Last Day In Mexico

By the time you read this we will I hope be crossing the Rio Hondo river out of Mexico and into Belize. We’ll gain an hour as we are on Central Time in Quintana Roo (pronounced “roh” in Mexico with a short ‘oh’) while Belize and Guatemala are on Mountain Time.

Monday we completed our chores, getting a tire alignment for GANNET2 at the only shop with a high ceiling above their alignment machine. I noted them in iOverlander for other tall vehicles coming through and paid $17 for the job. Our Agilis tires have 30,000 miles in them with not much wear and I want to keep it that way on these rough roads. 

Belize uses miles on the roads and I don’t yet know if they sell gas by the liter or the gallon but I do know that regular gas apparently sells for $7US per gallon. We got 21 gallons yesterday in Chetumal at $4:60 a gallon. I expect we will have to fill up once in Belize a country 180 miles long and 75 miles wide…

We tried to find water for sale but weirdly enough failed. In northern Mexico purified water is for sale everywhere but down here it’s mostly delivered so we do best flagging down a water truck. The corner store near the campground had sold out and the lady selling flour tortillas had sold out too. Bummer. Potholes like these encourage me to get regular wheel alignments and I think they pay off keeping down tire wear. 

25 years ago we sailed to Punta Gorda in Belize and have vivid memories of horrendously intricate customs forms and abstruse rules rigidly enforced by an unsmiling bureaucracy. I’ve had similar treatment from customs when landing on formerly British islands in the Caribbean, which Belize resembles. So we are trying to follow the guidelines equally rigidly. 

We finished all our fruits and vegetables and cleared the fridge and freezer of meats and eggs. We have one and a half liters of mescal and no beers. Rusty has his import permit:

And got a thermometer up his butt which he did not enjoy at all. He hated even entering the very clean modern vet’s office in Chetumal. They typed out his health certificate and gave him a one year rabies shot as three year shots aren’t accepted in Latin America. Go figure. 

We organized our papers including our Mexico tourist cards, Covid vaccination certificates  and vehicle import permit which we will hand over along with $40 to leave the country. On crossing the bridge we have to fumigate the van -$5US- and pay $15US to import the van and $55US to import Rusty. Ka-Ching! 

The currency in Belize is the dollar which is pegged at two to one to the US dollar so they accept US paper currency (not coins) and give change in colorful notes with the Queen’s head on it. I doubt King Charles is on Belize currency yet but we shall see. So if you see something listed at $10 it costs $5US. Why they couldn’t peg it at one to one I don’t know. And they use miles not kilometers in Belize. And they speak English, the official language. 

I am already missing Mexico, the ease of travel, the culture, the varied climate, the scenery, the food, the historic cities and the friendly Mexicans who want you to like their country. But it’s time to go and make this long journey to enjoy other cultures and places harder to visit.

Mexico is our backyard and has the easiest border crossing in the world, even easier than Canada. 

I feel privileged to know that when we get back we can have the option of spending warm winters touring this country and spending summers visiting friends across the US. 

Nancy, the manager of Yax-Ha resort always there to help when needed. Her husband Juan Carlos is  the groundskeeper. 

There aren’t  any dedicated campgrounds in Belize so we’ll make do with what we can find. Rusty will miss the peace and quiet of walled compounds as will I. 

Now the extended journey is real I wonder what we will find around the corner? 

Mayan Chetumal

The lord of the living mountain, an exhibit at the Mayan Museum in Chetumal, State Capital of Quintana Roo.

I don’t know how you spent your Sunday but we had a slow start at the Yax-Ha resort in Chetumal. Lsyne got busy doing some sorting and cleaning while Rusty and I sat outside reading Marie Arana’s  dense biography of Simon Bolivar, Liberator of South America. After a swim and a shower we got in gear to go visit the aforementioned museum. 

Layne checked out the municipal market but found it to be mostly a rather useful if dull clothes emporium. Rusty thought the smells in the square were fascinating. I made some pictures. 

I’ve never seen mango trees filled with fruit but lacking any leaves whatsoever! I just wished they were ripe. 

Rusty spent the next hour sleeping in the air conditioning; he always gives himself away with his sleepy eyes when we get back. We on the other hand struggled masterfully with Mayan mathematics, too complicated for me; the Mayan calendar, ditto for me as they had several different calendars all at once; and such intricate sculptures I can’t read them too well. I would have made an appallingly bad Mayan had I been born two millennia ago in this region. They had a place in the social order for dimwits like me: at the bottom. 

We were the people doing the hewing and carrying and being sacrificed for the common good. The lower castes lived rather unglamorously in straw huts that have since vanished of course so the lifestyle is only hinted at.

And reproduced in the rather lovely central garden inside the museum structure. These were some Federal pesos well spent by the central government. 

The script was awkward to read in real life so I don’t know how it comes out in a picture but basically not much is known about worker bee Mayans but you can imagine a fairly basic existence. 

The artisans created some startling monuments for posterity, the stone palaces still around today all over the Yucatán, Belize and Guatemala. 

Layne was too creeped out to walk on the glass but it was a display that captured your attention. This museum is less about artifacts and more about trying to explain the culture. For me it was a great opportunity to get to see these explanations before we get to the monuments further along our road. 

We met another gringo couple whom I waylaid. He was a man from Colorado in such a state of undress he made me look dapper. However he had a brilliant sense of humor pointing out the kid getting his head flattened (below) and warning us about the underworld to come! She was a bit of a pill distancing herself by pointing out she is from Chile as though she deserved a gold star for it, and promptly dragging off my kindred spirit to his form of underworld I dare say. 

Yes I know there are naked genitalia on display. If you are from Florida turn yourselves in to the thought police for looking, just as I am about to. Or, you too can come to hell with me. Here we go: 

From what I can gather the death myths involve crossing a river and doing feats of derring-do, some form of hand-to-hand combat with evil spirits if you want to make it to heaven. 

Meanwhile I was glad to notice this fine museum was wheelchair friendly for the most part, quite a step up in Mexico (pun intended). You don’t see many disabled Mexicans integrated into everyday life in this country. 

Now the math and the calendar. Good luck figuring it all out, I couldn’t. 

There were interactive screens to show how the Mayans multiplied numbers out by a factor of 20 or 400 I think, if I got that right. It was the most complex abacus I’ve ever seen. Hats off to them. However it’s also worth noting they figured out zero in their calculations, a subtlety that escaped the Romans and had to be imported from Arabia for our convenience.

I took some photos of digital images of Mayan art they flashed on the walls. 

Chetumal is so far off the Cancun-Cozumel-Mérida axis of tourism I doubt most visitors to Mexico will make it here and that’s a shame.

This stuff is so intricate I can’t make it tail of the symbolism described. They were artists of a high order. 

There was also contemporary art on display just to finish me off. 

Femicide and spousal abuse is a massive problem in Mexico not shunned by this artist. Titled “Not one more.”  She paints powerful stuff. 

I had a chat with a guy having lunch on a bench outside the museum and he said you have to try Taco Loco up the street. I found it on Google maps (4 mins by car…) and off we went. 

First Rusty got his walk checking out the sidewalks. Then he got his alone time in the air conditioning. Having batteries powerful enough to run the rooftop air is a wonderful think when touring with a dog. Even in Mexico he’s not welcome everywhere. 

There was indeed a sign saying no pets in the restaurant but that didn’t matter to us. The menu was vast but we knew we wanted the fish soup following on from the recommendation we got. 

I went off the reservation and instead of a boring fish taco I wanted to try a shrimp filled baked potato. Weird? Of course! Unfortunately Lsyne followed me out into left field instead of staying safe. 

The soup was a strange brown color more like mulligatawny than any fish soup I’ve had but it was delicious. Not too spicy, not salty but packed with fish shrimp and octopus.

The baked potatoes were weird as predicted but nothing like you’d get in the US. They made a tinfoil cup and filled it with mashed potatoes sprinkled with shrimp and covered in melted cheese. I loved it all soft and creamy and mild the antithesis of Mexican spice. Lsyne ate her shrimp and I took the rest and fed it to a bored dog locked behind a gate forgotten on a Sunday when the business was closed. She devoured  the potato and many extra cookies I put out for dessert. And I used my tinfoil bowl for water. I love all dogs much to Rusty’s disgust. 

Chetumal, a city of 170,000 continues to surprise us with its quiet small town vibe, clean side streets and gorgeous tropical ambience.  It was founded in 1898 and given the name Payo Obispo after the bishop  of Spanish Guatemala Friar Payo who visited the Hondo River area in 1660. Weird reason to bake a city but Mexico is frequently inexplicable. 

In 1902 President Porfirio Diaz carved the territory of Quintana Roo out of the two neighboring states of Campeche and Yucatán. Othón P Blanco founded Chetumal by building a barge in New Orleans (!) which he named Chetumal after the original Mayan Indian name and  sailing it to the Hondo River to use the barge as base from which to carve the city on land. 

In 1936 during Mexico’s anti Catholic  church revolution the name was changed to Chetumal and in 1974 the territory was made a state (along with Baja California Sur). The Rio Hondo was established by treaty as the boundary with British Honduras in 1893 but there has been a long history of commercial exchange with Belize. These days people come to shop at Walmart and Sam’s Club in much cheaper Mexico! Layne has seen numbers of Mennonites in both box stores in fact. 

We like Chetumal’s tropical vibe even though there doesn’t seem to be much “there there” downtown. It’s not a magical colonial city but it’s bright and cheerful and colorful.