Road to Merida Wednesday 16^th September 

It was another early start leaving the campsite before. We stopped for coffee en route and watched the sun rise.

The scenery was a mixture of farms, rough pasture and jungle.

We caught a glimpse of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea so it seemed the thing to do to take a lunch break on the shore, looking out to sea and watching the clouds scud by.

We entered Yucatan province and were driving along the road when we were flagged down by the police. This had happened a few times but mostly they just wanted to check our papers and permits. This time they wanted us all off the bus and started searching our bags and patting us down. When there are ten people and a bus full of luggage and camping gear this inevitably takes time. It was more than twenty minutes later that they must have realised that we weren’t drug smugglers or trafficking arms or immigrants so they let us go. I didn’t take a picture of them but I did sneak a couple of shots of an iguana that was sheltering from the sun with the police under a bridge.

Merida is a delightful colonial style city with the first cathedral built in the newly discovered Americas with the town being founded in 1541 with the foundations of the cathedral started in 1569. Our hotel in Merida was nothing from the outside but a quirky mix of styles on the inside an full of character.