Day 6. Mexico 2022. Bumming around Campeche

I drove to downtown early in the morning, with the idea that I could find a parking place before anyone got there. I did, but of course there was not much to do there at 6:45 am. Instead I took a walk along the outer wall of the old town, and much to my surprise found that the wall abutted against the sea when it was built around 1600. The sea now is at least 200 m away, and 4 m below the level of the footing of the wall. That means that the land has risen 4 m over the last 400 years, or a rate of uplift of 1 cm per year. Over the same time interval, the sea has retreated at an average rate of 0.5 m per year! A strange way to find some evidence of the recent rise of the entire Yucatán Peninsula!

As the morning unfolded I walked to the marketplace, to look for a cobbler to repair my walking shoes, but the shop would not be open for at least an hour, so I went back to the city wall and visited one of the small bastions where there is a fabulous exhibition about Mayan stellae and architecture. Afterward I visited the small Maritime Museum that the city has put together in the Community Center (unfortunately the hall with the old maps was not open, so I couldn’t refine my estimates of uplift and seashore retreat). I did learn that although Campeche didn’t have big stores of gold, it was one of the few places that ships doing the trans-Atlantic crossing could load water, food, and Palo de Campeche, a local wood from which a brown-red dye could be extracted. So the pirates were after these more mundane and yet important wares.

When I got back to the marketplace the cobbler told me there was no fixing of my old shoe, so I needed to go shopping for a new pair of walking shoes. ☹ The good thing is that I also bought myself a bag of mangos de Manila, which are smaller than most other mangos, but so much sweeter. They were my Mom’s favorite!

So far I was doing OK in terms of withstanding the heat, so I headed west of town, where the Fort of San Miguel was built on a small promontory in the XVIII century. This fort also serves as a museum of Maya archaeology, and whether it was cultural fatigue or the heat of the day finally getting to me, by the end of the visit I was ready to go back to my comfortable home.

I was planning on taking a siesta when, all of a sudden, a brutal gust of wind and rain hammered over the Casa del Colibrí. Had a hurricane suddenly developed off the coast of Campeche? I thought this would bring an end to the plan that Laura my hostess and I had made to go out in the evening, but no. After an hour of deluge the rain stopped, the wind died down, and the afternoon became absolutely perfect. At 7 pm we met downstairs, and Laura drove me around the town like the best professional tour guide. Laura is original Campechana, is involved in city governance and thus knows everyone, and is clearly proud of her city. She is also very proud of Casa del Colibrí, which is not only a business venture but her own art project. She proudly informed me that Casa del Colibrí was the house of Ché Guevara in a recent movie, and has been the stage for a few scenes in popular telenovelas.

We ended the night in the Calle 59, where in the evening the street is blocked and all sorts of restaurants and pubs cater to the locals that are looking to sit outdoors and enjoy the fresh of the evening. She did suggest, however, to avoid El Purgatorio and its diabolical temptresses.