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A long way from Panama ... hat weavers of the underworld in Becal, Yucatan.
Text and photos copyright 2004 Lynette Chiang
Complete Galfromdownunder in Mexico chronicles
Tuesday Jan 20. Down the Panama Hatter's Hole
I MADE IT to the nondescript town of Maxcanu in record time ... 60 km or so in about 3.5 hours, thanks to an extremely smooth, new and thuddingly dull highway, a tailwind and a pannier that was one whole papaya lighter because I ate the whole darn thing the night before. It's a strange game I play with myself, illogically celebrating the panniers getting lighter and lighter as I eat my way through the food I am carrying, because I'll simply have to restock it all at some point, and every new little thing I buy adds weight...like the bottle of White Lightning (that's for the bike chain, not my teeth).
Becal (rhymes with freckle) is the Mexican home of Panama hats, i.e. hats woven of the jipijapa (pronounced hippy happa) fiber allowing them to be rolled up and inserted into a tailored coat pocket, boinging back to life when unfolded. The only other place where they are made is in Ecuador.
I was sitting in the shade slurping at a 3 peso elote (corn niblet) ice cream telling the bus ticket guy how I was going to ride the hot and dull 20 km south to the town, buy a Panama hat for my dad, and ride back. He laughed uproariously doubling over in the process. I actually failed to see the humor but then, I guess riding a bike more than a block to get the local rag is an alien concept to some.
"Check into the hotel (100 pesos = $10 a night), leave your bike there, catch a 9 peso half hour bus to Becal, buy the hat, get back on the bus and come back," he gasped, wiping the tears from his eyes. Yes, and I could have gone half-half, put my folding bike on the bus and ridden back. Or vice versa.
I did what he suggested. On arriving in Becal I was accosted by a bike taxi who took me to the underground caves of his 'family' where the hats are made. These caves are simply nice cool, dampish holes in the ground with a little staircase going down, where family members sit and deftly weave the famously fine foldable hats for the hawker to high-class hattery in Merida. The technique looks rather like riffling through 3 packs of cards, back and forth... I wondered if there were any claims for repition strain injury...
There are 4-6 grades of hat, ranging from normal ($9) to ultra fine, costing around $80. The only real difference is the width of the fibres used, the finer and tighter the weave, the more material it takes and the longer it takes, resulting in a higher price. So, Grade 1 takes 2-3 days, grade 2 takes a week, grade 3-4 take around a month or more. Of course I clapped eyes on the most expensive item in view, a superfine Marlon Brando kind of lid with the the four initials of the weaver woven into the crown as 'holes'. As I turned this $80 work of artover in my hands I could imagine it being snatched away by a strong sou'westerley or my dad saying "thanks but I prefer my ballcap" ... and put it back where I got it from.
I bought a couple of grade 1 hats and a grade 2 sunhat for myself which certainly folds, but on unfolding resembles a limp shitake mushroom for quite some time ...yes, a supposedly seasoned traveler can be taken for a ride as well as anyone...
Yesterday I started talking about the Ruined Hacienda Route on the way to Celestun, starting with the decidedly unruinous (except to your credit card) Santa Rosa. It is managed by the delightful Szilvia Ori from Hungary, and you can email her on o_szilvia@yahoo.co.uk if you feel the urge to treat your loved one like a Spanish Conquistador's wife (or the husband of the latter). I also stopped to peek into Hacienda Chunchucmil, with its fabulously dust-obscured mosaic floors and wall murals, with little kids swarming around me saying 'Wat ish you nam?' and 'Money money money'. I got out of there fast.
The cutest little kid you ever saw ... she whacked her brother over the head with her bottle shortly after this shot was taken. Spotted in Celestun in Artist Cindy Abel's back yard ...
Celestun is a poor, dusty, and in my opinion nicely scrappy coastal town on the Gulf of Mexico famed for its Biosphere reserve and pink flamingos. The road there, however, was arduous. It was flat, it was empty, but the combination of patches every few inches, no shade and the sun beating down like a broiler made the ridiculously easy sounding 50km seem like 100 hard hilly ones. To distract myself and keep plugging on I tried mentally converting miles to kilometers and vice versa, an algorithm I always forget the moment I work it out. Then I tried singing, first my own songs, then cover versions of some popular ones, progressing to 4 part harmony and full orchestral backing, but to no avail, my eyes searching for nearest available shaded rock. There was none. The map showed a town 17 km along the unrelenting track but cruelly, it was nothing more than a private ranch with a keep out sign. My hopes for even a dreaded Coke evaporated like, to use one of my old metaphors, a snowflake in a hot wok. To add insult to injury, the final 20 km along the coast to Celestun was the longest 20 I have ever ridden. It was a smooth, new highway, but the km markers seemed so far apart, I was sure the people who installed them had their pedometer switched to miles not km.
Celestun greeted me with a lazy hola, the Rio Celestun Hostel (50 pesos bargain) booked out with ... you guessed it ... the 30 kids from Ohio! Because of my matching school uniform-i.e. bike gear-I managed to get a space to swing the hammock for 40 pesos.
I was invited to the home of fellow lone woman traveler and artist, Cindy, who lives part time in a beachfront cabin and part time in Venice beach, CA. Check out her riotously colorful art here and buy it at Venice beach.
I ate pizza at El Lobo, an oasis of a cafe run by a Dutch couple.
My lack of pithy reportage here is partly because Celestun is very laid back. My brain went into auto pilot. Oh yes, I got the zip replaced on my Assos Jersey in a little shack with an old iron Singer Sewing machine. A terrible job, costing $1.50.
Today I am in Merida, home of 18 striking colonial churches, plazas, ginormous murals and cobbled walks, groovy cafes and ramshackle luncheries, Panama hat and Yucatan Hammock haggling, and a constant stream of noisy, crazy traffic. Every night the local council organizes some kind of cultural event in the streets. Last night it was folkloric dancing, men and boys tap tapping in white suits and off-white Panama hats, rotund women tap tapping in white embroidered dresses and big flowers in their hair. I met Alice and Ray, a Canadian couple from Vancouver and I confess to coercing Ray into buying a neat little souvenir: a ping pong bat with wooden chickens pecking at the surface powered by strings and a swinging ball underneath. You have to see it to believe it.
They do not know how to make pizza here. My pizza had chopped celery on it which made it crunchy but not in a pleasant way, and was covered by a strange yellow cheese than turns to oil when heated. The Nomadas Hostel, however, is a treat. 74 pesos a night for a dorm double bed with overhead fans, breakfast, and ... an individual reading light above each bed. That's civilized.
Today I went on a free tour of the city. It was hosted by a smiling gentleman who refused to make mention of any of the bloodshed or conflict between the Spanish Conquistadors and the Maya many moons ago. Apparently when the Spanish came over they asked the local Maya for directions, as it were, in Spanish of course. The locals responded in Maya, "I don't understand what you are saying, but it sounds good". This sentence ended up sounding a bit like "yucatan". That's how Yucatan got its name.
Gear Freak Corner: The basic, heavy duty quick release holding my seatpost hinge finally gave up the ghost. I went shopping for one here in Merida, Grand Dame City of the Yucatan, but all they had were short seatpost ones and ones for the wheels. It still kinda works... I'll have to pretend it's a Brompton, ie where the hinge is not locked down at all - the weight of your butt and you on top of it is the lock. Also bought a bottle of White Lightning and a couple of brake pads from a Mexican bike chain called Benotto. The store featured quite an array of 20" and smaller tires.
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Louise Verboom of Cafe El Lobo in Celestun, a Dutch gal making a life where the sun shines all year round ...
Monday Jan 19. To Celestun
After tearing myself away from Imelda Marcos' stamping ground (literally) WITHOUT succumbing to a single beaded synthetic flip flop I set off north, still wheezing and sniffling, towards pinkflamingolandia, aka Celestun, a long, hot 80 or so km away on the Gulf of Mexico. My plan was to try and stop mid way and make a side trip to Becal, where, surprise surprise, Panama hats are woven in underground holes.
My plan was also to ride via the route of the ruined Haciendas, my appetite for faded majesty whetted by Tabi, the tragic diva of Haciendas...
The road itself is like stepping through a wormhole into a part of the Yucatan that everyone, tourists and locals alike, have forgotten. A one-lane patchy paved road politely right angles its way through a number of obscure villages baking in the dry savannah-like heat, each village with its own crumbling hacienda standing at the end like a palace, whereupon the road respecfully genuflects to the right.
The first Hacienda, however, was by no means faded, and if I had dared to turn up with a hammock and helmet in hand I would have been sent ever so politely packing. Thank Bhudda I found a marginally clean 100 peso room in Maxcanu. Hacienda Santa Rosa has been fully restored a la Vogue Living magazine (circa 1800 or earlier) and on entering its hallowed gates you know you are in for some severe pampering whether you like it or not. As the Lonely Planet said, private plunge pools, walled gardens ... The tariff is a mere $250 a night, really only half the price of an entry level Bike Friday and thus a bargain if you think about it hard enough. I felt obliged to use my Bike Friday business card as a port of entry visa to get a look around.
Oops, I am being tossed out of this cyber cactus .. more tomorrow... about the Panama hats made down a dank hole... here is an email I received today from NWT owner Richard Vallens:
--- Richard Vallens wrote: > Hot Damn, Dearie, reading your travelogs is darn near as good as being > there. When I log on to the BikeFriday web site and read your latest chapter, I > can hear the chain on my New World Tourist start to shake and slap, all the way > from the garage. Why don't you take ME on a trip like that, the bike cries. > And so I wonder, why don't I? > I had to go on Google to find the following clarification: Ticul is located 100 > km south of Merida, 19 km northeast of Uxmal, and 17 km from the Loltun caves. > It is on both the Convent and Puuc Route circuits. This should NOT be confused > with Tikal in Guatemala. <--That's important, because I WAS confusing it with > Tikal in Guatamala, at least momentarily. Which leads me to offer this > excellent piece of advice, formed specifically from a very scarey experience in > Tikal. Do not venture one INCH off of a road or ESTABLISHED trail without > paying exquisite attention to exactly WHERE YOU ARE. I was on a dirt road in > Tikal and stepped about 25 feet into the jungle for a little nature break and > was LOST when I looked up. No road. Totally surrounded by the sameness of > vegetation, with visions of being lost forever in a Mayan rain forest with my > parents forever wondering what became of me. You know, because you are reading > this, that I found my way out. But I very well might not have. So you're going > to embrace my experience and be extra careful, right? > > Take care, traveler. Hasta luego. > > Richard
Thursday Jan 15. Sniffling in Ticul (0 km but a reasonable amount of walking).
I have managed to contract "él gripe", the flu that Mexicans get when the season changes from sweltering hot day and night to hot in the day, less hot at night. Even zooming along at 21 km/h was not enough to out-bike the local lurgie (that's Aussie for contagious disease).
I had all kinds of plans to leave today but instead paid for another night and remained in the fetal position under my sleeping bag until the rattatatting of motorcycles outside drove me from my $14 a night matchbox with the B-52 propeller clattering dangerously overhead.
I have still not managed to work out when Mexicans actually eat. When I wander down to the Market at 1pm to eat lunch they are packing it all away for the afternoon siesta. When I go out to try and get some dinner at 7.30 I am met with closed doors or the famous words "no hay" (pronounced no eye) which means, "tough luck amigo". Well, it actually means "there is none".
So for the second night in a row I had to resort to the same grilled veggie sandwich at El Gondola, a place that service good but expen$ive pizzas, 70 pesos for a small one. The sandwich was 17 pesos. I was almost tempted to eat the Poc Chuc ex pig I heard squealing blue murder outside my window this morning.
Ticul, I discovered, is the shoe capital of Yucatan. Instead of statues of Mayan gods on every corner there should be a bust - or rather bunion - of Imelda Marcos. With little to do except sniffle and shuffle along past closed eateries I visited each and every shoe tienda along Calle 23. This had a curiously numbing effect on my head, and by store number 26 I was shoed out. Most shoes are synthetic and under $10. All but a couple made my foot look unappetizing to say the least.
Right now in the cybercafe the locals are glued to the latest video game ... well at least that beats getting drunk in the local bar. I think.
Ticul is is full of pedicabs transporting snuffling pigs, widescreen TV, grandmothers, entire families, you name it, to the next block. The downside is, it's horrendously noisy, due to an overpopulation of motorcycles. The tiny, lawnmower-engine kind.
I ran into two of the teachers again, from the Ohio school group. The kids were spending 2 well earned days in the Uxmal Club Med. I hear they were cursing me for saying the route was flat from there on in. But it WAS! "We told them you had come from biking in hilly Chiapas", said Theresa. I know my name is mud right now in the Club Med pool.
That's it from me. There was nothing to do (or eat) tomight except to come to the cyber cafe. I shall retreat to my matchbox and read a few pages in the "Time of Cholera" by G G Marquez before deciding if I should go northeast or northwest tomorrow. The issue being, there is nowhere to sleep en route and the stretch is well over 100 km. Something will come up.
Thanks to Nigel Dick www.nigeldick.com, Richard Vallens and Dean Asten in Mexico City for their nice emails!
Gear Freak Corner: I forgot to mention that the little bottle of rubbing alcohol you can buy from practically anywhere anyplace in the world, which fuels my stove, did a superb job of lighting a fire at the Sacbe campground. A few sticks, a splash of the ethyl alcohol and voom! Instant and prolonged fire. Great for sterilizing cuts and whatever too.
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Me and 30 kids from Ohio found their way through the maze of orange orchards to arrive at the magical, mystical Hacienda Tabi for the night ...
What a place to hang your helmet ...
Wed Jan 14. Hammocking in a Hacienda Santa Elena to Hacienda Tabi (15 km)
I HAVE JUST spend the night in the most amazing place. The owner of the Sacbe Camping spot suggested I stop by Hacienda Tabi, 'a very nice place' where I might be able to stay the night or hang a hammock. Well, after taking a premature turnoff and finding myself well and truly lost in a maze of orange orchards, bouncing along a rutted, potholed dirt road for around 4 km, the foliage miraculously parted to reveal a jaw-dropping sight ... Hacienda Tabi, floating like a magical, mystical mirage on a sea of fuzzy grass...
It was like .. like ... chancing across the Starship Enterprise albeit in a bygone era. I did not pace out the frontage but it was wider than my field of view. A bit like some of the massive colonial edificios in Florence where the architects cunningly countered the visual vanishing point and made the buildings wider towards the top, giving the mere mortal below a sense of being very small indeed... well Tabi had the same effect, only in the horizontal plane, if you get my drift.
La senora who greeted me had worked there for 18 years, cooking for whoever turned up, her kids helping squeeze the oranges for the breakfasts and her husband working on repairs.
She told me that tonight the place was booked out by - guess what - a group of 30 cyclists from Ohio. There was no room at the inn, but I could swing a hammock across one of the palacial balconies or in the library...
Sure enough, the cyclists arrived: 30 kids from a privileged school with 4 teachers keeping them in line -and pedaling, I imagine.
For the second night in a row, I rigged my hammock and mosquito netting, thus proving to be a canny purchase back there in Campeche.
While the kids kicked a football around the massive prairie out front I explored the abandoned stone church, complete with trees growing high on the open air rafters, the roots running like plumbing down the pitted walls and into the earth.
Behind the arched colonnades which went on forever were 5 large simple rooms, looking like they were straight out of one of those Yucatan Style coffee table books. The rest of the Hacienda was in a state of semi repair.
I was banished to the unrenovated bathroom downstairs and tried not to look up or down as I took a shower heated by an electric coil.
Dinner was tamales, fruit and a drink, for 35 pesos. Mexicans tend to eat very sparingly in the evening, say one tamale, but as I had not had much for lunch I downed 6 in quick succession and later wished, as I tossed and turned in my hammock, that I had restrained myself.
The night sky was expansive, black and silent, and even the hyperactive teens were stilled by the awe of the starry abyss overhead.
One of the teachers, Theresa, a travel writer who had been to the Yucatan 5 times, clapped eyes on my BF. "I want to buy one of those, much easier for taking on airplanes." Now there's someone we don't have to convince.
The Hacienda was built around the 16th century and passed from rich old codger to rich old codger, used for sugar plantations and lounging in the library in one's smoking jacket no doubt.
Details: Follow the Ruta Puuc road to the Loltun Caves turnoff, follow signs, dirt road for 4 km when the pavement ends. Around 150/250 pesos for 1/2 persons meals 35-50 pesos. I was charged a rather steep 90 pesos (amost $9) to hang my hammock but I suspect there was a donation to the eco-foundation that is restoring the Hacienda included in there somewhere.
Gear Freak Corner: What am I eating? If you are vegetarian you will find this place a bit tough. The screaming pig outside my hotel room did little to encourage me to try Poc Chuck, or roasted pig with the usual lashings of beans and rice. For breakfat I carry a cereal mix of granola, amaranth, oatmeal powder and pitted prunes I got from a health food store. I mix this with a squeeze from a pepsi bottle of local honey, a banana and a spoon of soya multi vitamin powder, also from the health food store. In the handlebar bag is one of several packets of supposedly healthy cookies which are probably made of some suspicious fat but I try not to think about that. I find that by eating lunch I can hardly pedal so I avoid that and just nibble. The restaurants close at around 8 so it is easy to miss getting dinner too if you are not careful!
The bike is performing superbly. I have to work out how to make the derailleur move over a teeny bit more as the new cables have obviously stretched. Check your rear rack bolts regularly ... they tend to come loose, as a periodic clanking sound soon revealed.
After a few days of riding here I am of the same opinion as BF co-founder Hanz Scholz: the Yucatan is a superb place to cycle. Basically flat with a rolling hill now and then, tropical to lowland shrubbery flanking your camino, captivating ruins, cenotes (crystal clear sink holes I have yet to encounter), caves, cheapish accomodation and food, friendly locals and an internet cafe behind every cactus.
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The cutest little house you ever saw ... a typical Maya house, the occupants often aspiring to one of those characterless concrete boxes that signify you are surpassing the Juans's next door ...
Mon Jan 12, 2003. How to eat a Toronja Campeche to Hopelchen (83 km) Hopelchen to Santa Elena (73 km)
About half way to Hopelchen, passing little oval Mayan huts topped deep grass roofs like the early Beatle's haircuts, I heard a panting behind me.
"Quieres saber como se puede cortar una toronja?" (Do you want to know how to cut a grapefruit? .. or near as dammit).
As I was panting like a dog myself in the heat and had been eyeing off the red grapefruit orchards it seemed like a good idea.
I lent him my ultra sharp Wenger knife and he proceeded to show me this brilliant technique...
1) Slice off the thick skin
2) remove excess remaining pith with fingers
3) slice naked toronja in half
4) now take one half, and make incisions in the middle of each segment, north to south.
5) you can now peel these sections back like leaves of a book and use your teeth to extract the flesh minus the pith. Repeat with other half. Brilliant!
As he was explaining it though, he managed to slice a nice fat piece of his forefinger. I freaked at the welling blood and scrambled in my first aid kit for bandages, antibiotic powder etc.
No problem, he said. We have a special resin and herb in the fields that stops bleeding.
Undeterred, I did a frantic St John's Ambulance on him. While I was wrapping his finger he eyed me and said, you know self-defense, don't you? MMM, yes, I mumbled, same as I answer the question "are you married?" when faced with uncertain strangers in uncertain strange countries. He said, I would like to practice self defense with you. Ummmm, no, I'd rather not, I said. He repeated his request and I got the hell outta there.
Before I left Campeche I was bailed up by a very good looking young (35) Mexican man sporting Armani sunglasses who insisted on following me round all day even when I was shopping for knickers and mosquito netting. Raul, an petroleum engineer, took me to a bar rarely frequented by women. With the Corona beer came botanos, little free snacks, in this case a plate of pork rinds (chicharrones), a plate of pickled potatoes and a plate of fried tortilla shards. It was after we traded dates of birth that he kinda...disappeared.
The road inland was dotted with tiny villages sporting both the charming older Mayan style houses made of mud, bamboo or concrete and topped with a grass roof, or the more modern and less appealing concrete boxes painted or patterned with Aztec-like motifs.
A policeman said it was funny how tourists will pay to stay in a Mayan lookalike hut which only those who cannot afford concrete live in, and locals will aspire to the more modern style concrete box.
On landing in Hopelchen I was struck by how eerily quiet the town was. Really, most folks just sit around, watch TV or putter up and down the streets in creaking yellow pedicabs. My 80 peso ($8) room in hotel Los Arcos was not clean... but it was the only choice.
The town is near a Mennonite settlement, where handsome German immigrants who wear overalls and hats work in the cornfields and rarely seem to smile. The women wear long hot dresses and big hats. They do not socialize or intermarry with the locals. The men reminded me of Mormons only swarthier and dare I say, sexier, with their blue eyes and blond, rugged man of the land looks. I averted my gaze though I was dying to take a photo.
For dinner I ate the local fast food, PANUCHOS, fried tortilla puffs topped with bean paste, cheese, chicken, red onion marinated in spices, and a chicken soup flavored with Verbena. I think they call this lime soup, but I could be wrong. Delicious, even if it did break my rule of not eating deep fried food.
Part way to Santa Elena I stopped at the Kabah ruin, much more intimate and less hyped than the Uxman and Chichen Itza ruins. It featured 300 masks of Chac the sun god, plastered across the palace face. I'll upload a shot when I find a cyber cafe with a CD burner and the USB port, um, on the same machine.
In the campground I encountered a www.dragoman.com tour group of 7 led by an Aussie called Ben. Dragoman tours have their marketing down pat, their exotic brochures describing how they will all but deposit you in the lap of the Zulu chief but with all the reasurrances of a well organized tour. It is not totally soft, in that you assist with the cooking and cleaning and contribute to a food kitty. They were on a two month jaunt through Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama... One of the women use to work for my ex's father at Inghams Chickens in Australia. Small world indeed. Very kind they were, allowing me to tag along behind their pre-paid guide in Uxmal and share in their roadside lunch. They gave me a ride to the ruins, some 15 km away. I had barely sat down before we were pulling in the gate. I forget how fast motorized transport is. It would take me around 40 minutes or so to do that distance.
I was talking to some folks about how traveling alone is so different from traveling with one or more. This morning I noticed another hammock and motorbike parked in another shelter and was going to go up and say hello. I then spotted two helmets. I think my instant reaction was, ah, forget it. Tomorrow I am riding to a town called Ticul via the Ruta Puuc, a series of smaller but fascinating ruins. Wish me a not too cold or mosquito ridden night in Santa Elena, the back of beyond in the Yucatan!
Gear Freak Corner: I have bought a simple $10 string hammock and 2 meters of mosquito netting ($2), plus a few clothes pins. Tonight it's all rigged up under one of the 30 peso hammock shelters in Camping Sacbe, a very nice spot run by a French Canadian woman married to a Mexican. I did not buy quite enough netting, so I look a bit like a quesadilla when it's all pegged closed. You are supposed to have enough to drape it so it touches the ground all round. The problem is it's actually pretty cold in the Yucatan at night in winter... so I will wear my bike clothes as well as slide the Thermorest in there. I thought the hammock was a double (better) but it is in fact a single, so I better not have too many nutty dreams or I'll end up on the ground.
I forgot to install my trip computer so I am using guesswork and asking folks how far I have gone. When not stopping, I am averaging between 12 and 18 km per hour. Allowing for stops and eating, this drops to around 9 km/h. Thus, if the distance is 72 km, I allow a full 8 hours to get there. Nice to have less gizmos, and rely just on the wind and kindness...
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View at 5am from the balcony of the Monkey Hostel, Campeche
Wed Jan 9, 2003. Flat out like a Lizard Drinking in Campeche.
BOY OH BOY that was a bad idea taking the night bus. A 12-hour journey is OK, leave at 6pm and get there 6am. This one left at 10pm and dumped me in a fluroscent lit bus shelter at 4am.
The air conditioning in the bus was turned up to ice making levels, and in my haste to get all my stuff in the panniers and into the hold so that potential robbers would only get my fake wallet, I forgot to retain my jacket, balaclava etc for the trip. In fact, after the sweltering heat of Palenque I jumped on the bus in only my Terry Skort and thin top, congratulating myself for being so astute as to make sure even my $70 Go-Lite backpack was rolled up on the rack and stashed underneath under lock and key.
Before long I started to cool off very nicely thank you. The woman next to me offered to share her thin cotton wrap with me as well. It was one of those touristy mantels that many old but tenacious women in the street have tried to force upon me at every turn. I should have succumbed instead of deflecting them, they knew what I was in for.
Dreaming fitfully about cryonics and slipping down Mayan staircases (my feet kept slipping off the back of the seat in front of me) I eventually got up and pleaded the driver to turn the heat up. He did, slightly, but after a couple of hours seemed to turn on the ice maker again. And the TV soap opera.
I stumbled out of the bus at 4am, the rest of the passengers sleeping, bound for Merida further north. I blearily set about putting the BF together with much less gusto that when I first got on he bus. Always the same questions .. how much did your bike cost? Give me your bicycle ... I am careful to tell them it was second hand unless it looks like a potential prospect (e.g. German cycle tourist looking for a folding bike etc). When catching buses I am careful to load it vertically standing on its rack as there is a tendency for the guys to throw all kinds of derailleur crushing cargo on top of whatever.
In the dimly lit street outside, a Swiss couple were haggling with the taxi driver over the fare being 25 vs 30 pesos while I saddled up. I cycled outinto the pre-dawn streets in search of the Let's Go recommended Monkey Hostel. I got lost several times, careening through dark streets and a bit scared to stop and pull out the guidebook. I thought I may as well ride around in circles till dawn if necessary. At least there is not a sensation of wasting gas when you are looking for somewhere on a bicycle. I found myself wheeling through the darkness according to the completely obtuse directions given by the cab drivers and an old man loitering outside the bus station with a large, foul looking ulcer on his thonged foot. Being so close to the ground I tend to see feet. A couple of months ago in San Francisco, a street away from that fading, hippie groovy street, I saw a place for homeless or displaced people. After looking at jewelery, my eyes caught a large, raw looking split in the heel of the bedraggled woman in front of me, who was limping toward the shelter. Back to the more pleasant image of the fortified city of Campeche.
After struggling to get the bike up the seemingly Mayan-influenced steep narrow stairway to heaven I was clearly early enough to see the sun rise to the thunderous cacophany of a thousand birds in the square, a majetic and elegant vista from the 2nd floor balcony of the hostel. I borrowed a copy of "Bicycling Mexico" by Weisbroth & Ellman, a 1995 classic, from a Canadian cyclist, which describes it thus: "Mid-afternoons the beautiful capital city of Campeche is hauntingly quiet. Your derailleur ticks loudly in the narrow, cobbled streets"....
The city is enclosed by a hexagonal thick wall designed to protect it from pirates. The Gulf of Mexico is visible between the narrow colonial buildings.
The Monkey Hostel is in one of these well-maintained, beautiful colonial buildings fabulously located on the corner of the square or zocalo. The 80 peso a night tariff (under $8) is steep for a dorm room but includes good sheets, mattresses and monogrammed towel, making it worth the struggle up the staircase with a bike. It also includes a simple breakfast of bananas, cornflakes, wonder bread toasted, jam, trans fatty acid margarine and coffee or tea. I ate the banana.
I am so wiped from lack of sleep it is 2pm and I have just woken up. I will now go out and see what there is to see. And nervously check the state of my derailleur.
Gear Freak corner: Guidebooks: I should point out that I bought the "Let's Go" because it occupied less cc's in the pannier. The chunkier "Lonely Planet" is more informative and mentions more godforsaken places to stay and eat, but I rather like the conciseness and up-to-datedness of "Let's Go". Every year a bunch of Harvard students are sent out to update it. It usually mentions three to five of the best places to stay, three in the case of Campeche. I figure if you go to all three and they are all full or inadequate you may as well cast around for what is available in the same street.
The other thing I noticed is that one girl here has a special "Lonely Planet" edition for Belize, Yucatan and Guatemala. That's the one to get for this trip.
I just got an email from Basil of www.bikemexico.com (afiliated with Los Pinguinos who hosted the Chiapis tour I did last week), who assures me that contrary to what I read, the Yucatan is not a deadly dull dustbowl punctuated by some interesting ruins, but a wondrous wonderland ... if my ramblings here have made you want to get the hell out of the rain and snow, he tells me there are spaces on his upcoming winter tours, see www.bikemexico.com
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The Maya compressed their heads from an early age for aesthetic reasons .. today the same effect is to be achieved with a ball cap worn back to front ... spotted at the Merida Anthropological Museum.
Tuesday Jan 6, 2003. Onwards to the Yucatan.
YOU ARE probably wondering what kind of exotic journey I am having that I seem to be spending most of it tickling these teclas (typewriter keys) rather than tossing back tequilas. I'm just succumbing to what has become the most popular pastime here since chasing chicas for un beso (a smooch). The internet has all but replaced TV soap operas, Nintendo, hassling tourists for money and certainly pushing a cardboard paper ball around the barrios with a stick.
The bars are empty. Everyone is hunched over a screen instead of a beer. Backpackers beat the beaten path to the netcafes even before opening their guidebooks to do what they came to do, ie gawk at ancient civilization surrounding us. The young chica with the cleavage who is running this netcafe is glued to the screen doing a CV for a friend.
Despite being careful to brush my teeth with bottled water etc I have been struck down by a bit of Tijuana Tummy so I have been dragging my heels a bit. I glanced at another cyclist's account of the Yucatan on the net. "Boring, flat, heatwave scenery, punctuated by interesting ruins. If you're the kind of cyclist that likes to get as many miles as possible under your belt, while eating and sleeping warm and cheap, then you'll probably like it. I probably won't be back," he said. Yikes - there is only one part of his description that turns my crank, but here I am and there I go... I'll decide when I face the first hot dry road disappearing to a vanishing point. That's the beauty of buses here.
The last three days were spent eating, languishing and sweating in a plastic chair at the Club Medish Don Muchos resturant bar at El Panchan with Carol, Dante and John, aka The Four Itinerants, where a surprisingly good $3 pasta, bread and salad combo was served with a nightly show of avant garde fire dancing, bongo playing, plinkety plunking on some interesting latin stringed and flutey instruments some darn fine folkloric singing by an American woman who could well pass for Celia Cruz if I closed my eyes alright. I think I might try the fire dancing with my led flashing lights.
I bought a local string hammock for about $15 as a back up bed in case I find myself without a place to crash. The hombre showed me how to string it up with a suprisingly simple know that I hope I will remember. Mexico is absolutely crowded with tourists, compared with Panama and Nicaragua. Some think it is dangerous, but the sheer volume of travelers guarantees that you will not feel like you are totally out on a limb.
Tonight I am taking a chance by riding a night bus to Chetumal, 6 hours north of here where my hot and dusty pedal across the Yucatan will begin. The more convenient departures were all sold out, so this one leaves at around 10pm and gets into what I hope is a reasonably civilized bus station at 4am. The night buses crossing to and from Chiapis are somewhat notorious for being held up by highway bandits. Carol told me that a friend had been on an ambushed bus, but knew that on first class buses the key to the cargo hold underneath is only available at bus stations. Luckily she had put all but her butt into the hold so lost very little. Thus, my BF, digital camera and all my worldly possessions will go into the hold tonight. I have my fake wallet with a few pesos and old bus tickets ready as a sacrificial offering.
More soon, chicas...
Complete Galfromdownunder in Mexico chronicles
Photos and text Copyright 2004 Lynette Chiang, www.galfromdownunder.com
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