There I was, having some good family time
at the Caribbean, visiting my sister in Cancun. Aunt Candy was with us from Kentucky.
We went to so some tourism and some delicious sea food by the sea, with all its
colors, flavors and odors. And suddenly…BAM!!!! An idea invades my mind: let’s
have a Mayan Adventure!!!
There is this Mayan city, Ek Balam (black
jaguar, also called panther) that lies in between Mérida and Cancun. Needless
to say, I haven’t been there even if it is very close by.
This is a medium size site; it has a
religious pyramid, some random buildings like houses of important people and
such, a gigaaaantic sort of temple, which is more of a palace. That palace is
the tallest structure at the site. I climbed it, against the strong wind,
vertigo and running children. It was a challenge! But I made it. From the top
you can see Coba, another site about 150km to the south.
This was a very hot day and I was starting
to get hungry and I wanted some mango. It is customary in Mexico to just eat
chopped fruit of the season with chili powder, salt and lemon. There was this
woman with a bag of chopped fruit (mango and jicama) the size of a carry-on bag
and I could not help myself, so I asked her where she bought it because it
looked so delicious. To this simple question I got the worst answer possible: I
brought from home!!!! Oh no! – I thought – all is lost! I can never get one of
those. But then, to my happy surprise, she extends the bag to me and asks me to
please, oh please, take some fruit. She walks over to my mom, pregnant sister,
and heated gringo aunt and offers them too. Frankly, we were scared by this
nice gesture, it is not normal for people to be this nice. Still, we took some
fruit and gorged on the pulpy deliciousness of its tropical flavor: IT WAS
DELICIOUS!!!!
The best part about this Mayan site is
that 2km away (by bike) there is a cenote (water well inside a cave that has an
opening to the surface) where you can swim and do diverse sporting activities. Needless
to say I was spared the joy of these adventurous undertakings by my sister’s
pregnancy, the heat and my aunt’s and mother’s age.
When we left, there was a market outside;
they sell little curious and artistic things, from beautiful necklaces to huge
jaguar heads carved on wood. There was a little explosion of colors attracting
my eyes, asking them to come over and look… and so I did. It was all just
beautiful in its own right and style. I didn’t buy anything, but I sure looked
at all of it.With the heart full of Mayan pride and my
stomach full of fruit, I parted with this gorgeous place only to be reunited
with it once more… in the near future.
By this time we were seriously hungry, so
we stopped on the nearest restaurant to have a late lunch, traditional
yucatecan food J I had longaniza, which is the Mexican version of chorizo.
After that, on the way back to Cancun, we
took the side roads instead of the highway. We had to make a caffeine stop. The
only place with coffee on the road was a hotel. While we were waiting for my
coffee to be made, we took a little stroll inside the gardens and to our
delighted surprise we found that they keep peacocks!! This was the beginning of
spring, so the males were all proud and feathers open courting the females, so
we got a little show.
It was a very nice family day trip, full
of fun and happy moments, unexpected events, laughs, heat, colors… Mexico.