Aaargh, Matey

Tonight we are in lovely Lake Bacalar, Yucatan, a town with a giant stone star shaped fortress built to defend the unlucky locals from Irish, English and French pirates. Long ago, this area was rich in many things - spanish gold from peru being transshipped, slaves, ´Campeche wood´which was a dye worth its weight in gold, and nice women. And while the spanish wantedto hang on to these, the English and French wanted them not to. so they actualy gave formal permission to great never-do-wells with names like PegLeg, these letters of Marque, which authorized them to sail right up to the clunky galleons and steal everything they contained. The piracy went on until at least the early 1800s... well maybe it is still going on today, just a different form.

but, I digress. I wanted to write a little about our first stop, which I actually really liked, being totally prepared not to. this was Playa del Carmen, which is one of many touristed towns close to Cozumel. Actually, it was not bad! we got there quite easily in a luxury bus from the airport in an hour, and the airport bus takes you right to the south end of the town at the ferry to Cozumel. the hotel we stayed at, Casa Toucan, was quite close, and it was fine.. well, a little noisy at night with dance clubs and dogs not actually too far, from our cute screened open air cabin, but good earplugs and we were fine. And it was really a cute hotel and they did have mostly solidly build actual cabins with glass windows, it was our own choice that we fell for the cute brightly painted screen windowed cabin with the bigger beds. The staff is clearly nice, the other travelers looked really happy. And, the town was bright, shiny, clean, most of the main drag is a calm nicely paved sort of elegant walking strip, without any of that high rise feel, and a street or two off it are some nice eating opportunities like the Hacienda de mi Rancho (what a cheesy name, but exquisite presentation, fabulous soup (crema de huitlachoche), its own home made tequila served right out of a wooden cask (Very tasty), some amazing stuffed peppers and something else with scallops. it was all so pretty and so tasty. expensive but still affordable. And we also had some great cheap tacos just up the street (stay off the pedestrian tourist street if you want to eat well). And in the morning we had fresh chilaquiles and tacos and yummy coffee in a great open air budget restaurant. Overall there, the sea is sparkling, the sand is broad and so very white, and there are some nice luxurious touches in the little hotels. a lot of cheesy tourist pitches, lots of junk and handsome guys selling it, but really, not bad.

From there at 9ish on Sunday morning, we had a great ride in another luxury bus, with a singing bus driver no less, way down 4 comfy hours to Mahahual which is almost to Belize. well, partway along our smiling singing bus driver got down on a side street greeted by his adorable four year old daughter and five year old son, and Mr Grouch took over the driving, but... the singing guy, was great. Not much to see on this journey, the country side is mostly all the same, a four lane divided highway, and flat flat green green scrub covered land... but about 4 times, every hour or so, the bus stops in one of the larger yucatecan towns with modern life except for with the occasional granny wearing embroidered white.

the next 3 days, we spent just outside the small village of Xcalak. ShhhhKa´lak. this is on a mangrovy shore protected by a reef, with narrow white beaches, the occasional palm tree, and not much else. we were at a really pleasant little hotel Craig has I´m sure written of, run by Dave who served liquor back in texas to Emmy Lou Harris and Townes Van Zandt, and his amazing intuitive wife Kim, a lovely woman with very calm blue eyes. they were both sweet as pie. we had a good time riding fat tired rusty bikes along the long mostly dirt road that runs for 45 km along the beach, back up to Mahahual. but luckily it does not go all the way through, because Mahahual is a cruise ship town, and Xcalak, is definitely not. about a third of the families there have lived there for ever... many are intermarried with spanish speaking families on the next island south which happens to be in Belize... most are fishermen... so far the gringo homeowners are rare, and yet, because of the little hotels on the coast, there is some really, really great food to be had, with your toes in the sand and your hands wrapped around a cold beer as you look at the sparkly water and try to figure out your next move. which is usually to a more horizontal position. The only real downside to the beaches along here is that there is trash from all over the caribbean carried directly here and beached by the gulf stream.. if you wanted a lifetime supply of unmatched flip flops and underarm deodorant containers, you could find them. and the coral is kinda mostly dead. but the fish are lovely and who cares, the sea is sparkling the sunrises are dreamy and a fresh wind is blowing gently all the time.

Xkalak also, the actual town, is just about 5 streets each direction, all of them are good clean dirt, and half the lots are empty (full of green weeds). The houses are mostly cement because the town was wiped out in a major category 5 plus in 1954, but they have little balconies and wooden porches and are painted mostly in those nice caribbean color combos. Palm trees fringe the water, and little kids ride both bikes, and motorbikes around. and there are cute elementary schools and soccer fields and volleyball fields. Lots of dogs, no cats. About 3 restaurants which in the off season, trade which days they will mostly be open, so that everyone makes some kind of living until things get busy again which I guess starts next week. Craig and I decided if we get back here, we might bypass the expensive comfortable boutique hotel scene, and instead get a simple basic 400 peso room in town as long as it has hot water. we actually liked the village a lot and biked to it several times each day we were there.

Oh and there is a new landmark feature, for us. most mexican towns have these really obnoxious topes, pronounced topays, cement bumps that are so painful to go over. here in xcalak, and nearby towns, since lots of the beach trash includes huge ship cables and ropes, they use these. they stretch the rope across the strees. the last foot or so, where a bicyclist or motorcyclist may have room, they just have normal one inch rope. we got to calling these, ro-pays. they come in those seamanly colors, green-white and blue-white and orange-white, you can see them and they are just a little softer, than topes.

Nevertheless... today we are finally off the caribbean shore, inland, and in a town that features mostly mayans and mostly catholics and is in love with the Virgen of Guadalupe, and we are at a really nice place, casita carolina, which is about 3 acres of lawn on a sparkling clean enormous lake, probably as large and clean as tahoe used to be, with actual waterlilies in it. The lake connects via some canals and sloughs with the ocean, enough that the pirates could come in to raid the area, but its fresh fresh clear clear water.

the town is along this lake front, it is not very spiffy, there are lots of empty lots and lots of places are closed until the weekend folks arrive, but it has a nice caribbean-mayan character, well behaved kids, cute teenagers all flirting, the packs of torch carrying bicyclist teenagers doing their pilgrimage thing in honor of the Virgin, and other teenagers practicing dances and performances that apparently will soon be done in the town square. right in the shadow of the pirate fort which is VERy hard to take seriously since from it, about five long piers go out to cozy vacationy palapa shaded decks where people lounge about in hammocks and-or swim. including the military: the naval station seems to be a kind of officers club, with a big huge hammock harboring the local guy who might be on guard duty of some kind but since he is horizontal and deep in a blue hammock, it´s quite hard to be sure.

Tomorrow we will go in to Chetumal, a Belize border trading city, by shared taxi, and go see the phenomenal mayan museum there, and buy sunglasses and underarm stuff and sun block (stuff that amazingly we could not find washed up on the Xcalak shore), come back the next night, and then the next day, we rent a car in Chetumal, to go deep into the jungle (which apparently has both malaria and dengue) to check out awesome isolated ruins.