I decide to check out two places - one suggested on the Thorn Tree forum, the other is a the place that Sue said she would be staying at. May as well check it out since I’m going there anyhow to meet Sue. My gut feeling though, is that it would be better to stay at a different place from where she is staying.

I first check out the Alvarez Guest House, - my sight-unseen preference. It looks nice inside - a long and narrow courtyard, with a mezzanine leading to more rooms on the second floor. Despite being on a buys street, the rooms are quiet as their windows open to the tranquil courtyard.

Having checked out my first choice in hotels (glad to find they have room, always a worry that the best places will be full), I head on over to find Sue’s hotel, the Luz en Yucatan.

This hotel is much larger and less cozy. It is more impersonal in a way, but only because it is larger. The owners are very friendly. It has a pool and a big kitchen. The rooms are large, at least the ones I saw. Nice in its way, but it doesn’t suit me.

Sue has checked in but she is not here just now. I head back to the Alvarez Guest House to check in. I am met this time by a man of very different character than the fellow who shoed me around when I was here half an hour ago.

The first thing he does is worry me: “Lets see if we have a room …”. He shows me a room that is OK, but does not appeal to me. “But don’t you have a room upstairs? I just looked at it half an hour ago!” I am starting to feel a little anxious again, the aftermath of the bank experience having not quite warn off yet.

After a bit of a pause, he determines that the room I am interested in is available. That’s a relief! Tramping around town with a backpack, looking for a place to stay, is not my idea of a good time!

The room is large - with an enormous king-sized bed and a smaller single bed. The single bed is a perfect place to spread out all the junk in my back pack. There is a somewhat old bathroom - clean enough - with a large shower.

Enrique, the owner, proudly shows me one of his antiques - a tube-powered short-wave radio. This is just one of the many antiques throughout the hotels - guest house, really. This place is far to personal to be a hotel.

Finally, after a long day with a few stressful episodes, I just want to settle in.

By now I am seriously short of cash. It is Friday at about 3:30, so I’d better get stocked up on pesos before the banks close for the weekend!

On my last trip to Mexico, I learned that exchanging traveler’s cheques is troublesome and that my credit cards and cash cards did not work in any ATM. This was in Oaxaca. What did work was to go into any bank and ask the teller for a cash advance from my credit card. I pay my credit card in advance, before leaving Canada, so that I do not have to pay interest on the cash advance. I don’t even know the PIN for my credit cards, since it was of no use on my last trip to Mexico.

I enter the first bank I see after leaving the bus station in Merida. I line up. There is a big end-of-week crowd. Finally, it is my turn. I ask the teller for a cash advance. No, she can’t do that. I am shocked! I tell her this bank is stupid. ‘Estupido’ in Spanish is a real insult, much stronger than ’stupid’ in English. I am sorry for my comment the moment it leaves my mouth. It is true, this is a stupid bank, but it is not the teller’s fault. But I am frustrated, and I can see a puff of panic on the horizon.

There are other banks. It is not yet 4:00.

Bank #2. Same thing, minus the ’stupid’ comment. And with less shock, but a bit more panic.

Bank #3. I short-circuit the long line-up for a teller, and try the information desk. No, the teller can’t provide a cash advance. Try the ATM.

It is now almost 4:00 - closing time for the banks. Panic is now at the door, with me on the other side, holding it at bay.

There is one more option left - the HSBC, which closes, as it turns out, at 7:00. Given their more customer-friendly hours, I have some hope that they can help me.

When I ask for a cash advance at this bank, the teller asks me to go to the customer service desk to see if they can help me. This does not sound good, but it is not actually a no. Stil, I am uneasy.

At the service desk, the young man has better English than any of the other banking staff I’ve talked to so far on this nail-biting exercise. This is good, as the effort to hold off the panic is rotting my already tenuous grasp of Spanish.

He explains that they don’t have the machine to process a credit card at this branch, but their other branch has one! The other branch is just around the corner.

I proceed to the other branch. After a long wait, I discover that I should take a number. On one of the desks, I find a pocket, made of paper taped to a bit of cardboard, filled with cardboard squares, each with a hand-written number on it. Not exactly professional, but full marks to the staff for initiative.

I take a number and sit down. I am not in a good mood. I take out my frustration and worry on the card, picking at one of the corners. The little card no longer has sharp corners by the time my number is called.

Finally, it is my turn. She takes my request as if it ere the most common task at the bank, something she did all day.

Soon, I am leaving the bank, with a pocket full of Pesos.

I’m not one to promote brands, but when it comes to banking in Mexico, HSBC is the only way to go!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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).

And yet, from such simple equipment, such a variety of hammocks! The colours vary tremendously, and so do the weave patterns. The simple weaves are almost like a fishing net, the more complicated ones give the effect of a two-layered weave.

The selling price corresponds to the amount of work and materials that go into the hammock.  For example, a single hammock might sell for 250 – 300 pesos, a double for 400 – 450 pesos, and a king for 800 – 900 pesos.  (For a rough US dollar conversion, divide by 10).

Look at the machine, it is an ancient treadle-operated Singer, with the foot (which clamps and moves the cloth) removed. The machine is old, but the wooden frame in which it is set looks new – I wonder how many wooden frames one of these antiques goes through in its exceptionally long working life?

You might thing it is easier to embroider by machine then by hand. From what I see here, I tend to disagree – it looks like it is much faster but also requires much more skill.

She moves the cloth around in all directions, very quickly and accurately. She follows a basic outline, penciled onto the cloth, and a much more intricate pattern in her head. The needle shoots up and down at a furious rate.

In some places, she moves the cloth round and round the needle. The tread builds up on top of itself, providing a bas-relief effect, and leaving a big hole at the center.

Closer inspection confirms my theory – she´s previously made small holes in the cloth, mere nicks, which allow the cloth to pull away from the center of the embroidered pattern around it.

So much activity going on under her control, yet her face is serene.