January 23, 2024
Thoughts About Yucatan
We "discovered" Yucatan because it was on the way from the major airport at Cancun down to Belize, where our daughter was living. She had to give her naive and non Spanish speaking parents very careful instructions. We were to get on a specific bus at Cancun and ride it to the ADO bus station in "Playa del Carmen", walk to some other bus station, and take another ADO down through Tulum and to the Belize border at Chetumal/Corozal. From there it was a speed boat past Ambergis Caye, and so on.
In these early days, the corridor from Cancun along the coast and down to Belize was all we understood of Yucatan. Slowly we became braver about it. We got off the bus at Tulum, rented two rickety bikes, and pedaled into the Sian Ka'an reserve. The crank arm on one bike kept falling off, so we used a rock to pound it back. It fell off enough that we sought out the rock of the perfect weight and shape for the pounding, and carried it along. Historians will tag this as the earliest beginnings of the Grampies' cycling toolkit.
During this time, anything west of the Cancun -Tulum corridor was "terra incognita", but we happened on a cycling blog, where the rider had gone to "Valladolid". Say what? Where is that, and can you really cycle to there? were our initial reactions.
But of course we did eventually cycle to Valladolid, now our favourite town, and then we swarmed all over northern and western Yucatan. The key to this was that we discovered that except for one or two major toll roads, all the roads of Yucatan were quite quiet and usually with shoulders. That established it in our minds as a large, warm in winter, network of decent roads to cycle on.
Again, that was only the beginning. Our daughter had taken us to Tikal, in Guatemala (by Colectivo, which is Spanish for rickety mini-van). Tikal was one of a large network of Mayan cities, built by the Maya between 2000 B.C. and the Spanish Conquest, in 1697 A.D. Almost all the cities had been mysteriously abandoned before the Spanish arrived. The ruins now dot the map, as tourist attractions.
But the Mayan people and their culture persisted. To be sure the Spanish were oppressive, but unlike some other indigenous people, the Maya did not become depressed or downtrodden or alcoholic. They just seemed to keep on working and living, and important from our point of view, welcoming visitors. They are so sweet, and to cycle into a little village and be greeted by everyone means a lot to us. If it were otherwise, we would stay away and not bug them.
Now to mention the little villages, something that does our cycling activist hearts good is to find the people working away with their trike cargo bikes - either pedaled or pushed by a converted moto. It is all so different from the car dominated streets of our own town, and even the general dominance of the motorcycle is at least a two wheel phenomenon.
It is also heart warming to see old ladies seated on a bench in the cargo bike, and being conveyed to market by a pedaling husband or maybe a grand child. The step-up at the front of the bike is a low one, just a brilliant design for immensely improving the mobility of seniors.
Food comes next in our thoughts about Yucatan. Containers of cut up watermelon, pineapple, papaya, strawberry, and many other fruits, are easy to find. But we also love the fact that with most main dishes there will be extensive garnishes: lettuce, tomato, avocado, refried beans, salsa, various sauces, rice, and a stack of hot tortillas. Of course we launched a whole blog themed with the pursuit of one of those main dishes, the Poc Chuc.
A network of flat, warm, quiet roads with pleasant people and good food is the description of what has kept us returning to Yucatan. Of course it's not all papaya and warm breezes, and this year we took some minor steps to boost the fun and cut any hassle.
The first bit of hassle in Yucatan actually begins right where we originally did - at the Cancun airport and going down the coast. Getting a taxi from the airport to a Cancun hotel is expensive, and you may need to pass a gauntlet of more or less sleazy operators looking for your business. And then pedaling down the coast means following the one, very noisy road. So this year we booked a shuttle online, paid about 60 USD in advance, and just breezed away from Cancun and halfway down the coast to Playa, where we assembled the bikes in a large ground floor room we knew about at the Maya Turquesa hotel. It may not have been the cheapest option, but it was lots more pleasant.
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The other step we took was to arrive at Valladolid before Christmas, and to stay a few days, to absorb the holiday ambiance. As it happens, I got sick and really needed those rest days anyway. But seeing the people all out on the streets before the holiday was really nice.
You can find a lot of concern about environmental destruction in Yucatan, and certainly the garbage thrown around everywhere is one easy to see indicator that all is not well. On the other hand, Mexico boasts about twice the number of bird species as France, and we are sure that they are lots more abundant as well. Yucatan alone has supposedly 555 species. Since we have so far seen only about a fifth of those, we should have lots of scope for circulating around staring into trees. Probably to get much further, we will need some guided trips into special areas. Those could be a source of future fun.
Just as we slowly expanded our range of travel into north west Yucatan, we may now edge more to the south. It's a little tricky, because people, including locals, have warned of drug gangs and crime in a variety of Mexican regions. In fact we sat with one fellow on the plane who reviewed the regions, including his own, and one by one declared "Don't go there, I wouldn't". That could mean that we will descend to Campeche, but quit there. The same concerns apply to other places in Central America, but we also know of problems in North America, so we don't know. When does prudence turn to paranoia?
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Despite that negative note about future routes, Yucatan this time was purely great, and we'll re-read our blog in future with enjoyment.
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Jacinto would love to tour in Mexico, I am not too sure. We have heard too many horror stories. A few good ones, like yours. But too many bad ones for me to be comfortable. Being kidnapped, as a white person, is my major concern. Sorry, that sounded like a downer. But, fact.
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