Yucatán

We experienced a bit of a culture shock as we crossed the border into Mexico. Suddenly the roads were well paved and lined with street signs. Streets of towns were strung with traffic lights, even special ones for pedestrians (until now an unrecognized species in Latin America). The buses ran through the night and their seats reclined.

From the border town of Chetumal we took an evening bus to Tulum with the lovely sing-song of the juice vendors from Orange Walk, Belize still ringing in our heads: "Oran-JOOS, Oran-JOOS." Tulum is a tourist town in a major tourist district of Mexico whose epicenter is Cancún. We rolled in rather late and had trouble finding a place to stay, finally settling on the Casa Rosa, a pink, anodyne, somewhat expensive hotel. But the rooms were refreshingly first world and overseen 24hours a day by the kind, efficient, and startlingly DeNiro-esque Eduardo (Mad Dog and Glory not Raging Bull). It also featured a wonderful list of rules that included:

The guest don't get in alcoholic drunks into the room.

If the guest is surprised doing a bad use into the room; painting walls or breaking any furniture, it will pay. Please avoid us to report to you to the municipal's autorities.

Fair enough.

In the morning we managed to dodge the tour hawkers, taxi barkers, and shuttle service sharks and jump a public bus out to the Mayan ruins of Tulum, which are not as grand as others but stand above the white sand beaches and turquoise waters of the northern Caribbean. This is the draw that brings the armadas of cruise ships, squadrons of air shuttles, and fleets of air-conditioned tourbuses to harry the region with legions of besandled shutterbugs.

Despite the hordes and the Disney atmosphere, the site is beautiful and we finally had a sunny day at a ruin. That and the fact that most of the white stone buildings were roped off from the crowds made for better pictures. We met a nice American couple from one of the cruise ships who offered to take our picture and flattered us with interest in our trip.

After the ruins, we spent the afternoon saying goodbye to the Caribbean on the long lazy beach nearby.

The next morning we caught the first bus inland and hit the Mayan ruin at Cobá which boasts one of the tallest towers in the region and a temple with some paint still intact. When we arrived there were few other people except the usual tour pushers and bric-a-brac salesmen, joined uniquely by pleading pedicab drivers and bicycle renters. There was also a hyperactive dog who must have run up and down the tallest temple five times alternately enchanting and terrifying the other tourists. We named him Doughnuts.

By the time we left the paths through the forest were full of tourists peddling or being peddled. We passed one group of fifty or more sullen looking Europeans who ignored our greeting, led by a man with the name Pedro embroidered on his breast. He looked deflated with his head down in a weary trudge, but he managed a wan smile and "hola" for us. The parking lot, empty when we arrived, was full of idling tourbuses. We stopped at a taco stand before boarding the public bus to Valladolid.














We have heard that a few years ago Valladolid was a pretty, unpretentious, colonial town fairly off the beaten path, but it has since been added to the tour bus circuit and is in the process of tarting itself up. Every colonial building had a fresh coat of paint or was getting one. The central square was closed for a deep clean and varnishing and the cathedral was covered in scaffolding. Most of the streets in the center were being torn up and replaced with what appeared to be imitation cobblestone -- "All the charm with none of the harm." We met friendly people but I thought I detected an edge as well. I imagine life there is changing quickly.

We wandered into one small museum or gallery with no signs or explanations. It had one room that I believe was devoted to heroic mustaches of the past.











Over coffee the next morning we met John and Carol, an interesting couple from Baltimore who love to travel. John told me that he was one of 11 siblings whose parents had decided that raising them in the U.S. was "too little of a challenge" so they took them all to Italy. They taught us about one of the most interesting geological features of the Yucatán. The region has no rivers above ground but its limestone base is a swiss cheese of underground waterways. Because the landscape is flat, these rivers move very slowly and form large pools in underground caverns. Some of these caverns, called cenotes, are accessible from the surface. They are magical places of cool clean water full of blind fish and long roots and stalactites hang from the ceilings. Professional divers have followed some of these underground rivers back to huge rooms of complete darkness and silence. John and Carol have a passion for seeking out these cenotes and exploring them with snorkeling gear.

There is a large cenote in town that we enjoyed briefly before renting bikes to visit the famous cenotes near the town of Dzitnup. We ran into John and Carol again and they lent me their snorkeling gear and a lamp. I loved exploring the base of the stalactites and chasing the small catfish. The magic was somewhat dulled, however, by the construction of a giant hotel outside filling the cenotes with the sounds of pneumatic drills and cement mixers. Scores of vendors run stands outside and were a nearing frenzy as we left and the first tour bus of the day pulled up.








That afternoon we took a bus to Mérida, glad to have skipped world famous Chichén Itzá. As we drove past the site we saw an ocean of tourbuses in the parking lot and a billboard advertising an Elton John concert ("Live April 3rd"). Mérida is a friendly colonial city mercifully outside Cancún's tourbus range. We arrived just in time to see some of its interesting buildings in the last light of the day and have a delicious dinner at a crowded local bar before boarding an overnight bus to Palenque in Chiapas.







After seeing the Yucatán, I have to indulge in the silly but universal pastime of the tourist: the bashing of other tourists. It is not really the tourists I want to bash. I respect the desire to get out and see the world and we have met many kind and interesting people doing all different kinds of travel.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is certainly correct when it comes to tourism. Everything observed is changed by the observer. That is not necessarily a bad thing. All cultures grow and change by influence from other cultures. I am sure Hilary and I have had some effect on people we have encountered along the way, though I doubt it matches the effect they have had on us. The places we have seen have soaked into us as we made our way through them, especially when the way has been difficult, complicated, or even a little scary.

But in so many places, especially places like Cancún, there is a huge industry that is built to herd tourists on to prepackaged tours. I understand it. There is lots of money to be made by the operators and it makes it all so easy for the tourist. You only have two weeks. You will have a giant comfortable bus that allows you to see the landscape through tinted windows. Every thing is planned so you will not miss a thing, no need to worry, no one will hurt you, you can try the local food and you won't get sick. You will even meet real live locals like Roberto and Juan, your friendly guides, and those quaint if pesky knick-knack sellers at each of the sites. You can try out your Spanish on the waiters if you want. But don't miss the bus tomorrow after too many daiquiris! It will be as safe and comfortable as watching it all on TV.

I am reminded of a time when I was returning from a backpacking trip in the southern Sierras and stopped to take a badly needed bath in one of the mountain lakes just off the road halfway between Tuolumne Meadows and Yosemite Valley. I had just gotten clean and was peacefully shivering in the cold water when a tourbus pulled up, disgorged a gaggle of shouting Germans, and left its engine running, dominating and shattering the tranquility of the place. If this same group of people had arrived in ones and twos or even groups of five, hiking out of the woods, driving, riding the excellent Yosemite public bus, or hitchhiking, finding their own way, I think it would have been quite different.

Without the bus and the yammering guide, the schedule as tight as a television show, people can become a part of the places they visit. By working to navigate through them, they come to respect them. They can feel the creeping wonder of being somewhere unfamiliar and new. In the wilderness or in a foreign country they quickly see that it is not all just a set piece for their entertainment, but something huge, complex, and ultimately not entirely knowable. It is then that the observed and the observer become intertwined and then that we can connect with people and places, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes messily, but with full humanity.

Outside one of the cenotes near Dzitnup, there was a pretty little girl about 7 years old, barefoot and in a ragged dress selling ugly little handkerchiefs. As the tourbus was pulling in and we were getting on our bikes she called out to us in the bitter tones of a tired old woman. "Bicycle! Bicycle! Compre! Compre!" And I looked in her eyes and it seemed to me that I was just a bicycle to her. A thing. A bicycle that might have a pocket full of pesos. And I couldn't think of anything to say or do that might make the moment feel human. So we got on our bikes and peddled away as the vendors shouted to the tourists descending from the bus. Compre! Compre! Compre! (Buy! Buy! Buy!)

Thank God there are still many places where human interaction is so much more.