Deb arrives!

Forgive me Father for I have traveled and it has been almost 3 weeks since my last admission.

The last 10 days have been a whirlwind. Deb arrived, and we whipped through the Yucatan like an unruly hurricane. First, we went to Calakmul, an ancient Mayan city plopped in the middle of a 6 million acre jungle. We stayed in an "ecolodge". (translated, ecolodges are expensive, rustic cabins, a veritable miracle in modern marketing. Since it contains the prefix "eco", you feel really good about spending lots more money than you normally would for such austerity).

Let me try to set the stage for Calakmul. On the drive in, you pass a gate (where you, of course, pay a bunch of pesos), and drive for about 40 miles deep into the jungle before you arrive at the entrance, (where you, of course, pay a bunch more pesos), and walk for another couple of miles to the ruins.

We gave a ride to a local guy who has worked at Calakmul for 15 years. He had us stop at various places to show us cool stuff, like a scarred chicle tree that used to be drained for its sap to make chewing gum, (it doesn't kill the tree, kind of like tapping maple trees for syrup). This is, by the way, where the term chicklets came from. Evidently there used to be a big chewing gum factory along the road. It must have been good karma to pick him up, because in the course of our one hour drive in, we saw keel-billed toucans, wild turkeys, chachalacas, a great curassow, a fledgling eagle, a pack of wild javelinas (picture above), a tiny deer about the size of a dog (second picture) called a red brocket deer, or temazate in espanol (which is evidently quite a find), and a cascabel (rattlesnake). Even the local guy said we were lucky.

Then we got to the ruins. The ruins are only partially excavated and seem to grow right out of the jungle floor. It is like no place I've ever been. There are four ruins that are taller than the trees that allow for views of the vastness of the jungle that are, well, vast. The third picture is of Deb and me on top of a ruin (estructura uno) looking across the jungle to estructura dos and neighboring Guatemala. Evidently, back in the day, the city of Calakmul, along with Palenque and Tikal, were the most important of the Mayan settlements. Calakmul and Tikal had a trade route, or camino blanco, between them that stretched through the jungle for 50 miles. Like all good neighbors, they fought constantly, trading off dominance for hundreds of years.

We ended up spending over 6 hours hiking throughout the ruins and saw all kinds of birds as well as both howler and spider monkeys feeding from the same tree. We visited 4 other ruins on that leg of the trip including Balamku, Chicanna, Becan and Hocheb. Each ruin has its own charm, but Hochob was especially cool because it is so off the beaten path, Deb and I spent a couple of hours there and saw only one other person, the caretaker. They tell us that Hocheb, although quite small, is one of the best examples of the Chene style of architecture (I have no idea what that means, but it sounds pretty impressive, and I'm a professor, after all). The last picture is of Deb inside the mouth of a serpent at Chicanna.

After returning to Camphece, I gave Deb the two day special tour of the museums, muralla, malecon, etc., and then we were off to Merida. Merida is a nice enough place, a city of over a million in northern Yucatan, but I'm still not sure why folks rave about it. I found it a bit touristy, with lots of shops filled with the same old same old, and proprietors trying to pull you in off the streets. I guess I'm accustomed to the "mas tranquilo" atmosphere aqui in Campeche. Anyway, Deb and I used it as a jumping off place for three adventures which I will talk about in my next blog! Tomorrow I am to return back to work, spending 10 days with Deb was a blessing, but I'm afraid I've forgotten half of the little Spanish I knew.