We caught our last ADO bus to Chetumal. Chactemàal (the original Mayan name) means "Place of the red wood" apparently (not that we saw much of it). The city is on the east coast of the Yucatan peninsular, and is the capital of the state of Quintana Roo. Chetumal is an important port for the region and operates as Mexico's main trading gateway with the neighboring country Belize.
Here is quality map courtesy of Quintanna Roo council. We could look back on our whole journey across Mexico on this, it was fun to reminisce...
The 1840s revolt of the indigenous Maya peoples against Mexican rule, known as the Caste war of the Yucatan, drove all the Hispanic people from this region; many settled in British Honduras (now modern Belize). Chetumal seemed like a strangely new town compared to other places we have visited, and it is relatively, having been resettled only just over a hundred years ago. We didn't seem to see many people around, althought there were a lot of parked cars, shops, wide streets and hotels, it felt like we were in a ghost town. It was quite odd.
We made a number of trips to the ADO bus station on the other side of town over the course of our two days in Chetumal. This wasn't intentional, sometimes things just are like that! One journey originated from the post office to the bus station to have my parcel checked and sealed up (why the bus station and not the post office, we will never know!) The lady at the bus station had fun laughing at our random souveniers, as she rummaged through them. She decided all was well and good, if a bit odd, and sealed the box up and then sent us on our way back to the post office to have the parcel weighed and payed for.
Here is an ADO mural in the bus station. Thanks ADO. The British public transport system could learn a lot from your efficient, customer friendly, cheap and reliable service. We salute you!
Chetumal seemed to be a concrete jungle, with some totally mad buildings. This one is a drive through off licence...no really!
This was the top recommended hotel in Chetumal from lonely planet. Its name was the Ucum Hotel. Wij thought that was hilarious in itself, but the colour was shocking, even in Mexico it seemed wrong, and this was only one tiny part of it, the whole place was painted like this. It was fully booked and we had to stay in a weird anonymous 'travel lodge' type place, boo!
Oh, if only! These are great, but not as good as a chopper.
We did get on and do some useful things away from the bus station. We went to the very impressive Museum of Mayan Culture. This was in a specifically designed and well thought out building. The displays were beautifully presented... models galore of all the Mayan temples in Mexico, as well as a three storey Mayan tree of life that explained the concept thoroughly.
The whole museum was filled with the sounds of the jungle, it was very atmospheric. Wiji was able to play the interactive Mayan maths game and convert mayan heiroglyphics into numbers and vice versa (I managed to watch). We also learnt about the Mayan calendar through interactive games. It was brilliant! In our continuing theme of Chetumal, we were the only people there.
Exibits included a Mayan underworld in the basement with moody lighting and sound effects.
A gecko ceramic container...and many more exhibits that I took piccys of for a school resource, whatever.
On one of our other many visits to the bus station we confirmed that we could book a bus ticket via Belize to Guatemala, the only thing was we had to return the next day to buy it!? LMAO. And so we did, return to the bus station again and again...despite all of this we were very sad to leave beautiful Mexico and the super friendly and welcoming Mexicans.
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