The first night we stayed in the small town of Zoh Laguna. This is an old company town, a logging town, where back in the day they cut down beautiful old mahogany trees for people like us (our Eichler used to have almost all of its inner walls covered with mahogany siding). The town has about 1200 inhabitants and most live in old company housing, small clapboard houses that are actually quite charming. Many of them were decorated beautifully with Christmas lights and the owner of the cabanas we stayed in, Don Antonio, had the best display in town, with a big blowup Santa and snow man, a fake Christmas tree, and lots of those moving Christmas lights. Back home this would look incredibly tacky, but here for some reason, it´s quite charming.
So we stayed the night in these old cabanas which were´nt so bad for only 250 pesos. No matter that the toilet didn´t really work, you had to pour a bucket of water in it to make it flush. The owner, Don Antonio, was a charming old guy who had lived in his house next door for 58 years. His father had moved his family there to work in the logging mill and he just stayed, starting his little cabana business 20 or so years ago. He was also the cook in the restaurant and we had a very tasty meal of fried chicken and smoked pork chops. So all this was very nice, but the problem with the town was that this one weekend they were having their biggest fiesta of the year with live music and dancing. The thing takes place in the square and the GIANT loudspeakers were pointed right at our cabanas!!!! So it was a little loud, to say the least. Mexicans just LOVE loud music. Kind of like the guy from Spinal Tap, if the loud speaker dial goes to 10, somehow they turn it up to 11. Thank goodness we travel with earplugs and melatonin.
MEXICAN TRAVEL ADVISORY: Always travel with earplugs, it´s often very loud at night, even in the smallest villages.
So we only stayed one night here. Anyway, that day we visited a couple of great ruins; Chicanna and Becan. At Chicanna there is an AMAZING building with a carving of this monster image with a huge mouth that is the door...
I´ve never seen anything quite like this. To give an idea of the size of this, a person would stand about halfway up the doorway.
The next place we went to was Becan, about 3 kms from Chicanna. We were there for a couple of hours and saw just two other visitors. Becan has some great pyramids you can climb, some with fantastic views over the jungle. Here is one of them...
This site is also unique because it has a moat that goes all the way around it, although apparently it was never filled with water.
The biggie ruin that we came down here for mainly was Calakmul. This site was discovered in 1931 by an American botanist who was flying over the area looking for chicle trees. These are the trees whose sap is used for chewing gum. He reported it to some university and within months they had archaeologists down here checking it out. Calakmul is not easy to get to. You have to drive about 60 kms from the nearest town on the highway, then another 60 kms, down a little road to the site. So now it takes a couple of hours, but back then, when it was first discovered, it would take days. But it was well worth the trouble, as Calakmul has the biggest pyramid in the Mayan world. It´s over 150 feet high and it´s base covers 5 acres. Here´s a picture of it with the second largest pyramid behind it...
So we finally got to Calakmul, after leaving our cabana at 5:30 am, driving 2 1/2 hours and walking 1 km through the jungle. Then you come out on a huge plaza with amazing structures all around it. On the north and south side there are pyramids, one being the giant Structure 2 and the other being a smaller, but still huge, Structure 5. We climbed the 150 feet up the big one and got a beautiful view over the jungle, with Mayan buildings poking through the canopy.
Last night we stayed in another cabana in a place called Rio Bec Dreams. It gets rave reviews in all the guidebooks and actually it is a very nice place, with amazingly comfortable beds and a down comforter. This comforter came in very handy as the temperature this morning was 50 degrees! Who would guess it would be this chilly in sothern Mexico? That´s not so bad, as in the day it´s been in the high 70s, low 80s, perfect for ruin climbing. Anyway, Rio Bec Dreams is pretty nice except it´s right on the main highway, the only one anywhere near, so there are trucks going by constantly. Again, thank goodness for earplugs.
Today we actually went to 4 ruin sites, some of the best we´ve ever seen. The first was in a place called Xpuhil (sshhhpu-heel) and it had one of the most amazing buildings I´ve ever seen. It´s a three towered structure that is unique to this part of Mayalandia...
There are some wonderful carvings and it has a cool hidden staircase in the left hand tower which you can climb. Teeny tiny steps, so you really have to be careful.
Three more ruins today with some amazing pyramid climbing and looking out over thick jungle. Again, we were usually the only tourists, or maybe had to share it with one or two others. The tourists just don´t get down this way, they are all crowded up at Cancun and Playa del Carmen, which is a world away from here.
Here is a mask from the Templo de Mascares (which Amy dubbed Templo de Marscaponi), which are way cool!
Tonight we are back at Lake Bacalar staying at the quirky Casita Carolina. We have our own casita right on the lake and it is great. Today is the 12th, which is Virgen de Guadalupe day and when we walked into town we arrived just when a big procession was walking through town. So we joined up (the only gringos in a crowd of about 200) and walked slowly to the local church dedicated to Gudalupe. In front was a cop on a motorcycle, followed by a pickup truck with a big float on top of Guadalupe, then the procession of local folks, then a car behind us with an old lady singing Guadalupe carols through a loudspeaker. Most folks were carrying candles and the little boys were dressed as Juan Diego (who was the Aztec prince who Guadalupe appeared to) and the little girls as Inditas (indians).
Folks here will now be turning there attention to Christmas. Walking around the streets tonight there are a lot of great decorations. My favorite was a giant blow up Santa in his blow up helicopter, with the blades somehow turning around. Dinner was a couple of chicken tostadas and a couple of chicken sabultes (very much like a taco) with Coke...$6 for both of us.
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