(Post 231 of 263)

What I thought was my worst nightmare came true — I needed a root canal on my bad tooth. The pain started to become intolerable in the last week, and after a hot cherry tomato exploded all over the tooth and I saw stars, I knew that it was time for drastic measures. I was careful all week before my scheduled appointment yesterday, but still managed to hit the tooth with hot and cold substances that nearly made me black out. My dentist was pretty mad that I hadn’t pushed up my appointment, but he blamed my history with Canadian dental lack of care for my “patience.”

This is how the procedure went today:

They start you off with some medicine (drops in water) to relax you, although I don’t think that really did anything for me.

The dentist then explains the procedure and checks your history to determine how much numbing agent you are going to need, in my case four times the average…

He asks you about the music and searches for a playlist that you like, in my case, kind of operatic Mexican stuff that did more for me than the drops.

He then tests your sensitivity slowly, using air and water, and then by starting to drill.

When he has drilled to the nerve and you say that everything has been fine, he lets you know that we’re at the end of the worst part and that if you don’t feel anything now you won’t feel anything at all so you can relax.

He gets to work and you relax and take micro naps and enjoy the music and two hours later it’s over. 🤷‍♀️

Once again, I feel so blessed to have such amazing dental care. Cost for the procedure so far (not sure if I have to pay for part two next week) was $3,150, about 170USD or 225CAD.

(Post 230 of 263)

A friend of mine returned to his home country and needed to rehome his two elderly female cats before he left. There was no decision to make; I always knew I’d end up with them.

They arrived the Friday before I left for Campeche, horrible timing, but there was nothing to be done about it. They spent the first week in their own room, and then I introduced them to Alma when I returned. She is happy to have them here, frequently seeking them out and chirping at them to come explore the house, but they are traumatised and not yet ready to come out. These things take time and patience and a willingness to work with the cat’s schedule. Just look at how far Alma has come, from a truly feral being to the affectionate cuddlebug she’s been since I got home!

My first new addition is Dodger. She’s probably 12 years old. While still very hostile, she does hang out in the open in her room and even ventured out into the guest room yesterday, hanging out under the bed. She always used to come cuddle with me when I visited my friend, so I’m optimistic that she’ll settle in.

Then, there is Xtiga (Ish-tee-ga). Today was the first time I got a halfway decent photo of her. She’s about 15 and was very much a daddy’s girl, so she’s struggling with her new situation and is still hiding.

Both girls are eating well and using their litter boxes, so I’m not worried about them. Again, time and patience will work wonders. That Alma has accepted them bodes well.

Speaking of Alma:

I was worried that she’d forget about me during my trip, but nope, I’ve come home to find her even more affectionate. It’s good to be missed!

Three cats at once is a lot — I’ve never had more than two — but I’m glad Dodgy and Ishy are here and arrived before I was too settled into a routine with Alma, so I can merge their habits and routines.

(Post 229 of 263)

Thursday was my last day in Campeche, but with my bus being at 4:20, I still had a full day of tourism! First thing I had to do was figure out what to do with my luggage between the noon checkout and 3:30, when I’d have to head to the ADO station. The hotel offered to keep my suitcase behind the desk, but it wasn’t a secure area, so I had to pack a day bag with all my valuables and then get everything else into the suitcase. It was a tight fit!

I went around the corner to Luan for breakfast. I ordered an americano and a juice of strawberry, pineapple, and… orange? I think. So refreshing!

Breakfast was a croque madame, hold the egg. I was surprised by the mustard, rather than nutmeg, in the béchamel. The bread was excellent. So delicious and a nice change from the Mexican breakfasts I’d been having all week.

I decided to do like Wednesday and go out to a fort, this time Fuerte San Jose and the subaquatic history museum, then walk back into centro for lunch.

This fort was up a couple of really steep streets the likes of which I have not seen since Oaxaca! Like at San Miguel, this was a two-for of the subaquatic archaeology exhibits and those about the fort.

I learned about how chocolate was only used in religious rituals, not consumed by regular people, and was not only bitter but very spicy. This is a chocolate serving pot.

There were tons of artefacts rescued from the bottom of the sea.

This was a great little museum. I was just a little frustrated that there was a lot of specialized vocabulary I did not know and I could not easily do translation research. I had to go up to a guard tower on the roof for cell service and shade to do my research.

Next stop was the Mirador, scenic viewpoint, and the Benito Juarez statue that watches over Campeche.

I had to return to Santo Taquito for my last meal!

I got back to the hotel around 3:20 and requested a taxi, which did not show up until almost 4:00, and my bus was at 4:20! We FLEW to the bus station… where I learned all the Mérida buses were delayed! Thankfully, my delay was only about 30 minutes.

The ride home flew by. The only excitement was a military checkpoint at the state border (the first since my drive to Yucatán), but there was no document check.

It was chaos around the bus station as we came in as streets were closed and there was a police roadblock. A taxi driver thought he saw a mark and wanted to charge me $150 to get home. Uber wanted $70, but when I changed my pickup pin by a block, they doubled the price. Didi was $90, but the texting function was down again, so I was not able to tell the driver which side of a busy street to pick me up. Total chaos. I was truly home! I ended up getting in around 8:15 and my lovely housesitter had dinner waiting.

My five days in Campeche already feel like a dream. They did me a world of good and it felt terrific to be back out in the world.

(Post 228 of 263)

Wednesday, I had thought to do another all-day tour to see dolphins and a cenote, but it would have been just me, so the cost was very expensive and, frankly, it didn’t sound like much fun on my own. Spoiler: I ended up being happy that I stayed in Campeche as I had a perfect vacation day.

Campeche has two forts high up on either side of the city. I decided I would take a taxi to the western one, Fuerte San Miguel, which also hosts the Campeche archaeological museum, and then walk back into the city via the Malecón.

First, though, was breakfast at Origen again as I had to have those chilaquiles again! This time, they did not have green sauce but could offer me a smokey “slightly spicy” red sauce. It was delicious and not even remotely spicy.

I went to Plaza Principal to try to get a taxi and ended up getting in one colectivo-style, where the taxi is full of passengers. I ended up getting an impromptu tour of the city, complete with the driver pointing out landmarks to me and treating it like a guided tour, before making it to the fort, for the low-low price of only 70 pesos. What a great start to the day!

The fort was reminiscent of similar structures in Canada.

The fort was great in that you have the fort history to learn as well as the Mayan museum within that had tons of artifacts. The space wasn’t huge, but it was easy to spend an hour there.

This Mayan calendar display blew my mind. They had an agricultural calendar and a religious calendar that worked together like gears to create a cycle of time of 52 years roughly equivalent to how we use centuries to mark time.

Their numbering system based on 20 broke my brain but kinda sort makes sense.

After a quick break, I headed north out of the hotel to go to the bank.

This was a day to get back on the Balkan pizza diet of walking a lot and breaking up the day with a giant pizza! I did some research and Patroni’s, where I’d had the shrimp pasta, seemed my best bet. All of their pizzas sound amazing and gourmet and it was hard to decide. After the server came back a third time, I said, “Almost there, I’ve narrowed it to two!” “Perfect,” he said, “We’ll do half and half!” Genius move to offer that!

The left side of my pizza was their “California” with a white base, blue cheese, Serrano ham, and fig jam. OMG. The right side was their “Aspen” with sundried tomato, roasted garlic, and Italian sausage. OMG. LOL!  This was quite a big meal, but the California side was a bit overbaked, so I did not eat most of the crust on that side. The crust on the Aspen side was chewy and amazing. The salty sweet combo was perfect. I think either pizza alone would have been too much of their respective type, but half and half worked great. I’m definitely coming back to Patroni’s next time I am in Campeche to try more of their pizzas!

Campeche historic centre has almost no cell service, oddly enough, so I went to the tourist info centre to ask about museums. You would have thought I was asking for directions to the moon. They had no idea about museums in the city or why I would even be looking for such a thing. Very odd. I ended up finding the small but interesting museum of Mayan architecture and then the city museum (next door to each other) on my own.

The info in the Mayan architecture museum cannot be condensed in a blog post. It was so informative. I learned about the four types of construction and daily life. Like all museums I visited in Campeche, it was tiny, but really well done. Most museums have some English, but not everything is translated.

The city museum was next door across from Plaza Principal and was the first place with free entrance (everything else had been $65). This museum was spread out across the building, so you had to follow the yellow arrows around, which was fun, almost like a treasure hunt to find where to head to next.

As time passed and the native, mestizo, and European populations continued to integrate, you could see the influence of the cultures in the clothing. These are traditional native and mestizo dress with European cuts.

I learned about logwood, Campeche’s black gold, a dye that allowed Europeans to achieve purples, blacks, and other colours more cheaply than with European methods.

There was a display of the original market in Campeche and all the people who worked there. I was amused by the tortilla lady. Some things never change. You can see her in Mérida at the Chaya Maya restaurant making tortillas exactly like this, on a little stool.

I was very tired after my day of walking, so I headed back to the hotel for a few hours, showered and changed, and went back out after dark to get an ice cream.

There was a 9PM walking tour about Campeche legends that sounded interesting, so I decided that I was going to do that! I bought my ticket, went back to my hotel for another rest, then headed out for the tour, which should have been 90 minutes but was a full two hours. I was beat by the end of it! It was very interesting, but unfortunately the guide spoke very fast and had some odd intonations that meant that it was hard to understand him. It was the first time of my entire trip that I really felt like I was travelling in a foreign language and not able to get enough to fully enjoy the experience. It was still very fun and there were some great jump scares.

I thought I could get a late dinner after the tour, but everything shut at 11PM, so I went back to my hotel and had peanut butter sandwiches!

Wednesday was an absolutely perfect vacation day. I’m pretty sure I haven’t put in that many steps in a single day since my Balkan adventures. I brought great footwear to Campeche (all Clarks brand sandals) and rotated them out throughout each day so I was never footsore.

(Post 227 of 263)

I somehow managed to wake up at 6:30 without an alarm on Tuesday. First up was breakfast. Most restaurants open at 8AM or later in Campeche, so I asked the front desk if they knew of one open earlier than that as I didn’t want to only eat peanut butter sandwiches all day! Turns out there is a restaurant called La Parroquia near the cathedral that is open 24/7!

I had to deal with a mini crisis at home while breakfast was going on, so no pics, but let me just say my breakfast wasn’t really anything to remember. I had panuchos, typically a favourite breakfast of mine, but these were really greasy and bony! Not great at all. I did appreciate that I was offered coffee the second I sat down, that the coffee cup was magically refilled at one point, and that the coffee was good!

I was picked up at my hotel at 8:00 on the dot. It was just myself and one other guy, so we went in a regular car. It was very luxurious to be on a semi-private tour! The plan for the day was to hit up three pyramid complexes, Edzná, Hochob, and Dziblnocac. I’m not going to get into a lot of details in this post. If you’re interested to learn more, the Mayan Ruins Website will do a much better and more thorough job of it than I could. I downloaded their page about each site (links above!) to my phone so I could consult it on site, a rather genius movie, as my housesitter said!

We were at Edzná about an hour and a half, the perfect amount of time.

Our next stop was much shorter, but also much smaller. I never felt rushed all day.

Hochob is when the other guest and I finally broke the ice and started enjoying our day together! It helped that he hadn’t thought to bring a lunch and I’d packed enough peanut butter sandwiches to share!

It was then time to go to our final stop. Yes, I can write Dzibilnocac without looking it up since we have Dzibilchaltun north of Mérida that has gotten me used to spelling the first part!

The new camera makes for stunning pictures, no? I cannot believe I have an entire phone period of ownership where I essentially have no travel pictures. For y’all, I pretty much jumped from my 6 (which was already a huge improvement over the 5C that I went to Europe with) to the 14 Pro Max, skipping the middling camera of my XR.

One of my favourite things about Tuesday was being out in nature. I don’t get enough of that in Mérida.

We had a 2.5-hour journey back to Campeche and had been in the sun all day. I joked that I could go for a cold beer. I was equal parts horrified, amused, and grateful when my guide asked a villager where we could get beer and then we detoured to get it! The other guest paid for my beer and it wasn’t until much later that I realised it was the thank you for the sandwiches! Beer tastes exceptionally good when being chauffeured in a fancy car after a long day in the hot sun!

We got in around 4PM. I showered, changed, and went out in search of dinner!

I ended up at Bastion off the main square, which was mostly a mistake.

Things started off very promising with this spicy coleslaw and totopos…

And crostini with garlic sauce.

Dinner looked great — vegetables are a nice change from no vegetables in Mérida, and the xcatic pepper sauce looked so pretty. But the shrimp were overcooked and over salted. And then it wasn’t until after I left that I realised I’d gotten scammed on the tip — they included it in the bill and I didn’t clue in when I wasn’t asked if I wanted to add one since I was paying with my credit card and I left a cash tip as well. Oh, well, it’s not a real trip unless you’ve been scammed at least once, right?

I was super amused, though, that as he brought my dinner, the server said, “You look like someone who wants tortillas with her dinner. I’ll be right back.” Maybe because I tore through all those botanas? LOL!!!

No picture, but I remember that after dinner I headed back to El Michoacano for the second time since my arrival to get an ice cream. This time, it wasn’t very busy and the server had time to tell me what all the flavours were when the first time, I just went with the obvious choice, cookies and cream. This time, I was delighted to learn that they had pistachio, so I went with that. Do not confuse this ice cream parlour with La Michoacana, the national non-chain of ice cream that while not franchises per se all have basically identical ice cream, kind of marshmallowy and a bit watery, with some flavours being better than others, all in all offering a middling ice cream cone. EL MichoanO was not that. This was quality, creamy ice cream with premium ingredients.

Tuesday was another early night. I did try to see the pirate show, but would have had to wait until 9PM to even know if it was on and I was ready to call it a night around 7! I went back to my hotel room and did the Sunday post on my iPad then decided I was not doing any more posts on my iPad! Handling the pictures is too finicking.

What an amazing day! I feel immensely privileged to now call this part of the world home.