June 1, 2007

For the first two months or so of our road trip, we had hung with the RV crowd in the campsites on the Baja and central Pacific coast.

Then we got to know the other language school students at our Spanish school in Guanajuato.

Ever since Palenque, we are now seeing and socializing with a third type of visitor to Mexico: the backpacking "traveler" crowd, mainly university students or couples in their 20s.

We figure this demographic shift is because we are now on the Yucatan and close to Mexico’s Mayan ruins and its famous Mayan Riviera beaches, or perhaps because universities/colleges are now out for the summer, or a combination of the two.

The Hotel Trinidad in Merida, where we stayed, definitely caters to this crowd.

Consisting of three or four distinct buildings – one a converted newspaper office - that are now organically fused together, it has hallways (indoor and outdoor) going here, stairways going there, and seating pods and guest rooms just about everywhere.

And every square inch of wall space in this de facto gallery is covered in great, original art.

It wasn’t the art that clinched it for us, though. It was the hotel’s little parking lot off Calle 51 and especially the small pool in the back corner of the property.

This is because day in and day out the temperature is now consistently in the low to mid 30s, and with the humidity feels at least 10 degrees hotter.

Coping with this heat while living in a VW van presents daily "challenges" for us - we are less patient with each other, we are less interested in the sights, etc. - and at times it has even caused us to re-think the duration of the trip. Yes, it is unbelievably hot.

For now, however, we intend to "battle on", relying on the following strategies to keep us going:

(1) somewhat counter-intuitively we like driving during the middle of the afternoon in a van that doesn't have A/C because the wind coming through the windows provides some relief;
(2) camping at places with pools, be they for ducks or for humans;
(3) taking lots of cold showers; and
(4) occasionally staying at hotels that are more expensive but that have A/C.

Yes, we know, life is tough in Mexico.

Key Facts & Figures:

-Hotel Trinidad: $20/night