After three days at Eco Genesis, it is time to move on. I’ve relaxed and unwound, I’ve done everything I want to do here and more, and Sue must have long since arrived in Merida. I don’t want to leave, but I am ready to go. Perfect! Nothing worse than traveler’s Complacency!

The local taxi stand consists of a single taxi, and the driveway of the taxi owner’s house. Just as I leave the guest house, the taxi drives by. I don’t know where he is going, but he is more than happy to throw his plans out the window and take a paying customer to Valladolid. At the bus station, I have enough Spanish to understand that the next bus to leave is slow, and that the bus that leaves later will arrive in Merida earlier.

I have just enough time for lunch, an even bigger advantage to the later bus. Asking around, I find that the best food options are a taxi-rid away at the town center. but I don’t have time that. I am baffled by the lack of restaurants or food near the bus station. If I were somewhere like Thailand, there would be food stalls in the bus station, next to the bus station, and all the way from the bus station to the town center. Once again, I question how seriously Mexicans take their food. I must be missing something here, don’t all cultures take their food seriously? I can’t imagine any other way!

After about ten minutes of wandering around, I find a place with so-so food, but it does do the job of filling my stomach in the time available.

It is an efficient bus ride from Valladolid to Merida along an excellent highway. Once we reach Merida, our progress is slowed considerably. From this direction, Merida has no main road into the center of town. Instead there is a lattice of narrow streets, with many speed bumps. Some streets have few if any stop signs, and savvy drivers know to stay on these streets, and the others have stop signs at each and every intersection. There is a moderate amount of traffic that moves slowly but steadily towards the center of the city.

I steel myself for the bus station. A very prominent warning in the Lonely Planet guide book warns to watch out for pick pockets ‘at the bus station, or in any crowd‘. When I arrive, there is no crowd, no feeling of skulking criminals with evil intent. I sometimes think that Paranoid Planet might be a better name for that particular guide book publisher.

Merida is an easy-going city. The crowded part is crowded only because it is buys and the streets are narrow. After relaxing at Ek’ Balam, it is nice to have a change of pace!

Do we really need traveler’s cheques these days, now that we have credit cards, and there are ATMs on every corner? I figure the more methods for obtaining local currency, the better, so I have a few traveler’s cheques with me. Not many, but a few. In US dollars.

Last year in Mexico, I discovered that the money changers in Oaxaca would not accept traveler’s cheques in Canadian dollars! This is strange, they will accept cash in Canadian dollars, and Mexico is supposed to be in the same tracking block as Canada and the US. Try telling the money changers that, they are not interested.

I am very glad I have traveler’s cheques on hand. I am embarrassed to find I have insufficient cash to pay my hotel bill in Ek Balam. There is no bank in this tiny village. It would surprise me if any of the residents even had a bank account. The remedy to this situation is appealing: a 150 peso taxi trip to Valladolid, and probably about two hours of my time.

Luckily, Lee accepts my traveler’s cheque, although this comes at some cost and hassle to her. I pay her for her costs.

Traveler’s cheques still have their place in the traveler’s financial tool-kit!

Long after the twin hurricanes of two years ago, damage is still evident around the Yucatan Peninsula. Possibly the worst damage is entirely hidden to the untrained eye.

In many villages, I have seen empty empty homes, the walls intact, the roof long gone. Perhaps the catastrophic loss of the roof was the last straw for some families, already on the economic brink of disaster.

Last straw? More like a whole load of hay. Who knows where these families are now? No doubt these reminders of past calamities will eventually be transformed back into inhabited and happy homes. Let’s hope sooner rather than later.

Less obvious damage is in pane sight, right where you can’t see it.

In the aftermath of the twin hurricanes, the government took action to help the people. But which people where they helping? The storms wiped out the villager’s crops – the first storm wiped out the more mature plants, the second finished off the survivors. Rather than providing badly needed food, the government solved a problem the villagers could have fixed themselves.

Consider the traditional Mayan house. The walls are built of sticks – available from the local jungle at very competitive prices. This type of wall provides the sort of ventilation required for such a hot and humid climate. If less ventilation or more privacy is desired, a mixture of mud and palm fiber is applied to the walls.

The roof is thatched with locally-available palm fronds, also at a price the villagers can afford. I doubt a single peso is required to build such a house.

The government probably did more to help the construction industry than the villagers. Building materials – cement and cinder blocks – were supplied, along with the labor. The block houses were built the way the contractors wanted to build them, no local input allowed.

Lee tells me that the excessive heat and humidity in these cinder-block houses causes disease. During the hot season, they are like ovens.

So what do the inhabitants think about their new abodes? Lee says they consider this a step up. This is the way city people live. Take a closer look at the side of the block house (in the photo above). Yes, that is graffiti; apparently the owners of this house decorated it the way they think city houses are decorated! Notice also the traditional house behind the new block house. Perhaps they still see the benefits of the old style house after all.

I think the custodians of the guest house want to get rid of me. Not permanently, just for an hour or two.

Lee, the owner, has left her guest house in the capable hands of an Australian couple. Just to make sure that everything runs smoothly, Lee closes the guest house to new guests. I am the only guests. If I am out the way for a while, they can get some serious rest and relaxation, to put it euphemistically.

William suggests I take a bike for a spin to a nearby cenote. I love cycling, so I am all for it. It is a beautiful ride along a deserted country road, then a dirt track.

What is a cenote you ask? Let’s start with a pronunciation lesson: Ceh-no-teh. You could call it a sinkhole, but it is really a water-filled cave, although the top may be completely open, or partially covered. This one is huge – maybe 150m across, nearly perfectly round, and its a shear drop to the water all the way around the perimeter. Falling in would not be great, but you could probably climb up one of the many roots which quench the thirsty trees far above. Some roots dangle, others are almost one with the rock.

Never the less, I have I’m not sure that this cenote is exactly benign. The somewhat sinister green growth on top of the water’s surface does not inspire confidence. Even more ominous are the three crosses which I have found at various intervals around the cenote. Who knows, there may be more.

Back at the guest house, I find a disappointed couple who were hoping to stay the night. Mean while, the couple taking care of the place are nowhere to be seen. They are pretty scare the following morning too.

I’m at the pinnacle of the pyramid at Ek Balam, 30m above ground level. Access is via a very steep flight of steps. I’d hate to fall down, this would probably be lethal. It may in fact be the reason the steps are so steep, I seem to remember reading that the blood-thirsty old priests used to kick people down the stairs as a sacrifice – true or not I don’t know.

For some reason, people who habitually take the elevator from the first floor to the second, feel the need to climb to the top of this pyramid. As I was coming up, an old gentleman was hobbling down, clearly in agony. “I don’t even climb the stairs at home” he says to his wife, “I’m never doing this again”. I hope he enjoyed the view from up here, it certainly is spectacular.

I am surrounded by jungle as far as I can see in every direction. The occasional man-made structure pokes out here and there – the village of Ek Balam for one, just 800m distant. It is jungle though, that dominates the mid- and far-distance.

The sun has come out and it is humid. Sweat is dripping everywhere, my eyes are stinging with it. The light breeze I’m catching up here makes it bearable.

Just below me is the rest of the restored site. To my right, a mound still overgrown with trees – I suppose it will be excavated and restored at some time. Despite the height of my vantage point, the rest of the structures look massive because the are.

A small group of tourists have rippled the waters of my peace, but just for a few moments. They snap a few photos, shoot some video of the remarkably stationary stone structures, then leave. I am left to contemplate a couple of large black butterflies flapping about the canopy of a small tree growing out the side of the pyramid.

The only sounds I hear are a couple of flies, many birds (both near and far), and occasionally some insects (other than flies).