In the morning several dead mosquitos lay about us, probably killed by the high volume of alcohol in our blood! We went out and met Urkan and Sabina on the Zócalo and we went for a cheap breakfast in the corner of Calle 61 and Calle 62.
From there we marched to the Office of the British Vice Consul to get visas for Belize for Declan (Citizen of Eire) and Sabina (Citizen of Deutschland). These cost $10 US dollars, and we were told to come back this afternoon. Amazingly nobody at the British Consulate spoke English and the visa application forms were in German!
We spent the rest of the day browsing the vast air-conditioned supermarkets and megastores. Sabine took several street photographs of trussed turkeys, tethered pigs, men unloading sacks from a truck, and the vast swarm of flies in the bakery window attacking the bread.
Declan and I split off at 14:00 hrs. and headed for the main Bus Station to buy our tickets for Chetumal. There was a fucking massive queue for the main ticket window, but luckily there was a separate, empty window devoted to Chetumal. Tickets were 15,000 Mexican Pesos and the only available coach departed at midnight tomorrow. It was a six-hour 242.2 miles journey.
Chetumal is a city on the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. It is the capital of the state of Quintana Roo and the municipal seat of the Municipality of Othón P. Blanco. Chetumal is an important port for the region and operates as Mexico's main trading gateway with the neighbouring country of Belize where we were ultimately heading.
On the way back we bought some mosquito espirales (coils) and some bananas and settled down on the hotel roof for the late afternoon sun. At 16:00 hrs. we returned to the British Consulate to pick up Declan’s visa for Belize. We then toured the city with Urkan searching for replacement watch batteries and anti-malaria tablets, before returning to the hotel with a couple of freezing takeaway bottles of “Superior” cerveza (beer).
We sat on the cast iron balcony overlooking the street and watching a vast colony of ants swarming about on the floor. We were joined by a German guy who brought his own bottle of “Corona” beer and we were soon chatting away in the fading light of the evening.
Urkan and Sabine and the Californian couple came to call for us at 19:30 hrs. and the German joined us for an expensive meal of chicken and chips in a Lebanese Restaurante. That evening deteriorated into a piss-up, much to the disgust of Sabine, who wanted to watch some traditional Mexican dancing.
At last knockings Declan, the German and me were drinking bottles of “Dos Equis” on the Zócalo. At midnight we went back to the German’s huge single room with Victorian furnishings and polished off his supplies of “Corona” beer before returning to our room.
A couple in the next room to us were humping and moaning in ecstasy as we lit our mosquito coil and retired to bed, drunk and happy.
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