Day 9: Valladolid to Ek Balam (and back)

December 3, 2021

Our project for today was only to ride to the Ek Balam archeological site. We have never been there before, and it's a straight shot of abput 30 km north of here. The hotel was offering breakfast from 7 a.m. which suited us fine. For the first time we were able to say in Spanish exactly what we wanted, and the lady miraculously understood. The only gap was in how to ask for "over easy". If anyone knows that, jump on the Comments before 7 tomorrow!

Made to order and so good! (Andrea, that's even a hot chocolate for Dodie!)

Temperatures were moderate today, and with a night's rest and good breakfast, the world looked wonderful today. This even applied to a pesky problem, which is that for some reason we were put in clearly the worst room in the hotel. It's at the back, right by the parking lot door. And on the other side of our wall is a utility area that includes hot water heating and with a pump that runs continually, vibrating the wall. The silver lining of this is that we could observe that the hot water is actually heated with wood, possibly macheted at the roadside and brought in by cargo bike. We watched the wood man stoking the burner for a while. Naturally he was very sweet.

Right outside our door (unmoved since yesterday!) was the church.

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We set off through the streets of downtown, now strangely devoid of buzzing motorbikes.

Pretty soon we were out of town enough to run into some flora and fauna. We begin with a rather beautiful (if dead) snake:

And here is what we would call a "pigeon" but what kind?

And of course we know this to be a Traveller's Palm, but it's gorgeous isn't it!

The way from Valladolid to Ek Balam qualifies as a rare super bikeway. There is only moderate traffic, a wide shoulder basically all the way, a smooth surface (mostly), and a straight shot (mostly). If we lived here, we would be doing this one all the time. Clearly someone else knows of this run, as we encountered a small group of day cyclists on the road. They were Americans, from Washington State, Chicago, and Portland - these were the ones we spoke to.

Half way along, the route features the small town of Temozon. Here you trade the wide smooth shoulder for busy town stuff, but the shoulder soon resumes. The town does provide interesting things of its own:

School kids. This is the first time we have seen kids clearly in school.

Fields with the interplanted "Three Sisters" : corn, beans, and squash.

Ek Balam has a beautiful entrance hall and ticket area, and some nice Jaguar murals. We found out from a local Mayan speaking man that Ek Balam means "Star Jaguar".

One immediate "fabulous" aspect of Ek Balam is the admission price - far higher than Tulum.

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Ek Balam only has about a dozen excavated structures, but at least two of them are really huge. The so called "Acropolis" is massive. It's 525 feet wide and 100 feet high. We could call that height loosely ten stories!

It was permitted to climb to the top, so I borrowed one of Dodie's trekking poles and had at it. With the steep steps and height there was no way her knees could have joined me. Still this positioned her to snap some photos:

I found the height quite scary. It's entirely at your own risk, and at some tricky bits there were only branches for gripping on to or protection from falling over the side. This photo completely disguises just how high this is.

A view from the top, showing that the people below look pretty small.

Halfway up you find this. Stepping off the stairs into this gallery requires caution. A few people made it in but were really scared of the move back onto the steps.

We noticed this yogi-like fellow sitting at the top for a long time, and really deep breathing. Yes, the view of the other buildings in the jungle is inspiring.

I was at the top a short time, having entered from a gap on the side, protected by a few branches. It's the only way up. But before I could go down, the passage was clogged by a gaggle of Russians. Yes, Russians.

There was a relative lack of information about specific aspects of the site, and really we do not tend to remember the archeological details. But we do have this map from a wall, and here below are a few shots of the other buildings.

The Ball Court, for Joni - who is a supporter of Poktapok!

The jungly grounds can be as interesting for us as the ruins, and here we found some epiphytes, and a tree of quite unique shape.

We think this is an ant track, as it goes from tree to tree, and see the ant holes. Bad place to put your tent!

Walking under this tree we heard a loud buzzing, but could not spot either a bees nest or really any bees. Yet there was a constant rain of what we assume was pollen under the tree. We took this photo hoping to see a bee in it, but no luck.

We had carefully locked our bikes to a tree, gambling that they would not be molested in this remote site. And indeed, they were fine. Except that when we had loaded up and were ready to leave, I discovered I had a flat in the rear!

We unloaded and moved to a shady spot for the rest of the drama (trauma) to unfold. Although we had travelled from town with minimal stuff, Dodie had been careful to bring all the tools!

Although I claimed it was only a 1 in 100 chance, Dodie wanted to try spotting the leak without fully removing the tube (and with leaving the wheel in place). First step, of course, is to break the bead and pull the tube partially out. So I grabbed my three plastic tires levers, and ... crap! In putting our Bike Fridays back in service I had not really looked at what tires were on there. It turns out mine were the Schwalbe 20x1.5's. These are notorious for going on tight. The plastic levers threatened to break, and the tire was not moving. Fortunately I also had one, one!, quality metal lever. I was struggling with this when a fellow came along and asked in Spanish what our problem was. "La ponchadura" we chirped, drawing on the custom bike related phrase book prepared for us by our Spanish expert Joni. The man - a tour guide - was prepared to help, but fortunately I did get the darn thing off.

Now we brought in our secret weapon - Dodie's delicate cheek. She used it to feel the leaking air. In no time it was then patched, and we were off!

We took a slightly back roads way home, passing through the small centre of Santa Rosa. Here we found some farming going on, including a field of peppers, and even some cows. Every blog needs a photo of cows!

Usually we say if a fruit is over a fence and in the road it's fair game. But the referee ruled this ripe papaya was in bounds, and safe from us!

The run to back home was really a dream, with the fine road and moderate temperature today, we were feeling really good. That made it a lot of fun to go out and find supper. We went to a food court on the main square. It's actually where our theme photo for this blog came from, taken by us four years ago. We chose horchata (almond milk), fajitas, and pollo pibil, from a little stall. all very good, we found. Horchata is an almost ultimate power drink. We haver seen it in bottles, but it seems what we are getting here is in some sense "fresh".

Out in the square, people were enjoying the evening and various treats on offer. One of these is marquesitas - which are crepes, filled with fruits or ? and rolled. We'll try some next time.

The church was also active, there having been an Advent march a little earlier. Have a look at the video!

Today's ride: 56 km (35 miles)
Total: 346 km (215 miles)

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Scott AndersonSomething to consider for your tool kit. I’ve never been defeated by mounting or removing these 20x1.5 Schwalbe tires since we started carrying these.
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3 years ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Scott AndersonSomething missing from your comment? Missing what?
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3 years ago

Scott AndersonTo Steve Miller/GrampiesOh, sorry. I forgot to include the link: https://pedros.com/products/tools/wheel-and-tire/tire-levers/.
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3 years ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Scott AndersonThanks for the tip. Will get Steve to check out link in the morning. Dodie
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3 years ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesPedro says my gorilla strength can not break them. Sounds promising! But we will also put 1.75s on - better for Portugal cobbles (if Omicron let's us go)
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3 years ago