The Route
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We loosely say this is a trip to the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, which after all is the home of Poc Chuc. But the peninsula actually contains three states, one of which is Yucatan and the others are Quintana Roo and Campeche. These three states are markedly different from each other. Quintana Roo is the site of the tourism mega centre Cancun, and south from there is the Mexican Riviera, a stretch of Caribbean frontage that houses many all inclusive resorts. This resort land stretches 130 km on the one really major highway of the region, to Tulum. At Tulum the luxury tourism thins out in favour of budget travelers, until in the extreme south you have Chetumal, a launching point for Belize and Central America.
This trip while we will be charging up and down that Cancun-Tulum strip, its more of a jumping off strategy for getting to Yucatan, and the far west of the peninsula. Our true goal is Celestun, located in an ecological preserve on the Gulf of Mexico. Our second goal is the so called Puuc Hills south of Merida, and including the archeological site Uxmal, and where there are up to ten other Mayan Puuc cities on the so called Puuc Route to the south. For practicality, we are likely to only visit Uxmal, Kabah, and Sayil - which are all visible on the map above. (Actually Covid has knocked out all but six sites on the peninsula. Only Uxmal of the three mentioned here is likely open.)
Our big problem in touring Yucatan beyond Cancun-Tulum is that accommodation is to be found (of course) mostly in towns of a certain minimum size. The whole peninsula only has maybe a dozen of these, and even there the places to stay may be few, not available, or may be extravagantly priced "eco villages" for wealthy tourists who must have made a wrong turn on the coast. It's a much different situation from what we sometimes faced in the States, where we could be shifted this way and that trying to avoid big roads or big cities.
Another factor, that we are only now becoming vaguely aware of, is the closure of archeological sites due to Covid, and the closure of cenotes and caves due to storm induced flooding. We'll deal with those as we encounter them. We do see that unlike in Germany, Covid has abated for now in Yucatan. Now triple vaccinated, we are hoping that we will not be contributing to or shot down by the problem.
Here is the actual route as we see it now:
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In planning for Yucatan we have found the two guidebooks shown below to be very clear, and informative without blowing our minds:
We are actually throwing these, and one other plus a pile of pamphlets into our bag. Dodie justifies the extra weight by pointing out that the bag in question will be my bag. My attitude is that any extra weight only makes me stronger!
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