Day 29 : Chichen Itza to Valladolid

January 10, 2024

Heart

Comment

The haciendas in Yucatan began as the heart of the agricultural industry, mainly through the growing of henequen for its fibre. There were some that may have produced tequila, or perhaps even corn and other crops. Today hennequen is mostly over, and many haciendas are abandoned. But a sizable handful are still maintained, and they have become overnight rentals, with preserved, landscaped grounds, and possibly with cenotes, ruins, spas, and other activities. One of the great ones is Hacienda Chichen, down the road a bit from where we stayed, and closer to Chichen Itza. You can book in there for about 4000 pesos, which is not that bad, considering the extreme beauty of the place and the fact that they advertise dozens or hundreds of species of birds visible on the property.

This morning before breakfast we cruised on over and snuck in, using the expedient of cycling down the driveway. Yesterday's guard was not around, so we pushed the bikes along, having a look.

The first impression was about the great beauty of the place. There were many tall trees and of course, tropical plants.

We began to look up and scan the trees. Everywhere we heard bird song, but though we occasionally saw a bird flit by, we could not really identify any. They were either fast or hidden in leaves or deeper into the forest.

We switched focus a little then, really enjoying the trees and plants that surrounded us.

We pushed a little deeper into the property, and found ourselves in a garden and orchard area. Here were papaya trees, lime, bananas, soursop (guanabana), and garden plots with stuff not yet identifiable.

Piper auritum, also known as hoja santa, yerba santa, hierba santa, Mexican pepperleaf, acuyo, tlanepa, anisillo, root beer plant, Vera Cruz pepper and sacred pepper, is an aromatic herb with a heart-shaped, velvety leaf which grows in tropic Mesoamerica (as per Wikipedia). @ Pierce Street Gardens, Eugene OR

Guanabana. When our daughters first travelled to the tropics, we all somehow thought this was the funniest name to say.

This is likely: Spondias dulcis (syn. Spondias cytherea), known commonly as June plum. It is a tropical tree, with edible fruit containing a fibrous pit. In the English-speaking Caribbean it is typically known as golden apple and elsewhere in the Caribbean as pommecythere or cythere. I am not so smart as to be deliberately recording finding this tree, rather, I thought I saw a bird in there!

Sort of like at Hacienda Uxmal - which had the Chocolate museum with jungle walk, we were resigning ourselves to somehow not spotting the wonderful birds that had to be in there somewhere. But then Dodie looked up and yelped "Toucan!". It was true, the tree held a group of colorful Collared Aracari. Aracari are in the Toucan family, but are smaller than some.

Just as Dodie was making the Toucan discovery and I was desperately trying to focus the camera, a lady wandered by - the only person we had seen around so far. She was toting a (to us) big camera and maybe binoculars. She glanced up where we were looking and exclaimed "Aracari! We haven't seen those since Costa Rica". She then called excitedly to her husband, who had been lurking nearby.

See them using their bills to open the seeds.

It turned out the lady and her husband were birders of 30 years experience. Just as when cycle tourists meet on the road, we had an exchange of mutual UQs. Thinking back to this exchange, it was not nearly as long or in depth as what happens with us and some cyclists. Perhaps it was because we (or they) do not really view the Grampies as birders.

However there were some possibly important takeaways for us. First off, we now want to go to Cost Rica. It's 2300 km from here by bike. We should be able to do that! Or maybe we should put the Fridays on a plane and fly. For next time, we're thinking about it!

Next, I mentioned to the lady the difficulty we have finding a bird we see by eye on the screen of the camera, given how wide the initial view is. And then when we zoom in, while always refocussing, the bird may be outside the narrow circle of view we get by zooming.

The lady did not have a specific tip for us on these questions, but she did show that her Nikon camera has a "bird" setting. I looked this up later and found that the "bird" setting selects optimal autofocus and exposure settings for photographing birds. I will be trying to research what setting Nikon considers optimal, to see if I can copy them.

Next, the "huge" camera carried by the lady was a Coolpix P950. This is deemed kind of a beginners camera for serious birders. It has 83x zoom! But if we were to use such a thing, it would have to have a handlebar bag to itself, and (to bring joy to Scott's heart) I would have to get off the bike and pull the camera to make a shot. Well ok, we're thinking about that too.

Little beginner's camera in the lady's hands.

Finally, Dodie seemed to think the lady had a kind of viewfinder that did not require holding the camera up a foot from one's face to look into the TV, while tiring the arms and probably jiggling. We would like to see what that may have been about. (The piece that says Nikon may contain a really large optical viewfinder.)

We ushered ourselves back down the lush driveway and back to our low life hotel. Actually, that's untrue and unfair. The Doralba also has beautiful grounds, including a sort of above ground cenote that has been partly converted to a swimming pool, quite isolated cabins and lots of jungle out back, and beautiful landscaping as well. We took a quick walk before breakfast, and saw another Toucan, here at home! It was right there in the open, but Dodie could not spot it in the viewfinder/screen. Frustrate her much more like that, and a P950 could land in my lap!

Dodie wants to photograph every darn black bird.

The eye colour tells this is the super common Grackle.

24049 Melodious Blackbird (notice the dark eye).

Doralba had another gift for us, in the form of a Woodpecker that we have not seen yet this year (2024). This was just by the pool at Doralba, and before we sat down for breakfast.

Breakfast at Doralba is kind of like a Model T Ford was - you can choose anything you want but they only have scrambled eggs with ham. But hey, they also have sort of toast, and it was good. We have sort of been running low on food intake lately, just not able to find it. So after wolfing down Doralba's offering, we were already plotting whether more food might lie along our route for today. That's when I hatched the idea of asking for more bread. This put me in mind of the scene from A Christmas Carol, when Scrooge asks for more bread, but refuses when told it will be a ha'penny extra. In this case, they brought not one but two baskets of toasted bread. Dodie dug out some packaged jam that we had, and life became better. What's more, since coffee here was in the form of a large cannister of hot water and a jar of Nescafe, it was essentially all you can drink. Two coffees, eggs, piles of toast and jam - I was just flying down the road when we finally left!

Just a little out of town we encountered a little chapel that spruced up the yellow concept with green trim. It made a lot of difference!

At many places along the road there are craft/souvenir stalls. This may be found a little more here on the road to Chichen Itza, but we have seen it throughout Yucatan as well. What caught my eye this time was a sort of theological angle to it. On the same shelving we could see items drawn from at least three mythologies: Mayan, Marvel, and Christian. Since we also have Darth Vader in there, maybe we should add a fourth - Star Wars. I am a bit put out that Star Trek is missing. This is the only one I really believe in - well Spock, anyway. Live Long and Prosper, souvenir sellers!

We stopped and watched electrical line workers with three big trucks, doing ... something. We watched for a long time, but could not figure it out. It's not like we have anything else to do out here, except maybe to get on with it!

A lot of the roadside stuff was really nice, like little girls' dresses, and the women's white, embroidered dresses.

There were also hats - hats and hats! To think, for a year I could not find even one like this.

And more hats! One that caught our eye was the yellow one. I suggested that this could be good for cycling, or I could be the Man With The Yellow Hat, like in Curious George. Neither of these suggestions flew. Dodie does not want to pack two large hats onto a plane!

Beyond Kaua, we were not short of things to look at, as there was a lot of roadside development. This included things like the Kukulkan Plaza, a Mayan equivalent of a strip mall?

Kukulkan Plaza. Kukulkan, the feathered serpent, is the creator god, and the god of rain, wind, storms, and life (and retail).

A roadside mural (these birds don't count in our tally).

As we passed that large roadside hotel/restaurant/buffet/handicraft stand again we noticed that it had attracted five large tour busses. This does not make it a place to avoid, unless it's at a time when the bus crowd is present. The quality and freshness in the buffet is likely to be good.

Here is another option. The sign is amusingly bi-lingual.

Tia (aunt) Poloc has attractive decoration.

For a time we followed a man with one of those lovely cargo bikes. These are heavy, of course, and without gears (maybe no brakes either). Yet he was rolling along at 17 kph. I remarked to Dodie that we did not seem able to gain on him, but Dodie rejected this, claiming that this was not a race. Even after 56 years, we do not always think alike! Mercifully (it was getting tiring keeping up) the man pulled over, and took two sacks of bottles and cans from his bike, heaving them into the bushes. Grrr. One of the aspects of local culture that we just can't come to grips with is this practice of dumping garbage all along the roadsides. This guy had cycled quite far to pollute just the right random spot!

Another Muscovy Duck for this year- we used to raise them at home, but they are indigenous here.

We are still wondering about the big trees with the long pods. We took another photo, to help with further research. In spots, these trees are much in evidence.

Since we have been back and forth on this road a bit, there are some familiar landmarks, like the prison. This time prisoners were outside shoveling gravel. I tried no snapshots, because of all the armed guards standing around. But another landmark is the Bimbo factory. The Price's have told us they like Bimbo, but to us it's Wonder Bread. Except, that is, for their cinnamon buns. These are marginally edible. Bimbo must be proud of them too - look at their truck!

It was easy getting to Valladolid, on route 180. Google had some other ideas, that we ignored, and really soon we were rolling through the outskirts.

These are tangy Atulfo mangos. One time a mango seller like this had put the pit too into our container. But not this nice girl. 40 pesos.

We got to our favourite Hotel San Clemente as easy as pie. Last time (about two weeks ago) I was too sick and weak to lift our bikes up the three stairs at the entrance. But now, piece of cake (still running on that extra bread as well).

Christmas is over at the hotel as well, so all we have left are the year long decorations:

But the hotel comes with cats, which is an entertaining big plus!

We got room 101, which is in a corner, ground floor, right by the pool. Ideal. We went and jumped into the pool (only I technically "jumped") and then headed to the food fair by the square. We had been looking forward to the fresh orange juice and the "Comida China", where our favourite choices are beef with broccoli, and fried plantain. Not seeing the plantain, Dodie said to the lady, in plain Spanish, "Tienes platanos fritos?". The lady seemed to not understand, and Dodie repeated to no effect. A local man standing beside observed this, and said exactly the same thing to the lady, only then getting the expected "No tengo" response. We have seen this in France too, where someone expecting to not understand may say to us that they do not speak English, when in fact we are speaking to them in French.

Oh well, even without platanos, it was great!

In the Square, Dodie's favourite color of pigeon.

Today's ride: 46 km (29 miles)
Total: 1,235 km (767 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	5
Comment on this entry	Comment	0