December 7th today, happy birthday Eberle!
at our last writing, the night of December 4th, our second day on this holiday, craig and I finished blogging and set off in a bicycle pedicab around the lively but soothing streets of Ticul. Ticul is a medium sized town on the border between the absolute flatness of most of the yucatan peninsula and the low hills where the terrain starts to start up towards the mountains of Chiapas. In the front seat for two of the tricycle cart, while our driver pedaled systematically behind us, traveling through town in the darkening evening, we saw small groups of elementary age kids, carrying palm fronds and branches, an activity called 'enramada' singing songs in honor of the virgin of Guadalupe to their neighbors. we are told they do this to raise money to pool together, to buy themselves a pinata for a later party perhaps at chrismastime during the posadas (the parades people do pretendnig to be jesus and mary looking for lodging, and getting rebuffed by their neighbors who don´t have lodging, and finally finding a party instead). Often they had a mom or two along, carrying small candles. We hopped the pedicab partly because we were looking for a restaurant, the Mirador, that our bike-driver said was a long way, so we saw a lot of town before we realized it was definitely closed. Shoulda realized it would be far, because Mirador implies a view and the town is totally flat. Also it was totally dark so what mirador would be open then? dumb gringos. But it was a great journey, by quiet bike in dark one lane streets whizzing past open doorways where people chatted or lounged in their hammocks. lots of christmas lights and christmas trees. many people buy artificial trees, which are for sale in every corner mom and pop store, but, another common way to do a christmas tree, here is to build an enormous cone of palm fronds and drape lights around it. very pretty and can be huge. Every town has lots of fancy neon-like decorations, and now and then there are snowmen and elves, despite this being an area where a temperature of 40 d F is a cold snap.
The next day, Friday, December 5, we had an absolutely fabulous happy time exploring the ruins up and down the Puuc route. some people do this in a single day from merida, and we were really happy to have 3 total days - one day to come down from merida and see the haciendas and caves and small ruins near the highway to chetumal, one day to see Uxmal which by itself took us 4 or 5 hours with lots of exploring of paths leading to ruins in the jungle, and also to see 4 other smaller city-ruins, which we loved, and one day to come back.
On the Puuc route day, visiting the smaller ruins, each one had a really kindly caretaker or two, often a husband wife team, and they were really pleasant. The ruins themselves were each quite unique and extensive and though small compared to Chichen Itza or Uxmaal sized, they were absolutely fabulous. great sized plazas, lots of rooms on courtyards, fabulous old mayan arches the size of the arc de triomphe framing their highways where they take off into the jungle and are now lost. there were many forests to walk through, coming out suddenly onto a pyramid or two or a plaza. we had a great time in uxmal in particular finding unreconstructed sites and wandering in to old-feeling rooms by hopping across heaps of old tumble down city.
Another nice part of being in the Puuc area overnight was the very gracious experience of staying in Sacbe bungalows in santa elena, with scattered cozy cabins on a huge grounds with lots of ornamental and fruit trees of the regions. We got to experience each of the two different tasty comfy restaurants in santa elena. Santa Elena is definitely a rural town. Although on its outskirts there are about three small european run places to stay, and one mexican run hotel that kinda imitates the others, it really has not much as it´s a very traditional village and probably most folks just don´t eat out, but on the main road outside of it, it does have two nice places to eat up til dark, one is mexican called the Chac mool and one is canadian run but has excquisit yucatecan food, called the Pickled onion, run by a nice welcoming lady Valerie Pickles. The Sacbe and the Pickled onion are very close to each other, across the rural part of the highway just south of the main town.
On Saturday, the 6th, we took another long travel day. we started with walking in the fresh morning around the grounds of the sacbe, and having breakfast in their arbor, with tasty coffee finally, thank god... then, we drove through about five or six different small towns, back to merida. we were mostly off of the good highways, which are straight, fast, and wide and bypass the small towns. we caught parts of Ticul again, then a great market-sized town called Oxcutscab in an area full of orange groves, where we negotiated for some pretty dresses and blouses, and the lacy slips that go under the dresses. Then we went up the road to a place called Mani, which is famous for being where friar Diego de Landa burned all the mayan paper books and tried to torture a few mayans to death, in the 1500s, before he realized, about 20 years later, some of the value of the culture whose records he had lost and started writing down everything he could recall.
Really liked being in Mani. it´s tranquil, lots of bicycle taxis with old men pumpng, with their dressed up old lady wives in front with their delicate lacy underskirts and their traditionally desigend(but machine embroidered) white dresses. how do they ever keep them so white. The town has large blocks with a little bit of slope, and while we explored, a local kid popped up and said, have you seen the cenote, because I´m one of the guides of the cenote. we had walked past without realizing it. the cenote of course is underground, and there is a wall and an arched entrance where you find some stone steps that take you down into a dark tunnel, into a cave where the roof opens up again and you can draw water. Our guide, Manuel de jesus, had a co-guide, Antonio, and they enjoyed helping us hapless gringos find our way in the dim light and then helpfully pointing out small shrimps. Only we could not see shrimps just little small fry. suddenly antonio punches manuel on the arm and says that´s not a camaron it´s a pescado and manuel tells us in english, is a finch. we marvel at the finches for a while with them while they splash a little and act like boys do around water and with an important job, guide of the cenote, to do. it was great fun. also very cool and fresh down there by the water, lit by the sunlight coming in through the skylight in the limestone overhead. (by the way we think any 9 year old brave enough to work on his english is to be admired and we are not making fun of ´finch´ instead of fish exactly... but it was so cute to think of those little finches in the water...)
From mani, we went up to towns where water tanks painted with coke signs are the main feature... getting drinking water is tough... people in the puuc collect rainwater because no cenotes, and people in the cenote areas still have to have drinking water bussed in because the underground water is no longer so clean I guess.
we really loved lunch in a small dusty town called Tekit, because it was the only place open, a great diner that had basically one dish she would really recommend which was fresh ceviche (marinated fresh fish) and would we like it pure shrimp or mixed. MIxed. it was SOOOOOOOO good. we ate huge plates of ceviche, with fresh crispy lard soaked tortilla chips, chased by Coke Light, while lots of locals popped by in their tricycles to pick up ´ceviche to go´for their families. we were up on floor level which is about 5 feet above the hot cement-stone street level. we sat at our tin tables in our plastic chairs and had a ball. the place is run by a nice lady whose son is a rodeo cowboy and wins prizes and whose daughter, now 17, looked cmpletely gorgeous on the day of her 15th coming-of-age birthday.
for a while, we were waaaay off the fast roads, in the curviest narrow road where every corner was blind due to tall tall grasses and scrub. luckily not much traffic. it goes right by a small cenote that used to be near nothing, now you can peer ovr the edge from the road, it´s deeeeep and has a scuzzy film of organic matter on the top and when you push a small stone in, it´s a long long time before hearing it thunk into the water. it´s got pretty, but very vertical limesone walls. you would not want to fall in.
we saw lots of other interesting things that day... village next to closed decrepit hacienda-sisal factories, one of these villages Chankanan very creatively now uses their small narrow gauge train tracks to pull tourists, using horses, along on the old factory cars to see really nice cenotes you can swim in. wish we had had time.. they were also dismantling a bull ring made of sticks and palm fronds, one of their celebrations in honor of Guadalupe´s festival day next week. Another hacienda village, Ruinas de Ake, also had one of these, and through the bull ring, you could see the mayan pyramids that the hacienda shares with its old henequen factory. ruins of two civilizations, right next to each other... the mayans gone who knows why, and the henequen rope makers, gone because of globalization and the change to plastics. very sobering.
After such a long day, it was nice to come back to Merida for a sophisticated type of evening in semi european comfort, walking the local tourist area streets which at night on saturdays are closed to cars and opened to performing groups and the restos set up tables and dance areas in the street. it was not that crowded so didn´t go on that long, but it was elegant and fun. we listened to about 6 different bands.. guitar duos playing criollo music including peruvian trio stuff. romantic caribbean type songs. besame mucho. cumbia. rocknroll too. In the morning the next day we also got to see our favorite: danzon. elderly couples dancing rhumba, foxtrotty, chachacha, classic dances, to a ten piece dance orchestra, with brass ensemble, piano and guitars, doing cuban-caribbear style favorites like ´quizá, quiza, quizá´.
Sunday morning the 7th... the religion wars: 70% of the yucatan is still catholic, but some portion of the rest is christian evangelical type. This time of year belongs to the virgin Mary, it seems. I wrote about the small kids doing enramadas. We have also seen a lot of pilgrim groups where people travel to holy sites with a lighted torch just like the olympics. it can be by bicycle, in which case the group of cyclists carries police type sirens, so when you hear the siren you get your camera ready to catch the bikers as they flash by in their virgin of guadalupe boxers. but it can also be where a group is in a small bus or two, and they take turns following a runner who carries a lighted torch and runs in front of the bus (which obviously goes slowly). This morning in merida we saw some nice small catholic parades in honor of the virgin of guadelupe, and went to her church where people were singing to her. and today we are at a VERY catholic place, the convent of izamal, in honor of the Virgin of Izamaal. This entire town is Mary-focused for the next two days. Yet, last night in merida we saw the opposing team get in to the action: at about 4 pm, there was a very long parade of evangelical christians with small rock type bands on the backs of trucks, pretty girls and women dressed in pink and white costumes, lots of fervent evangelicals all dressed in white if possible stretching out their hands in praise, some wearing pure white huipils over white lace skirts others in modern clothes, and then a sort of praise fest in the main square which lasted a while, as the dark fell, the neon christmas lights went on, and all the catholics sort of gawked and muttered, like who are these people stealing our show and our emphasis on penitence and hardship by singing, clapping and praisin´ God.
