I Fought The Lawn

Wednesday March 29th, 2006

If the first day was a wash due to the traveling, and yesterday not much better thanks to excessive drinking, today’s activities more than made up for it. We’re up at 6am and eating breakfast at La Brisa, and we catch our tour bus to the Coba Mayan Village. Our guide is Armando, a Mayan tour guide on the bus who really knows his stuff. The bus itself? Well, Jose is a pretty good driver, and has to be, because the roads we’re going to are in the jungle and they like to say that the bus drivers “shake hands” as they pass one another. There’s no room for error on these roads, and it feels like maybe a foot between the buses going the other way and us as they blow by. In the end, we arrive alive at Coba, a Mayan ruins site, around 10:30 for our first stop.

This place is awesome. Before I die, there’s a bunch of things I want to see, and the Mayan ruins were on that list. We see pyramids built as shrines for the gods, a temple built to house the corpse of a dead priest, and an arena for a game that the Mayans played that resulted in either the losers or the victors being decapitated. We also learned about Mayan history and culture: it dates back to 3113 B.C., and peaked between 500-900 A.D.. It’s the culture, Armando points out, that disappeared, and not the people; the people are his people, and many still live in the older ways. At the end of this long walking tour (and man, is it hot!), we come to the tallest pyramid in the Yucatan peninsula, and while Tania takes a pass I climb it. It’s steep, and I have to rest twice on the way, but I make it to the top and really get a look of just how high it is. The camera shots don’t do it justice. There’s a rope down the center of the steps that you can hold going down, as one false move and you’re tumbling down a pretty steep slope here. I don’t know why the Mayan civilization died out any more than you do, but I’m personally betting that it’s because they never invented the railing.

We take a trike-cab back to the entrance rather than walk it, and it’s back on the bus. Next on the tour is lunch, and we travel to this side-of-the-road place with an aluminum roof that you’d never stop at if you were on your own. Driving in, there’s a woman showing off a crocodile sunning itself on a dock just a few feet away from her! I’m glad we came here, though, because the food they serve is really great and the pop is nice and cold (no, I’m still shying away from the alcohol at this point). This place is opposite a dirt road from a swampy body of water, and the kids there happily take pieces of chicken and turkey and put it on the end of a stick, slapping the water to attract…. crocodiles. No, I’m serious. What kind of parent lets their kids go down and taunt the crocodiles? “Mom, I’m going to play with the crocodiles!” “Okay, Jimmy, but be home for dinner!” Or even better… “Mom, a crocodile bit my leg off!!” “Well,walk it off, son! Walk it off!” At any rate, it’s not long before a crocodile pops his head out of the water, and we snap some pictures while maintaining a discreet distance.

At 2:30, we arrive at the Cabo Mayan village. Everyone is extremely poor here, and while the odd house has electricity most don’t. Not all the children have shoes, and we’re given candy to hand out to them as they follow us around the village. I made a special point of seeking out the children who didn’t get candy, and there are some really cute little kids here. It’s kind of hard taking pictures of people in abject poverty as part of your expensive vacation, and doubly so when the villagers are very kind to you and want nothing in return. It’s a real mix of the old ways and the new: we’d see stone houses with satellite systems and DVD players in them, and where nine people sleep in two rooms…. or we’d see a house with no electricity, but with a brand new car parked outside. We’re told that crime is nil here, but that drinking is a big problem because beer is cheaper than milk, and we’re also told that the government is working hard to help get the young girls into schools and trades as they grow older so that they aren’t just kept ignorant and married off as housewives and baby-making factories. After an hour here and a tour of a house, we try tortillas made the old way over the fire and head back to the bus.

If that were the tour, it’d still be worth it, but there’s more… because we get to swim in one of the cenotes – an underground river! After traveling to this spot nearby, we enter some steep, wet stairs into a cavern below, where we see stalagmites and stalactites everywhere and crisp, clean, cool water flowing around. Neither Tania or I swam (we’re riding on a bus here, and we didn’t want to sit in wet trunks), but we kicked off our shoes and refreshed our sore feet. Afterwards, we take the bus to a place by the highway that the Mayans sell their wares at, but it was all too expensive for our tastes. Finally we arrive back at the hotel, feeling very satisfied with the day-long tour. If you’re ever going to Mexico, you have got to go on this tour. Just don’t forget to bring little soaps and shampoo bottles from your hotel for the villagers.

We eat at 6pm at La Brisa, relaxed around the hotel, and finally hit La Creperie – a crepes house we hadn’t seen open until now – at 10:30. The crepes were fantastic, and so rich not even I could finish one. We crashed after that, preparing to go to Playa del Carmen the next day.