Travel Diary: Mexico Yucatan peninsula (May 2024)

If you look at a map, Mexico and Colombia are relatively close yet it took us 24 hours of travel to get from the port city of Cartagena to the port city of Veracruz as the travel involved an internal flight in Colombia, then an international flight to Mexico City, a 4-hour twilight “sit-around” in the airport and then finally a 6-hour bus ride.   Needless to say, we were quite tired when we finally arrived.

Tiredness and our casual approach did unfortunately catch us out when we landed in Mexico City at 2am: the customs official asked how long we wanted to stay and normally an answer of “as long as we can” means you get granted the maximum allowed period.  This time however the officer only saw fit to give us 90 days instead of the 180 we could get and we only noticed this after he had stamped and returned the passports.  We figured it was not a train smash and probably would be easy to get an extension to the maximum allowed amount and so didn’t say anything further.

Once in Veracruz we settled into a routine of hurry up and wait for Mr Jones.  The physical sailing time from Colombia is just under 5 days but we expected at least another week of administration until we could get Mr Jones out of the port, so we would “hurry up” wherever we could in order to ensure that no delays were caused by us not completing a task quick enough and then wait for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn slowly.  The first task in the hurry up part was to go to the government bank (Banjecito) and pay for the Temporary Import Permit.  In Mexico, certain classes of vehicle are able to get a multi-year permit which, based on friends experience with a vehicle identical to Mr Jones we were hoping to get as it would make our future travels and parking of Mr J much easier in future years.  Our clearing agent had processed the documentation for this but the official at the bank interpreted it differently and granted a TIP for the same duration as our visa period.

In hindsight this was a blessing in disguise as despite being travel weary we had been pushing ourselves to stay on the road longer in order that we could slot in our “vacation” and visit to see Devon for later in the year but this forced a rethink.  Within 24 hours of the “bad news” we had decided on a new plan of action which involved parking Mr J in the trade free zone around Cancun, flying home to South Africa from there, spending 4,5 months in SA before flying back to Mexico via the UK.  In the UK we would celebrate Devon’s 30th birthday.  While both of us had known we were travel weary it was only after making this decision and noticing how excited we were to be going home that we realised just how weary we had in fact been.

Despite Mr Jones having been through a very thorough drug inspection in Colombia and been sealed up for the journey, this did not save him from another one in Mexico so midway through the process Stuart was taken to the port by the clearing agent in order to do another full unpack and repack. As was to be expected all went well with the inspection even if there was one heart stopping moment when the sniffer dog took a particular interest in the area around the one front mud flap.   Thankfully it did not do whatever such a working dog should do if they smell something inappropriate but it did cause his handler to bring him back to that spot a further 2 times “just to make sure”.

The weekend was fast approaching and we were getting quite tired of the wait as if we did not get Mr J out before then it would mean waiting until Monday so when we got a WhatsApp at 16:30 on Friday today he was cleared and could be fetched, Stuart was out the door in a matter of minutes.  A tired but very happy Stuart eventually got back to the Airbnb at 20:30 with Mr J in hand having been forced to once again break our cardinal rule (the last time being a month prior on our way to the Colombian port city of Cartagena) and drive at night but this time without even a second set of eyes to assist.

The following morning, we threw everything into the back of Mr J and headed out of town hoping to find a quite campsite where we could disassemble the partition, unpack everything that had been stashed in the back for shipping and return him to being our home.  The campsite we found was not exactly quiet, as it was the weekend, but did have very shady camping and thus suited our purposes perfectly.  

We generally try and stay on top of mechanical issues and deal with them as soon as we recognise them and before they become a bigger issue.   Just prior to shipping from Colombia we had noticed bad wear on the tyre tread and diagnosed it as a wheel bearing issue but had taken the decision to delay attempting any repairs until we were in Mexico, the logic being very simple: you can never be certain that a repair will go smoothly and if we encountered an issue it may affect our ability to delivery Mr Jones to the port on time.   Therefore after “restoring” Mr Jones back to a home, the repair was at the top of our list but when Stuart attempted to remove the large hub nut it would not shift at all which meant we were going to need specialist help. In the end this specialist help, actually come down to asking a garage if we could use a large breaker bar and the brute strength of their mechanics.  The garage then very kindly allowed us to park in the shade of the workshop and for Stuart to affect the repairs himself.  After a couple of very sweaty hours, (temps were in the mid 30’s with 90% humidity) we were back on the road !

At this point we had just under two weeks to drive approximately 1000km to the border with Belize and then another further 400km back “up” to Cancun where we would park Mr J and fly home from.  For anybody who looks at a map it would seem more logical to just drive straight to Cancun but in order for us to legally leave Mr Jones in Cancun we needed to cancel his Temporary Import permit and that could only be done at the Belize border.  The region between Veracruz and Belize/Cancun is rich in Mayan ruins and cenotes so we intended along the way to stop at a few.  Cenotes are basically limestone sink holes filled with underground water, some are open air but many are almost entirely cave-like and spectacularly beautiful (based on pictures we had seen) when just a small shaft of light shines through from above and into the turquoise water below.

One aspect complicating our route planning was that Mexico has many very very expensive toll fees which we were determined to avoid wherever possible, with the advantage being it would take us on (hopefully) scenic back roads but the disadvantage being much longer days in terms of hours.  Our first stop was at an area only 150km from Veracruz with many waterfalls and cascades, some of which you could camp near.  Although it took 3 hours to cover that distance it still left plenty of time in the afternoon to enjoy the surprisingly cold waters.

The following day turned into a typical longer one than we envisaged and 9 hours later we stopped, very hot, sweaty and tired, at a basic but adequate spot in the jungle a few kilometres away from the Mayan ruins known as Palenque.  While Palenque is not the most famous or biggest of the all the ruins scattered across the Yucatan peninsula it is in the top 5 for size, state of preservation and naturally number of tourists.  As our first experience of a Mayan ruin we enjoyed it and considered it to be as interesting and spectacular as our visit to Machu Pichu in Peru.

In contrast a couple of days later we stopped at the little known (and thus little visited) Hormiguero ruins.  At Palenque we had to pay a hefty sum to enter and then fend off vendors, parking guards, photographers and all the other annoyances associated with a popular tourist attraction whereas at Hormiguero we needed to negotiate a narrow dirt track through the jungle for 10km to arrive at an empty parking area and then just sign a visitor’s book before gaining free (& unfettered) access to the ruins.  As a bonus we could camp for free in the parking area.  It was very hot when we arrived, so we opted to set up Mr Jones first and enjoy lunch in the shade of his awning with the intention of making a sunset exploration of the ruins.  Late in the afternoon a Canadian family arrive and we set off to explore the ruins together while chatting and exchanging information about our mutual travels.

The exploration felt very “Indiana Jones” like as there were no signs giving descriptions or preventing access to parts of the ruins and we were basically alone in the jungle, listening to the sounds and admiring the ruins.  The ruins complex is much smaller than Palenque but equally spectacular and for us more enjoyable, even a little spiritual.

It was thankfully a relatively short drive from Hormiguero to the town of Chetumal and the Belize border, so once we had cancelled the TIP at the border we hopped across town to a spectacularly located campsite right on the edge of the Caribbean where we intended to spend a few days, firstly to just relax on some nice green lawn and secondly to stay off the streets for Mexico’s election weekend. The election was the largest (in terms of candidates at both national, provincial and mayoral levels) that Mexico had ever held and had been marred by a number of assassinations and political violence so nobody was too sure how the weekend would go.  In the end thankfully, it ran quite smoothly and everything seemed to be perfectly normal on Monday morning.

Our next and equally spectacular spot was found thanks to needing to get some laundry done before flying home.  Tania had done some research and found a self-help laundromat in the little village of Bacalar which sits on a spectacular lagoon of the same name.  The lagoon is spectacular both because of its white sandy bottom which really highlights the crystal-clear blue water and because part of its bottom is a gigantic cenote.  The hostel and camping we found on the outskirts of town had a very squashed parking area where we could just squeeze Mr Jones in but what it lacked in atmosphere for camping with your car was more than compensated for by the open kitchen & lounge area which led onto a beautifully shaded garden leading down to the lake and their own little jetty.  It was the kind of place we could easily build a home / live at and so our ideas of only spending a single night very quickly went out the window and we spent five, only leaving because we had flights to catch.

Leaving Bacalar we made one stop a little bit past Tulum in order to be close to where we would park Mr Jones for the next 4 months. Thanks to iOverlander we had identified a spot just outside Cancun where Mr Jones would live but as it was nothing more than a clearing in the bush where a Canadian operates a vehicle storage facility we didn’t want to spend more time than was necessary to prepare him for our time away.  That preparation basically involved a good clean (inside and out), emptying any open food stuffs, defrosting the fridge/freezer, spraying lots of WD40 on anything Stuart could find that he felt would benefit from it (Cancun is very humid and we feared rust or seizing of mechanical items) and then packing our bags for travelling home.  All went quite smoothly even if we did get drenched in a tropical downpour and had a bit of stress about whether the tent and awning fabric would dry before we needed to shut-up.

Mr Jones home for the next 4,5 months

Even though we were only about 30 minutes from Cancun, the storage location is a bit remote and with a very early morning flight we did not fancy risking a taxi not arriving to fetch us on time or getting lost and so spent our last night in hotel close to the airport.  It felt quite weird but equally exciting to be leaving Mr Jones behind and heading home for our much needed “holiday”.

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