You Say Flamingo, I Say Flamenco

A hot day, another excursion, and more stories. This time, off to Celestun, a small coastal village set within a biological reserve known for it’s vast flocks of flamingoes. We arrived at the dock just in time to group up with two young couples and boarded a small lancha out to the breeding and feeding areas of the flamingoes. At first, you chug along a beautiful mangrove shoreline populated by blue herons, white herons, ospreys, as well as gray and white pelicans.

After a while longer you begin to see, in the distance, a pink blanket covering the reddish water. Closer, you start to see the flocks of stately pink birds with long snaky heads, spindly legs and gorgeous plumage – a stir of pink shades, dappled with white, with black borders along the wings. By the time the boat stops, you are the regulation distance from the flock and it is a swirl of sheer beauty. Flamingoes  are there in every position, landing, flying, and walking across the shallow water. They walk, they do not paddle, despite every appearance to the contrary. For all of their gangly features, they are graceful dancers spinning about in all manner of configurations, one, two, three, ten, a hundred. All together, the guide estimates that there are 3,000 flamingoes mas o menos there on that day.

The total number in the flock, he says, is around 40,000. Much of what we learn is at the behest of Marco, one of the young Mexican people, who more or less volunteered to be our interpreter. He is a handsome fellow and his companion, Celine, is a blonde, Swedish sunburst of smiles and warmth. We take to them immediately. We continue silently watching the birds with only the “click” of cameras punctuating, now and then, the cries of the birds. The trip continued with a high speed entry into a narrow slotted waterway at the beginning of a mangrove forest that was nothing less than thrilling. After a short hike, we boarded the lancha and headed toward home. 

Entering the Mangrove

Our new friend, Celine

In the interim, we got to know Marco and Celine a little better, discovering that they had met on a grueling Machu Pichu hike awhile back and struck up a serious relationship – as in having met both sets of in-laws. We decide to have lunch together at the beach at Celestun and over fried fish and shrimp cocktails we learned that Celine is just about to start a new job as a HR person (she will be a huge success) and Marco is a part owner of a startup energy management consultancy, who, though he attended and graduated from law school, decided that he could make more of a contribution to the fledgling energy management sector of the Mexican economy than as a lawyer. He is thoughtful, fair-minded, realistic, and now, as the result of our political carnival up north, very concerned about the future. He is mindful of the corruptive backdrop that seems to be ever-present in his country and worried about the damage that it, coupled with our current and nearly complete misunderstanding of his country, may cause. Our conversation continues all the way back to Merida, as they kindly afforded us a luxurious ride in their rental car, sparing our tired butts the caramba ride we had expected on the return bus. We parted with an invitation for them to join us at some point in Oregon. As they are both rabid outdoor types, we think they may actually follow through.

We have a temperate day for a change and elect to take an inner city walk around the main zocalo with a city-sponsored guide who is the fastest speaking individual, in both English and Spanish that we have ever encountered. He is full of fascinating facts about the main buildings in the colonial center of Merida i.e. that they are constructed almost entirely of stones purloined and repurposed for churches and other nearby buildings, from five Mayan temples that once stood in the city center. He guides us through the buildings rattling like a machine gun.

Yucatan Governor's Office with Pacheco paintings

We are particularly taken by the artwork in the governor’s building by an artist named Pacheco. His mural-sized images are actually paintings that create a harrowing pictorial history of the exploitation of the Mayans from the beginning of the Spanish Conquest to the present day. Unlike the expansive murals of Rivera, Orozco, and Sequieros, these are personal, tightly focused studies of pain and heroism, hung on walls that were once the pride of Mayan kings.

Eric doing his best to smile

A hot day comes next. We are off on a voyage to find and swim in cenotes. Eric is not at his best but soldiers on through the usual folding into bus seats in a hot, claustrophic collectivo, out to two small villages about two hours south of Merida. Once there, we undergo a quick ritual of locating a motorcycle-like contraption with a bench seat on the front that will be our chariot of sorts for the rest of the day. It is quite something to be seated about where an engine ought to be while observing the rather large buses heading right at you. You quickly realize that you are, essentially, functioning as the tricycle driver’s airbag. That is just a tad disconcerting, along with the sobering fact that the combined weight of the two of us seems to be just a tick or two over the carrying capacity of the engine which is howling like a coyote. Just behind us Eric, ever the optimist, pictures a sudden detonation in which we are separated from the driver and sent headlong into something coming the other way. It’s a bit like being Ben Hur - had he been sitting backwards and in front of the horses with no way to steer them.

Surreal cenote San Antonio

Cenote swimmers

Eric descending

In any case, our driver, Benito conducts us through changing into bathing suits, obtaining lifejackets, and carrying us to the cenotes. From there, we are directed to climb down a rickety stairway inside a manhole-sized opening in the rocks. 
This, we are thinking, is just getting better and better. We begin to wonder when the flint knife will come out as we are slaughtered and cast into the underworld. But no, not even close. Instead, at the bottom, there is a huge room and a clear, beautiful pool of comfortable water lapping at the bottom of stalagtites, while overhead is a blast of sunlight shining down through the hole we just entered illuminating the pool with an eerie, alien, and astonishingly beautiful light. We swim, we climb out, eat with our driver Benito and, after practicing still more Mayan, part company and catch a collectivo back to our welcome hotel room and its A/C.

Benito stays cool

Merida Dias y Noches

Merida, the swirling, hot, friendly corazon of the Yucatan Peninsula invited us to dance and eat and converse with a blat of mambo trombone, a scuff of tapping shoes on limestone and a rhythmic wiggle of hips. We, once again, mastered the art of dodging traffic, negotiating taxis, collectivos, buses, reading maps on the fly, and a host of other sundry skills essential to Mexican city survival.

Our guard dog Lily at Hotel Mucuy

Our tiny, but dignified, Hotel Mucuy, overseen by a retired Flamenco instructor and her extended family, gave us a strategically located platform from which to plunge into this nonstop, 24/7 fiesta. A typical Merida day and night, if there was such a thing might include: a morning breakfast with the wise old men of Merida at Pop – a restaurant just down the road, then a visit to a museum to escape the midday heat, then a lunch at the central Mercado – another wise old men hangout - with (very good) roving musicians and outstanding street food  (good grief, there’s a taco truck on every corner), a paseo in one of the many parks, a return to the hotel for a siesta and swim.

Once refreshed, a second lap in the cooling evening air, dinner at the old hotel with stained glass entry way, a mambo or a folklorico concert to check out, a “walking”dessert, such as a marquesita – a delicious, baked-on-the-spot crepe-like waffle, with a filling of your choice, rolled and served “to go” (we developed a weakness for marquesitas filled with Nuttella and fresh strawberries, go figure).

We realized we could easily float on the surface of this joyous madness by following this routine for our entire time in this city, but that just isn’t our style. We sought out the deeper water.

To get the lay of the land, we first hopped on the Gua, Gua (pronounced Wah, Wah, after the sound its horn used to make that indicated a passenger stop). This was a “no frills” bus tour of the central portion of Merida that told the story of the city’s history through the commentary of the bilingual guide. It also provided valuable information as to where the important museos and art galleries were located and their hours of operation. From that trip, we worked out a plan of attack for the city.

Hot days were for museums, more temperate ones were for excursions to sites further away. And as always, no matter the plan for the day, we wanted contact with the natives. We wanted to practice our slowly expanding Spanish language skills and to hear, as much as possible, stories.

Stories like the one we encountered in a restaurant one afternoon. Eric has developed an interest in the Mayan language and has managed to eke out a few elementary phrases that he decided to try out on our waiter. The momentary look of astonishment to “bash-kawa-leh” (phonetically spelled greeting similar to “hello”) was hilarious and priceless. Upon hearing Eric speak those words, a workman who had been cleaning the restaurant windows magically appeared beside us. He responded to the greeting and Eric responded to that – exhausting his vast reservoir of phrases. As it happened, Eric had a copy of the Popul Wuj, a compendium of Mayan creation myths in his daypack. By now, yet another waiter had joined us. Eric thumbed through the book to an illustrated section that showed some of the fearsome “lords” or god-like creatures that populated the Mayan pantheon. The window cleaner jabbed his finger at one image in particular and explained, with the help of one of the waiters, that, apparently, this creature is often seen at the entrance to Mayan villages in the area. Only the village sorcerer, the brujo could manage these beings by pinning their arms to their sides and casting them out. Apparently, as best as we could decipher, it didn’t hurt the situation if the brujo happened to be a little drunk during the struggle. We continued talking for a few minutes more and were given a few more Mayan phrases to practice. Then, just as quickly as they had gathered, everyone dispersed and returned to the businesses at hand: washing windows, clearing tables, totaling the lunch check.  As we were leaving, the window washer wished us “yu’um bootik” (God go with you) and Eric tried out a newly learned “ni bo olal” (thank you), and received a smile as reward.

Beginning at the End

Dreams are another way of perceiving. Like pictures, they have no start or finish. You have of a vision and then find yourself in another reality. The chronology of events that occur is less important than the colors, sounds, or feelings the event inspires.

We are stretched out on a dreamy white beach in Progresso, Yucatan with palapas dotting the sand. A cruise ship sits at the end of El Muelle, a mile-long pier. Next to you us is laughter from a group of New Orleanians who are throwing back shots of tequila as their women’s Rubenesque bodies are being pummeled by Mexican masseuses whose tables nestle under the nearby shade of a large open cabana. Two children are digging away throwing up geysers of sand, now and then stopping to examine blackened fossils of charcoal from someone’s long ago beach fire.

If they could dig far enough down, down, down, they would eventually discover similar black material, only this would not be the remnants of someone’s campfire. It would be the skin of a monster: Chicxulub.

We are lounging on the exact spot where part of the earth was torn asunder by the impact of the Chicxulub meteor. It slammed into the earth’s mantle, blowing trillions of tons of vaporized planet into the atmosphere and beyond, while igniting worldwide conflagrations. The meteor’s punch reset the earth’s clock, annihilating seventy percent of all terrestrial life and branding the entire earth with a black stripe, the fragmentary codex of the disaster, that you can still see today. The shocked crystals from the blast, compressed into the limestone bedrock here, permeated all things Mayan – the crops, the people, and the stunning ancient cities - with stardust.

The Snail observatory

Deer sacrifice

Of the three spectacular ruins close to the Chicxulub impact site, Chichen Itza is the best known. Chichen is, in a way, two cities, or better, two iterations of one city. The first Mayans built the foundations of the empire with mathematics, astronomy, agriculture, and engineering. They created a religion from dreams and myths that required obedience and ritual sacrifice, usually a deer, to unpredictable but generally benign gods. At its peak, 600 years of Mayan culture collided with the Toltec “crusaders”. The Toltecs usurped Mayan culture and welded a terrifying and bloody cosmology to a ferocious appetite for conquest and war. They demanded human sacrifices and imposed a strict caste system, somewhat like the samurai culture in Japan that carried Chichen-Itza to the pinnacle of power on the Yucatan peninsula. Yet the very moment of supremacy was, ironically, an exclamation point, an extinction of a 600-year cultural experiment and the opening paragraph of a catastrophic decline that lasted for another two to three centuries, hastened by natural and cultural upheavals. By the time the Spanish conquistadors arrived, Chichen Itza was already overgrown and partly obscured by the surrounding jungle. There was only a tattered written codex left of a cultural treasure.  Even that was lost when a priest, at the behest of the Spanish Catholic Church, burned all of the long-calendar records he found. Those historical records would have been the key to understanding the wonders of this culture.

El Castillo

The buildings and surviving structures that marked the genius of the Mayans are spectacular as we see them today. The centerpiece of the current site is El Castillo, a huge pyramid in the center of the city. It played some part in virtually every important ritual throughout the city’s history and was a throne of the all-important feathered serpent Quetzacoatl, whose image adorns virtually every part of the old city. Some years ago Eric was able to climb down inside the pyramid to see a jaguar throne buried deep within, a representation of an important deity mentioned in Mayan creation myths. Nowadays, in part because one unfortunate tourist became an offering to the Mayan gods by plunging down the 91 steps of one side of the structure, and, in part, because of the deterioration of the temple as a consequence of human foot traffic, all other interior spaces are closed.

Pelota or ball field was almost too big to photograph

One structure, equally awesome, that is not closed is the ball field, the pelota, where a life or death game that seemed to be a cross between rugby and basketball took place. The game was steeped in religious significance and was centered on negotiating a very heavy, bowling ball-sized, rubber puck through stone rings placed nearly 24 feet up the side of opposing walls. Standing in the field and trying to imagine what it must have taken to “score” is an exercise in magical physics, since the ball apparently had to be knocked through the ring using protected parts of the hips and arms. There is much discussion as to when the game was played, how it was played, how long it took to complete, who the losers were, and what the consequences of losing (or winning) might have been. What is very clear is that one team captain, depicted in a frieze along the side of one of the walls, literally “took one for the team” by giving up his head.

Sacred Cenote

On and on we walked, to the Temple of the Jaguars, the Temple of a Thousand Columns (which seemed more Grecian than Mayan), the Monastery, the Nunnery, and the Snail. All of the modern day names are the work of the Spaniards who tended to lean towards Catholic references – not towards accuracy of the functions of these buildings. The one exception, the Snail, was clearly understood to be exactly what it was: An elegantly designed and incredibly precise astronomical observatory that represented the crux of the priesthood’s power of prediction for when to plant, sow, and prepare fields for the harvest cycle. Our last stop was the Sacred Cenote, that was at the end of a long straight road out of the main square. Based upon archeological excavation, this was a place of offerings and sacrifices (sometimes human) to please the gods. We knew it was time to leave when one of the Johnny-come-lately tourists (American, of course) said, “Oh yeah, this is where they threw in their disabled children.”

By the time we worked our way back to the entrance of the city, huge tour buses had arrived, disgorging thousands upon thousands of sightseers. At first, it was disconcerting, but then, on reflection, we reminded ourselves that this was what Chichen-Itza had always been: a concentration of peoples from all over Mesoamerica and beyond. It had probably always been noisy, always filled with gaping, awestruck spectators wondering at the power and majesty of their god-like hosts.

Footprints: Shoe Chains to Sandals

Finally after days of nail biting over the weather that had all but paralyzed Portland, we escaped to Mexico – but just barely. Even with the help of our friend Connie, we still had to strap on our shoe chains, hoist our backpacks and crunch down our impassable street to meet her at the bottom of the neighborhood - bundled as though we were beginning an adventure in the Yukon and not the Yucatan.

The plane buffeted and bounced us first to Dallas on a crowded flight that was accommodating three days of ice delayed Portland travelers, to a far more laid back flight to Cancun. Our indicator of a great flight is when the attendant notices Eric grimacing in his seat and moves us to an exit row. Ahhh relief!

One quick night in party-central Cancun started our transition to a sandy paradise of swinging hammocks and gentle seaside breezes on Isla Holbox (ole-bosch). We folded ourselves into bus seats for the 3-hour drive to Chiquilá, Quintana Roo where the Holbox Express “lancha” took us a on a short 20-minute ride across a windy bay, escorted by huge frigate birds, to the beginning of our new adventure. We couldn’t help but notice that the majority of our fellow passengers were an international collection of oldsters like us and young travelers of the barefoot, backpack, and tie-dye variety.

At last, the crew deposited us at the terminal on Holbox. We discovered that the primary mode of transport was golf carts (carritos) that worked perfectly for the sandy, unpaved roads of the island. More bouncing through the main streets of souvenir shops and tour offices and out onto the beach where we passed knots of barefoot, possibly chemically altered, hippies ogling the sunset- including one couple that appeared to be picking bugs out of their Bob Marley dreadlocks -to our room at the isolated beachfront hotel, the Golden Paradise.

After a night’s rest listening to the incoming tide break under the hotel, we awoke to see pelicans, gulls and cormorants roosting on the pilings below our room. The fresh sea air scent mixed with pungent seaweed that the locals are hope will rebuild their eroding beaches. Our hotel keeper, Amanda, her son, Juanito, and their little black dog are warm and welcoming as is as the large Mexican family on holiday next door.

As we ventured out to explore the town’s sandy center in “la manana”, we couldn’t help but notice a collapsed portion of a building just down the beach from our place that had clearly been overwhelmed by encroaching tides of this subsiding coastline. That, along with a collapsed palapa that looked for all the world like some native representation of a radar dish, gave our little spot a decidedly unique feel. Just behind our place, a skeleton crew of workmen were cutting rebar and cementing in concrete bricks on another building that seemed destined for the same fate as the palapa. Nevertheless, the workmen went about their tasks with the stoic industriousness that seems ubiquitous in Mexico. This is Holbox, a place of shifting sands and changing times.

The beach walk into town helped us get the lay of the land and we managed to find an excellent breakfast spot owned by an island veteran who hailed from Austria and who proudly showed us her ancient golf cart (which according to her was the very first one on the island). We were waited on by a dour and slim Italiana named Donatelle who, after warming to us, became a fountain of information. The island was clearly a grab-bag of expats, locals, and tourists all coming and going in some kind of island-wide soiree.

Wandering on into “downtown” Holbox, we encountered Mauricio, a tour seller from Mexico City who explained that he had reached the point in his life where partying had to end and the serious business of getting a living had to begin. Holbox, he decided was just the place to undertake this transformation. His sales technique was unusual – one part confessional, one part soft sell.  He would begin by extolling the fantastic adventure that awaited us on one of his tours and then lapse into admissions of existential crisis.  He was trying, he confided, to turn over a new leaf, but in spite of all good intentions, the pull of the island’s festive atmosphere and anxiety about meeting his sales goals often got the better of him, which required a day or two of penance, reflection and some restorative pot smoking. We encountered Mauricio again on day 2, apparently refreshed from one such soul search. He took the opportunity to let us know that he had taken another step toward his new life – he had shaved!

And there was Axel, the smooth, unflappable young entrepreneur and tour seller. His family literally had a corner on the tour business – the Blue Pompano - which occupied one of the busiest corners in town and was obviously one of the places you go when you wanted to get something done. We came to discover that there was no problem, tour wise, that Axel could not master, but more on that later.

We had a light dinner in town and decided to eschew the kidney punching ride in a carrito taxi for a long moonlit walk back to the hotel, passing nightspots filled with young, seriously hip smokers; bongo beaters strewn on the beach immersed in some kind of moonstruck new age ritual; silent Mexican workers toting supplies to and fro; stray dogs, tourists, and on and on. Eventually we passed beyond the town and the few streetlights into the darker reaches of the island only to discover that we had wandered onto a road that was being slowly reclaimed by an incoming tide. We backtracked and found our street by walking toward the dark hulk of the building we had encountered that morning. Finally, we climbed the stairs to our room that already was feeling like home.

On Day 2, we signed up with Axel for a tour of three of Holbox’s must see stops: The Cenote, Isla Pasion, and Isla de Pajaros (Bird Island). The small lancha held seven of us, two Mexican couples, ourselves, and a young man from Spain who had taken a temporary job on the island. The first stop, The Cenote, was a bit of a misnomer. It was actually a fresh water spring in the middle of a mangrove-fringed islet. The water was beautifully clear and cool and perfect for swimming. Afterwards, a family on the island fixed a lunch of pan-fried local fish, and coconut juice in the shell. Then, most took a brief rest in a hammock or another swim. We returned to the boat and were greeted by a small -ish crocodile waiting in the water beside the dock. Hmm. It didn’t take long for most of us to put together that the croc had the same access to the spring that we did. Yikes!  Isla Pasion was a very small islet that one could wade around in a few minutes, filled with birds, iguanas, and various forms of sea life hanging out on the sandy perimeter. The final stop, Isla de Pajaros, was a bird sanctuary closed to foot traffic, except for a multi-storied bird blind that overlooked a pelican and heron roosting area. It was fascinating to watch these large creatures flying underneath us as we gaped at them from the blind.

 Beaches, bikinis, and reptilian creatures were beginning to make us feel like Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor in Night of the Iguana, so we returned to Holbox and settled for an early dinner and a planning session with Axel. We were to depart the next day for a tour he arranged for us of Chichen Itza on the way to the mainland town of Valladolid.  Because Chichen is such a popular tourist site, Axel put together an itinerary that would get us there, via ferry and taxi, early enough to explore the ruins without the midday crowds. We packed and bedded down early with the intention of meeting up with Alex at 5:30 the next morning. He had planned everything down to the sack lunches (actually breakfasts) for our road trip.

Alas, the best-laid plans of mice and tour guides… the next morning Lynn awoke with a nasty cough and fever. As tough as she is, this development put our plan in jeopardy. We met Axel in the pre-dawn darkness and explained the situation. He devised a modified plan that would allow us the option of postponing the trip if necessary. Arriving at the dock, we encountered yet another problem: the early ferry had been canceled making it unlikely that we could get to Chichen early enough anyhow. Not to worry, Axel immediately hired a small lancha and placed us aboard. In a flash, we found ourselves crossing the moonlit channel between Holbox and the mainland in a small boat, without running lights or lifejackets, clinging to the railings as we bounced and skittered, like fugitive drug runners, over some considerable swells at breakneck speed under a beautiful full moon.

At last, on the mainland side, exhausted, tired, and in Lynn’s case, horribly sick, we opted to bypass Chichen for a day of recovery in Valladolid. After a long and sleepy cab ride, we found a perfect little traditional hotel in Valladolid and poured ourselves into bed.