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.

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.