Day 4. Mexico 2022. The slow route to Uxmal

I woke up with the idea that there was something else I wanted to tell you about my visit to the cenotes … oh, yes … you know how to us the netherworld is full of fire and brimstone? Well, that is a Judeo/European tradition that probably arose from the eruption of the volcanoes of the Mediterranean, who many regarded as windows to Hell. For the Mayans it was different, because every time they peeked into the netherworld they saw water! Alma and Tom have a beautiful painting, and an even more beautiful wood carving, of the Barge of the Netherworld, where the paddling gods, accompanied by a whole coterie of magical beasts, take the god of corn through the subterranean waters of the Mayan realm of the dead, so it can eventually be reborn and give food to the land. An interesting alternative view of “the others”, isn’t it?

And who are these magical beasts? According to the keeper of one of the cenotes, they include the alux or dwarfs, the tuskan or overlord spirit of his particular cenote, the donkey kat, the savage quasi-human sinsimito, the crocodile (which represents fertility and abundance), the bat zotz, the bird tooj, monkeys, turtles, swallows, cormorants, parrots, dogs, and catfish.

I am going to have to weave these ideas into a story to share with my Hydrogeology students next semester 😊

The morning would have been uneventful, except that my travel cell phone developed a deep freeze (the touch sensors decided to stop working overnight), so after looking for a repair shop (nothing open early in the morning) I screwed up my courage and swap the SIM card in my American phone for the Mexican SIM card and … it worked!

I headed for the west coast, to visit the port of Celestún, which is located in a ria or coastal lagoon formed between a bar island and the mangrove shore. My parents would have called it an estero or estuary, and it was a family tradition to take a boat ride whenever we encountered an estero to see what birds, crocodiles, turtles, or fishes we could spot. I had to do it, but balked at the cost of the trip because, being the Lone Tourist, I would have had to pay as if I were a family of six. So I waited and when I saw a family of four güeros getting out of their car I asked them if I could join them and share in the expense. The father was very gracious and said “of course”, and then I learnt from the mother that they were Belgians. Alas, they were from the Flemish part of Belgium, so I didn’t get to practice my French.

A highlight of the boat trip was a closeup sighting of a band of about 100 flamingos, which were walking along the bottom of the ria, staying just a few steps ahead of the boat. The flamingos in this particular band were juveniles and they fed during the day but at night flew into some salty ponds inside the mangrove, to avoid the crocs that feed at night. By October they will choose a mate, and they will migrate to the Rio Lagartos to the north (is this wise and safe for the chicks?), where the female will build a mud mound about 40 cm tall, deposit the egg, and wait for a month for it to hatch. The chicks will grow into juveniles over the winter, and next spring they will be back to start the cycle again.

Our boatman also took us, full speed, into a tunnel through the mangroves. It was his scary joke as we felt he was going to slam us against the roots, but after that shocking introduction he slowed down and gave us a magical tour through a world worthy of the movie Avatar. We finally came to an Ojo de Agua, where artesian conditions cause fresh water to bubble up to feed a fresh water pool in the otherwise brackish waters of the estero.

After a very satisfying boat trip I said goodbye to my new friends and headed for lunch at the beach in Celestún. It was hot! Which reminds me of a Yucatán saying that here there are only two seasons: The hot season and the very hot season. Thank God we are in the hot season right now, with enough of a breeze to make life bearable under the shade. I lunched like a king with an octopus cocktail and broiled fish in a cilantro sauce, with side dishes of rice, beans, and steak potatoes. And of course a Michelada de Indio!

Then I headed to Uxmal, but in the way I saw, in one of the many Mayan villages I went through, the sign for a barber. I stopped and had el maestro peluquero, Samby, give me a haircut and a beard trim, accompanied of course by lively conversation. On parting Samby suggested I visit the Hacienda de Santa Rosa, less than a kilometer along the road. So I did, and found out this beautifully restored hacienda that now operates as an exclusive boutique hotel, normally booked by foreign travel groups. They were very gracious, however, and the old bellman took me in a tour of the hotel, showing me the ways in which they had abilitated the old store rooms of henequen as suites, and the old cistern as a swimming pool (in the old days, a network of small canals fed water from the cistern to the vegetable and fruit tree garden of the manor house). Like other haciendas, these one had at some time thousands of hectares of henequen plants in exploitation. This part of the conversation brought us to the tienda de raya now converted into a SPA. The tienda de raya was at the core of the indenture of Mayans working as serfs for the owner of the hacienda. The “worker” would not be paid in money, but in kind in the form of enough corn and beans to sustain his family, but little else. Any extras would be credited to an account he never had the chance to repay, so he could never leave his employer. Although we both shook our heads at this shameless system of slavery, my guide confided that he had once asked his grandfather why he had not just left and taken his family to the city. To this the old man answered that he would not have known what to do in the city, that all he knew was how to be a field hand, that he had no money (nor did he understand the use of money), and that the boss had always provided what he and his family needed. A humbling lesson on learning to wear someone else’s shoes before judging them.

By the time I got to my hotel in Uxmal it was already too late to go visit the site, so I will do it tomorrow morning. I am in a resort hotel, with a beautiful view over the lowlands. In the distance, jutting out of the low jungle canopy, I see a light cream structure shining under the late afternoon sun. It looks like a scene of Star Wars … oh, wait … it is the top of the Pirámide del Adivino!