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Another Martha Stewart Living shot, spontaneously composed from a papaya and lime from Tulum, blue spoon from Merida, plastic plate from Campeche, Swiss army knife from Oregon, rusty chair from just over there ...
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Monday Feb 16, 2004 - FINAL CHAPTER Where the Acorns Fall
This is the final installment of the Galfromdownunder in Mexico chronicles. Thank you for reading and writing to me while on the road, and I hope it has inspired you to well, Just Do It! If not, well, it's perfectly fine in life to Just Read It.
SO, armed with a new bikini, a rehydrated head, but no timeshare, I prepared to take the long and winding 17 hour bus trip back to San Cristobal de las Casas (about $US50) for my return flight to Oregon.
Long and winding is an understatement. The misty narrow road through Palenque snakes around the mountains for a full 5 hours and from my front row seat I felt like I was in a queasy IMAX movie about the inner world of tumble dryers.
Patricia's mum had packed me some Monterey-style food in a Tupperware box and I had foolishly devoured it in one installment at the first rest stop.
My life's possessions including passport were stowed under the bus, in accordance with the tip I told you of earlier, i.e. the drivers not have the keys to the storage bays on First Class buses, making that zone relatively safe from all but gelignite-wielding robbers. I was later told that robbers had held up 4 buses in the past 15 days on the Palenque route.
Cancun is one of the places where if you got it to give, you gotta give it. My folded Bike Friday attracted a $5 excess baggage charge because it was obviously a fun and frivolous item - a folding bike, for chrissakes. If it had been in the soft bag I might have gotten away with it, but sometimes I'd rather it be fully exposed to so no-one slings a crate of elote against it.
So, 17 arduous hours later, I crawled out of the bus back at the starting point of my journey, San Cristobal de las Casas. I took my time putting the BF together and rolled it up the cobbled street. Near the church I spotted a man with an Ortlieb pannier slung over his shoulder at the same time as he spotted my Ortlieb pannier hanging off my bike. Nicolai from Germany, was lucky to still have that pannier. He told me how he and his girlfriend were held up on the Palenque road by a man with a gun a couple of weeks earlier.
"He made us take everything but our underwear off, went through the panniers, taking all the technical clothing, even checked our shoes." I was just about to suggest he put money in his shoes. He said he'd been held up before, by three unarmed men, but was able to overpower them.
"You don't argue with a gun" he said.
Nicolai's life for the past few years had been this: work as a nurse back home, do a short (3-4 week) tour every year, and quit to do a long (5-month) tour every 2 years with or without girlfriend. He still had the same girlfriend, bless him.
At the Backpacker Hostel ($3 a night) I met Karl, a doctor from Germany living and working in Guadalajara at a special hospital where even the poorest Mexican could get treatment. A consultation would cost around $3, so people from all over the country flocked to it. What were the medical standards like?
"Better than in Germany, in many cases," he said. The doctors are required to treat people from year 1 of their training, so by the time they graduate, they have already seen 90% of what they are going to see.He did not feel disadvantaged by practicing in a poor country either. By earning around $1000 a month but paying only $100 a month rent, it's about the same as living and working in Germany. But what of the thousands of Mexicans who go to America to work?
What's their story?
I met a fruit salesman on a bus to Merida, who'd spent 4 years washing dishes in San Francisco, dreaming of the day he'd return to his wife and 3 kids.
He had 2 jobs, paying $7 an hour, worked 16 hours a day and sent the money home. But how could he afford to live in SF?
"I rented an $800 condo with 5 of my cousins." On weekends
"I slept."
He had no desire to return to the USA. Nice things to buy, but it lacks love.
At the Mexico airport I called up Dean Kaston, a Bike Friday owner who had made a life in Mexico City because he married a local. He was full of praise and admiration for my travels, yet I could not help but feel his life was more of a feat. To visit a country is one thing, to live and prosper, rather than simply get by, is something to behold.
Living in another country involves more than just getting a phone line, learning the map of the underground, knowing how much to tip. It is less about buying tacos off the street instead of Taco Bell and more about working out how to say something and not be completely misinterpreted, both in business and personal relationships. Going to a country where people speak English is in some ways, even more tricky than if you don't speak the language at all. Australian, British and Americans think and respond differently from each other, so when you say, for example, "my wife left me" you might get the following response: USA Oh, that's too bad. Brit: Oh... (we're getting a bit deep aren't we?) Australia: Strewth, what happened?
In a situation where you do not speak the lingo, sign language, gestures and giggles are necessary and the communication can be surprisingly clear. In fact it's a relief because you can't intellectualize. Life becomes what do I eat, where do I sleep, where am I going. That is a great freedom from the western commerical world where things can get several layers of logical (and illogical) reasoning deep. Dumbing down? Maybe simply simplifying up.
When I was in Uxmal, I asked the waitress if the Mayan language had the capacity to express the complex web of verbage we spin today.
"Of course," she said. "Whatever you can say in Spanish you can say in Maya."
I was not able to get her to admit that you could express "When you said that, I thought that you thought that I thought ... " etc. in Mayan. Maybe that was the point. Simple lives, simple structure, less stress.
You have to land in the right place,said a friend, Barney Collier, of living in a foreign country. I have this huge acorn tree in my back yard. Every year it drops a s***load of acorns on the ground. The ones that hit the cement don't grow. You have to make sure you hit the soil.
Dean, who I talked about above, had not only hit the soil in Mexico City, he'd hit paydirt. A retired industrialist, he'd set up Shakey's Pizza or some chain this Aussie hadn't heard of. We talked of how it would have been good to meet, but the traffic and the massive sprawl of Mexico City made it more appealing to infuriate the queue waiting for the phone.
As I fielded the here-we-go-again scrutiny of the thin-lipped US immigration officer at Phoenix airport thumbing my USA work visa ( What? A BIKE company? in a manner about as abrupt as this story will end, I looked out the window and thought: there's a helluva lot of cement out there...
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Saturday February 14, 2004 - Itsy Bitsy shopping on Isla Mujeres (The Isle of Women)
In the last episode, you will recall that I saved myself $10K by taking the loaded flattery of the "58 and I have a 28-year-old-Colombian wife, sorry," timeshare salesman with a shake of my zulu-warrior-shaped NaHCL dispenser. I decided to use the proceeds of my virtual windfall to buy myself a new swimsuit.
I recommend purchasing a bright, cheery swimsuit in a warm place when returning to a cold, wet and dreary place. It is an act of defiance; wearing it round the house with the heat and lights turned up while the cold rain hammers down outside is great S.A.D. therapy. Throw a bit of sand on the floor and Bob's your uncle (Australian for 'you're all set'). The only problem I discovered when I got out to the beach was my Tiramisu Tan (also known as the Jello Tan) - white from mid-thigh down like I'd been fly fishing naked in a sewer, caused by the bike shorts. Ugh, a bad look.
Patricia hooked me up with her friend Vidar, a traveler from Norway who has made a life here, selling real estate and timeshare, like so many other foreigners from fringe latitudes in search of the sun. It makes a lot of sense to me, to move where there is sun. You buy less clothes, food, and don't heat your house or machine dry your clothes. Problem is everyone else had precisely the same notion a long time ago.
"Who would not want to be here?" said Vidar, motioning out to the sea as we hijacked a beach umbrella set up for the guests at the fancy hotel behind us. He pointed to Isla Mujeres, (Island of Women), the flat, 7.5 km strip of land floating just offshore. Patricia and I swam there for her birthday last year. Clearly, he was not pining for the fjords.
"By the way, don't eat the tacos off the street here." she said. They did a test and not one taco passed. They found windborne, pulverized dog poo from the street in every one. Great. At that moment I got a sudden attack of Montezuma's Revenge, and made for the hotel poolside toilet. I was stopped by a starched and uniformed guard aged about 17.
"Are you a guest of this hotel?" he asked, the gold thread in his badge glinting.
"No," I replied, "but I have turista and I am desperate!" With that he let me through and I stepped into Mrs Donald Trump's restroom for a few minutes. I should have tipped this $7 a day lad but did not have change on me.
"Do I look like I don't have the money to stay in a hotel like this?" I hissed at Vidar, eyeing the grey haired patrons out front sunning themselves.
"It's the backpacks, and the fact we are hijacking the very end umbrella," said Vidar, accustomed to using such bold beach tactics.
The next day I jumped on the Bike Friday and headed for Isla Mujeres, a mere 20-minute catamaran ride across the seas ($3.50 one way). It's a splendid little place that should be sinking under the weight of the shops, restaurants and housing crammed onto its barely-there surface. It was so named after anthropologists found hundreds of little statues of women scattered in the sand. The moment you get off the ferry you hear "rent scooter/bike?" from all directions unless you have your own. I pedaled south to the southernmost tip, called Garafon, where a series of touristy traps have been laid for the air cushioned sole set.
One is a ZipLine, a harness which whizzes you out to sea on a cable then back again. Somehow they had it sloppily strung up so that the joyriders seemed to stop four fifths of the way to each station and had to be manually dragged in. Or maybe that was part of the ride.
As I stood watching this spectacle, with the mirage of Cancun timeshare resorts wavering on the watery horizon, a bunch of golf carts roared up from a nearby resort, followed by a bunch of scooters. The occupants, young and young-enough, got out. I thought, this is the perfect island to burn a little fat not fossil fuel, why not hire a bicycle?
Needless to say, I was invisible to these tourists.
On the way back I spotted a bizarre concrete house made to look like a conch shell. The concrete job must have given the builder the heebeejeebees. Goes to show what you can do with money.
Feeling hungry, I stopped at a small restaurant where fish meals were being served for $US3. Not a lot of it, but for the price, worth a shot.
A pair of older lovebirds spotted the bike and asked questions. He was a Dane, she was French, and I'd passed them on the bike a while earlier. They had met only in the last 2 weeks on this trip, and already looked like they had been married 20 years (no, they were not arguing). Inspiring, though I have long known that when traveling on a bicycle you are often going a few km/h faster than a lingering conversation will allow.
So it was time to buy my souvenir swimsuit to add to my collection of rainy day antidotes. Vicky's swimwear is a tiny store crammed full of imported togs (Australian for swimsuit) at US Saks Fifth Ave prices which she quickly reduces to Sears prices (but not Walmart prices) if you linger longer than a few moments.
"When I was a child, I always thought I would like to open a bikini shop in paradise, to offer women a real service," said Senora Vicky, looking strangely drawn and tired in paradise.
Having some time to kill, I spent quite a while going through everything on offer. When I was a cashed up computer professional in my former life with house, hubby and fastish car, I would walk in and "what the hell, I'll buy it." Now, I am the retailer's pain in the posterior, carefully weighing up options and prices in my mind, and then going away to think about it some more and probably spend the cash on a bag of organic carrots instead.
After half an hour Senora Vicky suddenly glared at me and said, lady, are you going to try anything on? Yes, these three, I said. Please come back another day, she said.
She told me it I was emulating the pattern of the classic shoplifter, spending ages going through stuff then waiting till she grew tired of surveillance, after which she would find several empty coathangers.
"Doesn't make you want to buy anything, does it?" commented Elizabeth, the Portland woman I met in the restaurant. "What do you think of this?" Elizabeth had donned an extremely voluptuous red bikini top which made her look like Gina Lollabrigida meets Dolly Parton. I thought it looked good. She was not happy, and switched it for a no-nonsense sporty top made to look all trussed up like a diver.
That is the one difference I noticed between Latin American and North American clothing for women. Latino clothing tends to be figure hugging, because the mating game is earthy and traditional. El amor is all-important here. In North America, clothes tend to be conservative, because people are so busy meeting deadlines instead of each other that internet dating is rampant and who cares what you look like sitting at your laptop (just turn off the web cam).
But Vicky was still unnerved by this bike rider with the reflective vest who was surveying her $50 bikinis in paradise. I looked like I had no money and in touristic Mexico, people like that are not to be trusted.
"But I am a customer, and I don't have a deadline today except for the ferry," I said. She gave me the evil eye.
"I am very sorry you have had bad experiences with people who look like me," I said, as I paid for a swimsuit with $38 cash. Of all the women in the store, I was the only one who bought. I could have walked out in a huff and she would have been left with her same old view of the world, ready to insult a future customer. But I ended up with exactly what I wanted, a swimsuit. If traveling has done one thing for me, it has given me a tougher skin to deal with more touchy issues of life...
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Tuesday Feb 10, 2004: Doing the Timeshare Shuffle (Tulum to Cancun).
Today my headache became steadily worse, despite drowning myself in a liter of Pedialyte. I initially thought it might be the hammock, reasoning that it nudges you into a kind of banana pose, so might cause blood to rush away from your head and feet and cause lightheadedness. So I spent last night lying flat out under the mosquito netting with my camping mat protecting me from what Dr Freedom had described as ringworm-infested sand.
As my condition worsened, I rifled through my travel journal to find the phone number of Patricia Soto, the girl from Cancun who I met near Hacienda Tabi a few weeks earlier. "If you get near Cancun, mi casa es tu casa!" she had said. As I tell most people who offer me their hospitality, be careful, invite Aussies into your home and they are liable to say yes!
I called her, explained my circumstances and she told me to come immediately.
So here is one of the times when it is prudent to get a ride. I folded the bike and put it on the back of a colectivo, one of the many minivans doing the short 1-hour hop to Playa del Carmen, then another hop to Cancun.
Cancun is like Miami with crazy traffic and a Great Wall of Enormous Resorts extending 22 km along a narrow peninsula. The Caribbean laps at one side, a giant interstate-like throughway roars down the other, and it looks west to the city of Cancun where all the poor people who Clorox the toilets in the resorts live in their concrete boxes. Patricia greeted me in a car at the bus station, telling me how glad she was that I accepted her invitation. On the contrary, it was me who was happy and relieved.
First, I parked my bike in the shower to wash off all the salt from Tulum. Then I slept for a couple of days drinking Pedialyte until I could walk without my head hurting.
As I said before, when traveling, exactly the help you need turns up at exactly the right time. Belief in this alone will grant you a scintillating and safe enough journey. I usually get the following trilogy of questions from everyone I meet:
Q: Are you doing this solo? A: Yes. Q: Gasp. Don't you get scared? A: At times but if you thought too hard about anything you would not leave your front door. Q: You are brave. A: On the contrary. To stay at home and feel unfulfilled takes real courage. Now before anyone tells me I am simply running away from things, I maintain that the goal is fulfillment, whether that means retracing Marco Polo's route via pirahana-powered raft, or sitting at home with good people around you. I envy those who have successfully achieved the latter.
Patricia lives in a 3rd floor apartment, biking distance from town. Just at the end of her street is an internet café, that is, a garage door rolled up with 3 computers running Windows XP on school desks, presided over a señora rocking her baby while indulging in a chat session from 9am to 9pm. That's what I love about non-westernized countries. Little señor and señora businesses in between ramshackle houses with bougainvillea spilling over the doorways. Whoever invented zoning and stripmalls must be a dinner bore with no sense of the sublime. The tragedy is, the bore is winning. WalMart proudly occupies one intersection in Cancun, a giant MacDonalds another, and the Mall de las Americas is the local hangout where all the poor underpaid Mexicans flock to when it is raining.
Patricia works for a 5 star timeshare resort called Royal Sands, one of several lining the shores of the Caribbean. She has the toughest job of all, meeting the torrent of tourists arriving at the airport and trying to convince them to come and have a free breakfast and a 90 minute presentation of the resort, hopefully culminating in the prospect parting with around $20-50K for a single week in its swank confines for the next 50 years.
As a ravenous cyclist, I will do anything for a free 5 star hotel buffet breakfast, even have my arm twisted by a timeshare salesman, so I booked in for a presentation.
The Royal Sands is a giant members-only resort cannily designed so that every villa faces the view. There are no dud rooms here. It is about a third of the way along the incredibly fast moving freeway than runs down the hotel peninsula. I found the whole journey there and back on the bus quite stressful, as if any relaxation you managed to get lounging in the pool and on the beach would be nullified by the commute at the end of your holiday.
I was greeted by a fellow called Jose who told me that virtually all the villas are sold by referral, that is, happy clients telling their friends-just like Bike Fridays are sold! And happy they were indeed-the enormous members-only restaurant was full of tables of four, six, eight, ten person groups of tanned Americans and European families tucking into enormous plates from the groaning breakfast buffet, all you can eat for around $6. As a single traveler I felt like I had taken a wrong turn somewhere, but Patricia told me that a lot of single professional women also bought timeshares, perhaps to go somewhere warm to plug in their laptop.
The presentation was attended by a trainee, a 20 year old, incredibly nervous Mexican girl on her first day, who all but spoon fed my huevos mexicanos en tostadas and poured papaya juice down my throat in an effort to be helpful.
After being juiced and egged at the buffet I was led to the display villa. It was replete with all the mod cons and marbled surfaces and view of crashing surf, and slept six in inner-sprung comfort. You could see that it was designed for the western palate. It would have been rather nice to see the rooms decorated in Mexican hacienda style, with rugs and weavings and hammocks. But no, this was all beige and gold knobs and Martha Stewart furniture catalog territory. One interesting feature was that the villa could be locked off into two halves, one with the kitchen and one without. You could pay $20K to use the entire villa every year for 50 years, or $10K for a bi-annual program, that is, use the entire villa every second year, or use half the villa every year, alternating between the halves. Sounded like an administrative nightmare, but a neat idea. As with most of these vacation clubs, nowadays, you can pay $149 and trade it for a week at another resort in the world if same time, same place, next year, does not appeal.
I was then swept off to the Sand Room, where deals are done and dusted. It resembled a casino with couples and families clustered around little tables each with a toothy Royal Sands rep hashing out the purchase of more timeshare weeks. The reps come from all over the world, all with the gift of the gab, all on commission only. Timeshare sales is the chief employment opportunity for foreigners coming to Cancun. Either that or get paid $10 a day like a Mexican.
I then sunk into a 5 hour session that should have lasted 90 minutes, during which a rep from Holland called Robert tried every tactic in the book to get me to buy. He showed me photos of his family. His travels. His "I am 58, I have a 28-year old Colombian wife, sorry" Talked about Janet Jackson or someone showing a nipple on NBC TV or somewhere. Used positive psychology, telling me he is spending all tis time one me because he likes me. Used reverse psychology, telling me I will never buy, as I never make decisions.
"You're 41 and unmarried, you have never made a decision in your life." Then a couple of reinforcements were brought in-a young lad from Michigan who leaned over and through squinty eyes told me I should take the leap and do something adventurous in my life for once. Also a body builder from South Africa who sat with giant forequarter chops folded across his massive chest, raving about Australia.
They all showed interest, real or otherwise, in Bike Friday, and brought over the laptop to look over www.galfromdownunder.com
I know BF like to encourage you to buy a bike but if they ever go this far let me know!
I realized that the 90 minute session ballooned because I never said no. Being an incredibly inquisitive person with an almost pathological interest in peoples lives and the fruits of man's deviously creative mind, I made them hash out the details, and I have to say I was almost convinced to buy. I thought of how, after slumming it in a $3 a night hammock space with my bag of muesli, I was enjoying sleeping in a real bed with a fridge and stove and flushing toilet at hand. I thought of how nice it was staying in the homes of some of our favorite BF owners, and that anything is great for not too long, said my wise friend Kevin Duggan. I thought of....
The only problem was that I did not have $10K to blow.
Timeshare appears to be quite a neat concept for the above-average-wage American family who has 1-2 weeks to kill same time every year before they must scurry back to work and feed the mortgage and college coffers. http://www.royalresorts.com
I took a bus back to Patricia's apartment where her mother, visiting from Nuevo Leone across the country, had made me nopal (cactus) salad, and Patricia had arranged for her friend to take me to the beach while she worked. Now that's real 5-star hospitality.
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Sunday Feb 8, 2004: Beach Medicine and Human Sacrifices in Tulum
This morning I pierced one of the IT IS FORBIDDEN TO PICK THE COCONUTS coconuts from my sandy stash and washed my face with the juice. In Costa Rica a friend told me her 60-year old Uncle bathes himself in coconut juice every day and can pass for 40 something at a disco. The occupant of the campervan parked in front of my hammock turns out to be a young woman with a nice flat tummy in a crocheted bikini from Victoria BC, escaping the Canadian winter and living large on four wheels and a yoga mat. I introduce myself but Pamela is suffering from a dose of Montezuma's Revenge and does not look in the mood for campsite chatter. I brightly remark that the only times I seem to have gotten sick on this trip is when I attempted to cook myself something in a hostel.
"Nah, I think it was the mushrooms," she grunted.
Um, ok.
When you are sick and traveling, exactly the people with whom you resonate come to your aid. When news of her condition spread across the sand she was immediately attended by a homeopath in a cream RV, a Belizian doctor called Freedom, a couple of dudes from Montana and a Reiki master in a nearby cabaña.
When I came down with first symptoms of dehydration a day later, namely a throbbing headache, a German couple in their 50s immediately came over to where I was lying in the fetal position in the sand, offered me water and a scalloped potato and beef stroganoff dinner in their Mercedes RV, which they had shipped all the way from the land of orsprüng durch technik
It seems that my Bike Friday makes me invisible to those who do not comprehend bike travel (in general the young and hip), or look at me and assume I do not speak English, but very visible to people in the more tolerant and worldly-wise Bike Friday age range, that is, 50 and over.
"Watch out for the marijuana!" barked the dude from Montana as he passed by my hammock to visit Pamela. He pointed to a few tiny seedlings emerging from the sand, most of them unwittingly crushed by my thong.
Um, ok.
Later, he brought a friend over to observe the fledgling crop. "Hey, that's greeeaaat." said the friend, as if viewing Christ himself gurgling in the manger.
Dr Freedom, who I talked about in the last installment, is an extraordinary man. Deaf from leukemia at age 20, he flies back to Toronto for three months of each year to make a stash of cash as a resident doctor in a hospital, then brings it to Central America to set up schools for the deaf, all at his own expense. The tumors of his illness are starting to emerge around his stomach and at times he takes Valium to kill the pain. He sees the deaf schools as his life's work, and I am humbled to think I spend my working days encouraging folks to buy an expensive little folding bike so they can go spend even more money somewhere else having fun. He manages to expertly lip read my brand of fast semi-coherent chatter.
Australians are hard to lip read, they don't move their mouths,he says. I could make a joke about beer bottles being a fixed shape, but since I don't drink beer I would lack credibility.
Apart from mushroom malaise, Pamela is suffering from an infected spider bite on her foot, which exhibits a red streak moving up her leg. "If that reaches your heart, you're done." says the good doctor. For this we need to make a poultice from beach sage and aspirin. He goes and gets a sprig of the fragrant plant from a nearby dune, I supply the aspirin given to me by the German couple, and he makes a pesto-like paste and presses it onto her foot, using heat from rubbing his hands.
He also lights a cigarette and sticks the filter in her ear to draw out the toxins. The smoke creates a vacuum. I had seen this done with cone-like candles but the cigarette is certainly innovative and easier to come by.
"Wanna see the giant ringworm scar on my butt?" she offers. "That's from sitting in the sand here. Look at all these people and dogs pissing in it," she says.
I immediately leap to my feet and clamber into my hammock, safely draped a couple of inches above the earth's surface. For my dehydration he marches me down to the pharmacy to buy bottles of Pedialyte. In the last installment I reproduced some emails from Bike Friday customers offering advice. I thank my lucky stars and stripes it did not get to what PBP veteren Paul Guttenberg described as 'projectile vomiting and rectal bleeding.'
TULUM is famed for its clifftop ruin. Big Ben, the lobster-colored Pole, instructs me as to how I can follow the coastline and enter the site for free. Fascinated, I set out not really contemplating the moral aspects of this feat, but simply following my nose.
Some scrambling, hiking through tall grass, slipping through a barbed wire fence and climbing a wall and I hear the chatter of tourbus tourists around the bend.
The ruins themselves are in fair shape. I tag onto the end of a guided group and listen to some grisly tales.
The sacrificial victim was stretched out on that block with two guards holding his feet and hands (because he was alive) while a priest ripped out the heart. The victim was then pushed down the stairs where at the bottom, a second priest remove the skin, pull it over himself then moved to this platform here, where he would dance in the victim's skin before the mighty god.
Nice.
Apparently the formerly peaceful Mayans learned their bloodthirsty ways from the Toltecs from the Mexico City area ext... CANCUN!
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A bit of an ad: From 3-12 April 2004, Los Pinguinos are running the same Highlands of Chiapas 1-week tour that I did with Eileen and Rui in December. The tour has been modified a little to make it even more appealing. A fantastic way to see a nice colorful chunk of Chiapas. See Parts 1-6 of this journey for my take.
The Yucatan is an easy place to tour as you can glean from my writing, but you can also do it with Los Pinguinos sister company Bike Mexico.
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Thursday Feb 5, Flat out Like a Lizard Drinking in Tulum - Coba to Tulum (60 km)
As my brain stops feeling like it's adhering in spots to my skull then releasing itself with a disturbing thwack, I can continue this missive. Thank you to all the folks who have emailed medicinal advice, including that of Dr Eileen Lafer, PhD, who says I must eat fruit and veggies and not think about the fact that Mexican fruits and vegetables are engorged with pesticides and chemicals (it still a land where health is valued far less than making a buck).
Since you all seem to like the feature photo (some desperate soul has even put it on his desktop) I shall grace you with a new one next installment...
AFTER deciding to skip the ruins of Coba, (partly becuase I couldn't wait to get my hammock out of the squalor, and they want to charge you 25 pesos for using your bike in retailation for not using their bike), I headed off towards the clifftop ruin of Tulum, 60 arrow straight kilometers towards the Caribbean coast.
On the way I stopped to indulge in the luxury of a fresh juice at a stand. I asked the Senora why fruit is so expensive the further east you go. Is it because it is too dry? Yes, is the answer of every Yucateca you ask. She was not a Yucateca.
"Because the people here are flojos (floh-hoss)", she said. This loosely translates to loose, lazy, relaxed, ambivalent...
"Over here there is more native land handouts. The government just gives them the land, they sit on it and grow nothing, do nothing, just carve little wooden animals to sell to tourists and complain about the cost of living."
She looked bored and displaced. I could see she was from somewhere else - in this case Puebla, in the chillier north, where you gotta move or even three woolly ponchos won't stop your teeth from chattering. She lives in the Yucatan only because her husband likes it, reinforcing that machista is still alive and kicking. She went off to make piñatas, giant papermache Death Stars which are battered with baseball bats at fiestas, disgorging showers of sweets. Her non-flojosity was paying off, a new house was being constructed out back with creamy white and gold tiled bathroom, and a flat screen TV and microwave sat on a treestump waiting for their rightful resting places in the new palace.
Just outside Tulum I stopped at one of three roadside cenotes. Cenote CarWash, the Americans had daubed on the sign, because taxis use to come by and spruce up at this well. No more. Where there's a peso to be made ... The hombre in charge sits there under a tree, all day, everyday for the last 30 years, collecting 60 pesos per diver and 20 pesos per swimmer. There appeared to be no charge to just look down into its inky depths. A group of 6 Czech Republicans were just emerging with all their tanks. I am convinced of the wonders of diving but all the heavy apparatus puts me off. I am happy with a mask an snorkel. Of course if you looked at my overloaded panniers you'd say I was a hypocrite. But one gear-heavy pursuit at a time is all I can handle.
The back of the property stretched for a couple of km, he said, and had been in the family many years. I could see and hear a wealth of birdlife flittering about in the scrub.
"You could make nature trails with a machete and charge birdwatchers to come in," I offered. He gave me a flojos look. Why indeed, when the cenote sits there, maintenance free, renewed by an eternal subterranean spring...
I finally made it to Tulum. What a shock. The calm one and two lane roads that snake across the Yucatan suddenly converged into something resembling the Californian I-5. The town is an soulless strip of shops and restaurants lining this wide and cacaphonous highway, choked with dust, roadworks and jackhammers,and people endlessly trying to back into other people. It reminded me of the very worst part of California. I had been warned by a couple of English girls in the Valladolid hostel that I might be disappointed. Well, it depends what you seek. The Weary Traveler is a hostel populated by more the young, dreadlocked, pierced, bare-midriff and dope smoking set who hover about in the comfort of a peer group, and as I consider myself a failed hippie, it did not feel like a place to lay my weary head at this point. Furthermore, the way you are supposed to enjoy Tulum is not staying on the strip, but in one of its famous beachside cabañas.
And this is where the Bike Friday came in handy. the beach is actually an inconvenient 6 km from the town. I scooted down there and started looking for a place to pitch the hammock. And yes, the color of the Caribbean sea is actually just like in the glossy tour brochures, no photoshopping necessary. It's pale blue near the waters edge, becoming deep blue out there. For want of not using that overused word 'turquoise', it's ... it's ... Windows XP blue. Sorry. And the sand is fine and white. The ruins lie over there to the left.
The cabañas are 150 to 200 pesos a night ($15-20) and if I had been more careful with my cash earlier in the trip I might have indulged, but as far as I could see they were simply a bunch of sticks with a grass roof. The beach is actually free, but they still feel they can charge you for putting your tent or hammock out there. Especially if you use the dirty showers and toilets.
I asked at a restaurant-bar-cabins called El Mirador, close to the ruins. 50 pesos a night, said a smug, gum chewing Mexican through his Oakley sunglasses and gold chains. That's $5 a night for a dirty shower and toilet. I went down to the beach and spotted an expansive, lobster colored retiree pottering about his expansive, oyster colored encampment. Ben, from Poland.
"I pay tventy five pesos a night," he boomed, pointing a kransky-sized digit at my chest. "This is Mexico, you treat them like Mexicans. They tell you 50, you say here, take 125 for five nights now leave me alone."
His skin was bright red, and his left foot was bandaged and in a plastic shopping bag to keep the sand off it. "I got burned snorkeling, you should have seen it yesterday." He gave an expansive gesture.
I tried his technique at Don Armando's, who also ask 50 pesos. "Thees ees the price," said the French woman manager.
I finally found two trees at Santa Fe Camping, paying 30 pesos a night. Up went the hammock and mosquito net. Then who should roll up but the polish pair of cyclists, Joanna and Maciej, who were on a 5 month pedal through the Americas. Already he had gotten in trouble from his girfriend from spending way too long at my campsite talking about bikes, and now he was about to do same, going over the BF in detail. He was impressed. "When I saw it in the street I thought, whoever makes this what they are doing," he said, his nose an inch away from the 56 tooth chainring.
I collected a few green coconuts for juice from some trees on the beach before noticing the signs that said EET EES FORBIDDEN TO PICK THE COCOS. As they are a renewable resource, and picking them would reduce the chances of one glancing off a guest's skull, and in any case they are public property, it took me only a minute to realize that it is because THEY want to charge $1.50 a coco in a highball glass. I buried them near my tent like a squirrel, reserving one as a welcome drink. This I pierced one with my trusty Wenger knife (simply plunge down at top, make a triangular cut and dig out the little piece. Wielding a machete looks impressive but is not necessary) and toasted my arrival in the Caribbean.
Then, a rusting two-tone dodge campervan suddenly roared up and parked right across my idyllic view.
More about the Tulum Ruins pronto...
GEAR FREAK CORNER: Salt ain't good for bikes, but there she sits, chained to the coconut tree. I shall simply not stay here too long.
A useful item to take backpacking is a couple of S-shaped hooks. Shower and toilet blocks never seem to have hooks, largely because people steal them.
From Paul Guttenberg, Bike Friday Club of Davis CA leader (among other more impressive things)
Lynette-
Pedialyte is indeed expensive, but effective. We've used it on many occasions, on ourselves and our children.
May I humbly suggest something else? It won't work as well for recovering from the after effects of dehydration and exhaustion as Pedialyte, but taken regularly it may help prevent another bout. There is a product available here called "Emer'gen-C" that is a combination of vitamins and minerals. One packet in 8 ounces of water gives you a large dose of Vitamin C, along with various B complexes and large amounts of potassium, magnesium and so forth. A box of thirty-six packets can be purchased for around ten dollars or so. It is an all natural supplement (whatever that means anymore) and comes in a variety of flavors. The caloric content is extremely low.
The other product, easily used in conjunction with Emer'gen-C, is the Endurolyte capsules from Hammer Nutrition. Again, all natural and organic, it contains chelated minerals that are quickly absorbed by the body. I'm sorry, but do not recall the cost.
In the ultra-distance community, both these products have stood the test of time. While certainly not all riders use them, many do. Despite the long days in the saddle and dehydrated state we sometimes reach, these two products combined with water intake stave off or end cramping, and seem to allow the body to recover rapidly from the onset of dehydration.
More advanced stages of dehydration than what you describe are an unfortunate part of ultra events. Projectile vomiting and rectal bleeding are not unknown. I am sorry you felt so badly, but you caught it before it got truly awful!
Here are a few articles of interest:
http://www.ultracycling.com/nutrition/electrolytes.html
http://www.ultracycling.com/nutrition/fueling_for_endurance.html
http://www.e-caps.com/knowledge/index.cfm?template=techdetail&div=Technic al%20Information&cat=Endurolytes&id=10&sub=technical%20manuals
For the flipside of your difficulties (I've imagined a new book, "Hyperthermia - Killer Of The Overprepared!):
http://www.ultracycling.com/nutrition/hyponatremia2.html
Have a great rest of your trip in Mexico.
Regards,
-Paul "Didn't I Make This Sound Fun?" Guttenberg
From Richard Vallens, Irvine, CA
Your last posting reminded me of a story I read about an Overland Traveler collapsing in an airport and being taken to the emergency room in terrible shape. Turns out it was potassium/electrolyte depletion. Too much bottled water without minerals, too much diarrhea, no bananas. It came on FAST and it was quite serious, though the solution was pretty straightforward.
Has there been anyone around to help care for you?
Take care,
Richard
From Jym Dyer, BFClub of NY Leader:
I like that you took a bus to Becal and found a bike taxi. To me that's sort of an ideal solution. The more types of bikes experienced, the better! (Okay, so maybe I'm a little bit obsessed with bikes.)
Lily white ankles: even in the dead of winter, when I'm as pale as a sheet, I can still see where the not-so-tan line is from my bike socks. It's faint, but still there.
You've got my vote as the new Chac, God of Rain. Even if that *is* his eyeball.
All your talk of cyber cactuses makes me hungry for a cactus burrito. Actually, I'm missing a whole lot of things about San Francisco right now.
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Wed Feb 4: Getting my brain back into its skull
Folks, the cyber cactus is about to close so I'll be quick. I am recovering at last, my head no longer explodes everytime I cough or take a step in the forward direction. Think of a shrivelled up walnut clattering about inside its thick shell.. that is what my brain felt like for the past 3 days. More pronto...
Wednesday Jan 25: Cenotes and Such: Piste/Chichen Itza to Valladolid (40 km)
Folks, I think I foolishly dehydrated myself. I woke with a pounding headache and remained in a fetal position beside my hammock for most of the day. I should be drinking 2-4 liters of water a day and yesterday I did not. Every speed bump coming to the cyber cactus sent a shockwave of pain through my brain. So I shall see how far I get with this story, there may be a dearth of acerbic wit due to my 'condition'.
UPDATE: A deaf Belizian doctor educated in Toronto (who builds schools for deaf kids in Guatemala and is the best lip reader ever) told me that dehydration is rampant here, because the purified water is stripped of all minerals and electrolytes. It needs to be, to take care of microscopic worms and parasites. He instructed me to drink Pedialyte regularly, a kind of medicinal Gatorade without all the sugar. Pricey at 25 pesos ($2.50) a half liter, but there you go. It'd be great of you could buy it in powder form, I said. Impossible, he said, it needs to be in solution, electronically attached. I am sure the analytical chemists among you know what he is talking about... It seems that the dehydration crept up on me over the past couple of weeks, not just over one day of under-drinking...
Apart from ruins and haciendas, the Yucatan is also renowned for Cenotes, surface or subterranean wells which are so clear and cool, teeming with fish and often connected by an underground dive system for the non claustrophobic diver to explore. I stopped at one called Sambula, and jumped in, cycling clothes and all. The photo I took does not do it justice. You typically walk down some carved out stairs and often there is a hole in the roof of the cave which lets in a UFO-like shaft of sunlight which is neat to swim under... like being in your own limelight. In this one, the roots of the tree above reach right down like ropes into the well below. I first became aware of cenotes when flipping through a National Geographic years ago and marvelling at an aerial photo of a dustbowl with five or seven perfectly circular, blue coin-like ponds, stark blue against the white scrub. I have asked folks here where it is and no one knows, although the map shows one called Cenote of the 7 mouths, which looks promising. It's a bit far for me to go on this trip, near Tizamin.
Valladolid is a very chic little town and the Hostel is one of the best I have stayed at. A wonderful leafy garden and spotlessly clean dormatories and kitchen. To counter all the plastic bottles littering the highways of Mexico the owners allow you to fill your bottles and pay a peso a half liter. That beats 10 pesos a liter when you buy a plastic bottle. I have been using the same one for 2 months. Actually, I think bicycle bottles are extremely unhygenic over here. The germs are in the air. Best to use a bottle with a cap and remove and replace it each time. Part of the reason I may have gotten Montezuma's Revenge a couple of times.
The hostel even has a guitar hanging on the wall. An essential item in every home, in my opinion, or at least some musical noise maker.
You hear interesting conversations in a hostel.
A Danish history graduate was telling me how there was recently a huge case in the Danish Supreme Court regarding a crashed plane carrying atomic bombs to a US missile base in Greenland. It resulted in sickness for the villages all round. The villagers lost, because the Greenland government needed to save face with the US. That was a lot of anti-US feeling at that table.
A 34 year old Brit guy was talking about his disastrous relationships, telling us how his female friends told him he was 'predictable and bland'. Poor blighter. "I'm a very spiritual person," he kept saying. I was going to suggest that if he was indeed spiritual, would he need to state it in a sentence? Ah, I kept my mouth shut, but suggested he read the 30 somethings chapter in Passages by Gail Sheehy. In fact, I better re-read it myself, um, the next chapter.
A pair of Israeli girls were talking about the madness of the Gaza strip back home and how the rest of the world seems so peaceful. They dread going back, but they love their country, and there is nowhere else they would rather be. They reminded themselves of home by making tzaziki (yoghurt, cucumber and mint) with tortillas. I was inspired to bike Israel after talking with them. Israeli travelers always seem acutely articulate and intelligent.
In Valladolid is a cenote right in town, a giant well half covered by a cave with a restaurant perched over the edge. I was bailed up by John and Jackie from Idaho, who were staying with Mexican friends, Pedro and family. I kept intercepting their van, or rather, vice versa. On the highway they stopped me and asked if I needed, money,(would 100 pesos help?), or a sandwich. I accepted the sandwich.
I said that I was demonstrating to people the best way to cross the Yucatan... on a bike.
"We've got the best way to cross the Yucatan," said Jackie, tapping the seat. "In a van with amigos!".
Although I was sweating on the dusty highway astride my overloaded Bike Friday, looking into the cool confines of their spotlessly clean air conditioned van, the incredibly amiable Pedro at the wheel imploring me to state whatever I needed, I could not help but think that I was luckier. That is, until I got to Coba. While my Idaho friends were probably sipping ice cold limonada on a leafy terraza in the home of their amigos, pollo pibil (chicken in banana leaves) simmering on the stove, I was standing in a grimy 40 peso room - standing because I did not dare sit down on the tragic looking mattress, wondering if those rusty hammock hooks would find me sprawling on the filthy floor mid pesadilla (nightmare). My fault. The room was normally 100 pesos. I asked to hang my hammock and pay less. Outside, inside, I did not care. I wished I'd hung it in the street.
When I commented on the state of the place, where the only thing that looked clean was the front 30 degrees of the seatless toilet bowl, the muchacho said, "Seenoreeeta, that is the price you asked."
Thus, in Mexico, the difference between a cheap place and a more expensive one is not one of gold taps, but whether they threw a bucket of Chloro over it recently.
I better go lie down and try and stop sweating.
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Friday Jan 27: Some Letters received at the Cyber Cactus
Today, as I recover from a second bout of Mexi belly (I shoulda boiled that water a few minutes longer) I have just enough energy to raise the fingers of my right hand and reproduce below some nice letters I have received while on the road. The Izamal story appears immediately after... thanks for making all this time spent in the cyber cacti worthwhile!
*** From Richard Vallens, Irvine, CA:
Knock, Knock. Telegram. Lynette Chiang, por favor. Your photos are FINE. Your words the best. Keep on Pedaling. Do not rest. My days are filled with work and toil. But you, you spin on Latin soil. Divert me please, please you must. Protect my soul from Immobility Rust. Take care. Eat a pan dulce for me!
*** From Steve Scarich, CAT1 bicycle luminary:
I have been following your Mexican adventures; really fun. I actually did very much the same trip, without a bike, in 1977. I did it by 2nd class bus, hitchhike, and hiking (one leg was from San Christobal to near Palenque). I did the whole Belize, Guatemala loop. Total time in for the trip was about 6 months. Now, listen to this; I spent a total of $500 for the whole trip! (including bus fares). Exchange rate was about the same as now, but Mexico was very cheap then. Anyway, good luck to you and keep the amusing tales coming. (Steve, I am clearly outta practice in the frugality stakes - Lynette)
*** From Lye Kok, Publisher of Arabella romance Magazine www.arabellamagazine.com
I spent an hour reading your travelogue last night. All I can say is : it's FUNNY ASS HELL (no misspelling there:) goddamn I miss those solo traveling days of mine, your accounts are all i need to inspire me:) I particularly liked your descriptions of Yucatan, it's one of those places I want to go to but have absolutely no idea what it is like....I think you've got a new fan club going, La Chinita in Mexico haha If you're ever in Philly for your book tour (and I WILL do some promotions for you if you wish ) do let me know - have a spare room you can crash in! Vaya con Dios, Lye - freezing my ass off in Philly, I am a TROPICAL person, without doubt, this is killing me.
*** From Chris W, Berkeley, CA
You probably have hundreds of candidate places to crash when you come to the bay area on your book tour, but if you do need a place to stay you would be welcome at my place in berkeley or my partner's on parnassus heights, if we are in town at the time. we may even get you onto the tandem with pat for a bit of sightseeing around SF. in which case for five bucks we will promise not to take a picture of you on a bike with big wheels. pat cycled some in chiapas just before the uprising so the 2 of you may have some interesting stories to exchange.
*** From Bill Horne, Cycling Journalist, South Africa
Dear Lynette I never get tired with the stories of your travels. They are very special, keep doing them please! Talk to you soon. Bill Horne
*** From Robert Lim from somewhere in real space...
Hi there Came across your web-site while searching for tracking down some old contacts of mine. What can I say except absolutely astound and you have my admiration for what you have done and experienced. Here's to life ..
*** From Dean K, Mexico City:
Hi Lynette Have followed your travels. Amazing the places you have been. I live in Mexico City. Am a Bike Friday owner and user. I am a retired industrialists with two daughters about your age one of whom toured Holland last August and September. If you do come to Mexico City I would like to have my picture taken with you and your bike, and of course with my bike too. I have been riding bicycles since I was five years old, and have several bikes, which I have not ridden since I bought my Bike Friday. Whether it is in its suitcase or in the trunk of a car it keeps me happy on my travels when I get to where I am going. Let me know when you are comming, and if you fly in, I will send the chauffeur to the airport to pick you up.
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Thursday Jan 22, Merida to Izamal (53 km)
YUCATAN: yuck-a-tan. Origin: Maya. Meaning: On seeing the comparatively lily white Spaniards for the first time, the Mayans were heard to utter: "Yuck, you need a tan."
Of course the above is a load of codswallop, but when faced with a level, 50 mile road broken only by the occasional marauding tourist bus, the driver trying his best to check his morning shave in my rear vision mirror, one has to keep one's mind ticking over.
Today I looked at my carefully kept record of expenses and realized with an alarm as loud as an Air Zound water bottle horn that in 4 weeks I have spent around $US1500 not including the $908 last minute America West airfare. And nary a gourmet pizza or jacuzzi suite to justify it.
On every trip I make some expensive goofs. Like forgetting to collect my 50 peso deposit from the Merida Hostel (around $5). Like being suckered into buying 4 straw hats for a total of 740 pesos (about $74) of which one insists on imitating a withered shitake mushroom as I mentioned before. Like buying a 50 peso pizza that was essentially a bird biscuit with the kind of yellow cheese that turns to translucent oil with ... celery? Oh no, not celery on a pizza, puh-leese. Like finally succumbing to a pair of 45 pesos synthetic sandals because I was standing talking in the them for so long I felt guilty, and promptly gifted them to a worker for his 11 year old daughter (he probably earns around $10 a day) because they were so darn uncomfortable. Like being coerced into paying 10 pesos to have someone watch my bike at the Loltun Caves (a tourist trap as big as the yawning abyss itself). Like buying a soap for 92 pesos ($9) when I hallucinated that it said 9 pesos (90 cents) and then being told I could not return it. I argued enough to exchange the product for a handful of extraneous things I did not really need, with a complicated accounting reconciliation required. Perhaps to avert fraud and stealing by staff.
The "Let's Go" Mexico guidebook says, "Extreme budget travelers can camp or hang a hammock in Posada Carroussel, Piste, for 25 pesos." I declared myself a candidate immediately, and hung out my hammock and 4 meters of mosquito netting (having gifted my insufficient 2 meter piece to a girl in an adjacent bed in the Merida hostel). Perfect. Stringing my stretchy clothesline between the hammock ends provided the perfect line to drape the net, and on sitting in the hammock the fabric doubled over the floor sealing out the hummingbird-sized insectos lasciviously eyeing my lily white ankles (yuck, they need a tan. Blame it on the Cycle Oregon socks). The hammock salesman unfortunately lied to me and told me it was a double when it is in fact a single. It is just wide enough for me to sleep in, resembling a a taut fishing net with me the carp tossing around on top. Make sure you buy a double hammock even if you are single and not desperate.
I wandered up and down the street comparing prices of food until I settled on a 15 peso soup, then later blew it all away buy buying a slice of pizza, a stick of bread, a packet of plantain chips and a bag of papaya slices and eating them all in one hit standing outside the bakery at 10pm. I must have been hungry. I visited Chichen Itza but most of the comments I made about Palenque apply here. The light and sound show at night was cheesy at best, but the commentary did include some sensational lore like kids of long ago being painted blue then forced to take the eternal 25 meter dive into the sacred cenote to appease the god lurking in the depths below...
Izamal is a visual treat. If you visit the Yucatan, make sure this one is on your list. Every building is yellow and white. It looks like the Pontiff's robes and in fact he visited the imposing sunflower colored convent some time ago. I stayed at Posada Flory (this was the night before my austerity drive) which is a homely little place, for 120 pesos a night ($12). It is run by Dona Flory, a former beautician who made a killing years ago when she pioneered the notion of a beauty salon in Tabasco.
"No matter how poor, a woman needs to maintain herself," she said. At 72, her haircut was tipped blonde and spiky, her skin glowed. She showed me photos of her dressed in drag last year for a burlesque fiesta for women only. She offers cold, purified water for free and lets guests hang out in her lounge and use the kitchen. The thinking? "So they come back." Simple, really.
In Izamal are at least 7 crumbling pyramids to gloat over, embedded in the neighborhood rather than on the golf-course like grounds of the BIG sites, like Uxmal and Chichen Itza. I should have stayed another day. In fact, I loitered until 11.30am, stationing myself against walls and snapping arty shots of horses and carriages and little old women...
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