Campeche

  Campeche, Mexico
Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Today we carried on and drove to the town of Campeche in the Yucatan peninsular, by the time we got there we just decided to park up for the night.

Looking from a sentry window on the walls

This morning it was a quick trip into the town, the town is famous as a port that was raided on several occasions by pirates. As a result of these raids the Spanish decided to build a large fort to protect the people and the ships. In order to do this they actually built the walls of the fort out into the Gulf of Mexico which meant that boats had to sail in through the gate to get to the harbour. Nowadays some of the outer walls still exist, but they no longer reach out into the sea. It is possible to walk on the ramparts for about 300 metres over the main gate into the town. This section is all original, including the massive wooden doors that help secure it. Above the doors is a small bastion that overlooks the exterior gate, but also has holes in the floor through which various items can be fired, dropped or poured over any attackers. They also had a pirate museum in this section although it did not really have any original objects on display.

The garden in the old bastion

The main thing of interest was that the Skull and Crossbones flag was not the main pirate flag. It actually belonged to one of the 12 named pirates, all of the others had their own flag, and for example Henry Morgan had a picture of a skeleton fighting against a normally dressed man! As part of the existing fort they had built a series of bastions or mini forts in the walls and several of these still exist. In one of them they have made a tropical garden with just over 250 different varieties of plant and trees, all landscaped around a waterfall and fish pond. We recognize a lot of the plants which we grow in greenhouses back home but they are almost like weeds here. There is another small fort about 4 kms out of town dating from the same period, the 17th century, this one has an s-shaped entrance path that leads to an outer gate, then a drawbridge and then the main gate. Inside this fort is a museum of

The sites of the Mayan ruins

anthropology, this was a nice little museum with lots of good examples of the Mayans who lived in the surrounding areas, including some of the islands. This museum also had

In the museum

information boards in English as well as Spanish and the native dialect Tolti.

Looking in to the old town

Finally it was a quick drive back through the old town inside the fort. Here you can see how they have spent lots of money making it all pretty for the tourists, every building has fresh pastel coloured paint on the walls with the windows highlighted in white. It almost makes it look like a toy town. After that it is back to the vehicle for the night.