Monday February 12, 2007 A Three Week Visit to the Yucatan in Mexico - Day 1

We arrived in Merida yesterday evening after a 7 hour flight from Calgary to Houston to Merida. Larry and Mary Ann met us at the airport and drove us to their unit at San Bruno. We had a lovely evening meal and a couple of fine reds to toast our getting together again.

Then we were up early to begin our touristing. We drove back to Progreso for a few supplies and then after a short lunch drove east from San Bruno to our first visit to a set of Mayan ruins. This was just a short drive beyond a flamingo lagoon and less than 10 km from our unit. It is called Xcambo. Fantastic!

A. Best 10 Mayan ruin images

The following description of Xcambo is taken from a tourist guide publication called Yucatan Today.

The oldest evidence of occupancy is from 150 BC to 300 AD. This center was a source of salt to other nearby Mayan cities. There is a marked similarity between the buildings in Xcambo and those inland in Izamal.

B. Best 6 tourist images

These pictures were all taken early on our first morning in Mexico. The unit, rented by our friends Larry & Mary Ann, is on the north shore of the Yucatan peninsula, north east of Merida.

looking east	our unit is the one on the left
looking west	looking east

The beach is covered with sea weed as far as one can see/walk in either direction. There is also a lot of garbage hidden in amongst the weeds. It does not make for that pleasant a walk. The water from the Gulf of Mexico remains very shallow for over a mile off shore.

What an amazing introduction to the area! In our first day we saw numerous birds, particularly flamingoes, as well as Mayan ruins. The bird wataching was certainly facilitated by the Millers, who knew both where to go, and what it was that we were seeing.

C. Birdwatching

I have decided to omit the bird photos from these daily journal pages, and instead provide a link to one of my standard notebook web pages which will describe the bird watching activities.