Ek - Balam: family adventure

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.