Reaching the town of Palenque

 

It's a misty morning here in Palenque, like most, I suspect. The air is saturated with moisture, and everything always feels a bit clammy, nothing wet dries easily. This is wonderful for skin and hair but not so great for clothes, towels, and things that need to be maintained, which we can see here in our small hotel, the Casssa Vlanca (no, this is not a spelling mistake).

We just returned from a short walk to the plaza to the Café Ajau, a small coffee place our wonderful host Fatima told us about. For various reasons I've had to miss out on my coffee for the last three days, and the day before all I could find was a cup of hot water with a greasy jar of nescafé on the street in Xpujil. I feel refreshed and restored and ready to write about the experiences of the last little while – except that we'll be off to the day's adventures soon. 

We left Xpujil two days ago, our 'Ahorro' bus card charged the evening before for the ride to Escárcega with 'Autobus Sur': the ticket agent at the bus terminal told us that busses were leaving at five, nine and eleven in the morning. We arrived at the little terminal with plenty of time to spare, and, just to make sure, I asked the agent – a different one than the night before – if the time had changed. No, he said, nueve, aqui (nine o'clock, here). Two ADO busses left, and with them almost all of the people waiting, only a couple remained. A woman asked where we were going and advised us that the bus wasn't going at nine but at nine-thirty, and it wasn't 'Sur' but 'Caribe'. If the information we found online the night before was correct, a bus of the biggest Mexican bus company, ADO, was leaving Escárcega for Palenque at 1:30 pm, and we did have hopes of catching it – though with every half hour later that once again became more uncertain. Still, when the bus arrived at 9:40 we were reassured: this should be possible. The nerve of the ticket agents still irked us: to charge our bus card for the 'Sur' bus the night before when there was none, to tell us that it would arrive at nine when that most certainly wasn't the case, and a fellow passenger knew it – it's hard to fathom what to believe and how to make any reliable plans.

       Of course the 'Ahorro' bus card didn't work with 'Caribe', and we paid in cash, which is not a big deal but certainly not right. This time we had landed on a 'chicken bus', not literally, mind you, but for sure the least comfortable of the busses we had used so far, used by the local population, many of them just to get to a bus stop or two or three further from Xpujil. There were several mothers with young children, and once again I marvelled how little fuss those kids made. They sat beside their moms, sometimes three siblings under the age of six, hardly made any noise, just sat on that bus like us adults, being rocked back and forth, sometimes dozing off. I thought of children in Canada or Germany, how toys would have appeared from bags, colouring pads and pens, snacks ... How is it that things are so different here? I don't think that these kids had no toys, though likely by far not as many as in our culture, but they are self-contained, and maybe this is what is expected of them. Moms are calm; I haven't yet encountered a situation where one raised her voice – or a dad, for that matter.

The bus driver was a potential race car driver, and at times I almost felt a bit uneasy when he took the bumps and potholes at his regular speed, but he did get us to Escárcega in good time: if indeed the ADO bus was leaving at the posted time we would have no trouble walking from the general bus terminal in town to the ADO one, a bit more than a kilometre away. Wiping the sweat off our brows -it was a hot walk in the midday sun - we waited in line at the ticket counter and, greatly relieved, got our tickets to Palenque, a ride of about three and a half hours.

This time the landscape was reminiscent of the Bolivian pampa. Far and wide huge pastures stretched in all directions, herds of sleek cows grazing, some with the huge heads, hanging ears and wattle typical for Brahma cattle in white, brown, tan and anything between, tended by flocks of white egrets. Gates opened to long lanes leading to estancias with cattle handling facilities: this obviously is the ranching area of the Yucatán. From time to time we passed a small banana or papaya plantation, and everywhere was water: rivers, lakes, watering holes, but water standing in pastures and fields, big puddles in driveways, too. The thundershowers that we experienced in Xpujil the night before must have passed through here as bigger storms. No wonder it is so green!

Of course the arrival time of five pm was approximate again, and by the time we reached Palenque it was close to six. We hadn't dared to book a hotel earlier before we had no idea if we really would reach it that evening, and to our delight (and some relief) the bus station in Palenque had good internet. We quickly checked the places we had found on booking.com in the morning and decided on a reasonably priced one close to the centre of town. Walking in the dark in a strange town without a complete understanding where we needed to be didn't seem like such a good idea, and we hailed a taxi to take us to the “Casssa Vlanca”, our chosen destination.

We were welcomed by a very friendly woman who, almost before we had properly checked in, proceded to show us a wonderfully detailed map of the town and its surroundings and pointed out everything and anything that could be of interest to us, marking each with a different colour of felt marker she pulled from a plastic bag. The Casssa Vlanca is an older hotel, and while it has everything we need – a good bed, a bathroom with hot water, very good internet – it is certainly past its prime, and, while clean, not the kind of clean newer hotels often boast. What it lacked in modern stylishness it more than made up in other attributes: the warm welcome alone would have made this a worthwhile place to stay. It was the first time that I understood almost everything we were told in Spanish, but to make sure that we really had understood, and in case we had any more questions, our hostess's daughter was summoned who speaks an amazingly good English, as does the son, as we found out later. What a lucky break! This is so rare, and it just feels good to be able to ask questions that for sure are understood. Fatima, the mom, and her daughter and son run the small hotel together, and with the asset of the young people speaking English they often have guests from abroad.

We looked at the key: room number 71. “How many rooms do you have,” we asked Valeria, the daughter, surprised since the place looks quite small. “Eight,” she smiled. “My mom is obsessed with the number 7.” It happens to be a number I like as well, for whatever reason, and Fatima was pleased when I told her.

                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By now it is Wednesday afternoon, December 6, St. Nicholas's Day, which seems rather far away here. After a wonderful visit to the Palenque archaeological zone yesterday we've had a quieter day today, with a visit to a magnificent waterfall in the morning, about twenty-five minutes away by colectivo and a nice long siesta. I haven't been able to write anything about the amazing Maya sites we have experienced on this trip, a problem I've encountered before when reporting on a lot of facts is required, but after a great guided tour yesterday I will try to talk about Palenque later. 

 

 

Xpujil

 

Saturday evening, December 2 

It's not quite 5:30, and the sun has just set, the air mercifully cooled down after the day's blasting heat. The smoke and smell of charcoal fires is all around, asados fired up for the evening; trucks, cars, a few tuk-tuks – the three-wheeled taxis that are part of the traffic in every small town - and of course motorcycles rumble and rattle by constantly. “Quiet” is a foreign word in this town. Without our plan to visit Calakmul we would have likely never come here, and now, after a long day of bus travel yesterday and uncertainty how to get from here to our next destination we hope very much that Calakmul will be worth it. Unlike Izamal and Ticul the town itself offers not a whole lot to endear it to us, but it is, I believe, as genuinely Mexican as it can get. 

After our stopover in Campeche, which seems worlds away, we took the 'Sur' bus at 1:30 in the afternoon. When we realized how many people were lined up already more than half an hour before departure time we quickly joined them: there are no assigned seats on this bus, and the thought of getting a standing-room only spot for the long trip did not appeal to us. Travel time was expected to be five hours, but of course those are only guidelines. No matter how long it would take, we'd arrive in the dark, and of course we had no idea what to expect in Xpujil.

For the first while the bus laboured up one hill after the other on a four-lane highway bordered by dense vegetation on both sides, until after a descent to match the climb we were again at sea level at the fishing village of Seybaplaya. Long rows of fishing boats with bunched-up nets were moored along the narrow beach, gulls, cormorants and many pelicans gathered on their gunwales. Dark herons and white egrets stood poised to snatch up fish, men stood and sat together in small groups, talking and laughing. The road followed the coast line for a good while until we turned off inland in Champotón. Now, we drove through an obviously fertile area. The corn fields from further north were replaced by wide expanses of sugarcane, interspersed with pastures filled with cow herds.

At five we were in Escárcega, another mid-sized town. The trip had taken three and a half hours already, and looking at the map we saw no way that we'd be in Xpujil in another two and a half. The next leg of the trip must have been harrowing for the bus driver. Truck after truck loaded with rocks and other building materials travelled in both directions, and to pass one after the other on the now two-lane road in the dark with dense oncoming traffic would be a nightmare. He managed, however, but it didn't take us long to figure out that his information that it would take another two hours from Escárcega would never hold up. By 7:30 we wondered if we would ever make it, but finally we started seeing signs with ruins along the highway. Now, it could not be very far anymore. Still, it took another half hour until we finally reached our destination. It's often a bit unnerving to not know for sure when we are close, and there is always a slight anxiety that we might miss the right stop. It's no problem in towns with a terminal, even small, but depending on the size of the town the stop could be on the side of the highway, and of course neither sign nor driver necessarily alerts you to it. It's even worse when we sit in the back of the bus like yesterday. I went up to the driver twice to make sure he wouldn't forget us.Who knows, we might be the only passengers getting off. This wasn't the case, however, and a friendly young man who got off with us pointed out the taxi stand to us, insisting it was a better idea than to walk the kilometre or so to the Coa de Collar, our chosen quarters. 

Sunday morning

This is how far I got last night until I was overcome by tiredness. It is now 6:15 in the morning. Just like yesterday morning dense fog makes it impossible to see further than the houses across the narrow street, and the rooster concert is in full swing. Around seven we'll be picked up by a collectivo that will take us to the Calakmul ruins and bring us back here in the afternoon. We'll have about three hours to explore the site.

There is a much smaller site, the Xpuhil archaeological zone, within walking distance, and after a walk through town in the morning to get a feel for our surroundings we chose this as our destination for Saturday afternoon. It was rediscovered in the 1930s, its yucatec Maya name referring to a kind of cattail that grows around the principal waterhole of the site.

Only a handful of people wandered the grounds, and if it hadn't been for the very noisy highway running right by it it would have been very peaceful indeed.

This highway is the one we arrived on, and the huge amounts of heavy traffic are mostly due to the construction of a very ambitious project, the 'Tren Maya', also known as the Maya Train. This is a 1,525 km railway that will traverse the Yucatán Peninsula. It will connect Palenque with Cancún via two routes that circle the entire peninsula. Construction began in June of 2020 and operation is scheduled to begin in the middle of this month. Judging by what we have seen here it is an enormous project, and of course it hasn't been without controversy. It undoubtedly will bring more people from the holiday places on the east coast here to this area, but it remains to be seen if it really has the hoped-for effect.

Here are a few impressions from our walk to the bus station in the morning. The last two pictures show the market area which is much more lively in the evening. The loudest section is around the place where people are gathered in front of a big TV screen to watch soccer games. 

From Ticul to Campeche City via Hopelchén

 

Internet is not a problem: we are in San Francisco de Campeche, also known as Campeche City, the capital of the province of Campeche. This wasn't exactly where we had planned to be overnight, but it proved to be the simplest and most logical solution.

Yesterday morning at this time we were sitting on a stone bench at the collectivo station, our backpack stowed in the back of the van to make sure that it came along. We had said our goodbyes to Theresa, our wonderful host at El Jardin, sent on our way with a hug and 'Vayas con Dios'. Remembering at the last minute I asked her about a fruit growing beside the entrance to her place that I had never seen before. It is a caranbola, and she gave us one to taste. So far I haven't been able to find out the English name.

 A young woman with a cute little girl was waiting with us at the collectivo station. The collectivos supposedly have a schedule to which they adhere – kind of. The day before we had taken the same one, and it left a few minutes after ten, which would be perfect timing for the journey ahead today: we needed to catch the 10:30 bus to Hopelchén in Santa Elena. The young woman asked the driver of the collectivo – who was sitting on the curb on the opposite side of the road with his phone – about the time of departure and was told it would be 10:15. This might make it a bit tight since the drive takes 20 minutes, but what could we do? We had no idea how easy it would be to continue from Hopelchén to Xpujil anyway; the only information we had been able to get on 'Rome2Rio' (nothing else anywhere) was that there was one bus per day, no time given.

Around ten a few more people arrived, and in the end we left almost on time after all, thus had about ten minutes to spare if the 'Sur' bus was on time. In Santa Elena, the collectivo driver pointed out the place where we should expect the bus to Hopelchén. We waited in the shade of some trees beside an older gentleman who came in the same collectivo. 'What language were you speaking?' he asked us in English. Ha! This was the first person beside two travellers at our hotel who spoke English, and he was from here! What a lucky break. His English was not perfect but quite adequate, certainly much better than my Spanish. First we made sure that we were waiting for the right bus, and in the right place. No problem: he wanted to take the same bus, though only until Bolonchén, the station before ours. He told us to get out at the supermarket in Hopelchén, and from there a collectivo would be able to take us to Xpujil.

The bus arrived shortly after 10:30, and a handful of people got on with us, joining another handful that was there already: this is the route from Mérida to Campeche. Between Ticul and Santa Elena already we noticed (smaller) corn fields, no longer the seemingly impenetrable scrub and trees. Now, the fields got more numerous, and their size increased. While at first we wondered if they had to be harvested by hand there was no question anymore: these needed machinery, even though many of them were interspersed with little trees. In Mérida at the bus station we had noticed women in dark dresses and big hats and men with checkered shirts, suspenders and straw hats: Campeche has a sizeable population of Mennonites, and about fifty families reportedly live in the Hopelchén area. 

They are successful farmers, and what we saw now certainly supported that. The closer we got to our destination the bigger the fields got, well tended, many now either close to being harvested or freshly harvested, newly cultivated, some with rows of newly emerged little corn plants. Modern machinery appeared here and there, big, well-kept farm yards became part of the landscape, trucks loaded to the gills with workers on their way to fields with crops emerging from long rows covered with plastic. We were not able to identify what kind of crops they were, possibly melons or cucumbers, some fields with stakes for climbing support. A few cow herds were visible, too, but not a whole lot.

A surprisingly wide road with trimmed trees, nice sidewalks, benches and exercise equipment led into Hopelchén, the most favourable impression for me yet: usually the outskirts of a town are the most desolate. When we turned towards the centre the usual array of narrow streets prevailed; yet the town gave the impression of being relatively modern and well tended. We arrived at the supermarket after an hour and a half of travel from Santa Elena. Asked about the bus to Xpujil our bus driver told us that the bus left at 8 pm – and there was only one bus per day going there. Well, that would mean a collectivo, then. Johann retrieved our big backpack from the belly of the bus, and we looked around for the collectivo our friendly travel companion had mentioned. Nothing beyond the usual array of motorcycle taxis, however. A Mennonite couple was sitting on a low wall, and, assuming that we might get information in a language more familiar than Spanish, we approached them. Yes, they nodded, smiling, they spoke both English and German. No, we would not be able to take a collectivo to Xpujil; maybe to a small town half way, but that wouldn't help us much. This was not good news: the prospect of waiting for eight hours in Hopelchén, then taking a bus on a reportedly poor road, arriving close to midnight in unfamiliar Xpujil – no, that didn't sound like a good option.

      What then? Our bus was still there, ready to depart for Campeche City, and quickly we decided to board it again and spend the night in this port city. The bus driver looked a little surprised, but for another $4.50 each we got our tickets to Campeche. The bus was still almost empty until at one stop a group of school kids in uniform got on. It was fun to watch them, acting like 11 or 12 year-olds anywhere, teasing each other, tussling, probably with an eye on the bus driver in case they were going too far. Shoving and laughing they got off about twenty minutes later. On this leg of the journey we passed citrus, papaya and coconut palm plantations: it obviously is a fertile area.

At the terminal of 'Autobus Sur' in Campeche, now with an internet connection, we were able to search for and book a hotel for the night in the walled city, about a fifteen minute walk away, and we recharged our 'Ahorro bus' card for the trip to Xpujil today.

It's getting close to checkout time now, so I will post this and continue later.

A visit to Uxmal

 Wednesday evening

I'm back here at the table in the dining area of El Jardin after a day of exploring the wonderful Maya site of Uxmal. I don't think I'll manage to write about it tonight anymore, but since our travel plans for the next few days are somewhat vague and I have no idea yet where we'll be tomorrow or the next day, if we will have internet or not, I think I'll at least post some photos for now.

Getting further away from the big tourist spots: Ticul

 

Wednesday morning, 7 am

It's early enough that the metal chair feels almost cool against my bare legs out here on the terrace, but no, it doesn't really cool off a whole lot during the night. We are still in the low twenties, and days go easily up to the high twenties and low thirties. I haven't had to wear anything but sleeveless shirts since we arrived, and I can't see that changing any time soon.

We've been here at the 'Posada El Jardin' since Monday evening when we arrived after an uneventful bus ride in the dark already. The 'Oriente' bus leaving from Izamal took us all the way to the 'Centro Historico' bus terminal in Mérida as we had been promised when we bought the tickets the day before; this was important because it's a different bus company ('Mayab') from Mérida to Ticul. Often the companies have their own terminals which are not necessarily close together. The only small glitch on Monday's travel was the fact that we missed the earlier bus to Ticul because the first one was too late. This one left at four instead of three which meant we arrived after sunset.

It's always nicer to arrive in the day, of course, just because things look different then and you get an impression of your surroundings and sometimes it's easier to orientate yourself, but otherwise it doesn't pose a problem: it doesn't feel unsafe here at all. We had made sure this time that we knew where we were going, Johann took a screenshot of the map, and I wrote down instructions of how to get to El Jardin – still, of course we could have got mixed up like the first day. We didn't, however, and even though there was no sign to indicate that we had reached our destination – only a few blocks from the bus terminal – we found it without a problem. Theresa, our host, stood by the open gate, and I still don't know if this was just by chance because we hadn't been able to give an exact arrival time, nor did she know where we came from.

El Jardin is named appropriately: it's a small tropical paradise with trees, lush green, well tended plants, different sitting areas, a pool and very spacious rooms, all decorated simply but tastefully. Right in front of our room is a huge tree whose intertwined air roots reach higher than me. Asked about its name Theresa told me that they call it 'Alamo'.

That first evening we only went for a walk for a few blocks to stretch our legs a bit and get a few things from the supermarket. Ticul is a mid-sized town of about 26,000 with nothing special that would draw tourists, except that it's on the route to Uxmal and several other Maya sites. There are four other guests at our little hotel, and they are the only light-skinned people we've seen here so far. Of course nobody speaks English, beyond here and there a couple of words, usually less than my very lacking Spanish. Still, somehow we have managed so far to get where and what we wanted.

          Interesting juxtaposition of cultures

We walked to the centre of town in the morning, looked at the huge church (San Antonio de Padua), watched Christmas lights being put up by the town and some private businesses, eventually found a bank that a) would give us money, period, and b) without exorbitant exchange fees, and tried to figure out how to go on from here. We found out that a 'collectivo' – small van – goes to Santa Elena and another one from there to the Maya site of Uxmal, both taking about twenty minutes, and decided to take the one to Santa Elena to check out the little town and get a feel for this venture.

The collectivo waited until it had assembled a full load – 15 passengers plus a baby and a young kid – before it left for Santa Elena, which makes the departure times a bit vague, of course. It took a good half hour until this point was reached, but we were in no hurry: we had no intention of going to Uxmal yet.

Santa Elena is a sleepy little town (maybe appeared especially so since it was early afternoon, siesta time?), and hardly anybody was around. We remembered driving by a sign for a hotel/restaurant called 'The Pickled Onion' when we entered town and walked back there: the name suggested that here somebody might speak English and give us some information about Uxmal. The sign told us that 'The Pickled Onion' was a kilometre in the other direction, the one we had just come from, on the highway to Campeche City, the capital of the province of the same name. Back we walked – there didn't seem to be much else to do – and eventually found the hotel at the outskirts of town. No luck with English there either, but we did find out that the bus of the 'Sur' company stops there on its way to Campeche and Xpujil, one of them possibly our next destination.

The only 'attraction' in Santa Elena is the 'Museum of the Dead' that displays the mummies of four children from the 19^th century, but we found it closed, possibly because it was still siesta time. The collectivo back to Ticul was nowhere to be seen either, so we found a small restaurant open with view of the taxi stand and quenched our thirst with a beer. It takes only minutes of walking in this heat and high humidity until one is drenched in sweat.It takes only minutes of walking in this heat and high humidity until one is drenched in sweat. With not too much delay the collectivo appeared eventually, and, windows open for 'air conditioning', I enjoyed the drive on the narrow road that allowed glimpses of small corn fields from time to time. Traffic here is sparse, which is nice.

Not in town, however! We had a pizza at 'La Gondola' for a late supper, doors open to the street on two sides, and I once again marvelled at the stream of mopeds, riven by men and women alike, transporting families even with small babies, the parents always wearing helmets, older children mostly, but smaller children almost never. Once I saw a girl of maybe five standing up on the seat between her parents, looking around. Of course there are tuk-tuks, motorbike taxis, even 'taxis' propelled by pedalling power, but also new and fancy cars, by far not only the old beaters we've seen elsewhere sometimes. 

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the plaza near the church to watch the (small) school marching band practice. We had heard them the night before and now were able to watch their drill. The drums knew their part well already, but the same could not be said of the trumpets. There was a certain resemblance with a herd of elephants ... On the other side of the plaza a group of young teenage girls in school uniforms were practicing a dance routine with Christmas music, English as well as Spanish. They'll be ready for their Christmas concert, I'd say; already they were looking quite good. 

Two relaxing days in the 'Ciudad Amarilla'

 

It's a peaceful Monday morning, sunrise bird songs and whistles have quietened down, the swish-swish of a broom in the courtyard the only sound close by, cars and mopeds on the street hardly noticeable. It feels good to be here! Walking to and from town yesterday (our hotel is about seven blocks from the centre) I thought how, as so often, Latin America is a place to make me feel good. A nod, a smile, a 'buen' día' is almost always offered or returned. People look you in the eye when they say it, the smile crinkling their eyes, white teeth shining in dark faces that, here in the country of the Maya, are in some cases at the level of my waist. They laugh easily and enjoy company, and that is passed on to those they encounter.

As we had hoped when we first planned the beginning of our trip the two days we spent here were exactly what we needed: we are well rested now, got a lot of sleep, started to adjust to the humidity and heat (as much as that's possible for us northerners) and got used to walking and orientating ourselves in town. It likely would have been even better without the stop in Valladolid, but all is well.

We had chosen our hotel for its location – easily walkable from the bus station – and were not disappointed either by what the description had promised: it is quiet, very clean, with a nice garden area surrounding the outdoor pool. What we hadn't expected was that once again we seem to be the only guests. It must have to do with the fact that it's not yet high season here. In two weeks things might well look different.

 

Izamal, also called 'the yellow city' or 'ciudad amarilla', is rightfully named so: at least in and close to the centre of town all buildings seem to glow in the sun, beautifully offset against the blue sky. According to the Lonely Planet, for the Maya this was the centre of worship of their supreme god Itzamná and the sun god Kinich-Kakmó in ancient times, and, recognizing the importance of this place, the Spanish built a huge monastery here, using the stones of the Maya temples. Yet, a few of the temple ruins remain, Kinich being the biggest one, right in town. We climbed up the first afternoon, joining a good many other visitors, and enjoyed a good view from the 34 m pyramid. It's a bit strange to see cell phone towers and windmills on a distant ridge from the top of a pyramid, a quite different experience from our hike to El Mirador several years ago, or even Chichen-Itza or Tikal. On the other hand it's fascinating to think that the descendants of the people who built this are now offering us accommodation, sell us fruit and water, serve us in restaurants. Now, Izamal is surrounded by dense vegetation; then, the area had been stripped of trees for many, many miles to make room for temples and the people they served. It's hard to believe that the view from where we stood would have been so drastically different before the decline of the Maya empire twelve hundred years ago.

Yesterday we walked up the ramp to the monastery from the plaza, strolled along the arcades, supposedly the second biggest after St. Peter's in Rome (not sure if this is true) and went into the church, empty in the afternoon after the service in the morning when it was filled to the last spot. Its famous statue of the Virgin Mary was gifted with a crown by Pope John Paul II at his visit and is supposed to have healing powers, thus a destination for pilgrims. Right now the statue can be admired from close up, beside the altar; usually it is located somewhere higher up. It is still a functioning cloister, and nuns were selling handicrafts and religious articles in a little store beside the church.

Outside the convent square, at the bottom of the ramp, the fair was in full swing, music blasting from all sides – a strange juxtaposition.

Late in the afternoon,when it had cooled down a bit, we hiked up to the top of the pyramid once more. We waited at its base until a tour group had descended and now were almost the only ones to see the full moon rise on the opposite side of where the sun had just gone down. Swallows twittered all around, hunting for insects, joined by a few dragonflies. I was glad we came back to this.

At the bottom we found the big iron gate secured with a lock. Now what? Right across were stores with people we probably could alert. Or maybe we could find a way around the gate somewhere? No, within a couple of minutes a man came with a key and opened up the gate. We told him that there was another couple still up on the pyramid and went on our way. He likely has to deal with that on a regular basis.

 

On the way back to the main square we passed an open door from which loud music flooded the street. The day before we had gazed in in passing already, and I said to Johann, “this must be where the locals drink.” This time we were ushered in by a solicitous man, tempting us with 'cerveza, tequila, mescal, margerita?' A beer felt just right, even though the music was almost unbearably loud, and we gave in. A 1.2l (!) bottle of 'Tecate Light' appeared on our table immediately, followed by a few little bowls of snacks in part of unclear origin. 'Poc-chu - pork,' we were told, which, I found out later, is a Mayan dish where pork is marinated in sour orange. It was good, in any case, and we didn't get sick from it either. This was indeed a spot where the locals came to drink: not a tourist in sight, although at some point a man approached us in English. “How do you like my city?” he asked. “I'm Emilio, lived in the US for fifteen years, but now I'm back in my town.” He tried to invite us to another beer, but this was just enough to quench our thirst.

Today it is overcast but no less hot, as we found on our way to a hotel on the square for breakfast. It's almost time to leave. If all goes well we should be in Ticul, another small town south/southwest from here. No direct bus goes there, and we have to change in Mérida, travelling time altogether no more than three hours. Tonight we'll know more. 

 

 

Getting lost in Valladolid

 The slowly rotating fan on the ceiling, supported by the open screen door and three screened windows letting in a slight breeze, make the temperature quite comfortable in our room at the Posada Ya'ax ich in Izamal, Yucatan. Evening noises drift in: the rhythmic chirping of insects, the almost bird-like call of a gecko, a dog barking in the neighbourhood, the occasional moped. Roosters are quiet at the moment, and so, thankfully is the cat who serenaded us with its mournful love song yesterday. No more loud music from the fair at the centre of town either: last night I still heard it when I woke up briefly at four. Still, carousels were running and kiosks still selling sweets and french fries, families with small children gathered to listen to a singer on the lit stage when we went for a last walk into town around 9 pm.

We've only been gone for a few days, but home feels very far away. For the first time in four years we are back in Latin America, travelling – for the most part - the way we did so many times before in the past fourteen or so years: by local bus. Things didn't always go exactly as envisioned, but we are slowly getting back into the travelling groove.

As usual our plans were vague when we left home. We marked a few places we were interested in but didn't want to plan very far ahead, remaining open for what comes our way. We booked a hotel for the first night in Cancun near the airport, with the idea of taking the bus to the picturesque little town of Izamal the next day. The hotel had arranged a taxi to pick us up at the airport, and, taken aback by the price for the short ride, we gratefully accepted the offer of a German couple we met over a beer in the evening to take us with them to the airport the next morning when they returned their rental car. The Hertz shuttle dropped us off right at the parking area for the ADO busses, where we inquired about tickets to Izamal at a small kiosk. Instead of a direct bus to Izamal, however – which we thought we had found online the night before – we were ushered into a bus leaving for Playa del Carmen almost before we reached our seats: they obviously wanted to add a few more passengers, and we had no time to question the route they had chosen for us. Oh well: we were on holidays, after all, and since there seemed to be no way of reaching Izamal that night we would stay in the bigger centre of Valladolid, also a nice town according to the information we found.

In Playa we waited for two hours for the 'connecta' (15 passenger) van that would take us to Tulum and from there to Valladolid. The ride was comfortable, the temperature very pleasant, the A/C system not running full blast. So far we still didn't know where we would stay, but with internet at the bus station in Valladolid we soon found a small hotel, interestingly described as a 'home stay' in some of the reviews, not too far from the terminal for us to walk there. We shouldered our packs and followed the street in the direction we had figured out. After about six blocks we should have reached our destination, but nowhere was any accommodation with that name to be found. Confused, we turned around. We had been so sure that we had neglected to write down the exact address, and now, too far away from the bus station wifi, we couldn't access our booking anymore, only knew the name of the place, “Casa Fereny”. A young man we asked on the street shrugged his shoulders: although we must be right close he had no idea who we were looking for.

We passed a small cafe with the interesting name “Bike House Coffee” and decided to inquire there; maybe they could help us. The owner was very willing to try, and, seeing how affected we were by the heat, offered us water from a dispenser that perspired with cold. I ordered a coffee, too, and he went to work to figure out how to get us to our destination. Soon he was joined by his partner who spoke excellent English: it turned out the two had operated a bike rental and guide company for several years and had now turned that job over to another guide while they started the small cafe at the site of the bike shop – hence the name. It turned out that, unfamiliar with the way the numbering system set up in this city, we had got the wrong coordinates: everything is called 'calle', both what would be streets and avenues at home, and we had switched around the ones going north and south and east and west - not that there would have been a way to know for the uninitiated, at least without a map. We set out from the bike shop with new and detailed instructions, plus information about the bike tours they offered, possibly something we could do on the way back. 

After another twenty minutes or so we reached the Casa Fernery. Without the picture on booking.com when we booked it we still probably wouldn't have found it because no sign on the outside indicated that the house was anything but that: a house. We were greeted effusively by Nery, who, together with her husband Fernando, operates the place. It is small, only four rooms, and that night we were the only guests there. Fernando suggested we might want to take in the light show at the Convent San Bernardino at 9:30, which gave us a lot of time to relax after the long walk in the hot sun and the day's excitement. The bike people had mentioned a wonderful street food place 'right where you'll be', Tacos Patron, and our hosts encouraged us to pick up a burrito or tacos there which we could eat on the terrace of their place, right across. We did, accompanied by a beer we picked up at a small supermarket nearby. All evening the rhythmic tapping of knife on cutting board gave witness to the popularity of the small venture, and even when we finally returned from the light show around 11:30 pm after another wrong turn, long wanderings and an inquiry at a hotel reception, the four young men were still cooking, people still eating, the music still playing.

The internet at the "Posada" didn't work until this afternoon, so I'm behind with my blog, and now I'm too tired to continue. Tomorrow!