February 2008
The Casa San Mateo in Merida, Mexico, is highly recommended if you are a traffic noise enthusiast. The bedroom walls, which contain their windows, face the street, and the lower one is just four feet from the curb of Calle 57, a one-way, two-lane street that serves as a thoroughfare for Merida traffic headed west. Both the amplitude and the variety of traffic noise are outstanding. Cars, buses, trucks with loose and banging loads and many with defective mufflers, motorcycles with and without mufflers, and the occasional ambulance or police car with siren wailing regularly accelerate down the street, some only six feet from the bedroom window. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at around 2 PM the garbage truck arrives with a satisfactory level of assorted sounds. Across the street some 30 ft. away the flat wall of another building nicely amplifies the noise by reflection. Unfortunately for the traffic noise buff, there is lull in the noise between 1 and 5 AM, and silences as long as 15 minutes can occur. In all, however, Casa San Mateo is highly recommended for the traffic noise aficionado.
Top of Page