Street Views in Mexico

During our cruise to Mexico last summer, one of our shore excursions was to the Mayan ruins of Xcambo and a nearby beach, getting there by way of the Jaguar Safari Bus. But for me, getting to our destinations was part of the fun. I am always interested to see new places, so I spent much of the bus ride through Yucatan looking out the window to see what I could see. While we were in the city for a short time, we quickly reached the rural areas, and some of those out-of-town views were rather interesting, such as this one:

So many interesting things about this scene. Of course, the first thing to catch your eye is the Volkswagen Beetle. Better yet, it isn’t one of those new models that tries to look like the old models, but instead, this is one of the actual old models. Paint some stripes down the middle and add a circle with “53” in the center and you would have Herbie the Love Bug. Maybe it really is Herbie trying to live out his days incognito, hoping not to be spotted by tourists with cameras. Or maybe it is his younger brother, Harry.

But there are other interesting points about this photo, too. I like how the road leads down to the water, as did so many of the roads that we passed as we were riding. The bright colors of the buildings also pop in the bright sunlight. And of course, the palm tree looks cool to those of us who happen to be palm tree fans. Surely I am not the only one, right?

Also, it is rather small in this photo, but down at the end of the street is a Six shop, and there seemed to be one of those on almost every corner. I was starting to feel like that was the 7-Eleven or Starbucks of the area. You may remember that we had stopped at another Six station along the way if you read the part of our trip report from that day.

We also passed this little place along the way. I am not sure if it was mainly a house, or a shop, or both. The hand-painted sign at the right says, “There is ice in bags and pieces,” and there is indeed an ice cooler at the left of the building. I am guessing the “pieces” part meant that you could get loose ice for your cooler instead of a whole bag of ice, but that is just a guess. You can also see a young person inside the building, and of course the motorcycle parked out front. Just an interesting little scene as we were making our way along.

Here is another street scene, similar to the first photo up above. There are some similarities and some differences, of course. The main difference is that this street is paved, and the main similarity is that the street once again leads to the water. But here there is a street vendor of some sort at the left, waiting for customers to come along to buy his fruit and vegetables. Also, coming down the street is someone on a motorcycle pulling a small trailer, which is an interesting way of doing things. I don’t know if he was going to see the street vendor, or if he was on his way somewhere else. As with the above scenes, we were passing each of these quickly, and I just snapped some photos out of the bus window as we were rolling along.

It was all interesting to see, and also interesting to look back on it now to take a more detailed look at each of these to see what we might have been passing. It was slightly difficult to take these photos, because the bus seats faced inside the bus instead of straight forward, as you can see from our photo:

So I spent a good bit of time turned around, but no one around me seemed to mind. Or at least they didn’t say anything about it.

It is always fun to see how things are in different parts of the world, and I was glad that I thought to take a few photos along the way.

The one who mocks the poor insults his Maker, and one who rejoices over calamity will not go unpunished. - Proverbs 17:5

About the photo:

As I mentioned, these were just quick photos out of the bus window. I tried to make sure I had everything set the right way on my camera, but I was thankful to have the Raw files to be able to edit to cover for any problems that might have arisen. For example, the exposure in the first photo was off quite a bit, so I was able to use the information from the Raw file to darken it up slightly without losing any of the detail. Here is a before-and-after view, reminding you to always shoot in Raw mode whenever you can:

Photo: A single Raw exposure, processed in Photoshop. Read more about photography tips, photo software, camera gear, and more at Steve’s Photography Tips.
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10
Lens: Olympus 14-42mm IIR
Date: July 19, 2016
Location: Progreso, Yucatan, Mexico