Getting Around

There are two bus companies in this part of Mexico -- OCC and ADO. Most of the locals travel second class on these. If you have more coin you in your pocket, you choose ADO or OCC first class. If your pockets are a little heavier with the stuff, you'd choose ADO, GL and if you want the very best, you go ADO Platino which is the ultimate first class. We're going Platino today.

If we were laden with coin, we'd probably have chosen to fly from city to city and at night to sleep on fine Egyptian cotton sheets. But as Nelson, our Merida B&B owner said, "If you want to see the people and understand their culture, you have to sleep on the first floor, not the second."

ADO stations are spiffy places with lots of clean glass and as we found out today different levels of waiting rooms. At first we sat on blue hard plastic chairs in a room the size of three football fields where you pay to use the washrooms. Lots of passengers waiting there. Then Bob noticed another smaller room off in one corner. Because we had Platino tickets, we dragged our baggage through sparkling glass doors and settled into red plastic upholstered chairs. Like in the larger room, we could watch buses coming and going. An attendant checked our tickets. "You must go into another room," he said.

"Why? I asked. "Because this isn't the Platino waiting room, he replied. I shrugged as he led us us to a third windowless room. This one had blue upholstered fabric chairs, free washrooms, complimentary tea and coffee, TV and device chargers. We sat down on the soft chairs.

"I don't like it in here," I said to Bob. "What's wrong with it? he asked. "I can't see the outside and I want to go back to the room with the red seats. I found the attendant. "No you can't change rooms. You are in a special class."

"Well," I said (all along in my most polite Spanish, of course), "I don't feel special and it's like a prison in there." Luckily for both of us, our bus to Cancun arrived then.

Here is a cut and paste map of Mexico showing our route from Mexico City south by bus to Puebla, then Oaxaca, by plane to Tuxla, taxi to San Cristobel de las Casas, bu to Palenque, Campeche, Merida and Cancun.