Archive for the ‘mexico’ Category

Posted on October 19, 2007 - by MG

At Last, Becan

becan ix
Originally uploaded by mgharris

We visited Becan yesterday, a ruined Mayan city in the state of Campeche. Readers of The Joshua Files will know the significance of this place – no spoilers please!!!

After the carnival of Tulum, Becan was a wonderful experience. Can you believe that we were the only people visiting this amazing monument? Yes, for the two hours we were there we had the whole place to ourselves. No other tourists, no tour guides, no vendors hassling us. Just the sounds of the surrounding jungle. And the racket we made – two children can’t be silent after all.

You catch a glimpse the summit of the tallest pyramid, Structure IX, over the tops of surroundings trees as you approach from the main road, Highway 186.

Closer though everything is shrouded in dense jungle, so you walk through trees and then notice stones and steps from the base of the temples, cool grey in the midst of green; leaves, creepers and a mossy ground. At Becan the temples really do appear to rise up out of the jungle.

Becan has four really huge structures which are quite well restored; Structures II, VIII, IX and X. There are a large number of other buildings too, but many are still swallowed by the jungle. I wonder why the place isn’t more well-known. I suspect it’s only recently been restored to this level. I saw photos of Structure IX years ago and the staircase was a pile of rubble. Now though, as you can see, this side of the temple is quite well restored, with the staircase good and sharp all the way to the top.

We didn’t climb this one – there was a helpful rope but also a note saying ‘please don’t climb the pyramid’.

We did however climb Structure VIII, from where we took this photo. And my cousin Oscar and daughter couldn’t resist crawling into a tunnel on Structure X, where they found a chamber with bats…

My valiant husband tried again to take some non-hideous photos of me for the publishers. About 90% were gruesome, but we do have some usable candidates now, especially if Photoshop can help out. The sun was beating down on us most of the time, and I was the only one allowed to use the brow-mopping cloth, so this ‘photo shoot’ was none too comfortable.

Posted on October 18, 2007 - by MG

Lake Bacalar

Lake Bacalar

Finally a chance to swim in the biggest and bluest freshwater lake I’ve ever seen. In southern Quintana Roo state, this lake was known by the Maya, apparently, as the Lake of Seven Hues. The aqua coloured parts are where the base is shallow and sandy.

We ate fish fajitas, ceviche and Mexican beer in a lovely little garden restaurant on the edge of the vast lake, which stretches for miles. Hardly anyone around and nortenos playing on the loud stereo. It felt really nice and properly Mexican. I thought of my uncles in Mexico City and felt a bit guilty that we weren’t sharing this with any of them.

Still – cousin Oscar Raul arrives tomorrow! And then it’s off down Highway 186 to Becan.

There have been a lot of blue Nissan Tsurus around, ooer. Readers of Joshua Files will know what I mean…

Posted on October 17, 2007 - by MG

Tulum – my how you’ve changed!

No Internet access here, but my BlackBerry is working so I’ve been sitting on the beach outside our room (about 30 meters from the sea) exchanging emails with my agent and the desk editor at Scholastic re some final touches for the book.

Tulum has changed a lot since I was here with my husband and fellow biochemistry student, Becs, almost 20 years ago. Back then we hired a taxi for $80 US dollars and the taxi guy drove us down from Cancun, hung around the makeshift car park while we traipsed around the ruins, carefree as you like. On the tiny but gorgeous beach by the ruins we met some people from Didsbury, Manchester of all places (where I grew up). The sea was rough that day. The whole area was experiencing the beginning of what would become a tropical storm. We drove back along the coastal road with the windows down – no aircon and stopped en route for a swim at the blue, blue lagoon of Xel-Ha. (pronounced shell-ha)

Around 3 weeks later the storm became Hurricane Gilbert and devastated Tulum.

These days Tulum is a BIG tourist trap, Xel-Ha too. Big car park, coach loads arriving all day long, massive arts and crafts shops and restaurants. Official tourist guides take you round and give you a terrific spiel, all the latest findings. No more free wandering around the ruins, no more clambering over the pyramids.

Ernie, our Mayan guide explained how all 52 structures in Tulum played their part in a ceremonial centre which also functioned as an astronomical and weather calculator. He showed us the place where at around 5am on 13 November the light from the rising sun passes though a small window in one temple and lights up the door in the surrounding wall – to the west. This would be the signal to harvest the last of the crops before winter. Another portal would trap light to signal the time to sow. And by an amazing feat of engineering,the Temple of the Wind God uses a pole and a temple window to raise the alarm of an approaching hurricane, whistling like a flute when the wind speeds start to get dangerous.

Tulum is a city with natural protection from invaders – mangrove swamps to the west, the Caribbean to the east and offshore, a long reef which prevented Spanish from landing anywhere close. So why did they need to build a 6ft high wall all the way around the ceremonial centre? It’s the only example of such a wall in a Mayan city.

Ernie gave us the latest explanation – and it’s ingenious. “Tulum’s biggest danger was always the hurricane” he said. “Where do you put 2000 people in a place like this, to protect them from the hurricane?” The buildings held at most 600 people – and they were in danger of having their palm rooftops ripped away. The answer was this: the wall. It was long enough for all 2000 people to line up behind the wall as a shelter.

Ernie is a bona fide Mayan – comes from a tiny place deep in the interior of the Yucatan peninsula. “If you want to see the real Mayan people,” he chuckled, “get a guide to take you in a 4×4, and tell him you want to go where the tourists don’t go. He’ll take you where you won’t hear a word of Spanish – only Maya.”

Well maybe next time. Our kids are way too whingey for that right now. The heat and crowds of Tulum got to them. Chances are that Becan and Calakmul – in the Campeche jungle to the south – is going to be too much.

All the way down from Playa del Carmen, the highway cuts through the jungle. I peered into the trees. Poor Josh Garcia – in “Invisible City” he spends hours lost in there. Me – I wouldn’t dare to step 20 meters into that place.

Tomorrow, Chetumal, the state capital of Quintana Roo and the place where Josh’s Mayan adventure begins…

Posted on October 15, 2007 - by MG

Reasons to visit Mexico #1 Breakfast

mexican breakfastOriginally uploaded by mgharris

Here’s one of the things I really miss about Mexico; food!

Yesterday cousin Rodrigo explained how come he left Manchester so suddenly last year.

“I missed my Mexican food, and my mum. I’d had enough of sandwiches, pizzas and kebabs. So I bought a ticket and surprised everyone.”

The photo shows chilaquiles (fried corn tortillas cooked in stock and green tomato and chili sauce, with onions and optional sour cream), refried beans and fried potatoes and peppers.

The relief of eating this after 3 years…

Posted on October 15, 2007 - by MG

Cancun – is this really Mexico?

The beach at Cancun’s Hilton hotel

Cancun was a fairly newish resort with about fifteen (big) hotels when I first visited in 1981. The airport was one small terminal and a strip cut into the forest of coconut palms.

It doesn’t feel much like the rest of Mexico. Everything is charged in dollars and pesos also. It all feels a bit too organised and tidy to be real Mexico. I’m not wild about Cancun, but it this hotel is very comfortable.

It’s my fourth visit since then. Much has changed. We arrived to a Cancun airport that looks as big as Mexico City’s. At the car rental office a blue-eyed guy in a white cap began to chat with me in typical friendly Mexican fashion. My daughter growled at me for telling our life story to the first person who asked. But that’s how Cancun is. We want to know your life story, thanks very much. How else can we know which of the various services we have on offer to sell you? And my daughter is right, I’m probably way too friendly.

This guy and I had discussed: 1) the lack of a Mexican community in the UK, 2) the shocking state of our native Mexico City (I’m from Coyoacan, he’s from nearby neighbourhood Colonia del Valle), 3) the lamentable record of Mexico’s most corrupt former presidents and their responsibility for the disintegration of Mexican society, 4) the growing influence of Columbian drug lords on Mexico (he reckons plane after plane lands in Cancun loaded with Colombian cocaine, with airport air officials bribed/threatened into turning a blind eye); all this before he finally tried in a very relaxed fashion to sell us a tour or a time share apartment. “I can’t exactly buy a time-share from you, not when my sister sells time-shares, “ I told him. He blinked and nodded in agreement. “But come and have a day at the resort, drinks, watersports, as my guest anyway, no pressure, any time you like.”

This morning the sea is rough but already looks turquoise, the sky is filled with bunched clouds, the pools at this hotel seem infinite (and there’s a huge infinity pool), people are out training.

My lovely cousin Rodrigo just happens to work at the hotel we booked into. He’s studying International Tourism at Uni. Classes from 7am, and works reception in the evenings. A tough life, he admitted, but he loves it. He upgraded our rooms and breakfasts, and left us a delicious chocolate truffle cake in the room…