Dreamers Rise An Open Notebook And for those who choose the twisty road, prefer it to the straight Let joy beat out old misery, as love will conquer hate. Illustration by Henry L. Stephens from The Goblin Snob (ca. 1855) A sort of electronic broadside, composed of rants and reviews, conceits and speculations, and whatever else feels the need to be here. Issued as chance will have it. Incidents of travel (VI) Our first stop in our circuit of the Yucatán Peninsula was Campeche, a Gulf Coast city I only vaguely remember. I know there was a seawall and fortifications along the waterfront, and behind them what I recall as a tidy and somewhat reserved town — the last part may be pure fantasy. We may have stayed in the Hotel Baluartes, or perhaps in the Hotel Lopez, about which my Frommer's guide says that “the lobby is warmed by bright paint and strawberry-patterned tiles,” exactly the kind of detail that would likely have slipped my mind. I do remember eating a meal in a restaurant that claimed to serve Mayan cuisine; this may have been the Restaurant Miramar at the corner of Calles 8 and 61, but then again maybe it wasn't. We headed up the highway towards Mérida, through the scrubby low hills of the Puuc region, stopping along the way to explore the magnificent, melancholy ruins of Uxmal as well as one or two other sites whose identities I'm less sure of. It was dry terrain, in the brilliant sun of early summer, and at one spot where we stoped along the road flocks of brilliant orange butterflies had been drawn to a pile of horseshit, a rare if temporary oasis of moisture. Travelling through one of the heartlands of the Maya world, I had some small knowledge of the ancient civilization of the region, but very little at all (at the time) of its history since the Spanish conquest. When Stephens and Catherwood passed through, in 1841, the Yucatán was embroiled in a complicated series of coups, revolts, secession movements, and battles, including a naval encounter (in 1843) between ships of the Republic of Texas and a British-built ironclad belonging to the Mexican navy. That was before all hell broke loose in the form of the decades-long “War of Castes,” in which the Maya nearly succeeded in reconquering the entire peninsula. At the time, however, I knew virtually nothing of this. As I remember in Mérida we stayed, either one night or possibly two, at the Hotel Dolores Alba, which cost the equivalent in pesos of around $7.00 a night. My guidebook describes it as a “palatial” house converted into hotel rooms, which is not quite how I recall it — I remember a narrow entrance from a tree-lined street into a courtyard, and a cluster of low cabins. The hotel still exists at the same address, but the building depicted on its website seems to bear no resemblance to where we stayed, so either we stayed elsewhere or the original structure has since been replaced. Of the city I vaguely recall some historic buildings and a park, and not much more, which is a shame, because Mérida is, I suspect, one of the more interesting and appealing cities in Mexico. I'm embarrassed to say that my strongest memory of it is of going out in the evening to a dark, expensive, very touristy bar and getting thoroughly plastered on piña coladas. After leaving Mérida we headed east to the ruins at Chichén Itzá, perhaps the most tourist-friendly and photogenic of the major sites in the region. (The picture shows me, in a bad shirt, impersonating a narc, or something.) We continued on past little roadside settlements inhabited by the modern Maya. Not very far along we would have passed through the city of Valladolid, which I wouldn't have now recalled, even by name, had I not looked at the map. At the time I certainly had no clue that in 1847, during a struggle between political factions, the city had been the scene of bloody warfare and atrocities against civilians, or that, a year later, in the full blast of the Caste War, it had been hastily and completely evacuated in the face of an advance by an army of thousands of Maya, who harassed the retreating soldiers and civilians for miles, hacking stragglers to death with machetes or picking them off one-by-one with rifles. We spent the night in Cancún, not on the resort-crammed beach (though we walked part way out the next day to look around) but somewhere in town. I don't remember much of Cancún except that I think it was there, if it wasn't later in Veracruz, that we spent part of a day going from bank to bank trying to find one that would exchange pesos, which we were running short of, for our dollar-denominated traveller's cheques. We stopped somewhere for lunch and lemonades that had an appealing hint of mint. When I remarked on this to the waiter he denied that they flavored their lemonade with the herb at all; it was only later that it crossed my mind that the glasses might have been used the night before for creme de menthe and not washed with particular care afterwards. February 20, 2008 [ Permalink ] Previous page Next page Home Index About Email me