It was hot today but also really breezy in the city. I was bored and decided to drive out to the beach where it was really windy, not just breezy. Also hot, and humid and the palm trees were bending over. I drove about 15 km east to outside the little town of Chixchilub and pulled up at the beach in a residential area. Lots of big expensive houses with no one living in them. I used my compass on my phone and aimed the camera north west and took a pic. I think I was looking right at you James. The tide was high and the waves were as well because of the wind. You can faintly see a big cargo ship at the end of the pier in Progreso on the horizon.
Because it was Sunday, Progreso and the boardwalk there were jammed with people and all the bars were overflowing. I'll go back during the week and have lunch and get a better picture of the beach. There is more beach in Progreso, in Chixchilub it is fairly narrow. Even so, it is an area where the really wealthy people of Mérida have their beach houses. They generally only use them for August, Christmas and Easter. The rest of the time they are empty except for caretakers who live in small houses on the property. There are a lot of Canadians and Americans who live on the beach in the other direction from Progreso, in the town of Chelem mostly. The beaches erode there even more from winter storms, if I wanted to live on a Gulf beach (which I don't) I would follow the money and the better beaches to the east but... there is the 'flock together' thing that happens with expats, they all want to live near each other. I can't judge because when I first moved here I moved into the center of the old city where lots of foreigners were renovating the old stone houses. We did the same. If I were doing it again, I might move to an area a little more out of the congestion and traffic and with a larger garden. Hindsight though is 20/20.
