Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Chiggers

Friday 18th December 1987

It was still raining in the morning when we went to the restaurant for breakfast. The two girls behind the counter sang silly songs and giggled as they served. I was pretty empty after several trips to the bog (toilet) in the night, so I tucked into an omelette with white Bimbo bread.

Grupo Bimbo, S.A.B. de C.V., known as Bimbo, is a Mexican multinational bakery product manufacturing company headquartered in Mexico City, Mexico. It is the world's largest baking company and operates the largest bakeries in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala and Spain, and has some of the widest distribution networks in Mexico and the United States.

The name Bimbo was first coined in 1945. The main hypothesis is that it resulted from the combination of Bingo and the Disney film Bambi. Although described as soft and having the delicious taste of soft wheat Bimbo® bread made with enriched flour, wheat bran, and whole wheat flour, we found it to be insubstantial white fluffy pap.

Declan was tempted to look for magic mushrooms in the surrounding fields but was deterred by the fear of chiggers. Americans say that just the mention of chiggers is enough to make any outdoors-loving person itchy. These tiny bugs can be difficult to see when they're on you, but once you've suffered chigger bites, you'll never forget them. Chigger bites are so itchy, they are said to make grown men cry. So, what are chiggers, and where do they live?

Chiggers are nothing more than young mites, specifically the parasitic larvae of mites in the genus Trombicula. Mites belong to the class Arachnida, along with ticks and spiders. We put on long trousers and tucked our trousers into our socks, just in case.

We returned to our hammocks and watched the hippies come and go until the rain stopped. We were bored stupid by 10:00 hrs. so we got a Collectivo into Palenque village. There was only one bus per day to Mérida in the Yucatán and that was at 17:00 hrs. We bought tickets 12,000 Mexican Pesos each and set out to kill seven hours.

Unfortunately, there was little of interest in Palenque. We browsed through the hardware and leather goods shops in the “high street” and changed up some more money as we only had about 100 Mexican Pesos between us after paying for the bus tickets. As before, the queue for the cashier was painfully slow.

Now, with Mexican money replenished, we checked our rucksacks into “Left Luggage” and wandered from café to restaurant drinking coffee and Coca Cola. At 14:00 hrs. we had a chat to an American couple and the sun came out. We sat in it’s rays on the pavement opposite the Bus Station and watched the traffic.

Unfortunately, the cinema with it’s vast array of Sylvester Stallone posters, does not open until 20:00 hrs. At last 17:00 hrs. crawled along and we boarded a battered, but comfortable, bus destined for Mérida.

Mérida is the capital and largest city in Yucatan state in Mexico, as well as the largest city of the Yucatán Peninsula. The city is located in the northwest part of the state, about 35 kilometres (22 miles) off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

As the state and regional capital, Mérida is a cultural centre, featuring multiple museums, art galleries, restaurants, movie theatres, and shops. Mérida retains an abundance of colonial buildings and is a cultural centre with music and dancing playing an important part in day-to-day life. The famous avenue Paseo de Montejo is lined with original sculpture.

On board the bus we met our first Englishman over here, a student of ecology from Manchester University. He had been doing voluntary work on a new National Park in northern Belize. He was enthusiastic about Belize but said that it was expensive compared to Mexico.

The bus hurtled through the night, darkness making it difficult to see the passing landscape. We glimpsed only trees and rivers on a flat plain. We eventually dozed off until we arrived in Mérida at 02:00 hrs., which was two hours later than expected.

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