Mexico Part 2

Have you ever been in a place where the humidity is so high makes it hard to breath? That is Merida, Mexico during the monsoon season. Merida is inland about thirty miles in a low lying area about sea level. It is close to the Tropic of Cancer with trade winds from the east making it a tropical wet climate. The average temperature is in the low nineties with May being the highest month, usually around one hundred degrees in the afternoon.


I arrived there in August, the goal was to have the camp set up and ready to start the pump the station and pipe line by the time the monsoons were over in October. The first week is always the boring stuff, just feeling your way around and finding locations. You always seem to find people that want to help you, the first week usually means they are used car salesmen that want you to line their pockets. It's not tell the third or fourth week that you find the ones that really want to help.

Going back the second week, I had the company of Bobby Lee's wife, Marie Ward. She is a delightful woman, a charming southern beauty through and through. Bobby Lee always said he married up and while she married down. I have to agree with him on that. In all the years I have known her I have never heard one derogatory remark come out of her mouth. I never heard any negative remarks of any kind or anyone saying anything negative about her. Anyway, she was coming down to set up house keeping in a house Bobby Lee rented the week before.

Coming from Cancun there is a military and customs inspection checkpoint at the state borders of Yucatan and Quintana Roo. Typically you show your passport and vehicle documentation and they let you right through. The men managing these sites are usually bored and this time they saw a pretty lady and decided to search for contraband chickens. We didn't have any but we did see two buses pass by while we were there with chicken coops tied on top.

They have some highly unusual driving traditions in the Yucatan. The average speed on the 180, the highway between Cancun and Merida, is around seventy. It was a two lane highway with extra wide shoulders. One of the hardest things I had to get used to driving this highway was if I came up from behind on a vehicle and he flashes his left turn signal, it may mean he intends to turn left, but it would most likely means it’s safe for you to pass. On two-lane roads, the vehicle in front may drive on the shoulder so you can pass between him and oncoming traffic. In return drivers behind you expect this courtesy and may express their wishes to pass by flashing their headlights. So if you see a vehicle barreling down the middle of the road toward you, it is common courtesy to give him some room and let him through.

The other thing I really remember about the driving there,Yucatecos love to honk their horns. After I found out that it was their way of telling other drivers “here I am” I stopped being offended and expected to be honked at. I can say that I never saw any road rage in the three month or so I was traveling there.

Next time in “Mexico” I'll get more into the people, the job and the jungle.