Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

We were playing on the beach with Eloïse by 07:30 this morning. There’s really no stopping her. She continued to build her snowman with scant regard for parental grumblings about non-entities such as breaking our fast.

When we did finally convince her to allow us all to eat, we drove into Tulum for a filling meal at the very pleasant Don Cafeto. Its terrace made an agreeable spot for watching life go by in Tulum, whilst sipping coffee and juice, and tucking into chilaquiles, eggs and toast.

With the family bellies taken care of, we decided to occupy today with a jaunt to Playa del Carmen, which took about an hour to drive northwards to. Playa del Carmen was obviously once a very pleasant town in an idyllic setting. Today, the setting is equally idyllic along the tackily named Riviera Maya, but the town is straining to retain its identity under the unrelenting onslaught of mass tourism and the all-engulfing tide of naff and lurid excess that has followed. What a shame that tourism and tawdriness so often go hand in hand.

Need I mention that the day was yet another scorcher? I found myself spending most of the day trying to imagine how this town might have looked a quarter of a century (or longer) ago. Its beaches are still stunning, but a different kind of sun-worshipper comes here today. Watching them vie for a spot on the beach reminded me of the Pier 39 sea-lions in San Francisco, who attempt to leap from the water onto an already very overcrowded pier, only to be flicked back into the water by the flipper of a strategically perched kin member.

We quickly left the sizzling human meat on the grill and continued our walk down the unimaginatively named Quinta Avenida (Fifth Avenue), where faceless souvenir shops offered passers-by T-shirts bearing inane slogans, most of which with beer-drinking, sex or both as their theme. One can’t help but wonder what kind of individual considers it a proud and noteworthy achievement to be able to consume beer.

‘Bad girls suck. Good girls swallow.’

‘FBI: Female Body Inspector.’

‘I’m shy, but I’ve got a big dick.’

‘I’ve used all of my sick days, so now I’m calling in drunk.’

‘This isn’t a beer belly, it’s the fuel tank of a sex machine.’

And one for the Simpsons’ children to buy for Homer:

‘Who are these kids and why are they calling me dad?’

Good grief.

Hair beads, cheap sunglasses, shoddy rucksacks, footballs, overpriced beachwear, bracelets, trinkets, canned drinks, etc. Every sunny tourist destination in the whole world is filled with the same kind of shop offering the same kind of rubbish. Only the currency varies.

The south end of Quinta Avenida is definitely the worst, with the highest concentration of American fast-food eateries. There’s a Starbucks, a Johnny Rockets (that’s a bad burger joint, not a place for purchasing incendiary attachments for condoms, in case you were wondering), Papa John’s (pizza), Subway, Häagen-Dazs and others. One of the golden rules of responsible travel is: Support local businesses with your money, not the multinationals.

In spite of the blight of American chains, we did, in fact, eat a great lunch in Playa del Carmen from the local 100% Natural, which also serves absolutely delicious fruit juice smoothies. Check out the local speciality: hibiscus juice. I had mine mixed with lime juice.

After Eloïse’s snooze and an iced coffee, we drove back to Tulum for our second night at the beach bungalow. Eloïse played in the sand as the sun went down.

Tomorrow’s our last full day in Mexico, I’m sad to say. The day after will see us return to Cancún for the flight back to Providence, this time via Charlotte, North Carolina.

Another crack-of-dawn start to the day, thanks to the combination of Eloïse and the growing practice of going to bed monastically early.

After breakfast and checking out, we drove to Cobá, another Mayan ruin site. Our visit here was curtailed before it had even really begun by a sudden downpour, which showed no sign of relenting.

We surrendered to our predicament and drove back along the road about half a kilometre to get some lunch, stopping on the way to admire a crocodile that was eyeing us from the swamp at the side of the road. Not a sight you see every day in Amsterdam.

During lunch, the weather took a turn for the better and we were able to return to Cobá, parking and reentering the site on the tickets we had purchased that morning.

It’s possible to rent bikes or even take a bicycle taxi inside, but Eloïse needed a doze, so we pushed the buggy from each building to the next. There’s nothing like a good jostle in the buggy to lull her to sleep.

Eloïse was fast asleep by the time we reached the main pyramid, which bears the distinction of having maintainers who continue to allow tourists to ascend its steps. Sarah and I decided to climb it separately, so that the one of us on the ground could keep an eye on our sleeping cherub. We decided that I would go first and Sarah demonstrated her great unsentimental practicality by asking me to hand over the car keys before going up.

It goes without saying that it was another searingly hot day, so I was pretty tired by the time I made it to the top of the hundred-odd steps. The view from above across the canopy of trees was definitely worth the exuded sweat, however. It took me a few minutes to regain my composure for the descent.

Years of living in Amsterdam and dealing with the steep, narrow staircases of canal houses had primed me for the descent of the pyramid, and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself able to descend as on a normal set of stairs. While most of those around me were coming down sat on their arse with their hands behind them like a crab, or by consistently stepping down with the same foot and catching up with the other, the size of my stride and my experience with old stairwells combined to make mine a faster and easier descent.

When I arrived back down at the base, it was Sarah’s turn to go up. I took photos and kept a watchful eye on Eloïse.

Back on terra firma, we visited the remaining buildings and then returned to the car for the drive to Tulum.

Just before sunset, we arrived in Tulum and drove along the seafront to get to our hotel, which was actually a bungalow on the beach.

As I type this, I’m looking through the window at the fine white sands and listening to the breakers coming crashing in on the shore. Our patio area at the front of the bungalow even has a hammock, along with a table and chairs. The interior of the bungalow has soft lighting and candles dotted around the place.

Needless to say, Eloïse hastened to make merry in the sand. She says she was building a snowman, but it doesn’t look much like one to me. That he’s much broader than tall is by design, she says. One thing’s for sure: our girl is enjoying herself here.

Eloïse had us up and about around 07:00 this morning. We took advantage of the early hour to enjoy a leisurely breakfast, after which we fetched the buggy and walked the fifteen or so minutes to Chichén Itzá. We must have purchased tickets and been on the grounds around 08:15.

This is the time to come, as you beat the madd(en)ing crowds and pretty much have the place to yourself, save for a few other disciplined early birds.

The main pyramid is now closed to the public for climbing, as a careless tourist slipped and fell a couple of years ago. As is so often the case with such things, the powers that be subsequently legislated on behalf of the statistically insignificant minority, at the expense of the surefooted majority.

Whatever happened to the concept of ‘at your own risk’? I’m not claiming that ascending the steps is safe. Indeed, they are steep, shallow and uneven, and a fall from near the top would almost certainly kill or cripple you, but I still say one should be able to make up one’s own mind about such things.

Anyway, I took solace in the assumption that the pyramid will doubtless last longer if trodden by fewer feet, so in that sense it’s surprising that tourists were recently allowed to climb it at all.

Today was another sweltering day, perhaps the hottest so far. It took several hours to make our way around all of the sights, by which time the site had become besieged by busloads of tourists. It’s a big place, though, so I didn’t find that the experience was marred. The only time it’s irritating to have so many people there is when a large tour group stands in front of and obscures a building of interest to listen to their tour guide. This makes taking a photo a tedious affair, as you wait for the crowd to disperse.

Lunch at the site was a decidedly mediocre affair. This is to be expected at such places where one restaurant has exclusive catering rights, but we had

Eloïse in tow, so our options were limited. We therefore took a calculated risk and paid the price.

The cheese on the nachos I ordered turned out not to be real cheese at all, but a ghastly emulsified substance I grew up in England calling processed cheese. In the US, they euphemistically call it American cheese. Basically, it’s the plasticine-like stuff they put on hamburgers in places like McDonalds.

After leaving most of my lunch on the plate (the juice drinks were tasty, though), we went back inside to see the remaining buildings. We then left and went back to the hotel to relax for a while.

Later, we drove into the nearby town of Piste and had dinner at a local restaurant before driving back to Chichén Itzá for the evening light show. For forty-five minutes, lights are shone onto and across the buildings, while a Spanish-speaking narrator dramatically brings the place to life.

Some may find such an obviously artificial event cheesy, but I enjoyed myself, even though I couldn’t glean much from the soundtrack.

Given my abysmal understanding of Spanish, it was hard not to be distracted by the unearthly clear sky, whose stars burned so brightly that I found myself yearning for a better understanding of all that I was beholding. This would clearly be a great place to practise astronomy and it’s not hard to imagine why the night sky played such a dominant role in Mayan society.

I think I saw a satellite, which I had first mistaken for a star, but it was moving across the firmament; too slowly to be an aeroplane and too slow to be much else.

After breakfast and allowing Eloïse a few minutes of playing on Plaza Grande, we left Mérida and headed for Uxmal.

Uxmal is about an hour’s drive south-west of Mérida. It’s an impressive site with many large buildings in amazingly good condition, considering their age.

As with most sites in Yucatán, climbing the pyramid’s steps is not allowed, so one has to admire these great feats of engineering from ground level. I’m sure that’s better for their preservation, anyway.

It was a sweltering day, the temperature somewhere in the mid-thirties. Iguanas basked in the sun all around the ruins, some of them at the side of the trails, others clinging to the rocks of the buildings. Eloïse found them fascinating.

After a surprisingly decent lunch at the site’s sole restaurant, we drove back towards Mérida and joined road 180 heading eastward. Road 180 is the old Cancún to Mérida road that has been superseded in some respects by the 180D motorway, its toll-charged cousin. 180D is an expensive road (about 300 Pesos to travel its entire length) and we had already driven the full distance from Cancún to Merida a few days earlier, so we were curious to see how bad the old road was.

It actually turned out to be a decent, one lane road. It was a Saturday, so there wasn’t much heavy goods traffic to hold us up and the scenery was considerably more interesting than along the almost unerringly straight toll road. That’s because the old road passes straight through all of the towns en route, instead of skirting around them. This provided many a pleasing scene of people and their dogs; eating, chatting, sleeping or just watching our car go by.

We eventually reached Piste, the last town before the historic site of Chichén Itzá, just before sunset. We continued the extra few kilometres to our hotel and settled in for the night. It was a fairly long drive today, about 280 km in total.

I’m writing this on a seriously wavering wireless connection from our hotel room in Mérida, the capital of the Yucatán state. I had to manually configure the connection, as the DHCP server here appears to be dead.

We arrived in Mérida yesterday afternoon, following a 325 km drive from Cancún along the annoyingly straight 180D motorway. Where’s cruise control when you need it?

Cancún proved to be as tacky as the vast majority of accounts portray it. The Zona Hotelera resort area truly is a blot on the landscape, consisting largely of an endless array of awful American chain eateries, including everything from Starbucks to Hooters. Seriously, if you wanted to visit a place that horrid from the US, you wouldn’t need to leave the country. Just go to Florida.

On the other hand, if you skipped Cancún, you’d miss out on the one redeeming feature of our stay: dinner at La Parrilla on Av. Yaxchilán. That place was out of this world: nice surroundings, friendly waiters, good music and excellent overall value for money. In short, it was one of the best Mexican meals I’ve ever eaten.

In fact, the centre of Cancún didn’t actually look all that bad. Just avoid the Zona Hotelera like the plague.

Even our hotel there was a disaster. The Gran Meliã Cancún was painfully slow to check into and ultimately provided us with a room that turned out to be occupied by other guests. We could have taken their valuables and done a runner.

It eventually took ninety minutes, four different rooms and some seriously harsh words with the staff before we were finally given the type of room we had reserved several days in advance. I suggested to the reception manager that he throw in free breakfast the next day to compensate for the inconvenience, a proposal that he, to his credit, accepted.

We couldn’t leave Cancún quickly enough the next day. The weather had been cool and rainy, and the beaches had disappeared into the huge swell of the ocean, so neither walking along the beach or frolicking in the water had been an option. Hundreds of bored-looking tourists aimlessly ambled around the resorts, trying to dream up something to do.

Anyway, after filling up with petrol (a wise move, as it turned out there were no petrol stations for 100 km along 180D), we drove west, crossing the state border from Quintana Roo to Yucatán.

Mérida is a breath of fresh air, or would be if it weren’t for the stifling fumes churned out by the buses and cars that line the city’s narrow streets.

Nevertheless, it’s a charming, bustling city that has not succumbed to the pressures of tourism that have turned its easterly neighbour into a grotesque neon nightmare.

Mérida’s streets positively hum and vibrate with activity. The narrow pavements scarcely allow you to walk two abreast here, and buses hurtle along the kerb just centimetres from your elbow and hip. Small wonder that you see very few prams and buggies here, but it hasn’t stopped us pushing ours along the potholed pavements. You get used to it after a while.

We visited one of the city’s busy markets today. With Eloïse in the buggy, we settled down for some lunch at one of the many stalls lining the street. I had my first taste of panuchos, a Yucatecan speciality. It’s a puffed-up tortilla with beans and meat. I had pork in mine, sprinkled with lime juice. Yeah!

Sarah’s vegetarianism has proved a challenge at times. This is primarily because neither of us speaks decent Spanish. Plenty of people speak English here, but that still leaves plenty who don’t. And why should they? We’re in Mexico, after all. Ordinarily, I can just about get by in Spanish when ordering food, but there are so many things on the menu here that I’ve just never heard of. Many of the Mexican dishes are actually Yucatecan or Mayan specialities and it’s very hard to figure out what’s in them. It’s not all huevos rancheros, you know.

Street peddlers abound here, although they’re not quite as pushy as in some other countries. Just be firm and say no. It’s harder when someone suddenly appears from nowhere and acts as an impromptu tour guide during your visit to the cathedral. Only when you get outside does he make his real aim clear and try to cajole you into accompanying him to his handicraft or souvenir shop. The friendliness turns a little frostier when you politely decline.

The people here are great, though; very friendly and always willing to oblige. They’ve been warm and welcoming, especially with Eloïse, who always makes a splash in hot countries with her red hair and pale skin. One woman in the market today informed us that our little girl’s legs look as if they’re made of queso!

Tomorrow, we head out of town for Uxmal, the site of an ancient ruined Mayan city. We’re short on time, though, so we’ll double back and head on to Chichén Itzá to spend the night. It’s going to be another big driving day, but probably also our last. After this, it should be relatively short hops.

Open WiFi access is uncommon here. The few networks — including encrypted ones — I have managed to get onto have turned out to block SIP, so there has been no opportunity to call the home front cheaply from my mobile phone. My guess is that the upstream telco blocks this in an attempt to safeguard their revenue, although Skype seems to be popular here and offered by every corner Internet café. Perhaps there’s a less cynical explanation, but I’m not about to pay KPN’s international tariff.

Only one major purchase so far: a hammock. Sarah wants to hook it up outside in our soon-to-be-laid garden. Let’s hope the coming summer is a good one.