In which Sid and Doris see another Maya site, hand back the small car and pass through the veil between traveller land and tourist world.
Happily the Secret Palace breakfast included some American style pancakes about 6mm thick. Sid took these as the basis for a settled stomach and all was well in tummy town, as it had not been in bottom barrio. Enough, and on with the day.
Merida has a ring road worthy of a town of 50,000 but is a city of near a million people. So far we have not put a scratch on the Nissan March. “S” points out that driving here is the same as anywhere, only more so. Doris navs us through the grid system, through the suburbs, through a biggish ford to Highway 180 and our next site. We pass through the customary police controls. At one we are waved down but Sid and Doris make it obvious they are going to be much more trouble than stopping them could possibly be worth, smiling helpfully all the while.
Sid will usually say something about the car park. Mexico makes 3 to 4 million cars per year and employs more than a million people doing it. There is one car for every four people. The balance of cars to small commercials is about 60/40. The big sellers are Nissan, GM, VW, Toyota and Kia. Only in the last few years have manufacturers put airbags in cars for local sale as well as those for export, which is perhaps understandable given the size and number of the potholes. The average age of a car is about 13 years with many Beetles and first gen Corsas about to keep the numbers up. It will be a long time before the fleet is as safe as in Europe, US or Japan, but then people can get around at a price they can pay. It’s a balance, innit? The most ‘exciting’ car seen so far is BMW Z4.
What of our Nissan March? It is a 1.6 with about 108bhp, Mac struts at the front and torsion bars at the back and so very much like the Group N rally car Sid and Doris took on their honeymoon? Except that the March is on squealy mis-matched tyres, has an auto-box and weighs half as much again. We did not see if we could induce the snap oversteer that put friend Sue Toet and us on our roofs at different times. (While competing, in both cases.)
Meanwhile, back at the adventurin’. Ek Balam is another abandoned Maya site. Peak city was about 800 AD and various defensive walls and literally a last ditch suggest it was invaded by a people who subsequently did not live there. Rediscovered in the late 19th century it was mapped in the 1980s and excavated in the 1990s. Archaeologists were working on the stucco jaguar god relief when we climbed up to see the work. As ever going up steep things was easier than down. We rely on the sign boards and do not miss much but with a slight feeling of box-ticking as we want to be in Cancun before dark.
Pausing only for a memorial photo of the slightly less-damaged side of the unfortunate March, Highway 180 is regained through little villages. Advice to the young: go west (and north) to Mexico City. Try further north. We drop the March at the airport where the kindly National car hire staff direct us to drop it at another office because getting away from there to Club Med will be so much cheaper. The National staff run us to the Club for the equivalent of the local taxi fare with none of the hassle of having to engage with the airport taxi rank either.
Once in the Club we are no longer really in Mexico – Cancun is refreshingly upfront about this and has an area called HOTEL ZONE. We have had five days in Mexico City, five days on our mini road trip and now look forward to five days in limboland. After a very little hoo hah we have a fine room with view of the Caribbean, having come via the Gulf of Mexico. Sid has brought a piratical hat but unless there is a fancy dress night will probably keep that to himself.
Sid and Doris will sail, snorkel, yoga and mess about in the sea. But they will not really be having an Epic Journey so will sign off for a few days. Between us and our next stop in Maryland and the Epic US leg of this Adventure is our next Covid test and the US immigration authorities. As they say in Practical Performance Car, magazine of this and many other years: what could possibly go wrong?
PS It was National Butterfly day on the road from Merida to Cancun, we drove through clouds of them. And despite our best efforts, some butterflies were harmed in the making of this blog. Sorry about that.