Visit Campeche; Poo where I have Poo’d

Yes, dearies, Campeche is a beautiful place to become ill with the amoebas that will invariably catch up with you. It is a well-cared-for, colorful, sunshiney colonial fort town on the Gulf-side of the Yucatan Peninsula. It has a rich history of pirating and Catholicism, including a marker for the very first mass ever delivered in the Americas. Wowza.

Don’t let unseasoned travelers make your reservations, or you will find yourself in an overpriced, windowless, echo-y tomb. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

Yes, of course you did!

Newly Clean and Pure

Last night a lovely woman I met while traveling in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas regaled me with horror stories of “Mayan Purification Ceremonies” that seem much more like coerced sexual trauma – rocks in your undies, humming mouths in your crotch, hands all over your body, and that’s just the beginning. Naturally, when Sarah and I today went to the famed church San Juan Bautista in Chamula, we signed right up for a purifying cleanse with a curandero called Domingo.

I was the most skeptical and least comfortable of the three of us – Peggy from Ireland, Sarah from England, and me – and, honestly, if Peggy hadn’t wanted to have one, I’d still be the dirty little girl you’ve become accustomed to.

But let’s start from the beginning …