Colour supplement

I had a nice relaxing day today and took in a few museums and sights in Campeche. Here, in no particular order, are some photographs.

This little statue (which dates from, I think, the fifth century BC) speaks volumes about the pride of the Mayan rulers. The head is only the size of a gobstopper, but the detail is incredible.
I think I´ve mentioned before that the Mayans practised skull binding to make sure their children grew up with lovely pointy heads. Here are a few examples of the craft. I still can´t help but regret the passing of this tradition. After all, in the kingdom of the pointy-skulled, the round-headed man is king, or something like that.
I wouldn´t mess with this fella. Most of their depictions of poeple are very formulaic and cartoon-like (the creator of the Simpsons based his style on Meso-American art - the yellow colour is taken directly from their paintings) but sometimes they can be incredibly naturalistic, as below.
Why has every culture in the world arrived at exactly the same depiction of dragons? (it ain´t a crocodile, they did them quite accurately)
This is a cast of the tomb of Pacal, a Mayan king of Palenque. It´s still there, but currently closed to visitors due to unseasonal flooding (I´m told), so I was lucky to see its replica here in Campeche. This is the image that excites the God-was-an-extraterrestrial theorists; they say it clearly shows a man operating a spaceship. That theory was blown out of the water when they deciphered the heiroglyphs that surrround the image. But you can still see their point. This is a brilliant fat bloke. The way he´s grabbing his gut makes me think that the ancient Mayans did have a sense of humour after all.
This is the roof of Fuerte de San Miguel, an old Spanish fort designed to ward off pirates and now home to el Museo de la Cultura Maya - a small-time sort of place, but home to some of the fantastic artifacts above.
This bloke seems to embody all that´s great about English comedy - he´s got Kenneth Williams´sneer and Old Man Steptoe´s leer, all at the same time.
A former church in the town (Ex Temple de San José) is hosting a temporary display of jade funereal masks. In Spanish a mask is called a máscara - bit of etymology for you there (have I got that right, or am I accidently talking about the study of insects rather than words?) .
Finally, I had to take these pictures. This poor fisherman was obviously lacking female company, so he christened his boat ´Solo Para Mujeres´- ´Only For Women´. And there it is; all lonely and blue floating in an empty ocean. The next fisherman was perhaps more forthright.

Calakmul

"So, it is agreed," a heavy hand landed on my shoulder. "We hire a car, you drive. Tomorrow is my birthday, I will be 72, this will be my last chance to see Calakmul, I think."

How could I refuse? I had met Ole (pronounced Oola) while chatting to his much younger compatriot at the hostel. He farms a few acres near Oslo "for a hobby, for fun" during the summer and in the winter, with his generous state pension strapped to his belt, his back and every limb, he travels the world seeking adventure.

He´s supernaturally full of vim and energy, despite constantly smoking full-strength filterless cigarettes. He also has a pipe loaded with rich, dark tobacco tucked into his sock for emergencies, and never ventures forth without one-litre water bottles full of pre-mixed rum and coke in his bag.

And so it was that I found myself behind the wheel of a small automobile with Ole and Geir (who isn´t overly concerned about the world´s oil supply, just a remarkable mine of facts on almost every subject) setting out on a five-hour drive deep into the jungle.

Calakmul was only discovered in 1931 but archaeologists have since determined that it was the most powerful city in ´The Kingdom of the Serpent´s Head´ (a vast area that stretched well into present-day Guatemala) from about 250BC to 700AD. The 6,500 buildings so far discovered are hidden away in the heart of a vast nature reserve, ensuring that despite the size and magnificence of the site, very few visitors ever reach it.

The journey seemed never-ending. As well as the huge distance, there was also the issue of the vicious speed bumps that the Mexican authorities have installed in every town, village and hamlet. Even isolated cattle sheds had rumble strips in front of them.

One thing that enlivened the journey was guessing the names of approaching towns. After (in translation) Hope, Conception, Struggle, Liberty and Constitution, what else could be next than Social Justice? (Like all the others it was a scruffy little place with a hundred houses, a basketball court and a bandstand.)

Eventually we arrived at the turn-off to the ruins, and paid our toll for the road through the nature reserve. The cost seemed a little steep, until we realised that we faced a further two hours winding along a deserted road overhung by jungle canopy.

The length of the journey was fitting for the site, because approaching it through the jungle paths as the only visitors made it feel as though we were the original discoverers. All that was missing to complete the illusion was a train of bandy-legged Mayans struggling under the weight of brass and mahogony scientific instruments or a pink-faced vicar with a butterfly net.

The buildings and the jungle have merged together over the years. Trees burst through the upper levels of the pyramids and monkeys clamber where kings once sat in state. More than anywhere else the site has yielded information about these great and awful rulers due to the inscribed obelisks lined up in front of every building. Since the Mayan script was deciphered in the 1980s researchers have learned that these record the births, deaths and marriages of the proud aristocracy; like 20-ton editions of Hello! magazine, but without the TV listings.

There were also small things of interest, in particular the ants that scurried over every surface. Ole came out with an interesting fact; he said that if you added up the combined weight of any type of creature, ants were the heaviest. "More so than the whales, oh yes, of every kind and size, in all the seas of the world." All around the site were lines of soldier ants moving in close formation on their mysterious migrations. Sentries spaced at regular intervals on either side of the column seemed to be keeping the troops in order, while investigating and attacking interlopers. I saw a bee stray into their path and it was soon brought down by the sentries and then covered in a swarming mass of the common soldiery. There were also ants the size of wasps that strutted like bulldogs in packs of about a dozen roughing up any smaller creatures that got in their way. I tried photographing them, but they were half way up my leg before I´d got them focused.

All too soon night began to fall and it was time to leave. Right on cue the howler monkeys started to declare their ownership of the city, their echoing cries amplified by the buildings all around the tree-filled central plaza. I´d always imagined that howler monkeys howled, for some reason, but the noises these things made came straight from the ninth circle of hell; deep growling roars that would win an Oscar for any horror film sound engineer diabolically clever enough to recreate them. I don´t mind admitting that they filled me with the eebie-geebies and hastened my departure.

After the epic return journey (which put me in mind of a Viking saga with my two Nordic passengers navigating by the moon and stars) we were treated to dinner by Ole, who insisted on paying because it was his birthday. I had Chicken Mole, which is a breast and leg cooked in a chilli and chocolate sauce. I was filled with trepidation when I ordered it, but the combination of flavours really does work in a quite unexpected way.

Despite being knackered after yesterday´s ten hour drive I was awake horribly early this morning, and I blame God. If the bells of St Clement´s really do say "oranges and lemons" then the bells of Campeche´s Catedral de la Conceptión Immaculada say "come on, come, you lazy toad, it´s six o´clock, you´ll rot in that bed, in five minutes I´m coming in to take away your duvet."

By the way, I was wrong about the pork-based tribute to the Virgin Mary. Apparently the celebrations I´ve seen here are paid for the local council and happen every single weekend from September until May. It´s incredible how the Mexicans manage to do this without bossy stewards, police back-up units, St John´s Ambulance crews or health and safety inspectors. At home it takes a committee six months to organise a jumble sale.

The Monkey

No, not the world-famous cider house, but the hostel that´s given me my first taste of ´backpacker culture´. It´s in a fantastic position overlooking the square and the building is a lovely old colonial place with big shuttered windows and high ceilings. (not the above picture)

The elegance of the place, however, is slightly marred by the messages from ´travellers´that have been scrawled all over the walls with marker pens. Gems include "when people much beer drink, I me sick" and "all I say at this moment are that feelings my so complicated because I not that I do want be". Between such unique profundities are dozens of "live for the moment, man" and "carpe diem" type messages, childish self-portraits and expressions of love for the proprietors.

The other guests include a Norwegian full of Scandinavian gloom about the world´s oil supply running out, a filthy dreadlocked American couple who do nothing all day but eat bananas, a group of three German blokes wearing matching brown shirts (old habits die hard) and a Chinese American who speaks without using consonants.

It´s quite disconcerting. For example, when he tries to say "today I visited the park" it comes out as "oo-ay hai i-hi-hih huh hargh." When I ask him to repeat himself he assumes that, being a foreigner from somewhere called Britain, I must be struggling with the English language, so he shouts it very slowly and ends up sounding like an approaching ambulance.

I think the fiesta that has been going on in the square below since I arrived is Día de los Immaculada Concepción, which the rest of the Catholic world, I´m told, celebrates on December 8. Mobile food stalls shaped like galleons, castles and churches circle the perimeter selling plates of local delicacies (mainly grey stuff wrapped in leaves) and cakes with neon icing. Last night there was music throughout the evening, but tonight, if I´ve got this right, the highlight will be a special dance with a severed pig´s head decorated with offerings of ribbons, flowers, bread, fags and booze. It seems an odd way to venerate a Jewish virgin, but there you go.

I had a good walk around the town today. The picturesque historic area is the part of the city that used to be ringed by a hexagonal wall, built to foil the pirates who menaced the city for 200 years. Parts of the wall remain, but most of it now is covered by the inner ringroad. Outside this area the city seems to be a playground for nutty architects, who have built flying saucer-shaped buildings, gleaming white pyramids and Swiss-style chalets. It´s quite surreal, and a huge contrast to the Old Town, but not unpleasant.

Wassail photos

I´m escaping from the midday sun at the moment, so I thought this would be as good a time as any to put some Wassailing pictures up on here. I can´t claim credit for these, most of them were taken by Emily.

Some random photos

I don´t know in what order this will appear when the blog is published, so bear with me if the captions are confused. The first (I think) is the great pyramid at Cobá. Then there are some Japs in Hats at Chichen Itza.
These are Mayan hawkers at Chichen Itza. It´s so easy to recognise their faces from the statues and carvings, they have such a distinct look. Next is the store house at the Hacienda, that sent my tour guide into fits of righteous indignation about his bank.

Then there is the grand owner´s home. It´s now a museum. Finally my friends, the leafcutters. You can see in the second picture how one of the ants got stuck, so a third (who seemed to be acting as some sort of foreman) rushed up to help him.

Campeche

I´m writing this in the quite spectacularly picturesque coastal city of Campeche (pictured), 150 miles south of Merida, which I finally managed to leave this morning after a recuperative day and early night yesterday.

Campeche was granted world heritage status by the United Nations a few years ago, and when the cash starts to kick in, to tidy up the frayed edges, I could imagine this being one of the loveliest spots on the planet. I´m writing this at a very nice and very cheap hostel (with free internet) called the Monkey. The view from the window is the first photo above, looking out over the town square. At the moment there´s some sort of fiesta going on down there, so I have music wafting in through the open window as I type.

Before coming here I´d been tempted to say that Merida was the most romantic town I´d ever visited. Horse-drawn carriages festooned with flowers clop along the cobbled streets and shaded parks on every other corner come complete with troubadors.

But this place is really special, without being twee.

When I first arrived I walked into a bar, purely because it had those swinging half doors you always see on cowboy films and I couldn´t resist bursting through them. It was a real spit´n´sawdust place, but there was a bloke with a guitar slung up to his chin singing the most wonderful ballads, while having his shoes cleaned by a bootblack. I took up one of the tall, thin stalls at the bar and ordered a beer. Quite soon the other customers wanted to know where I was from. As there was a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce on the counter it was easy to explain. My associations with ´La Salsa Inglesi´earned me two bottles of beer. It´s not often that an Englishman gets rewarded for his nation´s contribution to world cuisine.

I´m now trying to work out where to go next. I really like Mexico, but it´s expensive and I´m feeling money slip through my fingers at an alarming rate. So do I go to San Christobel de las Casas (where Mayans continue their ancient ways in their cool mountain villages) before going to Palenque (apparently the greatest of the Mexican Mayan cities) or do I go straight to Palenque and then take the river boat through the jungle into Guatemala? Or should I jump on a plane at Merida airport for about 200 quid and go and have a look at Cuba? I´d love to visit the place, but apparently it´s also quite expensive. Or should I hang the expense for a while and have a look at some of the rest of Mexico?

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Arty party

I had intended to head off to Campeche today, but I was in no fit state to do anything this morning.

Last night the hotel (pictured) was heaving with the glitterati of Merida who had come to the launch party of an art exhibition. Hearing that the event included free wine, I disguised myself as an arty type. First I de-creased my tweed jacket by hanging it in my tiny bathroom with a hot shower running. It worked a treat, but being wool it smelt like wet dog for a while. I´d just got my laundry done, so with a clean white shirt and sandals (with red socks to hide any blood from my blisters) I was ready to go undercover. All I was lacking was a beret.

The art was rubbish; the sort of stuff you can see hanging on the walls of any school. It was mainly photographs of things like twigs or roadsigns blown up onto canvas and tinted in unusual colours. The names, so far as I could translate them, were along the lines of "The end of Innocence" (a traffic cone) or "Pedro Saw His Shadow" (a crisp packet stuck to a dog turd). I´m sure you know the sort of thing.

But I wasn´t there for the art, so I stuck close to the buffet table that was heaving with wine. I think the hotel staff knew exactly what I was up to, and they obviously approved because my glass was enthusiastically refilled throughout the evening.

Something I found odd about the guests was the lack of Mayan faces. Those present were obviously your yoghurt-eating, organic fairtrade fibre-wearing types who probably write letters to left-wing newspapers about the plight of indigenous people. But their concern for the natives doesn´t seem to extend to inviting them to parties. The only Mayans there were about half a dozen astonishingly attractive girls who looked like the Disney version of Pocahontas.

The event was presided over by a coven of about ten women ´of a certain age´, with that constantly surprised look that comes of having too many facelifts. They sat in the centre of the throng smoking slimline cigarettes and allowing people to kiss the air near their faces.

The owner of the gallery, Manola Rivera (apparently a very famous artists in these parts), is a rum old cove. He´s one of those enormously fat blokes who manages to be dainty despite his bulk. His massive body tapers down to tiny feet and when he walks it´s as though he only needs to tickle the ground with his toes to float along like the Goodyear Blimp. He also has the biggest double chin I have ever seen and a mouth the size and shape of a letterbox. I can´t look at him without thinking of the wide-mouthed frog story (oooh, yooo don´t see many of thoose around, dooo yooo?).

At the start of the evening I had been the first person to sign the visitors´ book at the gallery entrance. In the comment section I wrote "It was brown, so I assumed it was coffee," in keeping with the surrealist nature of the event. Later in the evening I noticed that all the other guests (those who wrote in English at least) had followed my lead. Comments included "It was dark, but I liked it" and "I couldn´t see the bottom, but I enjoyed the reflection". I guess they assumed the owner had written the first entry so, toadyingly, had followed suit.

After finishing the last of the wine I tottered off into town in search of further amusement. I have a vague memory of being in a nightclub with a roadwork theme; all the staff were dressed in flourescent jackets with orange hard hats. I found myself with a group of Americans having tequilla poured down my throat by a Mayan bloke who bore an uncanny resemblance to Bob the Builder.

Earlier I´d spent much of the day walking round exploring the town. I´d had to go barefoot because of my blisters, but that led to some good fortune. As I was walking down the Paseo de Montejo (an elegant boulevard modelled on the Champs Elysees) I noticed a glimmer of gold in the gutter. Picking it up I found it was a plastic packet containing a tiny golden statue of a saint and two silver medallions. It´s not of any value, just moulded plastic I think, but still a nice souvenir. I was later told that the statue is St Martin, and looking closely at the medallions they are, strangely, stamped on both sides with our queen´s head (the version before last on coins, the one when you still got a tantalising glimpse of the royal bosom).

Another thing I noticed due to my barefooted state was that many of the cobble bricks in the street are stamped with European makers´marks. I´ve since found out that all the street surfaces here were imported from Britain and France, which sounds extravagant but made sense at the time because they were used as ballast on trans-Atlantic liners.

A further random observation is that when Mayan people sit down on buses or on comfortable chairs one hand automatically flies up above their head to grasp at thin air. This puzzled me until I recalled my own experience with a hammock - it´s a natural reaction to brace your head when you get into one. Perhaps this Mayan test will come in useful, like when the old lady rumbled that Huckleberry Finn dressed as girl by watching how he caught a piece of lead on his lap (he closed his knees to grasp it, rather than opening them to catch it in the material of his dress).

A final note is that the streets are incredibly clean here, and in all of Mexico so far. Even though there aren´t many bins people simply don´t drop litter. It makes me feel quite ashamed to recall the chip wrappers and kebab trays that blight the streets at home.

Tulum pictures

Right, here are some pictures from Tulum, in no particular order. The first is a general shot of the ruins of the ancient city. The next I couldn´t resist; why do they always wash up on beaches? I have never been to the seaside without seeing a macabre dismembered doll.


The next is the ruins as seen from the beach, which is just behind and below the first picture. (Hand on heart, I already had the shot lined up when that girl appeared and struck a pose in the foreground.) The next is me in the hammock. This was the only occasion I fell out. I had the camera on self timer - the picture captures the split-second of equilibrium before I toppled out the other side.


Below is my cabin. The first was taken just before the storm came in. You can see how black the sky is. The second is in more clement weather. Mine was number nine.

Finally, I couldn´t resist getting a shot of these birds on the seashore.

Uxmal

After my attempts at putting pictures up on here, I had to go for a beer to restore my inner equilibrium and sense of well-being. I hate computers and they hate me. "Uploading" photos is also extremely slow and tedious, so I´m not sure how often I´ll do it. It´s probably just me being incredibly inept. Anyway, basta ya, enough of that.

I´ve been on a tour of a few more Mayan cities today, Uxmal in particular, which I think is the best yet. It´s one of the oldest-founded sites I´ve been to so far, dating from what they call the Classical Mayan period, and didn´t seem to have the same aura of sacrifice and death that I detected at Chichen Itza, which was founded much later.

Nobody knows why, but as time went on the Meso-American civilisations did get more blood-thirsty, culminating in the Aztecs who, seemingly, conquered their vast empire more-or-less as a by-product of their search for fresh supplies of victims.

I was picked up early from the hotel by a minibus driver who took some persuading that although my name wasn´t "Julia" I was still down for the tour. Also in the group were two elderly Australian ladies, a couple from Holland, some Spanish honeymooners and an ancient pair of Americans, with matching humps and hats.

As soon as they got on the bus they started whispering to each other, in the way that deaf people do, very loudly. "This is the pits!" says he, a glint of steel in his watery eyes. "We paid for a private tour, didn´t we?"

"Yes we did," said the wife. "I don´t wanna go round with THESE people. Do something. I wanna private tour."

Hearing them quite clearly, and having good English, the driver left them outside the tour office, which was shut and down an alleyway on the wrong side of town. I never saw them again that day, so who knows what happened to them.

On the way to the ruins we took a shortcut through a cemetery, which was strangely like a miniature version of the town, a vast grid of brightly-painted tombs and vaults covered in gaudy inscriptions. I noticed one family busily cleaning up their ancestral plot oblivious to a stray dog drinking out of their flower holder.

We also had a brief stop at a 17th Century hacienda, which was a hugely wealthy farm that employed hundreds of peasants. The owner´s house was an enormous neo-classical palace in the French style, and even the grain stores had baroque flourishes and statues on the roof. The guide pointed out a very plain building in the corner. "The workers were paid in company credits. They went there, to the store, to exchange for beans, or rice, or clothes, you know, whatever they need. But they always needed more and had to take loan. So when they were paid they never had enough to pay back and buy their beans or rice. Like with the banks and their bloody credit cards, the bastards." He said it as though he was hoping a new Pancho Villa of the computer age would rise up and give his bank manager a good kicking.

Uxmal supported an estimated population of some 25,000 and was at its peak between 750-1000AD, while we were stumbling about in the Dark Ages looking for the light. Because it´s in a very arid area and there are none of the natural wells called cenotes which abound on the peninsular, the rain god Chac-Mool was very important. His monstrous face with his long curved nose (like Gonzo from the Muppets) was everywhere.

It reminded me that on some Pacific islands our Queen is considered a bringer of rain, which seems a fair deal for the natives. All they need to give her is a shrimp cocktail and a gin and tonic, Chac-Mool demanded human hearts.

As I said, Uxmal was perhaps my favourite site so far. One building, the so-called Magician´s House, was particularly impressive. When you stand in front of it and clap your hands the returning echo sounds like a startled chicken. God knows how it works, but it´s a remarkably odd phenomenon.

The second site, Kabah, is thought to have been a garrison town linked to Uxmal. Ít was quite small and there wasn´t much to see, but the setting was lovely. Like many of the ancient cities it was abandoned for reasons that nobody fully understands. The best answer is that the Mayans themselves predicted their own destruction quite specifically, so perhaps when the dreaded day came they just gave up and wandered off.

This may be a good time to note that the Mayans had, and still have, a date for all of our doom - December 23, 2012. According to their predictive calendar (which, let´s not forget, foretold the arrival of Cortes and the Conquistadors to the very day) this is when the Earth, which was born on August 13, 3114BC, will come to an abrupt end. According to their horrendously complicated calendar that fateful day will be 13 Cycles, 0 Katuns, 0 Tuns, 0 Uinals and 0 Kins since the beginning of time - at least in this cycle, apparently there´s been many Earths before (all of which have been balanced on the back of a giant reptile floating on a pond). It´s interesting how the number 13 always crops up, wherever you are in the world. The Mayans also believed there were 13 levels of heaven (but only nine of hell, so that can´t be bad).

I hope nobody gets too worried about their impending doom - just think of the money you´ll save on Christmas presents.

Chitchen Itza pictures

Here´s some pictures from Chichen Itza. I´m afraid I´ve totally run out of patience now. I hate computers, hate them, hate them, hate them.