After Valladolid we decided to go to the endpoint of our train route and then work our way back. San Fancisco de Campeche was founded in 1540 by Spanish conquistadors. It was attacked multiple times by pirates and others so they built forts and a wall around the inner city. Along with Quebec City, it's one of the only cities in North America with most of its historic old city walls intact.
Campeche turned out to be one of my favorite stops and that started right from the train station. Most of the new Tren Maya stations are outside town but they usually had fancy Tren Maya shuttle buses. Here it was an autonomous bus rapid transit that had multiple stops, including the airport. I've never ridden in an autonomous bus before so that was cool.
Our hotel was on the pedestrian street that crosses the inside of the walled city. There were lots of restaurants with tables in the street. Even though Mexico grows lots of coffee, most of the coffee I had wasn't that great. The best of the trip was at Origen in Campeche.
The main square and church were only a block away from our hotel. When we walked over there we discovered there was an open air exhibit of insect photographs by Levon Biss. I'm a fan of his work and have three of his books (Microsculpture, Seeds & Fruits, and Extinct & Endangered). It was amazing to see his photographs 6 ft across. Roughly 8000 photographs are combined to create each image and they have incredible detail. There were about 50 of these photographs displayed around the square.
Our hotel was only a few blocks from the water. The first morning, as we were walking along the waterfront, I noticed something moving in the water. It turned out to be an octopus. We've seen octopus while diving but I never expected to see one from shore. According to iNaturalist, it's a Four-eyed Mexican Octopus (Octopus maya) - an endangered species that was first discovered near Campeche. It was hard to get good photos from the walkway with reflections, but at least they're identifiable.
I was also happy to see some shore birds along the walkway, including a Green Heron that was there both days we were there. It seemed to be having good success catching fish.
Even the statue had wings and pelicans at its feet.
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