Fire Beard!! (Mexico)

Today we drove from Palenque to Campeche. I was a bit sad to leave, as I was just getting into my Jane-of-the-Jungle persona, and the hotel was massively gorgeous woven into the surrounds, but Campeche has not disappointed. After stopping to grab some Dr. Peppers, we started out. The drive here was great. The roads were in fantastic condition, and at this point driving anything under 6 hours is chump change. We actually chose a slightly longer highway, because holy moly we hit the Caribbean!! We literally drove along the coast with crystal clear water and not a human in sight!
                                           
 I really wanted to pull over and take a quick dip, but we will have that opportunity soon enough. We got to Campeche early afternoon, which was good, because my trusty hostelworld.com did not give us a lot of options for places to stay. Luckily, when we arrived at the hotel we had looked into, they were nice enough to guide us to a cheaper alternative. I lucked out again and have a whole dorm room to myself! We walked around the town and zocalo a bit, grabbed some cheap food and settled in. The town is super cute. All prehispanic buildings, brightly colored, with the old fortress still intact in many places. Clint found a Chevy dealership, so we drove around to find it and see if they had an extra part for the trunk lock. No luck, as apparently every single things here closes at 3 pm. We had to walk for about 30 minutes before we could even find a place to grab food! Fortunately, for Jared, less so for Clint and me, we found a barber shop, the results of which you can see on Jared's facebook. In honor of Joe, Jared's friend that passed away, Jared transformed his beard into the flame beard sported by the game master in the Hunger Games movie. He looks pretty crazy, but he loves it!

pre-fire beard

post-fire beard

  Later, Clint went on a jog while Jared and I snapped some shots of the cathedral at sunset.

 Then surprisingly all the lights in town went off, restaurants, clothing stores, even the hostel...which meant no fans! The cathedral area still had some and we discovered a group playing Loteria or Bingo for Americans. It was a good vocabulary lesson, as the cards had numbers and pictures that they would call out. People were very impressed with our initiative to learn, so some would help whenever we seemed lost. Unfortunately we always got beat out by the professional old lady playing with 6 cards compared to our 1. Back at the hostel now. I was able to do a full load of laundry in the shower, which will hopefully dry over night so we can head to Chichen Itza tomorrow.