While staying in Merida, I knew I wanted to visit the city of Campeche. Though it’s only a couple of hours by car from Merida, it’s in a different state. (The city’s official name is San Francisco de Campeche, and it’s the capital of the state also called Campeche.) It gets far fewer visitors than Merida, and compared to the Mayan Riviera, it feels almost like Campeche gets no tourists at all. And I couldn’t figure out why. The photos I’d seen of Campeche when doing my research before my trip were stunning. It’s a little more remote than Merida, farther from the busy international airports, and though it’s on the Gulf of Mexico, it doesn’t have a beach. But these didn’t seem like significant enough reasons for visitors to be overlooking it. I was determined to go find out why this city isn’t on every Yucatan visitor’s must-see list.
It turns out that spending two weeks in one place still doesn’t mean that you have ample time to do all the things you wish you could do. Scheduling around a few pre-booked full-day tours and my Spanish class in Merida meant that I had no full days left to do a day trip to Campeche. I was determined to figure out a way, despite it being illogical, and I decided the only way to make it happen was to go there and back before my 4:30pm Spanish class. This meant waking up around 4:00am to catch a 6:15am bus and just crossing my fingers that there were no travel delays.
So that’s what I did. I forced myself to get up long before the sun rose and took an Uber through the near-empty city at dawn. I napped on the two-hour ADO bus ride, and we arrived in Campeche around 8:30am. I had just 3-4 hours in the city before I needed to head back to the station for my return bus, so I had to make the most of it. I did not account for just how far the bus station is from the Historic Old Town. And there are no Ubers in Campeche. I found a taxi outside the station to drive me into town instead. (I’ll note that Campeche is known for being one of the safest states in the whole country, and I would have prepared differently had that not been the case. I would NOT have gotten into a random taxi in Cancun, for example.)
The sweet little taxi driver and I zig-zagged in his falling-apart car through road work and blocked streets until we got to a corner of the walled Old Town, and I realized that he had no door handle on the inside of the back door. It had broken off. To open the door, I had to reach out the open window and open my door from the outside. I scraped my leg on something else broken in the car as I was getting out, and my leg bled for the rest of the day. I dodged cars as I hobbled across the busy street.
Once I got into the Old Town, I couldn’t make sense of why visitors aren’t heading to Campeche as fast as they can. Campeche is a walled city because there used to be a pirate situation. It sits on the Gulf of Mexico, and walls were built around the Old Town for fortification. Many sections of the wall are still standing today, and within the enclosed Old Town, the streets are painted every color you can imagine. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the colonial architecture is incredibly well-preserved. This was in November, so there were still a lot of Hanal Pixan (like the Mayan Day of the Dead) decorations surrounding the main square. It was about 9:00am on a weekday, and I had the streets almost entirely to myself.
I ate in a gorgeous café on Calle 59—the pedestrian-only restaurant row and most beautiful street in the city. The photos I took of the street look like I edited them to make the colors more saturated, but I didn’t—that’s just how the colors truly look. After I ate, I paid a small fee to climb to the top of the wall section that’s still intact enough for visitors to walk along, and I visited the base museum at its base. I sat in a modern coffee shop, bought chocolate in a fancy chocolate cafe, shopped for Christmas gifts in a neat boutique, and wished I could read enough Spanish to buy the books in the cute bookstore I found. There were far fewer English speakers than in Merida, but everyone was patient with my Spanish and made me feel like they were delighted I was there. I wandered out to the Malecon—the promenade along the Gulf—but I didn’t have time to walk all the way to the area of town where the popular seaside restaurants are. Vendors sat up booths on the way from the Old Town to the Gulf, and the sun was so strong that I felt like I was melting as I browsed.
Getting back to the bus station required me to wave my arms like a lunatic in the main square for 15 minutes trying to summon a taxi. There weren’t many taxis to wave at, and the ones that did pass were clearly already on a mission. I was starting to feel a little panicked when one finally stopped to let out a passenger and I was able to pounce. My taxi rushed me back to the bus station in time for my return bus and arrived back to Merida in time to hop directly in an Uber. I made it to my language class with 1 minute to spare. It was an exhausting victory.
Though it was far from the most logistically challenging experience I’ve had while traveling (I’m thinking about the memorable journey from Bulgaria to Romania), it wasn’t the easiest either. I wondered if there weren’t a ton of visitors simply because there is not (yet) a robust infrastructure for it. As gorgeous as the city is, it’s probably not the ideal destination for everyone. There’s such an emphasis in travel media and magazines about “hidden gems” and “off-the-beaten path” destinations and similar slightly-cringey catch-phrases. And while I think all travelers should consider visiting cities and attractions that are not in the top ten lists on Trip Advisor, I also think that different travelers will have different comfort levels, experience levels, and goals.
Campeche might be a challenging city to visit for inexperienced travelers or visitors who don’t Speak any Spanish. There’s not a big backpacking community, and there are only a couple hostels in town. Transportation is tricky if you don’t have a car. There are many tourists visiting Campeche, but not such a large number that you’re guaranteed to run into them. For some travelers, this type of trip might be logistically stressful. (My comparison, Merida is a FAR easier place to visit, and I think even very inexperienced international travelers would have an easy time there.)
For me, Campeche was absolutely worth visiting, and I’m so glad that I was determined enough to make it happen. I’d love to go back and spend a couple days in the city. For anyone who rents a car, Campeche would be a lovely base for exploring Mayan ruins in the region. It’s the perfect destination for anyone looking for a quieter city with a mostly-local population. I’d happily spend a week there just eating in seafood restaurant after seafood restaurant and taking photos.
For better or worse, I don’t think a city this beautiful will stay off travelers’ radars for long. The Campeche State Tourism board is doing a fantastic job with all of their promotional materials and social media. I feel certain that in the next five years, visitors will realize how gorgeous the city is and start flocking to it. You heard it here first. If a quiet authenticity is what you’re seeking in the Yucatan, hurry to Campeche before everyone else does.
