We rented an enormous home in Merida for a few days, in the ballpark of 6000-7000 square feet. The house itself is beautiful, but the location isn’t very good and it’s far from the town center. Even so, good times are to be had.
Watching some pre-election political parody.
Touring some government buildings last night.
Dinner last night. I was the only displeased patron at this overpriced meal.
We left Hermosillo last night at 7pm and a arrived in Merida this morning at 7 a.m. The trip was utterly exhausting mostly due to the 7 hour layover in Mexico City. A layover where it was entirely impossible to sleep.
Fortunately our hotel allowed us to check in early this morning despite an email from them yesterday saying it would not be possible to do that. We slept for roughly five hours. It was amazing.
We are staying at El Gran Hotel. For 700 pesos (35 dollars) a night, it is pretty amazing. We’re staying here tonight and tomorrow night as my sister will get here late in the evening tomorrow. Tonight we will pick up my father at the airport around 11 pm.
The photo above was taken from our room at the hotel. Our room overlooks a little park.
We spent the day on the beach at Kino. This is the very best time of the year for the beach. It was mid-90s with a pleasant water temperature.
Recently a park for food trucks has opened up near our home. This is the 3rd park to have opened in the last year. The concept is great as it provides for numerous options for meals, nearly all of which are spectacular.
We met Juan and Ruth for dinner last night. As it turns out, the food truck that they ate at was owned by one of the guys we went camping with a couple weeks ago.
We had breakfast this morning at a little cafe near our hotel before departing for Guadalajara. The food was great.
We are now on a bus on our way to Guadalajara. We are currently on episode 6 of Survivor, season 16. So much fun.
We went to the lake this afternoon to enjoy lunch at a seafood restaurant. The irony of course is that none of the seafood was fresh water despite the restaurant being located on a lake. Even so, the food was really good and the atmosphere was wonderful. The weather has been in the sixties and seventies nearly the entire time of this trip which is such a refreshing change.
I had a shrimp kabob and a plate of french fries. Martha had a plate of octopus, which seemed a little strange.
After lunch we departed to visit a mall. Is probably one of the nicest malls we’ve ever visited, and certainly better than anything in Sonora or in Arizona.
So far I’ve been mostly exhausted on this trip and given the long hours of travel and a few hours of sleep, I don’t see that changing anytime soon. However, this morning we enjoyed a spectacular cup of coffee with a really nice view. This is the first cup of coffee I’ve had on this trip and it was very helpful.
We spent the day looking at properties and homes, mostly in the northeast of the city. The prices in this city are absolutely brutal. It’s a big city with over 4 million people and it is rapidly expanding which provides a lot of business opportunities.
Yun’s family happened to be in the area and met us for lunch downtown not far from our hotel. We had a spectacular lunch which included crickets, among other exotic options.
I have mixed feelings about this city. It is really nice, but property is too expensive.
We ended the day at an Italian restaurant that we have eaten at once before.
During dinner, we saw Yun’s Brothers walk by outside so we joined them all at an Irish Pub up the street. Live music, pool, and Jenga Extremo. Good stuff.
We just arrived to our final destination after a 4.5 hour bus ride from Guadalajara (3:30am HMO time). I wish I could say I was able to sleep on the bus, but I wasn’t. The bus depot here is huge! That’s exciting.
We took an Uber a few miles to our hotel hopeful we could check in 10 hours early. The city is beautiful at this hour.
This is where we were dropped off by the taxi. Our hotel is just up this little street and on the left. To our joyful surprise we found that they were willing to check us in so early. That was nice because we were nearly 24 hours without sleep and exhausted.
The hotel is really nice. Well decorated and friendly staff. There is an old well preserved in the lobby which is quite deep.
The rooms are not very big but the bed is, so that’s just fine for us.
We slept for 6 hours, which was 2 hours more than we intended but I messed up the alarm with the time zone change. So now we are off to explore!
