Xpujil

After my round trip in Guatemala, I took a very crappy bus and an even crappier boat back to Mexico, to be able to visit the ruins around Xpujil. Xpujil is not very known, or at least not very visited, as difficult to reach. From Chetumal it takes 3 hours of bus, if I remember well, to reach the village of Xpujil. Then you have still to organize how to get to the three different archeological sites. Here I descibe how I did that... 
;-)

Shortly said, the visit was amazing: I was alone in all the sites! I took the bus in the early morning from Chetumal, to reach Xpujil. There they told me that I had to take a taxi for 200 pesos to be able to visit the three sites. As I had to get up very early and my mind was not working so well, I totally forgot to take enough money with me, to pay, for example, the needed taxi! Fortunately, the bus driver who got me there, had a little stop, so that I was able to reach him just in time, when he was getting back on the bus, to ask him for a free ride. He had to go to Campeche, so that the ruins where on the road. I asked him to bring me to Chicanna, the farest away of the three sites I wanted to visit. As my Spanish was really awful, I always asked if I had to go out as soon as the bus stopped (In Mexico, and in general in Latin America, the buses stop as soon as someone wants to get in or out. People have just to wave with their hands from the street to get in the bus.). He tried to explain me some things, but I really had no clue what he was talking about! After a while he asked me how I wanted to go back, and I said "camminando" (walking). All the passengers of the first rows, for which I became an attraction, started to laugh. The taxi driver explained me, that it was way too far! So I said, that I would simply hitch-hicke back. He got worried and insisted to give me 20 pesos, to be able to pay a taxi at least to Xpujil. So nice!!!

The visits were great! However, it was more difficult than I thought to get a ride back. I had to walk a long time from Chicanna to Becan, the second ruin, before I got a ride on a truck. It was midday, and no cloud or tree provided me shadow.. I saw how the sun was getting the last drops of water from the asphalt, and I really started to ask my self if I'm gonna be lost in the middle of nowhere. I bound my jacket around my head to avoid a headache later one, and this probably didn't help me to get a ride from the few cars that just passed by. But finally this guy with his truck stopped. It was great to be inside there, as it was the first time that I had the possibility to be in a such a huge truck!

After my tour in Becan, I was able to find a short ride on a small truck that was transporting chickens. So I finally reached Xpujil again, and after my tour in the ruins, I was ready to take the bus back to Chetumal.

You remember the thing about waving your hands to stop a bus? Well, obviously at that moment, I didn't. I saw the bus coming, and as a typical swiss girl, I waited on the border of the street for the bus to stop. Well, of course, it didn't! Fortunately, right after the bus driver ignored my existence, a guy with a car, who probably just caught my frustration telepathically, stopped to ask me if I needed a ride. I told him that I actually had to catch the bus that just passed by... I jumped in the car and the guy started to run, like James Bond in a wild chase, to reach the bus! Luckily the bus picked up some people not far from us, so that I was able to get in too. This guy was, together with the bus driver from the morning, my hero that day. :-)