there.

Hogs at Dzibilchaltun

The main difference was that they were attired a little more interestingly than most of the other visitors. And shortly after we arrived, I noticed that both Elizabeth and I were wearing black and orange, the official Harley colors, so we fit right in.

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Our Sidecar

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Here’s our junior associate. Read his account of our travels at Sidecar.

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