Bacalar, Mexico

 We started our winter in Mexico this year with a one week stay in Bacalar. We had a good flight into Cancun but spent two hours in the Customs line with hundreds more people trying to make it through. After a 6 hour bus ride from Cancun we arrived in the small town of Bacalar which is very close to the Belize border…

Bacalar is situated on a large lagoon and this was our first view…

We had a nice little condo in walking distance of the lagoon and the Centro square…

Great pool as well…

The Zocalo was decorated for Christmas with lots of people enjoying the warm evenings. Warm evenings are one of the best things about Mexico…

There were lots of stands with people selling marquesitas, which are waffle cones filled with your favourite flavour. Most people seem to like Nutella. 

The town is very small so we walked every day, often to the market to pick up food…

Lots of good fruits and veggies…

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   Here Don is checking to see if he has the right amount of pesos, he was short a couple but the seller gave it to him anyway.

Many piñatas for sale…

And poinsettias which are native to Mexico, In Mexico, the poinsettia is known as Flor de Nochebuena, or Christmas Eve Flower.

Walking home from the market…

Many of the houses have Nativity scenes in their front gardens, some very simple and others quite elaborate…

Bacalar also has lots of street art…

For a small place there are also so many amazing places to eat, both Mexican and international. We enjoyed some good food…

This place was called Mr. Taco and was busy every night…simple concept choose tacos, quesadillas or burritos and fill them with ingredients from different parts of Mexico. Don had trouble deciding…

 

I chose quesadillas with three types of filling…chorizo, chicken tinga and chicken mole. I couldn’t eat in all so it was breakfast the next morning.

This was an Argentinian restaurant…

Lots of upscale places as well…

Here we had blue corn tortillas and fancy quacamole…

And of course there is always the street food, this guy was on the corner each night selling tamales. He set up his chairs and the locals lined up…

One of the main sites to visit in Bacalar is the San Felipe Fort which is right in the Center of town. It was finished in 1773 and was built to protect the town from pirates who roamed the Caribbean coast. It is now a museum.

It overlooks the lagoon which the pirates used to access the town…

Speaking of the lagoon, it is the main reason that people visit this area.

It is approximately 60km long measured from north to south, and 2km at its widest. The lake is renowned for its striking blue color and water clarity, partly the result of having a white limestone bottom.

This is an aerial view of the lagoon, courtesy of Google. It shows the beautiful colors of the many cenotes in the lagoon. No wonder it is called the Lagoon of Seven Colors!

We rented a small boat with a guy called Jonathan and spent most of the day exploring the area.

Our captain Jonathan…

His boat, aptly named Maniac which describes him to the tee! We had a very interesting day! 

One of the most interesting parts of the lagoon are the stromolites which are mineral structures that look like rocks. However they are living beings that have existed 3500 million years and are one of the oldest living beings on the planet. Some say they were the beginning of life as we know it. They are found only in a few places in the world.

We toured the lake from North to South and it was such a beautiful day on the water…

Lots of places to swing over the water…

The sky was magnificent! 

Lots of paddle boarders…

Eco lodges along the lagoon…

Many fancy residences…

Lots of tour boats…

The colors were so vibrant…

Because we had a small boat we could get in through the mangroves…

You could see right to the bottom…

The clouds came in toward the end of the day…

I got a chance to snorkel and swim in the lake, it was so refreshing…

Here I was at the end of a canal of rapids which carried me down at a leisurely pace.

A couple of more pictures of the sky and water…

It was a wonderful experience to spend time in this special place, another magical place in Mexico! 

Our last day there was Christmas Eve so we went to church which had wonderful singing and a beautifully decorated altar…

They also have a tradition that on Christmas Eve families bring their babies to be blessed so there were lots of babies. They also bring their Baby Jesus dolls to be blessed and then bring them home to put them in the manager in their Nativity scenes. As we walked home from church the families were gathering for their traditional Christmas Eve meal, so many lovely traditions.

We really enjoyed our week here as we found Bacalar to be a very laid back, chill place. It was a great place to relax before moving on. 

The next morning saw us on the side of the road waiting for our next ADO bus ride. We travel light! 

Tampere, Finland

 We left Helsinki for a 2 hour train ride to Tampere, Finland’s third largest city with a population of approximately 250,000 people. It was recently the site of the 2023 IIHF World Championship final which Canada won. The Finns love their hockey. We stayed right beside the NOKIA arena and wish we had realized it was on as we could have rearranged our travels to be here, but such is life! 

Besides staying by the hockey arena we also were across from the bus station which was still busy late into the evening because in Finland this time of year there is only 3 hours of darkness and not that dark even then. This picture was taken at 11:45pm. It gets a little dark by 12ish and then at 3am it is fully light again. It takes a little getting used to what time is it really? 

We spent a few extra days in Tampere as we were getting to the end of our trip and we decided that we didn’t want any more travel days. It was a lovely city to end our journey through Northern Europe.

It is situated between two large lakes and the town is separated by a big river which runs through the middle of town and is also used to produce power. All along the river are walkways with lots of places to sit and we would often have our lunch there as the weather was very warm.

The river played an important role in the history of the town since Finlayson Textile Company,

the largest textile factories in Europe were located here in the 1800s with many of their smokestacks still intact. 

Finlayson’s textile production was quite varied: the mill produced many grades of fabrics and an enormous selection of yarn, clothing fabrics, and interior-design textiles. These operations required a large number of workers. At the peak of the production, at the turn of the 20th century, the mill had more than 3,100 employees in Tampere. The company’s production along the Tammerkoski rapids came to an end in the early 1990s, and all of its production in Tampere finally ceased in 1999. 

After they outlived their purpose the city redeveloped the area into residential and commercial properties and it is a very pleasant neighbourhood. 

There were houses provided to workers that are still residences today…

And a church where we caught a wedding party just leaving…

We visited a museum that gave us the history of the Finlayson mills and it was quite interesting to give a glimpse of life in Tampere at that time. 

One of the most intriguing displays was a miniature of the mills complete with people and machines of that time.

In this museum complex there was also the Finland Hockey Hall of Fame which Don really enjoyed. He tried his hand at scoring but with no luck! 

The Finns consider Jari Kuri to be the greatest Finnish hockey player to ever play in the NHL, here is his jersey…

Tampere is also considered the Sauna Capital of Finland with 55 public saunas in the city. One afternoon we took the bus to visit one of the oldest in the city established in 1905. It was a beautiful day so we go into the coolest sauna at 120 degrees and when someone throws water on the coals it immediately goes up 10 degrees and it feels as if you are burning.

After that you go jump in the lake which is 11C and then sit in the sun. You do this as often as you like and I must say after the first plunge it is refreshing and I can see why the Finns love their saunas. 

Don was the first in…

And this was me scrambling out after my first dip…it was cold! But after 3 or 4 dips it is wasn’t too bad! 

Since we had hot days here everywhere we went the Finns were out enjoying the sun and water…

There was also a very interesting Lenin museum in Tampere as it was the site of the first meeting of Lenin and Stalin and where they drew up plans for the new Soviet Union. 

Tampere with all of its’ industrial workers was ripe for a workers revolution so was very supportive of the founders of the Russian revolution.

Stalin and Lenin…

With Finland and Russia being neighbours there has been an on off relationship with each other, sometimes friends and sometimes enemies. 

This museum explored this relationship as well as the lives of Lenin, Stalin right up to Putin. 

Anyone want to be Lenin’s driver? 

Like most all of the other cities we have visited on this trip Tampere is also a very green city with lots of parks and trails to explore…

This group were listening to a musician give a recital in the park…

Wide tree lined streets everywhere…

Lots of fountains…

This park was not far from the Center of town and was huge…

Just another day on the trail…

On one of our walks we climbed an Observation Tower to have a look at the area…

Here you can see one of the lakes where Tampere is located, Finland has over 188,000 lakes and Tampere is the beginning of the Lake District.

Some scenes around the city…

Some of the older buildings in the Center of town…

This was the Workers Monument…

Lots of farmers markets…

Newer residences by the river, again with lots of walking trails nearby…

Lots of naked men around the city…

The theatre built in 1912…

The main square outside of City Hall is a outdoor cafe with lots of food trucks…

People enjoying the afternoon sun…

Brightly decorated streets…

After a relaxing stay in Tampere we took the train back to the Helsinki airport for our flight back home. This trip took us across 6 countries in one of the most interesting regions of the world we have visited. We have been very impressed with Northern Europe, with strong governance, generous social programs and an overall good standard of living. These countries often come out on top of the World’s Happiness Index and it is easy to see why. People we stayed with, people we met all told us they pay high taxes but they trust their governments to provide what is needed and more. Overall, another great trip in the books!