We began a wild goose chase through the dark, deserted streets of Mérida in search of a hotel room. At reception after reception we knocked up bleary-eyed receptionists to find they had “no hay cuartos” (no vacancies). The only one we found which did have cuartos wanted 25,000 Mexican Pesos!
So, we settled down on a park bench in the plaza where we remained relatively unmolested apart from one friendly chap and one dodgy looking gay bloke and his companion who invited us to walk 3 blocks with him to the Hotel Trinidad. We declined his offer and at 04:30 hrs. we went to an all-night café for chicken soup and use of their toilet facilities.
Dawn eventually came and we were back on the benches as a bugler blew the reveille and the Mexican flag was raised in the square. We found somewhere for breakfast and booked into the Casa de Huéspedes, a magnificent (now “boutique”) looking 200-year old hotel with rooms around a wide balcony overlooking the patio.
It cost us just under 10,000 Mexican Pesos for a huge double room with high ceilings and an electric fan. The balcony has a black and white tiled floor with arched stained-glass windows, simple classic dark wooden furniture, and some huge old pictures. It all looked very colonial. The sun is beaming into the central courtyard at last!
Now we had a pile of washing to do, both clothing and ourselves! We spent a couple of hours in what looked like a Victorian kitchen scrubbing and kneading our laundry in cold water. Once the gear was hanging out to dry in the warm sun, we sat out on the roof with a 940 ml. bottle of cold “Sol” beer each.
A brief sortie into the town showed us that all of the shops of one kind were grouped together in the same area. We were in the hardware and pharmacy area, but a few radical shops are selling nativity figures and Christmas decorations.
The Belize Consulate is closed for the weekend, but Mérida seems a very pleasant place to spend a few days. We caught up on a bit of sleep in the afternoon and in the evening, we went off to explore the market.
It was a very touristy affair in a purpose-built building. As soon as we stepped through the door we instantly became “amigos” and invited to look at a myriad of, largely useless, knick-knacks. Declan bought a “Dos Equis” T-shirt after bargaining the price down from 10,000 to 6,000 Mexican Pesos.
We left the market and looked for a decent restaurant and finally settled for a café which was offering two hamburgers and a coke for 2,200 Mexican Pesos. From here we went on to a spacious open bar with ceiling fans and a colonial style on Calle 60, opposite the 17th-century Iglesia de Jesús which was built by Jesuits in 1618. The church was built from the stones of a destroyed Maya temple that occupied the site.
Like all the even-numbered streets, Calle 60 crosses town from north to south, through the Zócalo. This is a fun place to stroll and unwind at a sidewalk cafe or listen to some music. Concerts are often held in the Parque Hidalgo and on Plaza de Santa Luciá, which you can enjoy in the cool of the evening.
Here we met an inebriated young Mexican who was pretending that his transistor radio was a walkie talkie. He spoke English but mainly stuck to singing American songs and saying “Hey, do you know that one”?
We were then joined by an American businessman who was down here in “the Taiwan of the 1990’s” exploiting the cheap labour. “These suckers work for peanuts”, he enthused, much to the disgust of our drunken Mexican friend, who left us. “You can butt fuck the President of this shitty country for $50 bucks”, he went on, “and if you were lying in the gutter, incapacitated and dying, one of these people would come over and butt fuck you”.
We went on to “Poncho’s Bar” with the American and found our Mexican friend ambling around in a shuffling dance by the bar. Mexicans in silly sombreros served affluent gringos as we sat at a mock beach bar. The air was filled with the scent of burning mosquito coils and the sound of pop music.
Drinks were ridiculously expensive at 2,500 Mexican Pesos for a bottle of “Dos Equis” (2X) but Declan managed to work a flanker and we only ended up paying for three of our twelve beers (drunk between the three of us). At midnight we stumbled back to our hotel and collapsed into a drunken slumber on our beds.
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