today, using shared minivans called combis, we have gone from city life to country towns. it is so nice. We've visited 3 of them, in a row: Hecelchakan pronounced sel cha KAN, about 60 km north of campeche, then Calkini, pronounced cal ki NEE, where we are staying, and then Becal. they really are fun. The smaller the town, seems like the more friendly.
The combis are cheap, and you get elbow to elbow with local folks. we had already figured out which side of Campeche´s big market, to find our combi. we showed up, asked and were immediately hustled on to the one that was about to leave. the local combis are not taxis, they are large comfy vans with seating for about 12. craig was originally going to get the middle chair beside the driver but they quickly shunted folks around. I got the very back bench, with some girls going to the town right before Hecelchakan, to the local institute where they are studying to become licensed social workers. they were shyly eating hamburgers from the same place we had had breakfast. they ate them in tiny tiny little bites ... lasted most of the trip. I´d have wolfed them. In front of me, a woman carried a toddler. it was getting quite hot, but we could not open the windows wide, because mexicans believe strongly that you get a cold from getting chilled, so no way could we get cooler because the little guy might get sick.
In Hecelchakan where we originally thought we might stay, tourism infrastructure was a little lacking: the only hotel I could find was a bright lime green very modern and very dirty one with unfriendly staff (apparently there is also a 5 star hacienda outside of town but when we passed it later, it looked out of comish anyway), and the main attraction of the town besides the very cool, very undervisited museum of Jaina clay figures, which is the very tasty food, turns out to be something that only happens in the morning until they runout, about ten am. imagine coming all the way to Hecechalkan to have some very savory pork or turkey, for breakfast! our eating habits have to turn upside down here. we are now used to eating meaty tacos first thing in the morning, but not everyone´s stomach would be ready. Also Hecelchakan although it did have a neat town square, huge, with a big church and many arcades around their public buildings, did not seem to have a lot of tasty refreshment stuff. doubtless we would have found it, but we got a very fast ride on the next combi, to Calkini.
the biggest pleasure on this ride has been seeing, again, women wearing white huipiles, lots and lots of three wheeled bicycle taxis, and among the cement houses, some of the simpler, oval shaped traditional buildings, where the walls are parallel poles, and the top is made of palm thatch. Tonight we have walked out a few blocks where the town starts to melt into the countryside which is fairly tropical. The area around the houses gets larger and larger, and there are flocks of turkeys, and room for orange trees and banana trees and such things. lots of the houses are painted bright colors and parked next to them are lots of the tricycles. hardly anyone uses a car. it´s real real nice.
Calkini and many of the other little towns have very pleasant Yucatan style squares. a large old church, some big old trees, a series of modern plazas with concrete, playgrounds of metal and lots of 1960s style cement abstract statues. except in Bekal, where the cement fountain is in the form of 3 panama hats. thats because in this town, they make hats, by taking specially prepared palm fiber, bleached and straightened, down into moist caverns below where the humidity makes it very easy to weave the fibers. The sweetest bike taxi guy immediately identified us when we got out of our combi, followed us as we took a little tour to find Craig some food to eat, waited for us while we ate deep in the cook's house at his kitchen table, and then pedaled us over to his favorite hatmaker. unfortunately we did not end up buying one but we tipped him a lot becuase he really had taken us to a great place and given us lots of chatty information about the hats.
Craig I am sure has written about the lunch. we were told we could find food at a particular house, so we expected to find in front a little room with cement floor and tables. not so. we went immediately into the house front room which had several matrimonial sized beds and lots of stuff, including grandma who has lost a foot and is in her wheelchair (moving around well and happy to see us, through the next room which is similar, into the dining room which is just like being at home, with a big 1950s fridge that we are told to open to get the drinks we like, and all the walls are surrounded by kitsch. including lots of seasonal christmas kitch. The man of the house waves us in, sits us down and says we have chicken with vegetables, a chicken broth, or beans and pork. the chicken is ordered and it has the first big pile of veggies we have seen including lots of tasty squash. the broth of the soup is rich and it also has tasty vegetables. two very spicy sauces are available as well as limes and onions and cabbage. soon a middle aged bachelor comes in and also sits with us at the table, he gets a very tasty pork dish of some kind on black beans. everyone is very relaxed and seem to be very entertained by us.
similarly back in our town, Calkini, people are having fun with us. a real nice guy David who lived 12 years in the San Jose-East palo alto area came up to us to tell us where to find practically everything: the restaurant tourists would usually choose, the restaurant he prefers, and the market stalls he really, really prefers but thought we would decline. a big group of students sat near us at one of the restaurants and smiled and smiled. Old ladies out in the sticks offered helpful comments about the things we were photographing and helped us out when they thought we were lost. And now, we are about to go next door, to the Casa de Cultura, for what I suspect will be one of the first Posadas of the Christmas season. every night between december 16th and 24th, certain people will have parties in their houses and one lady today told us it mainly starts, right now, with school events and parties. The routine in central mexico is that people pretend they are mary and joseph looking for a place to settle down and birth their baby, and they get turned around til they turn up at the party house, but we don't of course know yet what the party we have been asked to, will be.
Casa de Cultura is a great thing in yucatan and veracruz, it is a government sponsored sort of multipurpose center where people can take classes in traditional dance and music, often. we have not run into such a warm reception here in the yucatan as we did last year in veracruz, but today in Hecelchakan we definitely had just missed an event in the morning, people were filing out, and tonight we have been invited in to the special exchibition and ´party´. so we are looking forward.
I am hoping tomrrow morning we can walk out into the countryside some more. wish we had time and money to drive over to the coast where the birds and fish abound. next year.
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