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.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
On the Panama Hat Trail
Today and tonight we have been doing the small town Yucatan thing. Amy, God bless her, has been doing her usual unending research of what to do and see. She found some small towns inbetween Campeche and Merida that you can get to by combi.
MEXICAN TRAVEL ADVICE: When going from town to town, it´s easy, fast and cheap to travel by ´combi´. These are cars or vans that carry 4 to 10 locals that go between towns. We usually pay 10 or 20 pesos for rides of 30 kms or more. This is a really good deal and easier then the bus and certainly easier then using a taxi.
We went to the town of Hecelchakan which has a great little Mayan museum. There are some wonderful figurines that were found in a nearby ruin. But the rest of the town wasn´t so great so we went to the next town, again by combi, which we are staying in tonight. It is called Calkini and it is a nice little town of probably about 7000 people or so. There is a town square and a beautiful church and government building.
Not a lot of eating options, but there is always a taqueria somewhere. We found a pretty good hotel, very clean and recently remodeled for 350 pesos per night. The TV actually had Star Wars, the first one, in Spanish!
Nearby is the town of Becal, which is famous for making the Mexican version of the Panama hat. As some of my friends know, I have a passion for fine Panama hats and wear them a lot. I have a couple of them from Equador and wanted to see the Mexican version and where it is made. So we took another combi (12 pesos) out to Becal and were immediately flagged by a local pedicab driver. In all these towns here the main mode of transport is the pedicab, where two people sit on a little seat while the driver is in back of you pedaling away. He said he would take us to the finest Panama maker in town, a Mr.Balbomaro, who has been weaving hats for decades. But first I told him we needed some lunch, so he took us to what was apparently the only restaurant in town. Was this a restaurant? Where you eat was in a family home...you walk through the living room and into the dining room, obviously the family´s dining room, and behind this was the kitchen. The choice was chicken or chile, so I chose chicken and this was basically a pot au feu, boiled chicken with veggies and a soup. Delicious!
From there our pedicab driver took us to Mr. Balbomaro´s house, but he was away looking for the plants that he makes his hats with. But his wife was there and she showed us around. So they weave their Panamas in caves, so it keeps the palm leaf fibers wet and supple. Mrs. took us down to the cave which was right below there house and gave us a demonstration on weaving and showed us the different size fibers, from a normal to a fino to a super fino.
A hat made out of normal, wider fiber takes a few days to make. The fino takes about a week and the super fino takes two weeks. They are quite beautiful hats, but they really aren´t finished. While they are blocked into shape the hat ribbons are not sewn onto the hat and there is no inner hat band for some reason. The fino costs 3500 pesos, about $300. So I didn´t get one.
This evening, toward sunset, Amy and I had a wonderful walk though the town of Calkini. Just walking along the back streets, the late afternoon light striking the multi colored homes, was quite lovely. Local folks were out talking to their neighbors and it was a great joy to see such real, rural Mexican life. Everyone passing would say buenas tardes and smile. People are so friendly here.
MEXICAN TRAVEL ADVICE: When going from town to town, it´s easy, fast and cheap to travel by ´combi´. These are cars or vans that carry 4 to 10 locals that go between towns. We usually pay 10 or 20 pesos for rides of 30 kms or more. This is a really good deal and easier then the bus and certainly easier then using a taxi.
We went to the town of Hecelchakan which has a great little Mayan museum. There are some wonderful figurines that were found in a nearby ruin. But the rest of the town wasn´t so great so we went to the next town, again by combi, which we are staying in tonight. It is called Calkini and it is a nice little town of probably about 7000 people or so. There is a town square and a beautiful church and government building.
Not a lot of eating options, but there is always a taqueria somewhere. We found a pretty good hotel, very clean and recently remodeled for 350 pesos per night. The TV actually had Star Wars, the first one, in Spanish!
Nearby is the town of Becal, which is famous for making the Mexican version of the Panama hat. As some of my friends know, I have a passion for fine Panama hats and wear them a lot. I have a couple of them from Equador and wanted to see the Mexican version and where it is made. So we took another combi (12 pesos) out to Becal and were immediately flagged by a local pedicab driver. In all these towns here the main mode of transport is the pedicab, where two people sit on a little seat while the driver is in back of you pedaling away. He said he would take us to the finest Panama maker in town, a Mr.Balbomaro, who has been weaving hats for decades. But first I told him we needed some lunch, so he took us to what was apparently the only restaurant in town. Was this a restaurant? Where you eat was in a family home...you walk through the living room and into the dining room, obviously the family´s dining room, and behind this was the kitchen. The choice was chicken or chile, so I chose chicken and this was basically a pot au feu, boiled chicken with veggies and a soup. Delicious!
From there our pedicab driver took us to Mr. Balbomaro´s house, but he was away looking for the plants that he makes his hats with. But his wife was there and she showed us around. So they weave their Panamas in caves, so it keeps the palm leaf fibers wet and supple. Mrs. took us down to the cave which was right below there house and gave us a demonstration on weaving and showed us the different size fibers, from a normal to a fino to a super fino.
A hat made out of normal, wider fiber takes a few days to make. The fino takes about a week and the super fino takes two weeks. They are quite beautiful hats, but they really aren´t finished. While they are blocked into shape the hat ribbons are not sewn onto the hat and there is no inner hat band for some reason. The fino costs 3500 pesos, about $300. So I didn´t get one.
This evening, toward sunset, Amy and I had a wonderful walk though the town of Calkini. Just walking along the back streets, the late afternoon light striking the multi colored homes, was quite lovely. Local folks were out talking to their neighbors and it was a great joy to see such real, rural Mexican life. Everyone passing would say buenas tardes and smile. People are so friendly here.
leaving footprints in the .... concrete
this morning in Campeche, the weather is warming. the breezes coming over the gulf of mexico are amazingly soft. we had breakfast at a fast foodery modeled on american style but serving sandwiches of 'cochinita pibil' (slow roasted pork in orange-lime) and chilaquiles.
we have learned a fact about ordering main meals in Campeche, which is do not order an appetizer. no matter what you order, (and this takes a while as waiters feel you should be able to linger a long time looking over the menu), in a while when your drinks come, so will come the botanas, the appetizer like snacks. last night at Restaurante Marganza, it was a large plate of little shrimp with delicate slices of fresh tomato and lime juice with probably cilantro, and an avocado mayonaisse spicy something that was really good, not like any guacamole I can remember, with crispy chips. (for our main dishes we had a dark red spicy soup that was a thick rich broth with medium sized shrimp in it, and a fish cooked in a sauce that apparently had squash blossoms, pumpkin seeds and goat cheese in it. it was buttery and delicious). Yesterday for lunch we took a taxi ride to a far off restaurant called Chac-Pel, which is supposedly one of the better ones, and it was ok. same deal, lingering menu ordering, one free appetizer of shredded crab with something else and one fresh white shrimp ceviche, and opur main dishes were a fish cooked in a dark red achiote sauce and peppers stuffed with seafood. this restaurant was not as great as the two truly greats we went to: two days ago, the Palapa de Tito Fito where we nearly went to heaven on lightly breaded local chiles filled with crab, or the evening meal at La Pigua. the very best.
We had quite a day yesterday in that we hooked up with a new friend, Joan Russow aka Joan Stevenson, who is traveling after being at the global warming conference. she is traveling under her stevenson alias as a reporter for some watershed magazine, but actually she was formerly the leader of the Canadian Green Party and has a lot of stories about her life of advocacy. we went out to one of the ruins, Edzna, together and we wandered the ruins talking about a little this, a little that and lots of discussions about art, economic class and what we humans are all about. and what frames academics look through. Shes in her late 70s and had a significant stroke so she is traveling and testing her limits. it was amazing to be sitting in the ruins listening to her talking about challenging Madeleine Allbright on US policy on global warming.
Edzna by the way is another nice ruin. they are all starting to look alike in my memory but Edzna has these amazing staircases that had arched tunnels under them. and lots of interesting squares and the back of the huge temple had interesting curvy swoops. not sure if this is original or if after excavating they had to buttress it this way.
and I feel sympathy for Joan because today she is going all the way to Calakmul, and back, in one day. a trip we spaced out over several stops and several modes of transport.
As we have been wandering, we have noticed, Craig is not the only one to leave footprints in concrete! everywhere in the mexican sidewalks are footprints of cats, dogs and many, many humans. I'm tempted next time I see wet concrete to walk on it barefoot.
I'm not sure if we mentioned the two great archaelogy museums here. one is right here in the town wall and one of its 7 or 8 buttressing forts, it has the best carved stelas, and glyphs. one is 2 miles south of town and it has the jade masks and pots. both are great. today we are going north to a town called Hecelchalkan which is pronounced sel-cha-kAn which is famous for its little museum of mayan pottery figures of people, and more famous to people in Campeche for its delicious pork pibil and another dish made of turkey in a dark sauce of some kind. from there we may also go up to Calkini which seems to have some better hotels. then on to merida the next day. I am hoping since today is the 16th, the start of the christmas posadas, that we will see a little bit of christmas action with little kids in town. Last night, we did see the cutest thing, we went to a combination ballet studio-email place and in the next room on the wooden ballet floor they had set up a huge christmas tree maybe a prop for the nutcracker and a row of little girls in tutus was gazing starry eyed at the lights and train and tree. SOOO cute. all things were moving to little automated christmas carols. priceless.
there are many eating options in Campeche, yesterday afternoon we walked north along the quay (Malecon) past groups of fishermen drinking lots of beers with their families, up past a few kids towing hulks of empty battered santa claus pinatas, up to a row of palapas along the shore. at the top end the shore suddenly, immediately becomes mangroves growing right to the water. north of campeche is a big reserve of swamps with flamingos and fish. as we chatted with the plastered fishermen, one guy had a butterfly net and kept flipping crabs up out of the water. since the water is a little dirty I suddenly realized all this great seafood we have been eating may not be totally wholesome. oh well we feel great. This morning as we drank our coffee-to-go by the water, we saw schools of tiny sharklike fish hovering at the surface watching us watch them. its nice.
we have learned a fact about ordering main meals in Campeche, which is do not order an appetizer. no matter what you order, (and this takes a while as waiters feel you should be able to linger a long time looking over the menu), in a while when your drinks come, so will come the botanas, the appetizer like snacks. last night at Restaurante Marganza, it was a large plate of little shrimp with delicate slices of fresh tomato and lime juice with probably cilantro, and an avocado mayonaisse spicy something that was really good, not like any guacamole I can remember, with crispy chips. (for our main dishes we had a dark red spicy soup that was a thick rich broth with medium sized shrimp in it, and a fish cooked in a sauce that apparently had squash blossoms, pumpkin seeds and goat cheese in it. it was buttery and delicious). Yesterday for lunch we took a taxi ride to a far off restaurant called Chac-Pel, which is supposedly one of the better ones, and it was ok. same deal, lingering menu ordering, one free appetizer of shredded crab with something else and one fresh white shrimp ceviche, and opur main dishes were a fish cooked in a dark red achiote sauce and peppers stuffed with seafood. this restaurant was not as great as the two truly greats we went to: two days ago, the Palapa de Tito Fito where we nearly went to heaven on lightly breaded local chiles filled with crab, or the evening meal at La Pigua. the very best.
We had quite a day yesterday in that we hooked up with a new friend, Joan Russow aka Joan Stevenson, who is traveling after being at the global warming conference. she is traveling under her stevenson alias as a reporter for some watershed magazine, but actually she was formerly the leader of the Canadian Green Party and has a lot of stories about her life of advocacy. we went out to one of the ruins, Edzna, together and we wandered the ruins talking about a little this, a little that and lots of discussions about art, economic class and what we humans are all about. and what frames academics look through. Shes in her late 70s and had a significant stroke so she is traveling and testing her limits. it was amazing to be sitting in the ruins listening to her talking about challenging Madeleine Allbright on US policy on global warming.
Edzna by the way is another nice ruin. they are all starting to look alike in my memory but Edzna has these amazing staircases that had arched tunnels under them. and lots of interesting squares and the back of the huge temple had interesting curvy swoops. not sure if this is original or if after excavating they had to buttress it this way.
and I feel sympathy for Joan because today she is going all the way to Calakmul, and back, in one day. a trip we spaced out over several stops and several modes of transport.
As we have been wandering, we have noticed, Craig is not the only one to leave footprints in concrete! everywhere in the mexican sidewalks are footprints of cats, dogs and many, many humans. I'm tempted next time I see wet concrete to walk on it barefoot.
I'm not sure if we mentioned the two great archaelogy museums here. one is right here in the town wall and one of its 7 or 8 buttressing forts, it has the best carved stelas, and glyphs. one is 2 miles south of town and it has the jade masks and pots. both are great. today we are going north to a town called Hecelchalkan which is pronounced sel-cha-kAn which is famous for its little museum of mayan pottery figures of people, and more famous to people in Campeche for its delicious pork pibil and another dish made of turkey in a dark sauce of some kind. from there we may also go up to Calkini which seems to have some better hotels. then on to merida the next day. I am hoping since today is the 16th, the start of the christmas posadas, that we will see a little bit of christmas action with little kids in town. Last night, we did see the cutest thing, we went to a combination ballet studio-email place and in the next room on the wooden ballet floor they had set up a huge christmas tree maybe a prop for the nutcracker and a row of little girls in tutus was gazing starry eyed at the lights and train and tree. SOOO cute. all things were moving to little automated christmas carols. priceless.
there are many eating options in Campeche, yesterday afternoon we walked north along the quay (Malecon) past groups of fishermen drinking lots of beers with their families, up past a few kids towing hulks of empty battered santa claus pinatas, up to a row of palapas along the shore. at the top end the shore suddenly, immediately becomes mangroves growing right to the water. north of campeche is a big reserve of swamps with flamingos and fish. as we chatted with the plastered fishermen, one guy had a butterfly net and kept flipping crabs up out of the water. since the water is a little dirty I suddenly realized all this great seafood we have been eating may not be totally wholesome. oh well we feel great. This morning as we drank our coffee-to-go by the water, we saw schools of tiny sharklike fish hovering at the surface watching us watch them. its nice.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Worth the Wait
truly exquisite food, is always worth the wait, isn´t it?
Tonight´s menu, at the lovely La Pigua (the crayfish) restaurant in Campeche, we have just consumed a delightful Chenin Blanc from the baja california Guadalupe Valley, having a coconut shrimp with apple chutney and a squid a la Laurencillo. Laurencillo was a famous Irish pirate who plagued Campeche so much they had to build big walls and towers to fend him off, but nowadays they seem quite proud of him. The coconut shrimp was the lightest, most delicate coconut coating on very fresh shrimp, fried in some way that it was nearly no trace of any oil at all, just light fresh not too sweet coating,then came with a fresh half coconut filled with a spicy apple dip. The squid was tender, delicious, dark, in a savory chile guajillo sauce, amazing. the wine was fresh and light. we are very happy.
All in all Campeche has been so wonderful. It{s got a very pretty colonial center, all the area that was originally within the walls they had to build in the 1600s to protect themselves from English and Irish and Dutch pirates, is still colonial, the building fronts and false fronts painted with warm pastels that glow. some of the buildings are rich beyond dreams, containing collonades of Moorish style arches and fancy Belle Epoque staircases and Italian marble black and white checker square floors. This time of year, a very fresh, almost chilly breeze blows off the Gulf of Mexico.
The food. For lunch today, we were at a wonderful seafront restaurant with the unassuming name of La Palapa, a palapa is a thatched roof hut. But what a hut. This one was built out over the gulf, and was huge and airy, and filled with the local business folks men and women of Campeche. Everyone was greeting each other with genteel kisses. Waiters bustled around and they brought us a huge tray of what we might have if we wished: giant crab claws, an assortment of fresh snapper and grouper and whatever. We just settled for something that seemed small: a stuffed chile local style with crab. but what a dish. it took about an hour to arrive, due to lots of busyiness making our waiter forget us we think, but, it was preceded by the most delicious savoy dip (chickpea? we don´´t even know. And then when our stuffed chile dish arrived, it was the most flaky egg batter coating a delicious chile with the most incredible and abundant crab filling, all sitting in a warm orange tomato sauce with hints of herbs. it was great. it was SO worth the wait. the entire event was in a giant room with a palm roof and the sides were on the gulf of mexico, but shaded by white translucent shades that kept out the fresh wind. And we had this with a Bohemia beer and several diet cokes and fizzy mineral water.
One reason we were so ready for this meal, is that we spent the day exploring Campeche.
Last night when we arrived we went to a hotel we knew of, the Hotel America, ate at a really nondescript tourist trap called La Paroquia with terrible orange tomato sauce food on good seafood, listened for a while to a new age band from the highlands of Chiapas that sang in Mayan with electric guitar and fiddle sort of like celtic soft rock bands, and crashed early. Hotel America is $50 or $60, colonial rooms, great bathrooms but everything in dingy monotones for some reason.
We woke in the lovely darkness of our colonial room, well shielded from the street noise and the noise of the evenings tourist entertainment of nouvelle rock bands in the central square by giant wooden doors, but when you open them on the curvy iron grilled balcony, lovely soft tropical air. We woke at dawn and walked on the malecon, the quayside walk, and took photos of the early morning sunlight on Campeche´s magical colonial churches and streets. we went off to our new hotel, a bargain but a little low budget, the Hotel Regis, for 385 pesos a night about $35. Our new room is huge, a warm orange hue, wrought iron balcony, but sheets that feel like painting tarps. and no bedside lamps, just dim overhead fluorescents. oh well...
We have enjoyed shopping in Campeche. there are a lot of shops with stylish young people clothes. I brought a 1960s style body hugging sheath in black linen with a central panel of white cream hand embroidered brocade that I think will be perfect for the formal New Years Eve dinner we go to every year with our godmother at Smith Ranch homes. Craig brought a linen like cubana shirt. also, a t shirt with a great pirate skull and crossbones. I countered with a white eyelet linen nightgown to replace the one I left in our bargain hut 4 nights ago. And now I´m looking at stylish black high heels to go with my new dress.
But mostly we have enjoyed walking Campeche. there is a nice walking tour in the lonely planet. the town has sections of its original stone walls, that you can walk on up on the ramparts. and also you can dip into the local market area, where I bought sunglasses with rhinestones, and we got entertained in the fish market by cuban drummers, and then got more entertained by fishmongers dancing to the drumming with their enormous raw catch of the day in their arms. Then really great, out on a park near the market are booths where many people are selling their enormous starlike Mexican Christmas pinatas, and finishing them, in front of us! giant newspaper stars getting dressed up with frilly paper, before our eyes, by cute old ladies.
Another fabulous thing about Campeche, is the museums. There are TWO small, but priceless, museums for the Mayan ruin fan. One, right in town, is the museum of Mayan architecture, it is in one of the six or eight remaining ´bastions´of the town wall, and it has the very best pieces of old buildings and old stelas (the upright stones the Mayans used to commemorate war victories or the power of their kings), and also old doorways. And the other is the archaeology museum 2 miles south of town in one of the big forts, Fuerte San Miguel, high on a bluff over the gulf of mexico, and it has the very best in Jade funeral masks and priceless pottery painted delicately with scenes of mayan life in red orange brown and yellow, and ceramics in the forms of fabulous animals and human portraits. neither museum is very large and they are both distinct and the sites of both, in these great old stone fort buildings, are great. And also there are other museumlets in Campeche: nearly each one of these stone bastions is a museum of something.
A nice one, the museum of piracy, involves paying a fee, being literally locked into the fort, where you ascent to the battlements with their little towers and places to shoot arrows from and even little ancient outhouses where you could apparently poop directly over your enemy..., anyway, to get out of the museum, you have to find the bell that was wrung to warn people that the town gates were being shut for the night, so they had better get inside or else, and you have to ring it twice, to get let out! god help you if you could not remember the instructions, as was happening to some other tourists we met trapped up there in battlement hell. it was not hell, it was a great way to get up high over Campeche and see all the ornate towers of the great churches in the town.
Now we have officially ´done´ Campeche and so we have to see how this town will be to just hang in. Oh I forgot two more current attractions,a reallly wonderful special exhibit they have of the best ancient fossils from some desert in upper Mexico, I mean actually these are great exhibits great fossils and great live animals, and in the square a huge informative but kinda sad photo exhibit of places all over the planet that are having or will have damage from climate change. Mexico is working hard to educate itself. I do see a lot less trash and more interest in recycling and supplying water without new plastic bottles, all that.
tomorrow, a new ruin, edzna, and then we may go out to another country village before on to Merida, the queen of cities. we got a foretaste of merida tonight, in the music played at La Pigua, great cuban and mexican ´vals´ favorites.
Tonight´s menu, at the lovely La Pigua (the crayfish) restaurant in Campeche, we have just consumed a delightful Chenin Blanc from the baja california Guadalupe Valley, having a coconut shrimp with apple chutney and a squid a la Laurencillo. Laurencillo was a famous Irish pirate who plagued Campeche so much they had to build big walls and towers to fend him off, but nowadays they seem quite proud of him. The coconut shrimp was the lightest, most delicate coconut coating on very fresh shrimp, fried in some way that it was nearly no trace of any oil at all, just light fresh not too sweet coating,then came with a fresh half coconut filled with a spicy apple dip. The squid was tender, delicious, dark, in a savory chile guajillo sauce, amazing. the wine was fresh and light. we are very happy.
All in all Campeche has been so wonderful. It{s got a very pretty colonial center, all the area that was originally within the walls they had to build in the 1600s to protect themselves from English and Irish and Dutch pirates, is still colonial, the building fronts and false fronts painted with warm pastels that glow. some of the buildings are rich beyond dreams, containing collonades of Moorish style arches and fancy Belle Epoque staircases and Italian marble black and white checker square floors. This time of year, a very fresh, almost chilly breeze blows off the Gulf of Mexico.
The food. For lunch today, we were at a wonderful seafront restaurant with the unassuming name of La Palapa, a palapa is a thatched roof hut. But what a hut. This one was built out over the gulf, and was huge and airy, and filled with the local business folks men and women of Campeche. Everyone was greeting each other with genteel kisses. Waiters bustled around and they brought us a huge tray of what we might have if we wished: giant crab claws, an assortment of fresh snapper and grouper and whatever. We just settled for something that seemed small: a stuffed chile local style with crab. but what a dish. it took about an hour to arrive, due to lots of busyiness making our waiter forget us we think, but, it was preceded by the most delicious savoy dip (chickpea? we don´´t even know. And then when our stuffed chile dish arrived, it was the most flaky egg batter coating a delicious chile with the most incredible and abundant crab filling, all sitting in a warm orange tomato sauce with hints of herbs. it was great. it was SO worth the wait. the entire event was in a giant room with a palm roof and the sides were on the gulf of mexico, but shaded by white translucent shades that kept out the fresh wind. And we had this with a Bohemia beer and several diet cokes and fizzy mineral water.
One reason we were so ready for this meal, is that we spent the day exploring Campeche.
Last night when we arrived we went to a hotel we knew of, the Hotel America, ate at a really nondescript tourist trap called La Paroquia with terrible orange tomato sauce food on good seafood, listened for a while to a new age band from the highlands of Chiapas that sang in Mayan with electric guitar and fiddle sort of like celtic soft rock bands, and crashed early. Hotel America is $50 or $60, colonial rooms, great bathrooms but everything in dingy monotones for some reason.
We woke in the lovely darkness of our colonial room, well shielded from the street noise and the noise of the evenings tourist entertainment of nouvelle rock bands in the central square by giant wooden doors, but when you open them on the curvy iron grilled balcony, lovely soft tropical air. We woke at dawn and walked on the malecon, the quayside walk, and took photos of the early morning sunlight on Campeche´s magical colonial churches and streets. we went off to our new hotel, a bargain but a little low budget, the Hotel Regis, for 385 pesos a night about $35. Our new room is huge, a warm orange hue, wrought iron balcony, but sheets that feel like painting tarps. and no bedside lamps, just dim overhead fluorescents. oh well...
We have enjoyed shopping in Campeche. there are a lot of shops with stylish young people clothes. I brought a 1960s style body hugging sheath in black linen with a central panel of white cream hand embroidered brocade that I think will be perfect for the formal New Years Eve dinner we go to every year with our godmother at Smith Ranch homes. Craig brought a linen like cubana shirt. also, a t shirt with a great pirate skull and crossbones. I countered with a white eyelet linen nightgown to replace the one I left in our bargain hut 4 nights ago. And now I´m looking at stylish black high heels to go with my new dress.
But mostly we have enjoyed walking Campeche. there is a nice walking tour in the lonely planet. the town has sections of its original stone walls, that you can walk on up on the ramparts. and also you can dip into the local market area, where I bought sunglasses with rhinestones, and we got entertained in the fish market by cuban drummers, and then got more entertained by fishmongers dancing to the drumming with their enormous raw catch of the day in their arms. Then really great, out on a park near the market are booths where many people are selling their enormous starlike Mexican Christmas pinatas, and finishing them, in front of us! giant newspaper stars getting dressed up with frilly paper, before our eyes, by cute old ladies.
Another fabulous thing about Campeche, is the museums. There are TWO small, but priceless, museums for the Mayan ruin fan. One, right in town, is the museum of Mayan architecture, it is in one of the six or eight remaining ´bastions´of the town wall, and it has the very best pieces of old buildings and old stelas (the upright stones the Mayans used to commemorate war victories or the power of their kings), and also old doorways. And the other is the archaeology museum 2 miles south of town in one of the big forts, Fuerte San Miguel, high on a bluff over the gulf of mexico, and it has the very best in Jade funeral masks and priceless pottery painted delicately with scenes of mayan life in red orange brown and yellow, and ceramics in the forms of fabulous animals and human portraits. neither museum is very large and they are both distinct and the sites of both, in these great old stone fort buildings, are great. And also there are other museumlets in Campeche: nearly each one of these stone bastions is a museum of something.
A nice one, the museum of piracy, involves paying a fee, being literally locked into the fort, where you ascent to the battlements with their little towers and places to shoot arrows from and even little ancient outhouses where you could apparently poop directly over your enemy..., anyway, to get out of the museum, you have to find the bell that was wrung to warn people that the town gates were being shut for the night, so they had better get inside or else, and you have to ring it twice, to get let out! god help you if you could not remember the instructions, as was happening to some other tourists we met trapped up there in battlement hell. it was not hell, it was a great way to get up high over Campeche and see all the ornate towers of the great churches in the town.
Now we have officially ´done´ Campeche and so we have to see how this town will be to just hang in. Oh I forgot two more current attractions,a reallly wonderful special exhibit they have of the best ancient fossils from some desert in upper Mexico, I mean actually these are great exhibits great fossils and great live animals, and in the square a huge informative but kinda sad photo exhibit of places all over the planet that are having or will have damage from climate change. Mexico is working hard to educate itself. I do see a lot less trash and more interest in recycling and supplying water without new plastic bottles, all that.
tomorrow, a new ruin, edzna, and then we may go out to another country village before on to Merida, the queen of cities. we got a foretaste of merida tonight, in the music played at La Pigua, great cuban and mexican ´vals´ favorites.
Hang on to your hat!
We are now in the wonderful town of Campeche, on the Gulf of Mexico side of the Yucatan. Campeche is a World Heritage site and is just marvelous! The architeture here is beautiful, with lovely churches, pastel painted houses, and old walls and forts from back in the pirate days. They are really into the whole pirate thing here and milk it for all it´s worth for the tourists. In fact, I bought a pirate mug and T shirt, so I guess it works.
We got here on a 7 hour bus ride from Chetumal, which covered the whole southern part of the Yucatan and most of the Gulf coast. Normally, these 1st class bus rides are great. But this one was a little different as we had a very odd driver. There is a large TV right above where the driver is and it shows movies constantly. This driver kept looking straight up, off the road, to see what was happening with the movie! We had a good view, as Amy and I had the front seats. When he wasn´t looking straight up at the movie (the three movies were The Namesake, Paul Bart, Mall Copp, and Hotel for Dogs) he was listening to his Ipod and drumming away on the steering wheel. Occasionally he would look at his cell phone to check his messages!
But after 7 hours we made it to Campeche alive. Only one little problem. I´m carrying around one of my nice Panama hats because this is Panama hat country and I thought it would be nice to wear it here. When I got on the bus I put the hat (this is a fino Panama from Ecuador, a really nice fedora) in the upper storage area, trying to tell myself DO NOT FORGET THE HAT. Then I thought nothing of it for the rest of the trip. We arrived in Campeche, we got our luggage and then the taxi and as we were heading into town I suddenly remembered I´d left the hat on the bus!! Thank God I had Amy around. We went back to the bus station, Amy went in and when she found our bus, the driver was walking across the parking lot with my Panama in hand!! He must have felt very lucky when he spied Amy and had to give it to her. Whew!!!
Believe it or not, there are Mennonites all over the Yucatan. When I first saw them, I was really wondering, what the heck are they doing here? The Mennonites all are caucasian, wear the exact same clothes (overalls, a blue shirt, and a straw cowboy hat for the men, a dark blue prairie dress and a flat brimmed straw hat for the women) and look pretty inbred. So the story goes that they came here in the 1930s from Canada and the USA because of religious intolerance or whatever and made some kind of deal with the Mexican government...and I am not making this up...that they wouldn´t have to pay taxes if they made good cheese. Heck, I would take that deal!
Anyway, back to Campeche. This place has AMAZING food. Today for lunch we were in this nice little seafood restaurant. We weren´t all that hungry so we just ordered on thing, chiles stuffed with crab. The waiter brought an appetizer of freshly made tortilla chips with two wonderful dips, a black bean dip and some kind of chick pea dip with spices. Then the main dish arrived, a spicey green chile stuffed with crab and cheese, covered with a red sauce with cheese in it. OH MY GAWD!!! It was fabulous. Just the right amount of spice and the crab was great. Tonight we went to a restaurant out of the tourist district, but only by a few blocks, called La Piguoa. It had some good write ups in our guidebooks. We had the most delicious octopus (pulpa) I´ve ever had, with a slightly spicey sauce made with olive oil. The other dish were these coconut prawns with an apple sauce dip which was unbelievable. We washed it down with a chenin blanc from Baja. Unreal.
Amy and I today took a nice walking tour, from the Lonely Planet guidebook, that takes you by many of the nice places in town, including some original town walls, a few old forts, some churches and the local market. The market in a Mexican town is always one of my favorite places as that is where the real life of the town is. In this one they had a great fish market with real characters selling fish and dancing to some music that a couple of local guys were playing. Here is one of the forts here...
Right at the base of one of the old walls is a really cool old bar, the Rinconsito. This has so much atmosphere, really looking like an old west Mexican bar, that they used it in some Anthony Banderas movie. When we came in I said outloud, ¨Wow, what a cool bar!¨ when I noticed a Mexican guy at the bar, with a cowboy straw hat who was quite borracho (3 sheets to the wind, potatoed out of his tomato, toasted, really drunk). It was noon. He turned to us and said, ¨You got that right, amigo!¨ He had obviously been drinking since about 9am. Amy and I had a couple of Coca Lights when he came over to our table to talk to us. He wanted to practice his english, but between him being so toasted and also forgeting how to speak english, he was having a hard time. But he was able to communicate that he lived in Sascatchewan, Canada for awhile doing something (we couldn´t quite figure out what ) with cows. He kept pointing his finger in a horizontal position and when his amigo said that he was a veterinarian, it dawned on us that he was in Canada artificially inseminating cows. To see his picture, check out our Facebook page. He was quite a character.
Tomorrow we will try a couple of other good places and tomorro is our last day here as we are heading up to Merida. We will also be taking a little tour out to another Mayan ruin, Edzna.
We got here on a 7 hour bus ride from Chetumal, which covered the whole southern part of the Yucatan and most of the Gulf coast. Normally, these 1st class bus rides are great. But this one was a little different as we had a very odd driver. There is a large TV right above where the driver is and it shows movies constantly. This driver kept looking straight up, off the road, to see what was happening with the movie! We had a good view, as Amy and I had the front seats. When he wasn´t looking straight up at the movie (the three movies were The Namesake, Paul Bart, Mall Copp, and Hotel for Dogs) he was listening to his Ipod and drumming away on the steering wheel. Occasionally he would look at his cell phone to check his messages!
But after 7 hours we made it to Campeche alive. Only one little problem. I´m carrying around one of my nice Panama hats because this is Panama hat country and I thought it would be nice to wear it here. When I got on the bus I put the hat (this is a fino Panama from Ecuador, a really nice fedora) in the upper storage area, trying to tell myself DO NOT FORGET THE HAT. Then I thought nothing of it for the rest of the trip. We arrived in Campeche, we got our luggage and then the taxi and as we were heading into town I suddenly remembered I´d left the hat on the bus!! Thank God I had Amy around. We went back to the bus station, Amy went in and when she found our bus, the driver was walking across the parking lot with my Panama in hand!! He must have felt very lucky when he spied Amy and had to give it to her. Whew!!!
Believe it or not, there are Mennonites all over the Yucatan. When I first saw them, I was really wondering, what the heck are they doing here? The Mennonites all are caucasian, wear the exact same clothes (overalls, a blue shirt, and a straw cowboy hat for the men, a dark blue prairie dress and a flat brimmed straw hat for the women) and look pretty inbred. So the story goes that they came here in the 1930s from Canada and the USA because of religious intolerance or whatever and made some kind of deal with the Mexican government...and I am not making this up...that they wouldn´t have to pay taxes if they made good cheese. Heck, I would take that deal!
Anyway, back to Campeche. This place has AMAZING food. Today for lunch we were in this nice little seafood restaurant. We weren´t all that hungry so we just ordered on thing, chiles stuffed with crab. The waiter brought an appetizer of freshly made tortilla chips with two wonderful dips, a black bean dip and some kind of chick pea dip with spices. Then the main dish arrived, a spicey green chile stuffed with crab and cheese, covered with a red sauce with cheese in it. OH MY GAWD!!! It was fabulous. Just the right amount of spice and the crab was great. Tonight we went to a restaurant out of the tourist district, but only by a few blocks, called La Piguoa. It had some good write ups in our guidebooks. We had the most delicious octopus (pulpa) I´ve ever had, with a slightly spicey sauce made with olive oil. The other dish were these coconut prawns with an apple sauce dip which was unbelievable. We washed it down with a chenin blanc from Baja. Unreal.
Amy and I today took a nice walking tour, from the Lonely Planet guidebook, that takes you by many of the nice places in town, including some original town walls, a few old forts, some churches and the local market. The market in a Mexican town is always one of my favorite places as that is where the real life of the town is. In this one they had a great fish market with real characters selling fish and dancing to some music that a couple of local guys were playing. Here is one of the forts here...
Right at the base of one of the old walls is a really cool old bar, the Rinconsito. This has so much atmosphere, really looking like an old west Mexican bar, that they used it in some Anthony Banderas movie. When we came in I said outloud, ¨Wow, what a cool bar!¨ when I noticed a Mexican guy at the bar, with a cowboy straw hat who was quite borracho (3 sheets to the wind, potatoed out of his tomato, toasted, really drunk). It was noon. He turned to us and said, ¨You got that right, amigo!¨ He had obviously been drinking since about 9am. Amy and I had a couple of Coca Lights when he came over to our table to talk to us. He wanted to practice his english, but between him being so toasted and also forgeting how to speak english, he was having a hard time. But he was able to communicate that he lived in Sascatchewan, Canada for awhile doing something (we couldn´t quite figure out what ) with cows. He kept pointing his finger in a horizontal position and when his amigo said that he was a veterinarian, it dawned on us that he was in Canada artificially inseminating cows. To see his picture, check out our Facebook page. He was quite a character.
Tomorrow we will try a couple of other good places and tomorro is our last day here as we are heading up to Merida. We will also be taking a little tour out to another Mayan ruin, Edzna.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Muchas Ruinas
If you look at a map of the Yucatan peninsula, the Rio Bec area is at the very southernmost part in the very center. This is where we have spent the last few days looking at some amazing Mayan ruins. In fact, we have visited eight ruins in the last 3 days!
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...
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.
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.
Cuidado con la Virgen (Be careful with the Virgin)
well we came down here in part to catch the celebrations for the Virgen of Guadalupe, patron saint of the Americas, and, tonight December 12th is the final night, the last time you can walk in a candlelight parade with the Virgin of Guadalupe, for a whole year. Tonight we got back to Bacalar, after 3 days in the hinterlands seeing great ruins, and were just in time to hear the sirens and fireworks and loud Guadalupe carols that meant we could get in a last final parade. We raced up to join it, and walked about 10 blocks til they reached their guadalupe church destination, a very modern church since this is a rapidly growing little town. Families walked hand in hand, some with candles some with bouquets and some with just folded hands. The kids in the parade were so cute. the little boys were dressed in white tops and pants with red sashes, like Juan Diego, and the babies and girls were dressed like little virgins with long shiny veils or in Índita costumes. then everyone got to pose with very solemn faces carrying their candles or a bunch of flowers, in front of the virgin and about 1000 little candles.
Although we are back in Bacalar now, 3 mornings ago, we left Lake Bacalar, and after a lot of delays, picked up our rental car from Europcar in Chetumal - a shabby little city with a little bit of caribbean feel - and drove east on the amazingly good fast highway, up a little out of the flats into the jungly lowlands. We have visited a total of 8 ruins, and 3 hotels, in 3 days, and all of the experiences were nice.
At nearly all the ruins we have seen, in this area called Rio Bec, we were the only visitors. you park near spiffy little entrance buildings and then walk in through the trees on little white chalk walkways, always in about a half mile, and always come in through the less sacred buildings, and then through fancier and fancier ruins, til you hit the hugest or scariest buildings last. we have climbed so many excellent pyramids and walked through lots of corridors in what, a thousand years ago, were the dwellings of the rich and famous. the going theory is that the Mayan centers were destroyed because the poor people got sick of maintaining the rich people and killed èm all and left... but those rich people sure had it good for a few years. like 600 years...
the highway across the Yucatan, from Chetumal, is practically all straight. every 20 or 30 miles you wiggle a little up and down through some little hills, that all might actually be pyramids... there is a slow gradual rise. in 3 days we were in so many little climates. The very first day we drove about 2 hours east, up to Xpujil, a crossroads town, and from there went to 2 ruins to the east: Chicanna, which is famous for some doorways that look like giant monsters eating whoever dares go in or out the doorway, and Becan, which is an astonishingly beautiful city inside a kind of moat. The architecture here has some really interesting features. its not complicated or lacy like some of the Puuc route area ruins, or Palenque, its fairly tall and straight with very accurately cut blocks and some interesting rounding of the corners. the result to me is that a lot of the ruins felt like ruined Romanesque churches or abbeys. of course at one time it was all covered with brilliant red or orange plaster, and intricate maske designs, but what´s left now is quite simple in some ways. but they loved to build temples that rise up steeply with stairs too steep to climb, just for show, and have many levels, the lower levels being the oldest with these rounded corners.
Much of this is in a low height jungly sort of guava foresty looking regrowth. But, on the second day, we drove far down off the highway, to Calakmul, what was once a fairly giant city like the size of Tikal the famous ruin in Guatemala, and here the growth was SO dense its amazing that anyone ever found these ruins. two feet away from a building, and it disappears into the jungle. it used to take anywhere from 2 to 4 days, to get to Calakmul, while it was being excavated. so now, the fact that we could get there in two pothole-y hours, is a marvel.
Today was actually the best day. In the morning we went to the ruins at Xpuhil and they were so very pretty, towers glowing in the morning sunlight, and some of the towers have hidden staircases that you can climb up. in the mid day we dropped down into some broad open wide valleys with cornfields and sugar cane and preserves of very tall treed jungle with howler monkeys, and saw two adjacent city states, one of them Dzibalche`had about six giant plazas and huge residential complexes with hidden patios and staircased gardens, just for the rich, and howler monkeys, and one, Kinichka, was just an enormous 3 tiered temple. and in the late afternoon, we went to one of the prettiest I´ve ever seen, Kohunlich, which is in acres and acres of the loveliest palm forest I´ve ever been in. with a great company, a yellow dog who liked Craig to pieces. kept step with us nearly all the 2 hours we were there.
While we have been in the Yucatan, several troubles have broken out elsewhere, which we are only dimly aware of. Many mexicans are in mourning, because there have been some horrendous displays of power by the drug lords who are warring for control in the state of Michoacan (very far from here, but everyone is staying tuned). Meanwhile because we are very close to both the Belize and Guatemalan borders, there is a lot of attempts here at controlling the drug trade. frequently, you have to stop at checkpoints, usually if you are a foreigner or look harmless you are waved through. but today probably because of the Michoacan thing, they took a little more care with us. The six soldiers running the check, who probably get a little bored, were really not at all sure why 2 gringos would want to take a vacation going to remote ruins around here, so they decided to spend some time with us. so we had to open our trunk and have all our luggage checked. but, on top of our luggage, was our latest purchase, another of the blinking electric Virgin of Guadalupes that we keep bringing back. so as they are checking us, and Craig is lifting her up, I said loudly ´be careful of the Virgen´! instant respect and smiles from the army guys. Oh, if they are traveling with the Virgen, on this her holiday, well, they must be ok! smile, smile. `'okay you can go now, have a great day, how do you say in English éxcuse us for the inconvenience, by the way?´'
Our hotel accomodations have been so varied. I just read Craig´´s description of our cabin at Cabanas de Mercedes in Zoh-laguna. This was the neatest town. it was set up in the 1930s or 1940s by an American logging company and it was a true company town. Kind of like Chester, California. wooden company buildings, on big tree filled lots, in giant grids of streets. a great place to walk at night and look up at the brilliant stars and see the kids riding their bikes and everyone walking down to the square to see what´s going on. it really was too bad that there was such a loud festival with giant loudspeakers scheduled, or we would have liked to stay 3 nights. the cabins that you can rent around here, with screens instead of windows, are very comfortable most of the time, actually a little chilly since there is unseasonably cold weather here but only chilly at night, warms up right away in the days. the food that Don Antonio gave us, a tasty fried chicken and smoked pork, was very yucatecan savory rather than spicy.
the next night just because of the noise, we decided to splurge a little on a place called Rio Bec Dreams, which is way away from any town, also has great stars. theey have spiffy little cabins and then jungalows which are nice screen walled cabins, roomy, solid walls half way up then screen all the way around, with little white curtains which shield you when needed from the breeze. luckily we were the only ones there. the place is an ecolodge, very close contact with the jungle which here is drier and not tall, kind of like guava forests in hawaii (did I say that already). The only misconception, is that these jungalows, are in the jungle. well, not really. they are just about 40 feet off the highway and although at times there is hardly any traffic, at night, the big semis and long distance buses come whooshing by. not so loud you can´t deal, but you sure do not hear a lot of jungly noises.
Actually, there is a lot of deception around here in what websites indicate a place will be like, and what it actually is. for example today we stopped at another ecolodge on Lake Bacalar, which its true does have lots of acres of jungle but all in the long skinny drive in from the highway... the next door properties which are also long and thin, are developed out with fancy houses and huge boats on the lake! My advice is, do NOT book ahead on the web, come with good guidebooks and have alternatives, but really unless its high high season there is always room at the inn! some inn, anyway.
tonight we are back at the pleasant but very quirky, Casita de Carolina, an eccentric collection of houses and cabins right at the lakeside, with green lawns going right into reeds on this very pretty lake, with nice lake birds and fish. Another place to have earplugs, because if you are in one of the houses you will hear the other guests and if not you will probably hear the frequent chorus of howling dogs at some time in the night.
well, now that virgin of guadalupe day is drawing to a close, its time to turn attention to christmas. tonight as we were sitting at a local taco place - everything here is basically open air, a roof over a patio open on 3 sides with the house where the hidden cook is, on the one side - I was peeking into a neighbor´s yard and seeing they were dressing up their huge, star shaped pinata with streamers and loading it with candy. although there were a lot of christmas decorations out for the last week, suddenly there are more. some are huge blow up scenes. one is a giant blowup of santa with a helicopter, the air blowing out makes several propellers spin, and in the yard below it is a giant blow up nativity seen with a giant brown haired joseph, a tiny mary, a little white baby and the cheesiest cow and sheep I have ever seen. There are many snowmen on roofs, seems quite incongruous here since it has never ever snowed. all the lights do things, pulse red then green, chase little white lights around. it´s a great show.
Bacalar is a great little town and not very big. we feel we know the main streets well, one is christened BarkingDogStreet, one is InternetandCathedral street, one is taxis-to-chetumal street. and we know the main restaurants: breakfast tacos which is run by the mayor, evening tacos, chicken tacos, and a few others. in the small towns each of the smaller restaurants may specialize in one kind of meat, for instance, often, cold shredded chicken. you can have it served under 4 or 5 different names, tacos tostadas salbutes gringas panuchos, but they are all the same thing a variant of a tortilla, lettuce, tomato, chicken, and maybe some cream and a slice of avocado. tasty but oh, so similar! same choices at the place that specializes in carnitas (roast pig) or in pastor (sort of like gyros, sliced off a rotating collection of pieces of whatever). lots of displays, all the same thing. whatever its all good stuff.
So tomorrow morning, we´ll drive our car back to Chetumal, possibly see a little fishing village and another little ruin-let, and then, take our first class bus 6 hours across the peninsula, to the gulf of mexico side, to Campeche, which is a colonial city, another pirate center and a world heritage site. should be fun!
Craig, I love your pictures...
Although we are back in Bacalar now, 3 mornings ago, we left Lake Bacalar, and after a lot of delays, picked up our rental car from Europcar in Chetumal - a shabby little city with a little bit of caribbean feel - and drove east on the amazingly good fast highway, up a little out of the flats into the jungly lowlands. We have visited a total of 8 ruins, and 3 hotels, in 3 days, and all of the experiences were nice.
At nearly all the ruins we have seen, in this area called Rio Bec, we were the only visitors. you park near spiffy little entrance buildings and then walk in through the trees on little white chalk walkways, always in about a half mile, and always come in through the less sacred buildings, and then through fancier and fancier ruins, til you hit the hugest or scariest buildings last. we have climbed so many excellent pyramids and walked through lots of corridors in what, a thousand years ago, were the dwellings of the rich and famous. the going theory is that the Mayan centers were destroyed because the poor people got sick of maintaining the rich people and killed èm all and left... but those rich people sure had it good for a few years. like 600 years...
the highway across the Yucatan, from Chetumal, is practically all straight. every 20 or 30 miles you wiggle a little up and down through some little hills, that all might actually be pyramids... there is a slow gradual rise. in 3 days we were in so many little climates. The very first day we drove about 2 hours east, up to Xpujil, a crossroads town, and from there went to 2 ruins to the east: Chicanna, which is famous for some doorways that look like giant monsters eating whoever dares go in or out the doorway, and Becan, which is an astonishingly beautiful city inside a kind of moat. The architecture here has some really interesting features. its not complicated or lacy like some of the Puuc route area ruins, or Palenque, its fairly tall and straight with very accurately cut blocks and some interesting rounding of the corners. the result to me is that a lot of the ruins felt like ruined Romanesque churches or abbeys. of course at one time it was all covered with brilliant red or orange plaster, and intricate maske designs, but what´s left now is quite simple in some ways. but they loved to build temples that rise up steeply with stairs too steep to climb, just for show, and have many levels, the lower levels being the oldest with these rounded corners.
Much of this is in a low height jungly sort of guava foresty looking regrowth. But, on the second day, we drove far down off the highway, to Calakmul, what was once a fairly giant city like the size of Tikal the famous ruin in Guatemala, and here the growth was SO dense its amazing that anyone ever found these ruins. two feet away from a building, and it disappears into the jungle. it used to take anywhere from 2 to 4 days, to get to Calakmul, while it was being excavated. so now, the fact that we could get there in two pothole-y hours, is a marvel.
Today was actually the best day. In the morning we went to the ruins at Xpuhil and they were so very pretty, towers glowing in the morning sunlight, and some of the towers have hidden staircases that you can climb up. in the mid day we dropped down into some broad open wide valleys with cornfields and sugar cane and preserves of very tall treed jungle with howler monkeys, and saw two adjacent city states, one of them Dzibalche`had about six giant plazas and huge residential complexes with hidden patios and staircased gardens, just for the rich, and howler monkeys, and one, Kinichka, was just an enormous 3 tiered temple. and in the late afternoon, we went to one of the prettiest I´ve ever seen, Kohunlich, which is in acres and acres of the loveliest palm forest I´ve ever been in. with a great company, a yellow dog who liked Craig to pieces. kept step with us nearly all the 2 hours we were there.
While we have been in the Yucatan, several troubles have broken out elsewhere, which we are only dimly aware of. Many mexicans are in mourning, because there have been some horrendous displays of power by the drug lords who are warring for control in the state of Michoacan (very far from here, but everyone is staying tuned). Meanwhile because we are very close to both the Belize and Guatemalan borders, there is a lot of attempts here at controlling the drug trade. frequently, you have to stop at checkpoints, usually if you are a foreigner or look harmless you are waved through. but today probably because of the Michoacan thing, they took a little more care with us. The six soldiers running the check, who probably get a little bored, were really not at all sure why 2 gringos would want to take a vacation going to remote ruins around here, so they decided to spend some time with us. so we had to open our trunk and have all our luggage checked. but, on top of our luggage, was our latest purchase, another of the blinking electric Virgin of Guadalupes that we keep bringing back. so as they are checking us, and Craig is lifting her up, I said loudly ´be careful of the Virgen´! instant respect and smiles from the army guys. Oh, if they are traveling with the Virgen, on this her holiday, well, they must be ok! smile, smile. `'okay you can go now, have a great day, how do you say in English éxcuse us for the inconvenience, by the way?´'
Our hotel accomodations have been so varied. I just read Craig´´s description of our cabin at Cabanas de Mercedes in Zoh-laguna. This was the neatest town. it was set up in the 1930s or 1940s by an American logging company and it was a true company town. Kind of like Chester, California. wooden company buildings, on big tree filled lots, in giant grids of streets. a great place to walk at night and look up at the brilliant stars and see the kids riding their bikes and everyone walking down to the square to see what´s going on. it really was too bad that there was such a loud festival with giant loudspeakers scheduled, or we would have liked to stay 3 nights. the cabins that you can rent around here, with screens instead of windows, are very comfortable most of the time, actually a little chilly since there is unseasonably cold weather here but only chilly at night, warms up right away in the days. the food that Don Antonio gave us, a tasty fried chicken and smoked pork, was very yucatecan savory rather than spicy.
the next night just because of the noise, we decided to splurge a little on a place called Rio Bec Dreams, which is way away from any town, also has great stars. theey have spiffy little cabins and then jungalows which are nice screen walled cabins, roomy, solid walls half way up then screen all the way around, with little white curtains which shield you when needed from the breeze. luckily we were the only ones there. the place is an ecolodge, very close contact with the jungle which here is drier and not tall, kind of like guava forests in hawaii (did I say that already). The only misconception, is that these jungalows, are in the jungle. well, not really. they are just about 40 feet off the highway and although at times there is hardly any traffic, at night, the big semis and long distance buses come whooshing by. not so loud you can´t deal, but you sure do not hear a lot of jungly noises.
Actually, there is a lot of deception around here in what websites indicate a place will be like, and what it actually is. for example today we stopped at another ecolodge on Lake Bacalar, which its true does have lots of acres of jungle but all in the long skinny drive in from the highway... the next door properties which are also long and thin, are developed out with fancy houses and huge boats on the lake! My advice is, do NOT book ahead on the web, come with good guidebooks and have alternatives, but really unless its high high season there is always room at the inn! some inn, anyway.
tonight we are back at the pleasant but very quirky, Casita de Carolina, an eccentric collection of houses and cabins right at the lakeside, with green lawns going right into reeds on this very pretty lake, with nice lake birds and fish. Another place to have earplugs, because if you are in one of the houses you will hear the other guests and if not you will probably hear the frequent chorus of howling dogs at some time in the night.
well, now that virgin of guadalupe day is drawing to a close, its time to turn attention to christmas. tonight as we were sitting at a local taco place - everything here is basically open air, a roof over a patio open on 3 sides with the house where the hidden cook is, on the one side - I was peeking into a neighbor´s yard and seeing they were dressing up their huge, star shaped pinata with streamers and loading it with candy. although there were a lot of christmas decorations out for the last week, suddenly there are more. some are huge blow up scenes. one is a giant blowup of santa with a helicopter, the air blowing out makes several propellers spin, and in the yard below it is a giant blow up nativity seen with a giant brown haired joseph, a tiny mary, a little white baby and the cheesiest cow and sheep I have ever seen. There are many snowmen on roofs, seems quite incongruous here since it has never ever snowed. all the lights do things, pulse red then green, chase little white lights around. it´s a great show.
Bacalar is a great little town and not very big. we feel we know the main streets well, one is christened BarkingDogStreet, one is InternetandCathedral street, one is taxis-to-chetumal street. and we know the main restaurants: breakfast tacos which is run by the mayor, evening tacos, chicken tacos, and a few others. in the small towns each of the smaller restaurants may specialize in one kind of meat, for instance, often, cold shredded chicken. you can have it served under 4 or 5 different names, tacos tostadas salbutes gringas panuchos, but they are all the same thing a variant of a tortilla, lettuce, tomato, chicken, and maybe some cream and a slice of avocado. tasty but oh, so similar! same choices at the place that specializes in carnitas (roast pig) or in pastor (sort of like gyros, sliced off a rotating collection of pieces of whatever). lots of displays, all the same thing. whatever its all good stuff.
So tomorrow morning, we´ll drive our car back to Chetumal, possibly see a little fishing village and another little ruin-let, and then, take our first class bus 6 hours across the peninsula, to the gulf of mexico side, to Campeche, which is a colonial city, another pirate center and a world heritage site. should be fun!
Craig, I love your pictures...
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
The One Ring
"One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."
Why am I quoting Tolkien while traveling in Mexico? It´s a good story.
For the last few days we have been in the town of Xcalak, in the very southeast tip of the Yucatan peninsula, near Belize. We´ve stayed a nice small hotel, Tierra Maya, owned by a couple of ex-pats, Dave and Kim. Six rooms, right on a small white sand beach, the Caribbean beckoning right outside our door. There is a small reef about 500 yards off shore and Amy and I rode some plastic kayaks out to a buoy where we tied the kayaks up, jumped into the beautiful warm, clear water and started snorkeling. The water is about 15 feet deep and on the way swimming out to the reef I saw a big conch shell on the sandy bottom. I asked Amy if she wanted me to try to get it and she said go for it. So I took a deep breath and swam down to the bottom, got the conch shell and headed back to the surface. I started swimming back to the kayak to deposit the shell when my wedding ring slid right off my finger and dropped to the bottom!!!! It seems that when I´ve lost my 20 pounds the last year or so my fingers have gotten a little smaller and there you go. But I could see it right on the bottom, so I dropped the shell next to it so I could remember where it was. By this time I was totally freaking out and screamed to Amy to come back towards the kayaks. I was drifting all over the place in the current, but because the big shell was there and the bottom was sand, I knew about where it was.
Amy made it back to where I was, but since I was breathing so bloody hard from my swimming and freaking out, I pointed to where I thought it was and said you have to try to go for it. I pointed to an object I was pretty sure was the ring, she swam the 15 feet down and grabbed the thing, then came back up. It wasn´t it! Damn! I kept looking down at the bottom and then spotted it for sure, the whole ring was visible in the sand. She swam down again and grabbed it and brought it up safe and sound. As Amy was grabbing the ring it looked exactly like the scene in The Return of the King where Smeagol grabs the Ring in the river. Sorry for all you non Tolkien fans, but I´m sure a lot of you have seen the movie.
So then Amy put the ring on my middle finger, where I was sure it wouldn´t slip off and we were off for some nice snorkeling.
Xcalak is a very small town of about 400 people, right on the Caribbean sea. North of town there are some nice small hotels. Ours had a few old rusty bikes that we could cruise the dirt road that went up and down the coast. So yesterday we rode about 13 kms up the road and visited a lot of deserted beaches. Unfortunately, this area is right off the gulf stream, so all sorts of trash litter these beaches. Lots of plastic bottles, baby chairs and A LOT of shoes. You could start a store with all the darn shoes on these beaches.
Mostly for the last few days we´ve just hung out on the beach, done some bike riding and had some great food and some AWESOME margaritas made up by the hotel´s owner, Dave Cawkins. Dave is an old Texan with some great stories including one that has to do with the fact that he was slightly responsible for Townes Van Zandt´s death (he of "Pancho and Lefty" fame). Another nice little restaurant in town, the Leaky Palapa, run by a couple of nice lesbians, had some unique Yucatecan fare, including quesadillas with shrimp and lobster. Marla, the owner, apologized for the fact that they only had lobster, no shrimp. DARN!! And the other nice thing about this restaurant is that the tables and chairs are right on the sand right on the sea, so you can eat your lunch as your toes wiggle in the marvelous fine white sand. To me, there is nothing better (well, almost nothing better) then eating some delicious seafood as you wiggle your toes in the sand.
Today we got up early as another local restauranteur, Toby, was driving into Chetumal today and when we were talking to him about coming here to Bacalar, where we are now, he said he´d take us. So now we are in the nice small town of Bacalar, which is located on this incredible lake, which is about 50 kilomters long and about 4 wide. The town is up on a hill with an old fort from the 17th century, which used to fight off pirates all the time. We are staying in a nice little place called Casita Carolina, run by another ex-pat American. She has 6 rooms and a big lawn that goes down to the lake. Just marvelous!
The town is great. Very few tourists, not spiffed up for us, which we love. Small taquerias and restaurants serving tasty food. Today I had salbutes, which are like a taco, but with more stuff on them like meat, salad, tomatoes and avocado. Amy had a poc chuc, which is a Yucatecan dish of pork marinated in amazing spices with sauted onions on top.
Later we had a really good fish soup at the local cenote. Cenotes are sink holes filled with fresh water. The one here is the largest in the Yucatan and is about 900 feet across and 500 feet deep! The water temperature is perfect, maybe mid 70s, and there are fish swimming all over the place. This one is right on the surface, as opposed to many cenotes which are in an underground cave.
Of course it´s Virgin of Guadalupe time, her day is coming up on Sunday. So tonight we joined a procession singing songs with a crowd of about 50 locals following a pickup truck with Guadalupe on top. There are a lot of pilgrims in town, the guys that go on bicycles all over the place, eventually ending up on December 11th at a church somewhere around that is dedicated to Guadalupe.
We´ll be here for a couple of days and then it´s down to the Rio Bec area, which has some amazing ruins. Looking forward to that!
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."
Why am I quoting Tolkien while traveling in Mexico? It´s a good story.
For the last few days we have been in the town of Xcalak, in the very southeast tip of the Yucatan peninsula, near Belize. We´ve stayed a nice small hotel, Tierra Maya, owned by a couple of ex-pats, Dave and Kim. Six rooms, right on a small white sand beach, the Caribbean beckoning right outside our door. There is a small reef about 500 yards off shore and Amy and I rode some plastic kayaks out to a buoy where we tied the kayaks up, jumped into the beautiful warm, clear water and started snorkeling. The water is about 15 feet deep and on the way swimming out to the reef I saw a big conch shell on the sandy bottom. I asked Amy if she wanted me to try to get it and she said go for it. So I took a deep breath and swam down to the bottom, got the conch shell and headed back to the surface. I started swimming back to the kayak to deposit the shell when my wedding ring slid right off my finger and dropped to the bottom!!!! It seems that when I´ve lost my 20 pounds the last year or so my fingers have gotten a little smaller and there you go. But I could see it right on the bottom, so I dropped the shell next to it so I could remember where it was. By this time I was totally freaking out and screamed to Amy to come back towards the kayaks. I was drifting all over the place in the current, but because the big shell was there and the bottom was sand, I knew about where it was.
Amy made it back to where I was, but since I was breathing so bloody hard from my swimming and freaking out, I pointed to where I thought it was and said you have to try to go for it. I pointed to an object I was pretty sure was the ring, she swam the 15 feet down and grabbed the thing, then came back up. It wasn´t it! Damn! I kept looking down at the bottom and then spotted it for sure, the whole ring was visible in the sand. She swam down again and grabbed it and brought it up safe and sound. As Amy was grabbing the ring it looked exactly like the scene in The Return of the King where Smeagol grabs the Ring in the river. Sorry for all you non Tolkien fans, but I´m sure a lot of you have seen the movie.
So then Amy put the ring on my middle finger, where I was sure it wouldn´t slip off and we were off for some nice snorkeling.
Xcalak is a very small town of about 400 people, right on the Caribbean sea. North of town there are some nice small hotels. Ours had a few old rusty bikes that we could cruise the dirt road that went up and down the coast. So yesterday we rode about 13 kms up the road and visited a lot of deserted beaches. Unfortunately, this area is right off the gulf stream, so all sorts of trash litter these beaches. Lots of plastic bottles, baby chairs and A LOT of shoes. You could start a store with all the darn shoes on these beaches.
Mostly for the last few days we´ve just hung out on the beach, done some bike riding and had some great food and some AWESOME margaritas made up by the hotel´s owner, Dave Cawkins. Dave is an old Texan with some great stories including one that has to do with the fact that he was slightly responsible for Townes Van Zandt´s death (he of "Pancho and Lefty" fame). Another nice little restaurant in town, the Leaky Palapa, run by a couple of nice lesbians, had some unique Yucatecan fare, including quesadillas with shrimp and lobster. Marla, the owner, apologized for the fact that they only had lobster, no shrimp. DARN!! And the other nice thing about this restaurant is that the tables and chairs are right on the sand right on the sea, so you can eat your lunch as your toes wiggle in the marvelous fine white sand. To me, there is nothing better (well, almost nothing better) then eating some delicious seafood as you wiggle your toes in the sand.
Today we got up early as another local restauranteur, Toby, was driving into Chetumal today and when we were talking to him about coming here to Bacalar, where we are now, he said he´d take us. So now we are in the nice small town of Bacalar, which is located on this incredible lake, which is about 50 kilomters long and about 4 wide. The town is up on a hill with an old fort from the 17th century, which used to fight off pirates all the time. We are staying in a nice little place called Casita Carolina, run by another ex-pat American. She has 6 rooms and a big lawn that goes down to the lake. Just marvelous!
The town is great. Very few tourists, not spiffed up for us, which we love. Small taquerias and restaurants serving tasty food. Today I had salbutes, which are like a taco, but with more stuff on them like meat, salad, tomatoes and avocado. Amy had a poc chuc, which is a Yucatecan dish of pork marinated in amazing spices with sauted onions on top.
Later we had a really good fish soup at the local cenote. Cenotes are sink holes filled with fresh water. The one here is the largest in the Yucatan and is about 900 feet across and 500 feet deep! The water temperature is perfect, maybe mid 70s, and there are fish swimming all over the place. This one is right on the surface, as opposed to many cenotes which are in an underground cave.
Of course it´s Virgin of Guadalupe time, her day is coming up on Sunday. So tonight we joined a procession singing songs with a crowd of about 50 locals following a pickup truck with Guadalupe on top. There are a lot of pilgrims in town, the guys that go on bicycles all over the place, eventually ending up on December 11th at a church somewhere around that is dedicated to Guadalupe.
We´ll be here for a couple of days and then it´s down to the Rio Bec area, which has some amazing ruins. Looking forward to that!
Friday, December 3, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Around the Yucatan
On our clockwise circle around Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, we will visit a small fishing village near Belize, attend a festival for the Virgin of Guadalupe, explore ancient Mayan ruins, visit the seaside city of Campeche (a world heritage site!), explore more Mayan ruins, hang out in our favorite Yucatan city of Merida and enjoy its weekly music festival, and explore more Mayan ruins.
We will start our trip in the small fishing village of Xcalak, way down near the Belize border. I was told years ago that this area, although not all that far from Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel, is like 'Old Mexico'. There are very few hotels, few tourists and the villages are tiny. There are nice beaches, great snorkeling, diving and fishing. Seafood is what to eat here. What's not to like?
Mayan ruins are everywhere around the Yucatan, like Calakmul, above. This ancient civilization, which flourished from around 300 BC to around 900 AD left many wonderful cities to explore. Archeaologists say around 900 AD the Mayans mysteriously left their cities and disappeared. Of course, they didn't disappear, the Mayan people are everywhere here. Just look at the local folks and they look just like the Mayan inscriptions on the ruins. Many of these ancient cities are off the beaten track and are little visited, so it's possible to be the only tourists there. Many of the sites have been well excavated and studied by archeaologists. Others are still under the jungle and you feel like Indiana Jones when visiting them. At the best sites, unlike Chichen Itza (which is beautiful, but crowded, clean, groomed and boring) you can climb all over the ruins and have a great time. We'll be visiting quite a few of these, as we'll have a car for a few days. Once we get ruin fatigue, we'll stop. Or maybe not.
Campeche is a town we heard was nice to visit, but we never made it on our last trip to the Yucatan. It is located on the Gulf of Mexico, so there should be some good seafood restaurants. Looking forward to one of my favorite dishes, conche in garlic sauce! This is also the area where they make the local version of the Panama hat.
Our last stop will be the beautiful town of Merida. This was one of my favorite spots on our last trip here, as they close most of downtown from Thursday through Sunday for a music/culture festival. Every little square in the city has a band playing great traditional music. There are streetside restaurants with local musicians and the food and drink are great! The music here is Cuban influenced, so there is lots of good Mexican/Cuban jazz from the 1930/40s and of course, Danzon!
Although we have an itinerary and kind of know where we're going, we expect lots of suprises along the way. Isn't that what travel is all about? So please check out our blog every once in a while. Hopefully we will be able to find an internet cafe from time to time, although we will often be out in the Mexican boonies.
We will start our trip in the small fishing village of Xcalak, way down near the Belize border. I was told years ago that this area, although not all that far from Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel, is like 'Old Mexico'. There are very few hotels, few tourists and the villages are tiny. There are nice beaches, great snorkeling, diving and fishing. Seafood is what to eat here. What's not to like?
Mayan ruins are everywhere around the Yucatan, like Calakmul, above. This ancient civilization, which flourished from around 300 BC to around 900 AD left many wonderful cities to explore. Archeaologists say around 900 AD the Mayans mysteriously left their cities and disappeared. Of course, they didn't disappear, the Mayan people are everywhere here. Just look at the local folks and they look just like the Mayan inscriptions on the ruins. Many of these ancient cities are off the beaten track and are little visited, so it's possible to be the only tourists there. Many of the sites have been well excavated and studied by archeaologists. Others are still under the jungle and you feel like Indiana Jones when visiting them. At the best sites, unlike Chichen Itza (which is beautiful, but crowded, clean, groomed and boring) you can climb all over the ruins and have a great time. We'll be visiting quite a few of these, as we'll have a car for a few days. Once we get ruin fatigue, we'll stop. Or maybe not.
Campeche is a town we heard was nice to visit, but we never made it on our last trip to the Yucatan. It is located on the Gulf of Mexico, so there should be some good seafood restaurants. Looking forward to one of my favorite dishes, conche in garlic sauce! This is also the area where they make the local version of the Panama hat.
Our last stop will be the beautiful town of Merida. This was one of my favorite spots on our last trip here, as they close most of downtown from Thursday through Sunday for a music/culture festival. Every little square in the city has a band playing great traditional music. There are streetside restaurants with local musicians and the food and drink are great! The music here is Cuban influenced, so there is lots of good Mexican/Cuban jazz from the 1930/40s and of course, Danzon!
Although we have an itinerary and kind of know where we're going, we expect lots of suprises along the way. Isn't that what travel is all about? So please check out our blog every once in a while. Hopefully we will be able to find an internet cafe from time to time, although we will often be out in the Mexican boonies.
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