Mexico - Day Seven: On to a different ruin, state and biosphere

I'm up early, just after sunrise (so about 6:30), but the pool area has already been soundlessly mopped.  Luis comes to take me to the Maya breakfast.  Rosa (whose last name means “Rainbow”) teaches me to shape dough into tortillas.  Under her watchful eye, and encouraged by Luis, I make two of them... and they’re not too bad, if I do say so myself.  Of course, the hard part is making the dough, but at least I didn’t embarrass myself.  Meanwhile, Victor has prepared the chocolate in the Maya way, but without the traditional blood from a decapitated head.  What’s a Maya breakfast?  Pasteles (pastries), fresh fruit, tortilla with a raw egg dropped inside to cook (like into a pita bread), omelet with spinach.  I have trouble finishing.
       We walk around the homestead:  the raised garden (to protect from animals) - peppers, tomatoes, mint and oregano - the outhouse, chicken coop, washstand.  Victor has put out some old tortillas to attract the “blue jays”, who look to me more like blackbirds but do have a bluish sheen in the sunlight.  Then Luis walks me back to the spiky “arbol de la vida” (the tree of life).  It is here that Xtabay lives.  Legend says this female demon of incomparable beauty seduces men and leaves them naked, which is a surprise to them when they wake up the next morning (and also a handy excuse for staying out all night).  Under this ceiba tree, he gives me the Mayan blessing to send me on my way, and we finish with the Mayan amen: “bay ya”.
       On the way to my waiting taxi, we run into Jorge, who is as glad as I am to have the opportunity to say good-bye.  Big hugs to him, and to Luis.  I leave behind the heavy, tight-grained dark red-brown wooden doors with the Maya warrior of my home away from home.  I leave behind Luis, who went to the Simi Valley at age 19 to live with his uncle and finish school.  And Jorge, who, from his early teens, learned archaeology from the archaeologists digging in the ruins and English from Frank Sinatra records, and with whom I sang under the Maya arches of the ruins.  And Prospera, last night’s waitress who kept me company in Spanish, even though I didn’t understand everything and who’s been here since 1989.  And the mourning doves, the contortionist trees tortured into strange shapes...  This world slips into the past, but I will always remember it fondly.

Jorge

Rosa

I’m whisked off by Rodrigo from Mérida, my chauffeur for the long haul to my next destination:  Palenque.  Rodrigo lived half his life in Chicago, so his English is excellent, which is a good thing because I don’t think I could keep up a conversation in Spanish for seven hours, even with the practice I’ve been getting since I arrived in Mexico.
       After a loop to the north to catch the M180 highway, we head southwest until we reach the Gulf Coast, transitioning from the Yucatán into Campeche.  We reach Champotón and turn due south, inland.  There begins an area Rodrigo does not want to drive through after nightfall.  Evidently, there are banditos who attack cars and semi-trucks to rob them.  For protection, the semis have taken to forming caravans to cross this stretch together, but even then sometimes the robbers’ cars cut off the last semi in the caravan.  For someone brought up in Chicago, Al Capone’s crime city by reputation, Rodrigo seems to have a healthy respect for the danger.  I doubt if he’ll make it back through in time though, but he’s promised his wife he’ll stop overnight at a motel if it gets dark first.
       We cross a sliver of the state of Tabasco, edge around the northern border of Guatemala and slip into Chiapas.  The earth is black now, not red.  The road rises and falls, twists and turns, with hills in the distance, the beginning of the southern Sierra Madre mountain range that links up the Andes with the Rocky Mountains.  There is greenery here, and cows grazing... and actual rivers!  A bit like rural Michigan.  Small, very rustic stands sell everything in the towns we cross, including cockteles at a tiny booth that - presto! - becomes a cockteleria, a cocktail lounge.

Palenque

 My destination, Palenque, lies just inside Chiapas.  The Spanish there is more mumbly and the people more laconic.  Fewer smiles, more business.  This hotel is called the Chan-Kah, which means “small village”.  It’s more rustic than the two Lodges, more like a 50's resort (actually built in 1971) and does seem to form a little village among the lush vegetation.  My room turns out to be a small bungalow above a small stream called the Michol, all just for me, with a shaded patio and banana trees and other tropical greenery just outside my big window.  Howler monkeys settling in for the night greet me loudly.  To misquote Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, I’m definitely not in Yucatán any more.  This is the jungle.
       I get off to a bad start when I lie down on the bed to stretch away the miles.  My back begins to itch, then sting.  When I look in the mirror, there’s a big red welt.  I look at the bed and see a tiny red ant.  I guess it’s only fair; I did lie on him.  But I kill him anyway, and his friend nearby, too.  Then I go on the patio, turning the deadbolt so I won’t be locked out... but when I go to close the door later, the deadbolt won’t go back in.  Soon I have two workers in my room:  a maid armed with Baygon bug spray (which later kills a huge roach-like thing on the ceiling) and a handyman who has to remove the deadbolt and put on a new one.  Problems solved.
       I’m tired from doing nothing, so after a dinner of camarones con ayo (garlic shrimp) and a piña colada, it’s sleep for me.