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.