Mexico 1980
MEXICO TRIP, December 9, 1980 - January 8, 1981
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1980. Bill calls at 11, shows up at midnight, gives me a surprise $150 cash for the stay, and has given me time to think of HEAVY socks and LEAVE binox case as last switch---and I don't need shoe horn. Tell him everything and downstairs to sleeping Dennis at 12:40. HE sympathizes with ME for having to put up with Bill, but then HE has to put up with ME! Alarm is set at 6:30, I sleep fitfully, but not as much TENSION as LAST night, and alarm clicks and he puts it off and I wonder what to do between 6:30 and 7, and watch says 6:55! Dennis says, "It's been ringing late recently." Dress and wish each other good vacations and it's chilly but not COLD to walk to A stop, get Lefferts to Jay and next train in is a CC at 7:20, getting me to Broad Channel, or whatever the stop is, at 8; pay $1.20 for bus ticket and find Aeromexico is STOP 6 in AREA 2---confusing. Via other terminals and check in at 8:20, getting far rear right window, plane almost full, and variety of tourists and Chinese board at 8:40 and I write this in seat at 9:01 as we seem to just SIT here. Off at 9:20 and tasty breakfast at 9:40; cloudy outside till 11:30 when I can see pieces of ground and they pass out bottled Margueritas. 11:50, halfway there, we're over the GULF already! 11:55, no, but enormous Mississippi DELTA? Flat, laked, canaled, VERY watery. 12:05 over Gulf. Lots of "stuff" in Gulf: drilling towers, static platforms, working ships, patterns of clouds and sandbars. THICK clouds and back to bumpy flight at 1:20---edge of Mexico? Seem to start DOWN at 1:30, but it's only 200 miles from COAST to MC. I REALLY debate canceling Acapulco and spending time in BELIZE; also fantasize about falling out of plane and landing (after five minutes) in water or in jungle and LIVING thanks to Russell and Shelah. At 12:35 (Mexico time) captain announced landing in 20 minutes, temperature 59 F. INCREDIBLE HUGE SMOGGY city as we turn and twist and bump over HUGE slums, ENORMOUS roadways and circles and squares. IMPRESSIVE buildings and sports complexes and HUGE dome surrounded by tents. One village before MC nestled in old pyramid OBVIOUSLY. Mexico City (MC) HUGE place---land at 1 pm. Buy $50 worth of pesos at Internacional, at airport, get 1,146.5 (22.93 pesos/dollar). Check in 1:30 that I don't have to be at counter 25 till 4. Search for cabs to Zoologica: 300, 200, 150, finally 130, which Information told me. Road BLOCKED, around and around. Arrive 2:15, see monkeys, birds, seals, elephants, buffalo, rhinos, giraffes, antelopes, coatis, lions, tigers, bears, ETC. Out to see bus: Puerto Aereo. I shout "Aeropuerto?" and he says "Yes." TWO pesos: 8.8. Gets crowded. I ride round and round, get off at the last stop---nowhere NEAR (see map for Estacion Aeropuerta). Walk across bridge, along road, along construction, and get to front at LAST at 4:10, exhausted from heat, dust, and altitude. On line and write this to 4:20. ADVENTURES! Sit in lounge 1E at 4:55, knowing THIS is not the MC Pope saw. I'm getting a blister in the middle of my right foot, my face is slick and GRITTY, but the wait told me that Gray Line has NICE tours to see EVERYTHING in 4 days, at only about $20 apiece, hardly the cost of a TAXI. Huge city, but on bus I was riding through the outskirts of QUEENS as it looked. Everyone hops on line as boarding is called at 4:40, thankfully not NEAR getting dark yet. I CHOSE 19A, LAST, but it WASN'T---last 6 rows empty. At 5:10 we move out and 5A is empty and he (steward) lets me TAKE it. VERY hazy below, and finally clouds close in. We have 3/4 3-deck sandwiches and fruit and sweet, that I eat, and spectacular sunset that I'm too blasé to move to a back right window to see if a picture fits. Night into Villahermosa is FIERY best, wells by DOZENS flaming off in their pools of water. Land at 6:10 in darkness and take minibus to Zocalo after clerk says NO reconfirmation necessary since 12/1. Oh? "If you WANT to, you can call this number." Oh? Ride to busy, bright center of town for 66 pesos and walk up and down crowded TACKY streets, past Olmeca that looks expensive, around and around, tireder and tireder, and come on "Tourist Information" and he directs me to cheap hotels but they're FULL. Back to Olmeca, resigned to 439 single, and CLERK says full and OWNER says OK. Pay 489 in all and up to windblown room to take NEEDED shower and change into BOOTS to ease blister. Walk malls, then to Tourism to find it's around corner and upstairs, and Estrella tells me ALL. Walk to Circuito #1 and taxi pulls up and takes everyone where they want to go, me to ADO for $20. Line, info, buy RESERVED seat for 50P, out to watch rattle-carver, fascinating with foot guiding knife, buy bottles of soda and wait long time for 30P taxi to Malecon and Los Faroles for GOOD Lengua ala Mexicana (Mexican tongue!) and potty Superior and bitter canned Tres Exquis beer for 109P, and back to hotel to say I'm STAYING two more days and get up at 10:30 to put my stuff away and get to bed at 11, tired but happy Villahermosa's working out!
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10. Wake at 5:30, again at 6:30, and out at 7 after cabs. Cafe waiter said "Blah blah blah blah" and I stare until woman says, more simply "Mas tarde." Guy smiles and thanks her for simplicity. I go to "Restaurant Casino" for tea "Manzanilla" and omelet of cheese for 40P. Good. Out at 7:30 and decide to WALK to ADO, and it's short. Bus 112, next to CUTE kid reading comic books and "Super Raton" and he only offers me the soap opera one. Swampy lands with LOVELY herons and geese, then flat farming lands and LOTS of military traffic and encampments. Stop in Palenque town and that's IT at 10. "To corner and two blocks" for Ruinas. I start, stand staring when nothing seems to be there, and a Ruinas bus pulls up, lots of French and German tourists around. Try bank for change: "No rata." Get good cold Fanta and board bus for 5P. Bumpy ride out, up hill, past Mayabell camping, and to LOVELY green ruins. Buy guide, in to climb Inscriptions, down tomb, hot and humid picture taking, side entrance NOT a savings of muscle. Around back of the other three, forest dripping, down to isolated Lions temple, to pair talking, cross stream and there's "lost" temples in GRAND sight. To all three, then up TERRIBLE hill, prickly palm, slides, rocks under roots, and NO view down and VERY tired and hot and sweaty at 1:45. Around top for a bit of "thereness" and down quickly, chatting with French. Down to Palace, up and around, into and out of halls and courts, very picturesque, and down to rather tatty museum, but for MAP that's ACCURATE of the area, not like "imaginary" of booklet, and some nice jewelry and jade and statuettes and heads, but not much else. Rains prevent me going down to river. Wander back climbing all north group, looking down impenetrable back forest where one COULD spend a day searching old ruins, but not for me. One day HURRIED but enough. Up Count's temple, looking down at shape of ball court, and out AS rainbow forms over place and I snap pictures, VERY glad for chance, and out at 4:15 to expect to have to kill time and bus drives RIGHT in! Is the 4:15 bus I just catch the 4:30? Great: sticky TREE shows me the WAY; RAIN gives RAINBOW! ON bus, extraordinarily handsome Maya teenager with real CHINESE eyes and mouth and MAYA nose and quite HAIRLESS on bare arms and chin, but HAIRY SHINS! INCREDIBLE first two days: (1) fly, MC zoo, Villahermosa flight, hotel search, Olmeca, shower, dinner, buy ticket in ADO tourist office for ALL and TIRED to bed. (2) Breakfast in street, bus to Palenque, search for change and Ruinas bus, GRAND Palenque, seeing EVERYTHING for out-of-the-way places, rainbow, two Fantas to repletion, and bus back to Villahermosa. (12/11: $100 for 22.915). Out at 4:30, one Fanta in lower town, one in upper waiting for bus, smiling at guy playing with his kid. On bus next to Japanese, dark quickly, tired, doze, fingernail-sliver moon doubles in my tired eyes into eyes of meditating BUDDHA! Around to SEE those eyes in museum next DAY. In at 7, walk difficult way to hotel past Christmas lights, TV, elaborate Bethlehem scenes, screaming kids, wet sidewalks broken, lots and lots of plastic ticky-tack, and past good looking restaurant to hotel, tourist guy saying NO bank. Olmeca tells me I checked out! Up to room, down to get bathroom stuff, up to find NO cold water, shower uncomfortably and down to Azulejo Restaurant for awful bistek for 90P and bitter chocolate con leche for 20 and two Bohemias, nice and cold, for 22P each for enough money for the $10 I cashed for 210 in the hotel. Stare at RITUALS: businessman shaking hands and smoking cigarettes and waving at passersby and talking importantly away from their wives. Couples acting like couples: holding, necking, mooning, talking. Boys cruising and girls parading; families with kids and pregnant women and sheepish husbands. The rich going higher and the poor furtively hoping not to sink lower: feisty shoeshine guy guiding two kids and then slapping away HIMSELF, sitting on bare stones with bare feet. Boxer-type with WIDE shoulder muscles under Qiana shirt, posing and being stared at. Loud table of "men" in back. Stolid suspicious waitress. Men sit for an hour with "Una coca" and leave no tip. Fat ugly pushers, pretty girls, gruff German tourists, local kids all eyes and eagerness, on the make. I pay 160P and wander looking for a second place, but all are closing, pulling down rattly metal shades over standalone doors and going in and out importantly. Mothers and kids cruise by, dejected balloon-salespeople and anxious old lottery woman and bright-eyed shoeshine boys announcing services with chipper "Hello." Quiet quick pass-by. Wander around more and more deserted streets till 10, then up to bed, hoping to sleep LONG, AC having dried out sopping-wet bathroom floor where I THREW tepid water from the sink over my body to remove soap.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11. Wake at 6:30 (only 8.5 hours) and doze and finally up at 8:30 (10.5, what I needed). Out in slight sprinkle and bank opens just then at 9, so I'm in to wait 25 minutes after great cash exchange and short "No" and "Una ventanilla" and he frowns at other "pushers" and gives me my money---9 people behind me in line already. Decide to walk river and lots of junky shops and slum homes and semi-factories, but no place to EAT. To GRAND museum, next to "Theatro Iris" a-building, and restaurant's on map, but it's closed. So sit on steps 9:50-10 and write a bit, then doors open and I have to wait a bit before paying the girl 25P at 10:10 and up to "Second floor," which is UP two flights, of course, BIZARRE museum images---shamans with MOUTHS SEALED or wearing face masks like surgeons; DOUBLE-HEADED both and . Must have SEEN them, as they saw HIPS like this: . Double-headers from Tlaltilco Mountains, Teotihuacan, and Xochilolco and Tula. Eyes from to to to . Also my "moon lune" ideas of . Finally 200-900 AD, they LAUGH with TEETH. VERACRUZ had smilers. CUTE west-coast huts and porches and people, all foot-high, of clay, 200-900 AD. "Vasu Pellican" is SO Greco-Roman in line and SO beautifully colored that one thinks it might be PHONY or REVOLUTIONARY. Museum has CONSTANT music "Let It Be" and others for John Lennon's murder? and "Jesus Christ Superstar" and other "movie music"---not QUITE disco but certainly NOT even "light classical." Some of the "special pieces" very nice, but most of the "monumental" is VERY destroyed, worse than the friezes I took in Palenque. PATIENCE from 10:10-12 on three floors, reading the Spanish with SOME sense, but finally tired of walking. NO one on upper floors, the two French flash past fast, and 3-4 in lower rooms were an IMPOSITION. Sitting outside nice restaurant at 12:05, waiting for them to open. FORGOT to bring fresh film, so I've got to be BACK to hotel---or buy it. Decent boring exhibits, but since it's my first I have patience for them. Good views over river and boats speeding down and men working on theater. Out at 12 and over to restaurant which they're readying, but they're STILL not open at 12:35, as I write THIS. Day's STILL clouded and gray, but I'm glad I did the SMALL and NUMEROUS objects of museum FIRST before going to LARGE and FEW objects of La Venta, having also gotten SOME background from museum script. "No one knows where they came from" and they'd THOUGHT of endocrine imbalance to explain the baby-like adults of the Olmecs. I just hope it doesn't RAIN in the afternoon, my last in Villahermosa, so I have to see it now. Good place to SEE but not very nice to STAY. Couldn't see WHAT I'd do for more than two days, except bullfight on Sunday and boxing in a week. Not even MOVIES look good and EVERYWHERE is the tacky MUSIC, even on the BUS last night, even when the music stopped and a guy chattered. Nice IDEA: expand way out here to get tourists NORTH to La Venta museum and WEST to CIMO museum and SOUTHEAST to Zocalo and the road to the ruins, and make WHOLE CITY vital. They finally let me in at 12:40, I DEMAND the river-window DESPITE table being set for 4 ("Will you be filled?") and order a Grijalva, green UNLIKE the brown river, with rum and what could be kiwi fruit flavor, great. Menu tells me it's Los Persicos, the OTHER restaurant mentioned by Fodors! Have Pepitas de Rib Eye with frijoles and guacamole, and hope the alcohol kills the germed ice. He suggests 4 beers, in order I'd HAD them: Superior, Tres Exquises, Bohemia, and Noche Buena, a GREAT DARK beer, which I of course ask for. Cheapest HALF of wine is 265P, over $10, and JUST too much. Central tables reset for 20! Grijalva SHOULD be great for 100P! Beers only 20P. Out to walk back to hotel in rain, take pictures out window for last, refill camera (forgetting to lock bottom, missing first picture), and get out to TRY for taxi to La Venta, first on "right" side, then across, then BACK and get there for 30P. In for 25P, raining, neat model of place, then a DEER! Somehow it's just not as GREAT to see a set of ruins so TAMED! More workmen then visitors, though the salesroom is open and pleasant like a Samoan palace. But nothing worth buying, except for noting that ALL the Easy Guides seemed to be priced at 50P. It rains on and off, I take flash pictures and hope. Leave at 4:45 and get attendant to root out the postcards, awful, buying 3 for 12P. Wait long time for taxi, AGAIN on two sides of street, and finally to hotel. Pay bill, get told to wait for 7 am minibus at Hotel Mayan and back to Las Faroles for great Carne Asada for 85P and beer and fried beans for 12P and see the Guadeloupe parade (cause for all the FIREWORKS!) pass by. Don't forget all the calling BIRDS in the TREES outside Las Faroles and in CAGES in shops or on street!) Back to Casino Cafe for beer and watch part of "Incredible Hulk" to 9, then to hotel and jerk off after slow start to a shooting climax to collarbone at 10, no trouble to sleep at ALL.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12. Wake at 5:30 and up at 6 to shower and shave and pack and down to wait for bus till 7:10, commandeering another car with 5 others. To airport at 7:30, no plane! Eat with Jesus, glass salesman, and at 8 the plane arrives, I board at right window, and it takes off in rain at 8:35, only 25 minutes late. LOTS of FRENCH bound for Acapulco, and Mexicana plane is STILL in MC for my friend's departure. Breakfast on plane, by coincidence, is all that I'd NOT had at airport: sweet rolls, fruit salad, and, well, orange juice, but I'd WANTED grapefruit juice at the airport but it HAD to be orange. Nice short hop and after fearing I'd get off on WRONG side, there's Monte Alban on RIGHT as we land, seemingly high and desolate. No tourist office in airport, so into minibus and strike up conversation with couple from Los Angeles, who tell me of hotels, restaurants, tourist office, and places to go. They say to go 30 km to the market at La Coruna before Mitla, they were with Howard Leigh for two hours. From Mitla, go to Teotitlan for serapes. Senorial is on the east of the Zocalo. Saturday market is two blocks off Zocalo. Peripheral market for Indians, not GREAT. See Lucio at Monte Alban, 50P for hour's tour. Artesanos on Garcia, 5 blocks south of Zocalo. Market one block south on Vincente Guerrero. Restaurants: straight across with white chairs to Tortilla des Papas and onion soup. Camarones Basque, same place, upstairs. Next door white chairs is cheapest. Bank's toward blue table cloths. Puerto Angelito outside of Porto Escondido, beautiful. Hotel Meson del Angel around corner cheaper. Go with them to hotels and markets, then back to check into El Senorial and to Tourist Office at 10:30 to get map all marked. Up to Santo Domingo Museum for GREAT Tomb 7 stuff and average "start of order" exhibit and ethnographic section. Lots of fireworks and shirtless sportsmen outside. Trumpets and singing at 12, and out at 1 to buy GREAT postcards for only 2P each and ask woman why girls are all dressed up: Guadeloupe. She makes marks on map, I walk up to CHAOS of stands, photographic displays, kids, families, and stand in church watching donors of flowers, crèches, money, models of donations, and kids kissing glass-covered Guadeloupe portrait, and getting a CARD that I briefly coveted. Out photographing and back at 2:30 to find I missed BANKS. Cash at hotel and rest TIRED in bed 3-4, then over to Artesanas, shy for asking prices, and to Casa de Culture for closed watercolor exhibit at 5. Oaxaca is NOT charming OUTSIDE center: people futilely knocking on doors, LOUD motor scooters, junky shops and smelly courtyards and small factories and squalid people living squalid lives. And they all stare at ME! Then to St. Philip Neri, whose altar could use cleaning, but since I'm here at 5:30, it could be lighter. On the left chapel is St. Gaudencio, martyr, in Mexican sandals and red velvet fringed pants that are OK but gold on red tunic-top makes him look ROMAN. On right, under a more dignified white sheet, stares the bloodied bearded face of who could only be Jesus---and NOT my companion at BREAKFAST! But the RECENT painting of the white stucco is rather Muchan Art Deco in swooping lavender ribbons and stylized drooping hangings and ropings. OR this is one of the ten sepulchers of the FOUNDERS of the order HERE. Then to the Cathedral for baroque splendor, and sit in park and try to cruise till I get cold at 8, not many SEXY people, though white-panted fellow I saw NEXT day in JEANS looked good. Look for El Portal and it's empty inside, as is El Patio, so it's Cafe Guelatao for TASTY cream of mushroom soup for 25P, saucy Mole Oaxaceniya con pollo for 60P, and good fruit and two beers. Watch people. Zocalo is emptying out and I get to bed about 9:30 pm.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13. Wake at 6 to band outside, laze till 8, some writing, then dress in sweater, too cold to shower, and the Patio and Portal are closed and Guelatao is full, so I'm to Marquez del Valle for 100P tasty steak and mushroom omelet and watch spoiled brat train his father, and at 9:30 change sweater to shirt and to bus for Monte Alban to be angered with their 10-12, 2:30-4, 4-5:50 schedule, and debate taxiing with couple and two friends, but someone says "Get 2" and I DO for 32P, OUT at 10 and back at 5:30. Bus leaves promptly, about half full, but it fills up with standees as we pass through town. Spectacular road up: views and Indian villages. Take quick look at Tomb 7 (which doesn't QUITE match guide photo) and then get to east side for building-by-building climb. Always DISCOVERIES! Want another bag for papers and El Senorial furnishes laundry bag. Shield my eyes from sun to look into dark hole and find my Monte Alban book reflects sunlight, lighting better (more widely) than a flashlight! Photos and notes in guide, morning mainly alone. They allow two hours by bus. I take 10:15-11:45 on EAST side, and wander 7 Venades (7 Deer) until 12:30 and couple central things until 1:30, 3 hours, then tramp to restaurant for 2 Fantas and write this. Only got "accosted" twice for "antigues," but I COULD have gotten nearer the shirtless guy. Hard NOT to be disgusted at not seeing (1) "an idea of how these tombs looked before excavation" (p. 28) and (2) walls "finest so far discovered at Monte Alban" (p. 31) because they're LOCKED! Shirtless guy at Venades turned out to be Patrick, the cute friend of Michelle who gives me (their?) address in Le Mans, since she said she WAS from Brittany. We chat of trips and their three months' travel, one month in the Yucatan! Then I go to pleasant museum, DYNAMITE photos of lumps of soil BEFORE restoration, and down west side in increasing discomfort from heat. Disappointed at end, but on road down talk to Luca who says tomb is ALWAYS locked. That's better. In at 6, pass the Saturday market STILL GOING, and talk to Luca who at LEAST confirms that "paintings belong to museum, not to archeological service," so he AND guides can't show them. The sheer QUANTITY of EXPANSE of stuff is overwhelming: I walk one LONG side of brick-front, then inside to a SECOND, food, brick-front, that extends three entrances, and circle to find another area out BACK, and go VERY far along some OTHER road, three TIMES as far as the two brick-fronts, and then turn back east another huge distance before ANOTHER road cuts in, and turn AGAIN to come to LIT aisles then a huge BOX, and turn to see expanse and it looks like a huge pentagon, and natives are packing to go amid great BARGAINS of huge white onions and fragrant scallions, wilting green beans and bowls of shelled peas. Enormous quantities of flowers thrown into muck piles with broken sandals, bits of meat and fat and gristle that attract rooting starving dogs, and peelings and wrappings and husks and pits and seeds and shells and plastic scraps and newspapers. The juxtaposition of the flickering glittery flash and color of Christmas ornaments against the dull brightness of steel: wedges, nails, tools, tongs, hammers, wrenches. Meats: loops of beads of sausage, tendrils of flesh, gobbits of fat, shiny thongs of tendons and fascia. Gelatinous pools of liver and bulbs of brains, kidneys, testicles, and other inauspicious animal organ orbs. Types and kinds and hotnesses of dried chilies, dozens of sizes of tomatoes, and sweetnesses of fruits: oranges, tangerines, little yellow limes, enormous grapefruit and basketball-dwarfers of papaya, obscenely orange when cut into crowns filled with shiny black seeds. Whole SHOPS of bananas: yellow, green, black, and orange; BRANCHES of strange artichoke-like plants and so many spheres of such lavender and orange and chartreuse that my tongue knows not names. Clothing: inner, outer, women's, children 's, warmer, colder, longer, shorter, all hanger-on-hanger depending from the rafters and brushing the heads of the shorter Mexicans, obliging me to duck down low. Toys: lovely bright tinsel-colors and sparkling tin exteriors, plastic with verve and zing and flash. Chocolate in lumps, sugar in cones, salt in glacial hunks, spices in pastel powders. Jewelry and trinkets and baubles and gewgaws and gimcracks (and ALL the overhead colored lights in the Zocalo just go off) and eye-dazzlers. Zippers and sandals and lingerie and hamper-sized baskets and wheelbarrows and safety pins and gold braid and rainbow-hued long stockings and electronic games and spark plugs and extension cords and baby bottles all in dazzling array (all the lights, at ONCE, come on!). Now the passersby: beggars and shoeshine boys and who I would hope would be tall sexy cruising tourists and men in tight white shirts with black swastikas embroidered on sleeves. Restaurant had no Noche Buena, aw! Perhaps Negro? Sounds good, and Modelo Negro IS good, maybe even milder than Noche Buena. And the bearded fellow to my right reads "Crime and Punishment" and the husband next ogles all the guys and the German boy-girl quartet behind me aloud dare ANYONE to daunt their supremacy. Two bearded hippies sit six tables away writing; hope no one connects them with bearded, writing, me. Guitarist strums and sings balefully, cripples moan and beg, newsboys wipe sweaty eyes tearfully, other boys run past on VERY important errands and the balloon seller chirps like a goddam bird and a pesky fruit fly likes my beer so much I applaud him between my hands. Someone stops at my table playing a tom-tom and I write as an excuse to not even look up, and the marimba band strikes up at 7:10 in the band shell, not quite drowning out the kids screaming, and "Crime and Punishment" bums a match for his cigar from the two VERY ugly German 40ish men behind me. Balloon octopi glisten brightly beneath the red-green-blue-yellow-white (one would think there were more colors) lights, and as I write that last (long) sentence, a boy asks a question I don't understand, a woman opens a case and inquires something that sounds like "Porcelana?" and another boy insists my shoes need more color. How writing CAN distance me, while including ALL---like satori? Fat girls in white dip red lips into lime-colored cones, and "C&P" looks like a bigger sexier Roger Evans as he slouches sexily in his chair and smokes his fetid cigar. And my writing hand boggles almost as my brain did speaking too much French with Michele and Patrick in Monte Alban restaurant at lunch. My eyes sting from day and smoke, and unpleasant Ugly-George-Hamilton-type-with-mustache triumphantly lights a cigarillo from one of the fat white ice-cream girls. Motorbikids ROAR past and I have to FIND my waiter to get another beer at 7:15, and what a GLORIOUS day it's been DESPITE former unpleasantness, now that one beer's gone and other's now HERE. The urchins selling artfully strewn bachelor's buttons from a wicker basket are cute. Marimba continues over CONSTANT drone of HEAVY un-modern auto traffic and guttural accents of newly arrived Teutonic tourists. Underlying rush of water from fountains, smell of exhaust, people, beer, and whistles, whistles, horns, and "cute" horn-melodies like "La Cucaracha"! Passersby making noises, drink-ice clinking, metal chairs clanking, papers rattling, voices constant, and I can't even hear my pen scratch, but I feel it, as I feel my arms developing a burn, and my still-unsettled feet from a HARD day and the beginning of a neck-shoulder-finger ache from writing SO much SO fast. Now I stop writing, I can see people; but German is an UGLY language! LOTS of VW's on road---too. Signs in lights, it dawns on me, says "Feliz Pascuas." Ain't that EASTER? Chill of 7:30 even getting to me, but it's nice to know my room's JUST UPSTAIRS! Fantasy: would you (C&P) watch my drink for a second, I want to go upstairs for a sweater." Pregnant woman carrying a BALLOON outside her stomach and ANOTHER serape salesman acts like a pigeon, stands off to the side and puffs his wares. Look quickly and think I see a DODGED RAT! Why aren't some of the tall, thick-chested, tight-jeaned Mexicans I saw TODAY here NOW? Ready for buying in the Zocalo? Hungry dogs lope by, pretending to be busy, and improbably young couples have two or three kids already. Tall lanky dopey guy who passed OUTSIDE twice now passes INSIDE the arcade. Trying to look casual? Woman with laces knows better than to pick me; my arms feel TACKY from too much sun and lotion together. Feel HOT, too! Husband DID leave wife while he went up to get jacket and C&P plays with a 50P note at his crotch and I think he's CRUISING. Mexican boys, though CUTE as hell, and EVEN athletic as on soccer or volleyball field, still seem, for all the chocolate splendor of their skin, SOFT and lacking in hard DEFINITION. BULK perhaps, but ABDOMINALS no. Stagger back to hotel about 7, too tired to go to ROOM. Get beer at Marques (or Bar Jardin) and see the couple from this morning, who went to Mitla instead. They talk: about the bus tour to Orizaba peak and Fortin de las Flores, about Puebla with its gold cathedral and its catacombs, about the Galle "Guide to Yucatan" for about 80P, the four-hour Chichen Itza tour, the small tours of Uxmal and Sayil where you should be in the front of the bus, and be sure to take a flash to the inner pyramid of the Castillo, and they say to go up the front and down the BACK of the Magician, and stay overnight at Uxmal for the sound and light. I finally say I'm getting cold, decide to go with them for awful 85P dinner of middling lentil soup, awful PEA (garbanzos) omelet, and LUNCH MEAT slice of ham with two tiny potatoes under tomato sauce. Tea (one cup ONLY) and flan, all squeezed between 9:15 and 9:35 because they close at 9:30. Decide I've HAD it and get to bed at 10.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14. 3 am: Wake from a dream that must be recorded: based in part on the semi-frantic conversations among the three of us last night, the dream finds me at some dim nocturnal garden party with amorphous interrelated people: men and women who are or had been married or lovers, a female child somewhat like Aviva, and me. I'm somehow the topic of the conversation---my effect on a former relationship is the topic, to be more exact---the involved relationship might be LIKE Amy and Adam and Dana and me and Dana's husband and Aviva, but some key people aren't there. It MAY be that "Dana" broke up with her husband, a GOOD thing, because of me (and it's only MUCH later, about 1/16, that Amy tells me that Dana's ex-husband is VERY good looking with a GOOD body and MUCH sought after by gays in San Francisco), but "Dana" doesn't want to talk about it, so I ask "Aviva," who was there and who I thought could give a "fair" report, to tell the story. Suddenly "Amy and Adam," seeing a similarity to their OWN story, say they can't take it, and Amy gets up to leave in anger and agony of sorrow. Then I happen to glance up at the night sky and see a "black rainbow," like an iridescent disco display (all Xmas displays at markets?), across a segment of the sky. I point and everyone looks up, but confused reports indicate that what's being seen is CHANGING. "Rings around Jupiter" says "Amy," and "Rings around Venus," says "Dana," and I scoff and say in jest "Rings around your anus." It's more like swirling smoky WEDDING rings in cylinders of 3 or 4, whirling in 6 or 8 "spokes" around an invisible central hub. "They're more like rings on a carousel" I shout, expecting others to AGREE with MY interpretation, but they go from perpendicular to earth to parallel to earth and they're like TIRES in some huge carousel that we're RIDING, but they're INTERFERING with a sort of ring of DODGEMS that we (riding the tires) have descended upon. "What's the SIGNIFICANCE of this dream?" I demand of myself, of them, and of the dream itself, IN the dream. (Wisdom challenge?) "Machines must work for man or man will be made to work for the machines" came back. What? And I see an instant correspondence in my life: I can make plane flights and cameras and computers work FOR me, easing and enlivening my life, or I can LET flights and computers and busses and plastics RULE ME. It seems VERY profound, I wake and start to deem it trivial, but it SEEMS also somehow to apply to the Mayan, Mixtec, and Zapotec ruins I've been seeing: if farming and architecture and sculpture are ruled by MAN, they remain benevolent TOOLS. When man GIVES OVER HIS LIFE to astrology, or farming, or temples, or irrigation systems, man becomes ruled BY them, no longer SERVED by them. And THAT seems UNIVERSALLY applicable in ALL time-space. (Now 3:15 am.) Maybe, I think immediately, the dream would be MORE applicable and true if "the system" were substituted for "the machine" in the above context. And the VERB, the AIM, should not so much be "rules" one or the other or "is ruled by" the other or the one, but each "goeswith (Watts' term)" each. How potent: "Each goeswith each" seems more Zen than "Tat tvam asi" ---Thou are That. Each goeswith each. Rather than A=B, it's A=A! Or better C=C, where C=A OR B. A AND B? TRVELY, TRULLY, TRULY, TRAVELY, TRULY ("typos") equations from All/one's pages. Turn off the lights and arrange my sunburned arms, when a FURTHER LEVEL of applicability dawns---or re-dawns, since it WAS in the dream---the "meaning" of "A goeswith B" ALSO applies to CONVERSATION (or REVELATION) part of dream, that UNDERSTANDING has to GOWITH a PERSON: too much said will bewilder a person; a person must be ready for what a person is told, or the person can't USE the information but is DRIVEN BY the information. I wonder if all this isn't some sort of "immortal-connected" "Mexico-influenced" "personal revelation" rather like Alta notes were. As if I could turn into (TURN into??) channels of information (as I pointedly WALKED ACROSS "innermost Holy of Holies" on Central Mound and STOOD AT "umbilicus of world" on Central Altar in North Sunken Plaza to "tune in---attune myself ... " ...and suddenly those words are so MEANINGFUL and APPLICABLE to the junction of a PERSON with KNOWLEDGE to a PLACE with KNOWLEDGE, so that the TIME-VARIABLE vanishes IN the atunement---at-une-ment---atonement. Have I found a power-spot? I recall my vague wish to RETURN to Monte Alban on bus with Lucio. No, that SPECIFIC action seems silly, but surely I hope to remain OPEN for more "transmissions" of PLACE-knowledge through the TIME-barrier. Not BARRIER, since that MAKES a barrier OF it---the time-VARIABLES THEN and NOW must be ASSIGNED the variables from before, A and B, so that what WAS A=B is NOW C=C, where C=A AND B! Vague impression from earlier float through mind: Copan statues LOOK Chinese, as Maya INDIANS do. Olmec statues LOOK African. Is it MORE likely that CHINESE and AFRICANS BOTH came all the way to Mexico OR could, somehow, Chinese and Africans (including Leakey's primeval man) have BOTH come from MEXICO? 3:50 am: another set of coincidences: THIS morning, annoyed by chirping cricket, I thought NOT to kill it but to enclose it in my plastic bag and throw it into the street. I "saw" that I could scoop it from the enclosed corner of the closet in the bag. As I lay down for the second time after writing, I idly wondered what the Zocalo would look like at 3:30 am, I heard the cricket; opening the door, he's in THE VERY CORNER I "saw" it in, so it was EASY to get it in the bag AND open the window and throw it out AND see what the Zocalo was like at 3:40 am: empty save for one or two cars on street and one or two peons walking, lights out, area QUITE quiet. COINCIDENCES! CRAZY morning, Sunday: Jerk off, write, downstairs at 9:30 and get caught on idea that I'll take BOTH tours (1: Tule, Tlacolula, Mitla; 2: Coyotelco, Jalisza, Ocotlan) today, only 440P for 8 hours of tours, $20 or a bit less. BUT get out to restaurant and they DON'T bring menu and they DON'T bring food so I LEAVE and sign up for tour, then RETURN and STILL don't get served, so I'll take the first tour BREAKFAST-LESS! A magical mystery tour since I have NO idea WHAT the places hold! Except Mitla, where I go for an hour, and if I like it I can always return tomorrow. Otherwise I seem to have seen all the tour has to offer. Dejected 13 of us on bus, and I seem prepared to be depressed. Still tired from VERY busy yesterday? 10:15-10:45 to Tule; 11-12:15 at Mitla ruins; 12:40 Tlalteclola market; 1:30-2, drive back. Road to La Tule deserty, and I KNEW I remembered the name but follow guide blindly into courtyard of church and turn before realizing it's the TREE. Looks pretty good if it's dying, but there ARE a lot of branches and trunks for a SMALLER proportion of leaves. Few photos and back in bus to pass Dainzu and Lambityeco and Yagul and get even MORE depressed that we're not THERE. PASS Mitla museum and guy talked ONLY Spanish WHOLE WAY. ONE Mitla building IS spectacular with "no paper admitted" dressed stones and "cementless mosaic" STILL ORIGINAL, but EVEN when he starts talking to me in English I remain pouty. Feeling sorry for myself feeling sorry for myself? There till 12:15 and then to Tlalteclolo market for impossible-to-capture colors and quantities AGAIN, and back on bus to be let off PRECISELY at 2 pm with glum Torres at Senorial. To Bar Jardin for Puerco el Coloradita, pork in RED molé, for 85P and two beers, and it's not bad but it's not super. Sit glumly deciding what to do and figure I'm just TIRED, so up to room to rest a bit, then decide to READ, and it gets cool on sunroof, which IS nice, and down to room to read before going to BED. Band plays, mercifully muted by distance and door, and I watch lightshow of lights and colors and shadows on walls and ceiling. Finally wrench myself up at 9 and go to dinner at El Asada Vasco, sore left arm leading me to think maybe it's DIABETES: no breakfast from 9-2, then eat and get REACTION of lassitude and fatigue. STOP IT! Steak is large and tasty, cheese in tomato sauce good, parsley-butter tasty, TINY refritos, and DELICIOUS Sangria. Dessert tart for 60P that's a good moist rum-taste, and then they don't CHARGE me for it. This place has the best clientele in town I've seen: rich locals, elegant tourists, handsome girls and boys serving. VERY contentedly out at 10, take a few circles around the Zocalo to see what's doing (nothing) and get to bed at 10:30, latest yet?
MONDAY, DECEMBER 15. 5 am: More movie-dream: Charlton Heston is helping people up raised stairways to help fortify a 106-story skyscraper for his "band," but after he climbs to the top and feels the earth and building shake, he deserts and tries to subvert the "top-takers" into being "bottom-takers," knowing it's easier to survive in the cellars than be forced out by fire at the TOP. He comes back and is served food, but old woman whom he helped tries to spread the alarm against him. He gets the radio and announced "Atlanta, Atlanta," and all panic and he continues, "Were you ready for that? Well, you should have been," and he goes on to make up an imaginary enemy to get the panicked people back to his side. Tune in tomorrow, or at 6 or 7 am, for next chapter? Up at 9, down to hotel restaurant (none others close are OPEN) for toast and orange juice and rolls and grainy chocolate for 40P and to tourist office at 9 exactly for museum hours, and since they're open till 7, I'll do them last! To bank to NO lines for cashing $150 at last, then to hotel to pay bill, around corner to reserve taxi for airport manana, and to bus station to Mitla. 9:52 am: GRAND idea, take Mitla bus to Lambityeco, ON the road, and I'm BOUND to find a tourist going EITHER way to EITHER ruin and then maybe bus EITHER way to Mitla OR other ruin, depending on how I FIND them. Or, ideally, find someone at Lambi who'll take care of the rest of my day! Local bus picks up and lets off lots of people, and I get off saddened to find NO one at Lambityeco. Pay 3P, open gate after being told to climb back steps, GOOD friezes and masks preserved, there 1/2 hour, out to hitchhike BOTH ways and bus comes QUICKLY to take me FREE to Dainzu. Walk cool-hot road to ruins, 3P more, and glyphs are VERY eroded under shield, but half-fixed/ half-ruined ball court worth the trip. Nice climb to top of hill for view and map. (Map on p. 51.) Catch a truck ride from halfway to road, and hitch and get a BUS to Mitla for 8P---bus 10-10:45 to Lambi, there till 11:15; then to Dainzu and at 12:15 start out, truck ride halfway to road to 12:25. EMPTY highway toward Yagul! BUT after few no-rides, at 12:35 is a bus for Mitla that gets me a seat as we go through Tlacolula and fill up again. Both, so far, really WORTH it! Walk Yagul road 1-1:15. Hot! Yagul to 2:55, FABULOUS. To road by 3, thanks to three guys' ride and then hitch fruitlessly till TRUCK picks me up at 3:08 and takes me to CENTER of way between museum and grounds by 3:20, and I pay MY 10P (as opposed to TOUR's paying for me) at 3:25. Yagul was marvelous (see map on photo page), just GREAT views and cactus and blimp and spectacle. Out and catch truck to Mitla, into ruins again to see them all over with ENGLISH talk by American Jewish Congress tour of doctors from NY-NJ! Make map of stairs down and up and areas under floors of temples (see p. 52), and guide says that under #3 was the tomb of the warriors, under #2 the tomb of the priests, and the Tomb of the Leaders is yet to be found, probably under the pyramid WEST of the area, under a CHURCH! HOLES in facades were for trunks of trees for awnings at festivals. Give card to a book publisher from NJ! Views of glyphs over quadrangles behind church which is BUILT over a quadrangle! Guide OK's my ride back to the museum on the bus at 5, and I get to Leigh's collection AS he comes out. Start talking and get to know his wind (nose turning up) and rain (tongue turning down) brothers, his bat caricatures, his male loincloths, his absence of pornography (except for blind old man with HUGE phallus, "consolation" as he put it), his "indelicate story" of the ocelot "shitting" on the lizard's supposed importance, and his impatience ("I wasn't there, I know as much about it as YOU!") with "Why" or "How" questions. Give him 100 pesos, for which he seems truly grateful. Out at 6 to look at END of Frissell museum's light, and find that the restaurant won't be open till 7 and next-to-last bus is at 6:20. Out for a Squirt and another soda for 10P, and 14P to Oaxaca, in near-dark to total dark at 7:30, writing the following poem about KIDS: Stupid kids are unforgivable / But smart kids are even worse. / Fat kids are just obscenities / And skinny kids a curse. / Sexy kids are much too precocious / While ugly kids are just a bore / Quiet kids I find atrocious / While raucous kids I just abhor. / Dribbly bubbly piddly babies / All of them should just be shot. / Snotty kids should be given rabies / For all the love for them I've got. / I was probably a horrid child / Simpy, picky, obnoxious, wild. / Mother probably wishes she could drown 'im / How is it then that I can't stand 'em? Back to hotel and change for El Patio at 8 for INTERESTING meal till 9. Extraordinary how TACKY a restaurant can be. El Patio, set up for a table of 26, has the Chinese-Jewish couple, and she seems to get sick and they have to leave with a tinfoil doggie bag; Mrs. Uptight Westchester and daughter having an AWFUL time on a glass of wine and a Coke; and three lovely Germans, one female (who had Bananas Seengapore) and two lovely guys (one of which, the loveliest of all, had Crepes Suzette, which USED the lime peel and orange peel and orange juice and Grand Marnier), and me, who ordered a Combination 4 (I'm SURE I said "Quatro") and got something ELSE (they thought FIVE), and when I complained, got the same thing (two guacamole covered tacos filled with what tasted like tuna but was probably chicken, two special Oaxacan tacos "con picadollo" that turned out to be CHEESE, and a TINY tortilla under mole and a TINY bit of refritos and ONE chip) PLUS a piece of STEAK. For 100P. And LIKE El Asada Vasco (when I got the Asada Oaxacenia for 120 and sangria for 2 for 65 and dessert for at least 40, got a bill for 110+65+20 for food=195+19=214, which I gladly paid, left 30P tip and LEFT, and TONIGHT the Combo 4=100, the half Santo Tomas Chemin Blanc rather good wine for 90, and THAT WAS IT, for 190+19=209, without a CENTAVO for the Crepes Suzette marked for 60P. So THERE I took a shiny 20-c piece for souvenir, and 10P, and left 30P 80 and Left, swinging over to Marquis del Valle at 9:30 for a Noche Buena, GOOD cold farewell to Oaxaca, nice at start and end! Then to the FAR end of Bar Jardin for two dark beers. Santa C's back, rocking jollily from side to side as he walks, and still the metal plate at the corner BANGS when a car hits it right, and NO one seems to be cruising the Zocalo. Club soda spritzed against attack of dog packs in Oaxaca! At 10 I'm exhausted, pricing pure wool serapes STARTING at 900P and synthetic at 300P. POOR old man trying to uphold STANDARDS. Tired of thinking at 10:30, so leave call for 7 am and get to bed.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16. Odd dreams: (1) Working on some kind of book and woman in charge is saying "And we have to live with that style of page number, with those floral designs at the top of each page, with those types of chapter divisions, illustrations, etc. (2) A group is finished some kind of performance, an opera or oratorio, and we're all dressed in black gowns, like graduates. It's time for the final bow and we've not rehearsed the lineup enough: there's a gap in front of me and we're too tight in the second row. There's jostling back and forth and I think "I only had a secondary part, so I should stay in back." The next day the reviews have come out and everyone thought we were just AWFUL: How could the lead singer have lost his way in the main song, how could the duets be so poor, how could the chorus have been so bad? I excused them, saying something like "What do THEY know?" and "remembered" they'd said I "attacked too fast." I didn't even know what an attack WAS, but in fact I could see myself ever eagerly starting to sing too quickly, and sloughed it off as "too little rehearsal, and it was only an amateur performance anyway!" Wake at 5 am with those memories and doze back off until the phone jolts me awake at 7. Shower takes a LONG time to warm, but it does, and finish with bathroom at 7:30 and pack till 8, sorting out "souvenirs" and "still to use" papers and putting everything firmly into bag INCLUDING raincoat, without TOO much pressure. Down JUST as all those clanking churches ring out at 8, and car drives right up and we're only 2 to airport at 8:20 and I check in and finish this at 8:33, waiting for plane. 9:10 plane is IN at 9:15 but OFF at 9:35, landing at 10:05. Good view of Monte Alban. Countryside VERY hilly and villagy and could be HUNDREDS of Mitlas hidden there, but I have LITTLE interest in it. Along coast and small inlets, and land at Acapulco and out for adventure! Wow! Acapulco! Stair problem behind LOVELY 6'2" Mexican of 12 with fat thighs and a WADDLE under his tight-fitting designer jeans. Even the STEWARDESS liked him. Off at 10:15 into jitney to terminal and onto cab at 10:25 for 89P. I AGAIN hit it lucky: say my friend told me to go to "Centro" and phone. "Centro" turns out to be ENTIRELY across city. HOTEL section is all shops and tourists and heat and glitz. HOME section is all private and quiet and noncommercial. "Centro" is noisy and crowded and older and poorer. Off cab at 11:15 and telephone truck isn't working. Take photos and ask for bus to airport. Have to change at Passy. Wait as dozens of VERY sexy tourists and Mexicans go past in swim trunks. Not QUITE as nice as Rio, but maddeningly nice for ME. Decide not to stay, and bus is a CRUSH and people scream to be let off as full bus zooms along avoiding stopping, but I get OUT at next stop and hail occupied cab for 200P and have LOVELY trip, even with a photo stop, and to airport at 12:35, to write this during long line for flight 301 check-in. May not even have time to phone Lavender and Lowman from AIRPORT, and I'm feeling lightheaded from having only a Coke and 4 cookies on the Oaxaca-Acapulco flight. 20P airport tax takes me down to 500P notes. Awful snack bar and I desperately to upstairs, sit in bar, then to restaurant at 12:50 for special enchiladas and Modelo Negro. Whew! I'm #80 on flight and it appears to be free seating. Ugh. He said "Better have lunch here." Well, the stop was REALLY worth it and now I'm SURE not to come back to Acapulco. Merida will be the center of the REST of the trip after MC. Seats WERE assigned before I KNEW it: 14C indeed! LOVELY sharp-eyed guy looks at the muscle-builder pock-faced swimmers, and I move next to him to sit. YUM! Finished eating (for 125.40) at 1, in waiting lounge at 1:20 (for 1:10 flight!). Boarding announced at 1:35, NOW. Off into clouds at 1:55, one last GRAND shot of Acapulco Bay! So I was even lucky NOT to get my choice of LEFT window seat! Incredible! Cloudy flight, drab hills below, sharp turns, and BOTH sides get ENORMOUS MC at 2:30 landing. American straw-hatted, open-shirted 50ish clod slept whole trip at his WINDOW! Glad I have transport to Hotel from here! Out and no one from Trade Winds. Wait. To Information Desk: it's locked and he can't check representatives. Finally find guy at 3:10. Andre arrived 1 pm?? Leave airport 3:20. Pass cathedral at 3:53, to hotel at 4:15, but they have no reservation for me and know NOT the Mr. Arturo I'm supposed to see at 4:30. So I pay room with VISA, so it can be proved, and phone office to have them say they'll check. They say LAST telex was 12/2 canceling Ken and nothing after. So Andre's not here after all! Unpack, since this WILL be my room, and drink one bottle of purified water and extract MC papers and decide to see Gray Lines. Phone downstairs: no news. Phone office again and they're still checking. Morning tour returns here at 1 pm. I'm out at 5:20 to BUSY streets, but Pink Zone is almost mall-like and there MIGHT have been a few tentative cruisers. Pay $20 and get back 80-odd pesos for tomorrow's Sound and Light that'll pick me up in lobby between 1:10 and 1:20 or THERE at 1:30. OK. Around block to Refugio at 6, people eating already and guy seats me before fireplace. Quesadillas for 36P: sunflower flowers; Manchemanteles for 90P, cervesa 25P, Fonda el Refugio good but not great, but what's 208+ 22=230P? A few cents UNDER $10, AND I saw my THIRD (first, tall guy on plane; second, open-shirted starer on NEXT plane) dynamite Mexican: beautiful face and mustache and NICE strong blond muscled arms when they took their jackets off in restaurant! Because of few jacketless guys? WERE "Gentlemen" in suits there TOO? Chicken VERY tasty with potatoes and mole and chilies and pineapple and apple. Out at 7 and decide to search out Chapultepec Park's rollercoaster. Discover that sidewalks can change height by a STEP suddenly, if some storefront wants a special design---also lots of HOLES and the cars are allowed to park around corners. Lots of GRAND hotels and interesting hippie-type restaurants. Across to corner of park across HUGE roadways and impressive yellow-lit avenue to "Monument to the Boy Heroes of 1846-47." Pass Museum of Modern Art and feel perfectly safe (except for scurrying rats that "chung" into the wire-mesh fence around the zoo in their hurry to run. Zoo SMELLS fine, too, and the OTHER (Reforma) side has LOVELY topiary animals: peacocks, ape, buffalo, deer, lion, giraffe, and LOTS of others. Come to BUILDINGS and walk dark passageways and see SOLDIERS and get a JOLT from MUFFLED head peering out of a stone guard-box just inches from me when I see him. See sign "Molina del Rey" and ask someone passing by, and he says "This is near the President's Palace," and agrees it's Los Pinos. "Where do you want to go?" (in Spanish) "Montana Russa." "Over there." But THAT happens to be in a FIELD, ending against a WALL around a ROAD. Walk to entry, cross bridge, and there IS the rollercoaster across ANOTHER roadway. Walk to a bridge across the congealing highways, people even BACKING OUT ENTRANCE ways to feeder roads that are moving faster. Military block roads, too, and as I look SOUTH I see artificial fires (which I later find are REAL steel mills) and fountains, and think that's the amusement park, but cross at side of Technological Museum and walk past IT to amusement area that's CLOSED! Note hours and chat with watchman and pass lovely mosaics around park and then the fountain of Del Lago, take pictures, and walk way around JAMMED Perifico and cross an arching bridge and FINALLY get to Reforma and HUGE National Auditorium along it. Then walk till feet ache and see "Expresso Reforma" map and it starts AFTER I started and Insurgentes is about halfway along, so I wave one down and it's FREE! Fabulous blinking lights in rows above road, GREAT 4-story hotels, LOVELY rooftop duplexes with TREES. Quite a city! Out of bus and THERE'S Doral sign, stagger in, he says there's a CHANCE of clearing things up. I get upstairs about 9:30 and take shoes off and write this and put things away and ready for sleep now at 10:15, after washing face and earplugs in!
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17. 6:15 am dream: I'm at some learned mystical meeting like Theosophical Society and someone's making a very careful presentation of man as a congeries of various bodies and entities, and after the speaker concludes "We concur in which, when a woman afterwards COMPLIMENTS him on that, he says wasn't true. Take the cucumber lady (meaning the lady who spoke of or dealt with cucumbers; at which point I laugh and say "Ha, cucumber lady," but no one listens to me), she can always be depended on for brilliant questions and wonderful observations." And I'm busy brushing hairs and bits of debris off a diagram in my notebook. I'd waked earlier with ANOTHER dream, but I've forgotten it now. It's COLD here and hotel is NOT heated! Up at 6:45 and write cards till 7:55. To restaurant for rather good meal of steak mexicana and fruit and tea and toast for 85P+10P tip. Down to ask about laundry, BRING it down, and as I'm sewing my own pants at 9:05, Francisco comes in looking for start of my tour. Then he goes to pick up Jim and Chris at Continental, I price wool sweater at 900P or $45, and my guide returns at 9:25. Drive down 5 de Mayo looking at old churches and leaning buildings, then park and look at eagle-serpent monument, lots of Rivera murals in government building, and across to cathedral (pyramids MAY be open by Saturday, he says) to GREAT front altar, side chapels, lots of "Saved" altars from churches along Reforma-widening, and out to get shot of whole place. Into Church of Jesus of Nazareth which is TORN apart, with newly found BONES in pit, plaque for Cortez (said to be syphilitic and monkey-headed). GREAT extra! Lots of driving past schools and churches and monuments and bypasses, then through Chapultepec to see roads by DAY, large zoo and children's zoo of small animals, and before that through Lomas de Chapultepec for elegant---some MARVELOUS castles on whole blocks---houses. To Niza at 1:10, give him 40P tip (for letting us stop at bank rather than market), and to Gray Lines at 1:20, buy tour for tomorrow, catch up on this on the bus to 1:55 to be told they're waiting for people from the Doral! I announce I told them when I arrived at 1:20! He's back inside and finally out again---what DO they DO?---at 2:01 with two passengers who'd entered at 1:50 (had been waiting for MY guy at THEIR hotel). Planning to make Pink Zone into a TOTAL mall. Dianetics with a whole tiny triangle of a block! Insurgentes only n-s street, 38 kilometers. "Reforma" refers to Juarez's separation of church and state. Two million cars for 15 million people, NOW probably largest city in world; Tokyo 13 million, and Shanghai somewhat less. Streets with elegant European countries' names in the TACKIEST residential-small factory area. Guadeloupe to 3 pm, and at 3:07 to Artisanas for 1/2 hour. ARTESANIAS FINAS, INDIOS VERDES. Overpriced? Sweaters, wool (but skimpy) at 350P, lovely Merida long sleeve sheer shirts for $20. Small wall hanging about 2x4 feet at 675P, and some hangings are PART wool and PART algodon, which is cotton. Leather coats about $200! ONLY tourist busses stopping here, just above Cathedral, and GUIDE is very last---if no one bought, how much can he be paid off? We finally depart at 3:46. Fifteen million in Districto Federal ONLY, and lots of SURROUNDING neighborhoods would ADD to that. Can SEE Ixtaulatl already and "Popo" DIMLY on right. Teotihuacan: Citadel: "The place where man becomes God." 4:15 out of bus. 4:45 out of bus at Temple of the Sun (and the commentary says they DIED and became Gods). Sound and Light at 7 and out at 7:45, with a five-minute cop-stop at 8, said by the guide to be done only for a payoff, which driver said was 50P. For a tip? Into town about 9, left off at corner, and have good dinner in coffee shop (El Roble 36P) and bed at 10:30.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18. 2:40 am: Dreams (1): Joe Safko and I are working in the same motion picture projection booth in a vague, wall-enclosed, jungle community. Inside the wall, where the earth is very thin on a rock base, was a huge tree that people thought highly of. But the enclosure was overcrowded and Joe wanted to remove the tree but no one would let him. We were projecting a movie and he tried to get permission, but angry people refused. He determined, and we flew around in a helicopter over lines of people, including the leaders, taking their picture. We'd found our projector could also RECORD. The people didn't know we were flying over, and I said, "Joe, with these films of the leaders, we can do anything we want." But, wordlessly and with grim lips, he flew to the tree and somehow gathered the willowy branches together with the helicopter blades and then manfully pulled the entire tree down, one part of the trunk making a HUGE thump on the sandy ground, uncovering the sand, and I rushed over to make sure, in liberating the whole community, someone wasn't crushed under the tree, but some little girl assured me that the records were so badly kept that people only THOUGHT she might have been with a classmate, but the records were wrong and there WAS no "classmate" and she was safe TOO. So EVERYTHING worked out and I swooped along the lines of people to give Joe a huge hug. (2) CONNECTED with the first, this was like a quiz show or newspaper lottery puzzle called "Someone Dare Not Go," and you had to use the colored tables of contents or game counters called "Resources" under certain headings to "Tasks" and combine them in various subsections called "Methods" to achieve final desired "Results," something to do with traffic planning. Joe (or I) zipped through effortlessly, the "only way to do it," and everyone acclaimed him/me/us as having succeeded where "Someone Dare Not Go," and it seemed RELATED to pulling down the tree. 3:30 am---still awake---I remind myself to make two notes for the indexing book (1) In section explaining headings and subheadings of chapters, the idea that of COURSE some items to be indexed are only a BLOCK of text, so there's NONE of this "explicit" organization (be it correct or incorrect!) to "help" the indexer. But there may be "implicit" organization that you CAN use. (2) Conceptualization note: if chapter tells of "making soap" and you know term is called "saponification" (check!), it may depend on the intended AUDIENCE---if the audience is TECHNICAL and saponification is discussed in another context ELSEWHERE, this could be considered an "author's oversight" and included in a subentry under saponification. If the reader is only USING the book, ANY entry under "saponification" to a page that doesn't use the WORD will merely seem like an error in the index, unless notes in some way, e.g. "saponification, see also soap making." Jerk off at 5:20 am. 7:30 am dream fragments (1) Talk with the 12- or 13-year-old black-haired boy with the most beautiful blue eyes in the world, and then sitting on a plane in a swivel chair, looking in amusement at the straining people as the plane twists and dips and banks and turns, but then it begins turning UPSIDE DOWN and I know plane can't survive, and start doing lightwork. (2) Sort of press-statement form: I know that both Johnny Weissmuller and I died, but since he can't write, I must be the one writing about it. Up and check for pants, still not back. Breakfast of pancakes and LOUSY service. No more restaurant in hotel! Down for tour at 9, with Juan in a car with seven others to Puebla, GREAT road past volcanoes and SCARY walk back over bridge to get pictures. Lovely forests! To San Martin Tuxmelucan for birds and flowers and SHOP for half hour! SHORT-sleeved "Fanny's" 390P. Small WOOL hanging 160P! SINGLE bed-cover COLORFUL for 625P. WOOL sweaters for 480P. Half wool-half synthetic 390P. 130P for wool VESTS, 220P for short-sleeved embroidered shirts. 340P for THEIR all-cotton rainbow-hue queen-size covers. Leave at 9:10, to continental divide at 10:30, into San Martin at 11, SHOP and house there till 11:30, mucho impatience. Franciscan friars CRUCIFIED in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1600's??, and they said "We'll punish Japan." Pyramid 1200 feet each side. Five kilometers of tunneling INSIDE! 60 feet BELOW street at least. Out of Puebla at 3:30 and out of Cholula at 4:40, out of gas at 4:50. IN by Route of Quetzalcoatl, BACK by route of Ehecatl. Then Puebla for BEAUTIFUL Bello Museum AFTER "Hidden Convent" and then Alfenique, quick chalupas and soda snack, to car for Cholula, climb THREE tunnels and UP hill with LOVELY Swiss couple, and back to rest and to Rivoli for dinner, Chicken Chichen-Itza for 90P, achiote of chicken in banana leaves like Aztec HEART. Wine for 80P, brandy and Kahlua and WATER (THAT makes me SICK?) and grand Marnier soufflé that comes before I FINISH meal. It's ELEGANT but TRIES too hard, and NY-type manager doesn't help much---Werner Erhard-type. Out and wander streets and miss gay section and bed maybe 11:10, latest.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19. 3:50 am dream: Dad was nominated Captain of "Scabbard and Blade," or some militaristic organization, in June of the previous year, and at the dinner THIS year, someone like a combination of Elaine Hyams and Marjorie Dettling from California nominates ME, and I ACCEPT before realizing I'm running against my father! AND they have no one but a Zolnerzak to vote for! MUCH worthless comes up! They come as I'm making up some plan of GOOD word for the organization to say that "85 abstained," so I can see they can still joke about it, but I won. Dad is drinking heavily in a bar, but has left me a gift in the attic; I tell two "Sergeants at Arms" to take him home safely, and climbing a ladder to the roof see that the BUTTER has melted down the walls. Someone comes in to proclaim an emergency, I say I'm about to handle it, get my sock caught in a step nail, and come down saying, "Well, I have to have a pail and soapy water to scrub ANYWAY," and come down while someone with the NAME of Dick Gmerek (of AU?) but with the "gee-gosh" quality of Larry(?) Someone (of IBM's machine room) is on my staff and I remember I have to congratulate THEM on their meeting TOO. Wake at 7 and across to VIPs for Huevos Especial VIPs, which I order as "Huevos Especial" and she chirps "Huevos VIPs?" like a bird. Cheese and ham and eggs and adobo sauce, VERY filling, and out by 9 to get to hotel to complain some MORE, then up to brush teeth and get call down at 9:13, no traffic, and stop to pick up marvelous Miss Schnitzler from Zurich, and we talk of Mexico and India and she PRAISES Ajanta and Ellora and HATED Tahiti (NO native culture, everyone in corrugated tin-roofed huts) and Moorea (NO villages, only BIG EXPENSIVE hotels, beaches, small amount of snorkeling, and NO trails or roads up STEEP hills covered with scraggly BUSHES, not trees. She didn't HATE Fiji, only there two days, people seemed cheerful and men had HUGE chests. Yum. That occupies trip to Tula. Off at 9:55, 8 in minibus, 11:20 out at Tula. At Tula, great shots, decent museum, but I'm THIRSTY and feeling ILL. Shop on road sells PLASTER OF PARIS Atlantides for 150P! Awful arguing when German (Frankfurt) girls don't take guide's beer, he flings it away; my chicken soup is mediocre; he bitches about German talk, saying they're too stupid to speak Spanish, "has worked in LA and NYC for 4 years," says he'll kill me if I get sick. He's been high on beer and Tecate for 4 days for the holidays. Wants to ditch (or fuck---or both) German girls, but we insist tour continues. Santa Cecilia is like a park, lovely house and museum-piece patio and cactus, but total reconstruction of pyramid. Talk to Guatemalans of my visit there. Tenayuca a FIND, and I'm glad I'm rested enough to climb and take pictures. Guide quiets down at end, thank God, but I felt sorry for people who had to put up with my not tipping. Out of car and into hotel. Schedule for day: Into bus at 12:20 and stop for shop till 12:30. To Tepotzotlan at 1:10 and walk QUICKLY through till 2, getting Squirt before, feeling AWFUL. Restaurant La Huerta de la Corilla at 2. Out of ARGUING restaurant at 3:10. Into Santa Cecilia at 3:40, out at 4:05, into Tenayuca at 4:15 and out at 4:35. Into final traffic jam at 4:45, back by 5:45! Take shower after hollering about pants and vouchers, give Viajes Permec phone number to desk guy, reserve city tour tomorrow through Gray Lines, and check my airport transfer Sunday! Maid knocks while I'm naked, I put DO NOT DISTURB sign out at 6:15 and at 7 or 8 she knows ANYWAY and actually delivers my CLEAN pants!!! Put in a call for me at 9 pm and go to BED with a fever, doing a DYNAMITE session and seeming to clear LOTS to it up! Used Gen, Reg, Red, orange, balancing and aligning all the way up to Archangelic and Deva of Mexico City, who REALLY has NEED (she says "9 o'clock" when my watch says 9:07) of more light, even from SMOG-cover point of view. Then ideas begin hitting my percolating brain: (1) The SIGN OF THE CROSS could be a 3-D LIGHTING: hand "father-son" for up-down, "holy ghost" for left-right, and "amen folded hands OUT at end" for front-back! (2) THEN I think of pyramids being BUILT OVER every 52 years, but has anyone figured the TIME FUNCTION of SINKING of these buildings' weights into Lake Texcoco? V(cone) = 1/3 (say) pi r2h, while V(pyramid) = K(?) r2h, where 1/3 pi probably not = K! Sinking depends on V(or P) x K, and it may be with various K's of soils and rock-sinkings, their "sacred ratio derived" as the pyramid VANISHES! Would Museum of Mexico City have studies on this? (Guide somewhere said that pyramids were built on ISLANDS, which still doesn't mean they couldn't sink ANYWAY). (3) is harder to write: I thought of 3-D time-space crosses of light MOVING THROUGH time-dimension for 4th dimension, and thought it SAD that everyone always SAID 4-D was DIFFICULT! If you SAY it's easy it WILL be easy (and about here it crosses my mind that when I say "Magnetic closed, right head load, Dynamic lopsided" and she AGREES, she's not LYING to me, merely verifying what I've actually PRODUCED by Energy Follows Thought!), so why not take a TIME exposure of a skeletal cube MOVING from t1 to t2 and the PICTURE WILL SHOW 3-D, even to MEASURABILITY (taking triangle-laws into consideration, as a=b=c in DRAWING, but it is in the actual CUBE. So that a not-equal b=c not-equal d in the C-D mode; maybe better not to take PHOTO, which reduces 4-D to 2-D again, but letting people OBSERVE IN A ROOM (LIVE gurus, NOT printed pages or TV screens!) STROBE-LIT "instants" of change-of-position-of-cube! GREAT IDEA! Then I wonder, "Well, how many NUMBERS do you need to "describe" reality? I guess x, y, z (current position), xl, yl, zl (next position) for 6-variable gauge (am I using correct terms?) theory, or [many formulas]. IS this what they are? Visualize a "proving computer" that has all the "known laws of nature," which are merely transforms of and SEE what comes from a sort of "Simple Simpson" set of inputs. "LIVE!" could then be rewritten to contain the ACTUAL equations: Reality=(somehow) But what if these ACTUALLY FIT into Einstein's General Relativity and Special Relativity, Milne's Gravitation Wave theory, Gauge-invariant theory, electromagnetic theories, long-distance and short-distance nuclear systems of energies, and LINKED THEM INTO ONE. "OK, all fit" rather than coming up with a DIFFERENT set of EQUATIONS they CONTAINED (isn't that what a Unified Field Theory has to do? But not in a TRIVIAL Reality=Reality1+Reality2+...or Reality=Reality1.Reality2..... but a real set of Reality is-identical-to (K1Reality1) (K2Reality2)...where Km's are provable ratios (dimensionless numbers) that OCCUR in nature: Curvature of space, Wheeler's dimensionless congeries of G, k, lambda, mu, and Einstein's Cosmological Constant. The "proving computer" could POSTULATE values for Km's until everything FIT, and if the k's proved DEMONSTRABLY EXISTENT, THIS would be the Unified Field Theory! What a session for heat-popping brains, ending at 9:30, at which point I CHECKED that pants ARE OK, and wrote THIS and decided I'm STILL feeling too "frail" to venture out tonight. Let's sleep and see if the morrow brings health or ail. AND assimilate all this great stuff from my FIRST session in DAYS---is THAT what, at bottom, my "sickness" was about? Tomorrow's energy will tell!
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20. Up at 7 and feel pretty good! Pants rip at breakfast, so I change. 8:53 am: still no vouchers! Get angry with desk clerk, he says I have to handle it. Get Mr. Rafael Sanchez on phone and HE says he'll make out vouchers---my people aren't working today! AND if vouchers don't get there today, he'll be in the office tomorrow (says the desk clerk: so he can talk to the hotel manager and let me go. Sanchez: "Are you going to be in the hotel today?" "No, I'm going on a tour." "With our company?" "No." "No?" "No." Why should I go with your company when your company charges more and gives less---that I don't tell him. Though I have NO bowel movement since 8 am yesterday, and NO Lomotil (and I could have been ill from Lomotil (never HAD it before), height (it FELT like it, but after FOUR days in MC?), lack of salt (could be, in my red sweater I sweat a lot and add NO salt to my food, though my impression is that it's pretty salted), or some OTHER bug that gave me a fever last night---or even a cold or touch of flu or virus! Then THIS morning I have diarrhea, take two Lomotil at 7 and ONE at 9, just to be sure, and now I'll see what happens TODAY! I feel I WILL be back to MC (though maybe it's the AZTEC heaviness that hit me yesterday!), and will THOROUGHLY see the Anthropology Museum, and the parks, and the Metro, and dance, and the restaurants and the other museums. Touch of US: southern-accented tourists behind me in Mom-type talk: "Isn't that the ugliest THANG!" "Look, they got Lacoste here, chemise Lacoste." "That guy really went crazy on THAT (building) design." "That sweater looks just like a blanket." "I didn't bring my wool pants, I didn't think it'd be so cold." So today's a COMPLETE bus and even a john in the back. Is the guy's name REALLY Mr. Lobo? MOSTLY foreign tourists: Guatemala, Spain, Canada, Japan. Guy outside keeps holding up sweaters when I'm just looking at a tall guy in the office, who walks out without coming to the bus, sadly. Now I see ANOTHER Gray Line ploy (beside quoting in dollars and giving FEW pesos in change or changing MANY pesos in change at the START; including meals and shops for more commissions; yesterday FORGETTING Tlaltelolco, thank goodness I SAW it; NOT coming back from Puebla two ways), saying they leave on tours 9 am and 10 am to be able to pick up people at 8:45, like me, but not leave until 10! Figured last night I did 12 pyramids in 11 days: Palenque, La Venta, Monte Alban, Mitla, Lambityeco, Dainzu, Yagul, Cholula, Teotihuacan, Tula, Santa Cecilia, and Tenayuca. Got picked up at 9:05 am. 9:30 am, it's 45 F, 7 C, COLD. HE says 18 million people in 600 square miles, not 15 million in 700 square miles! Guides Ernesto, Juan, X, Porfirio. Four orders of monks: Franciscans, Angustinians, Dominicans, Jesuits, here. 9:45 left off at Zocolo, pictures of temple work area, to OLD National Museum to 10:03, for Africa, URSS, which is closed, HISTORY of museum, old pictures of OLD museum before Anthropological Museum. Museum of the City of Mexico is GREAT: Prehistory, volcano Ixtle that covered Cuicuilco, prehistory of lake civilizations, Aztec temples on ISLANDS under ALL current Cathedral and Zocolo and environs, and MODERN view of MID-country (great) and of city---poor because houses really too SMALL, not the impact of the FABULOUS NYC exhibit in the NYC building at the World's Fair. Leave the Zocolo at 10:45 after meeting tour in Cathedral, having arrived at that stop at 9:48, and having enough time to return to the Government Building to buy the Rivera mural book that the girl from the states sitting across from me recommended. To government market at 11 and buy three necklaces for Mom, Rita, and Helen, and two eggs for Mom and me; out at 12:04. "It's supposed to be a democracy, but it's always one party: PRI." Out of bus AT Museum at 12:20, getting short of BREATH again! INSIDE museum at 12:25. ROUND was Temple of Cuicuilco and observatory under the Zocalo. OUT of museum at 1:25, not THAT bad a time, seeing many OTHER things while he droned on before a few selected items. When others shopped, I return to see a few more rooms, but don't even TOUCH upstairs and outside. Buy book for 220P. To Bazaar Sabado at 1:55. He says "Look at painting." (Girl later said he DID mention the Bazaar on the bus, but I didn't hear him.) First there's a square of paintings, mostly junk, then the shop-filled Bazaar Sabado with restaurant in center and some GREAT expensive jewelry and craftworks inside, THEN the triangular "Peasant plaza" with painted leather, like India, play money, tiny copper utensils, and most LOVELY shells and precious and semi-precious stones. GREAT deluge of Mexicana in other twenty minutes, but returns at 2:20. Stop for lunch at 2:30, Shirley's looks pretty awful, so I follow guide and SURPRISE! It's the Moana Loa! I order Chinese soup: "For 2," says the waiter. "OK." "Thirty minutes." "OK." He frowns. It's 2:40. He's back in 15 minutes: "It's 45 minutes." "OK." "Mucho trabajo." AH! In a few minutes a manager comes over: "We don't have it." "Why?" Disgusted look. So I have rolls and butter and a beer for 22P for lunch. So much for the incredible (so they DO have a 30-foot waterfall, bamboo groves, a Chinese room, much hanging straw lamps and local color restaurant on the front of Gray Lines' brochure). Fits. Table dislikes me. Tough. To bus at 3:50, could have had it if it took an HOUR! "Chinese Chafing Pot, succulent broth in which you simmer your own tasty tidbits of beef, breast of chicken, shrimp, sea conch, and Chinese vegetables," I copy as I leave. 100P, not cheap at $4.40, but not for Gray Lines lunch, even if I'm not on the meal plan! Then to Des Angeles section, now Pedregal, NOT that elegant for the most part. Not CLOSE enough to the University of Mexico mural for a good picture. Guide says 100,000 people stadium BUILT in a crater. Rivera mural on it RIGHT under the sun, picture impossible. 4:15 NOW. Pass POLISH gift to the Olympics on Friendship Boulevard: scattered metal CONES. Olympic Village now condominiums. ROUND Cuicuilco pyramid, just passing there. Azteca Soccer Stadium: 110,000! Tlaloc came from Tlaxcolo to Archeological Museum. Industrial area, still crowded, then farmland. "What's THAT?" "A fountain." Great. NO welfare in Mexico: no social security, no unemployment benefits, but there ARE schools and SOME free health services. Xochimilco stone canals built by HAND. SUNDAY is best day to see them. "Five pesos is the minimum tip in Mexico." LOTS of ball fields HERE, too, as well as in city. Not a live flower in all of Xochimilco's boats; arrived and ON boat at 4:40. Canals only 4-5 feet deep. Tourists (glares) and salesmen (desperate) would ruin it for ANYONE, even if there WERE any flowers. Off at 5:15. At entrance, HEDGES nicely formed over benches. All in all, a fairly tired, sad half-hour. Sun is almost yellow TAN through dusty dusk. Twenty-four on bus, ALL in ONE boat with normal capacity 16-18. Kids washing windows, girls selling bagged PALM rootlings. SADDEST little Xmas tree with droopy balloons, scrawny branches, and barest touches of the cheapest glitter---on a possibly dead leafless tree in a dusty mud-hut yard with lots of kids running around. Friendship Boulevard (unannounced by guide) displays metal sculptures donated by Israel (blue and yellow), Holland, Australia, Spain, Poland, Uruguay, Japan, Czechoslovakia, and US, with Mexico's entry first in the city-side parade. My room is 420/day, or 462P with tax, PRECISELY $20/day, or $100 for which I paid $168 (actually $163) or so??? Off the bus at 6 pm, the vouchers have finally ARRIVED, and I get up to wash my face and NOT change my shoes and put on jacket and go down to catch the free Espresso Reforma to Auditorio for the Amusement Park and then dinner at Del Lago, ending my five days in Mexico City with a splash and looking forward to a BIT more relaxed sightseeing in Merida tomorrow! (START OF BOOK 2) On bus at 6:30, to Auditorio by 6:45. IN park at 7:05. Entrance 3P, Montana Russe 12P, Wild Mouse 6P, and the planes are 6P (or two tickets, since each ride has tickets only, the roller coaster SEPARATE from all the rest), and there are the Octopus, Paratrooper, Pile Driver, Hammer, Little Planes, self-swinger-up (closed), 2 Ferris wheels, dodgem, tilt-a-whirl, I'm THROUGH funhouse for 6P, double Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, Roundup (the kind that goes around then on end with people standing), whirling cups, and some kiddie rides too. Two roller coasters SOMETIMES go, says doll of a rider with me in the second car for my "primero." Then I go on a SECOND time, waiting in the cold for it to fill up, and that ride is from 8:02:22 to 8:05:22 and THAT is the LAST one, office is CLOSED! (El Roble Restaurant was the one I ate in Wednesday evening.) Cepa Urbino was 110P, but the waiter recommends another kind. Las Perlas was Rivoli's wine? Schedule: out of restaurant at 9:35, to hotel 10:35, bed at 10:50, no shit! But wake at 12:45 pm to do so! Take two more Lomotil then and two more at 9:15 am---let's GET it. Amusement park fun (but cold) and I can't get over it's closing down the roller coaster at 8:05 pm! Restaurant del Lago is easily reached, but as I enter door, two car attendants start shouting something I can't understand. "Esto cerrado?" I venture. "No---", but they can't think how to give their message in English, so they wave me in. "Esto cerrado?" I ask the startled young maitre d'. "No," he fumbles, "but they're cleaning for a party, there are no tables until 10." "Oh." "And do you have a reservation?" "No." "Oh, then there are no tables at all." "Oh." We stand. "Could I SEE the restaurant?" "Would you like to go to---" He hesitates, "the bar?" "Yes." So he's glad to show me to a level ABOVE a rehearsing combo---the place is REALLY grand, but there's only one single lady in the place. I sit. "Would you like---?" he seems not to know the word for tidbits or appetizers or freebies, and sends a barman who asks what I want to drink. "Daiquiri." THEN the maitre d' comes and asks "Would you like to eat?" "Yes." I go into the WHOLE EMPTY RESTAURANT, like into the most elegant 5-floored private dining room in the world, with billowy fountains spraying across my view. GREAT cream avocado, El Uva wine mediocre for 95P, spinach extraordinary, chicken Moctezuma with "black corn cob mushrooms tasty, and place CERTAINLY surpasses Rivoli and would join lists of GREATS until I ask for Mangos Flambé with Tequila and though there WERE some marked "Two persons" and this NOT, for 75P, he says "Two persons only." I swallow and get mango mousse, nice but NOT perfection in a dish OR restaurant. Leave at 9:35. Walk back to bus stop, enjoying last of Mexico City this trip, and get in at 10:35 and bed.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 21. Wake at 6 and again at 7, up at 7:15 to start packing, get call at 7:30, shower, eat 8:35-9:05, lousy scrambled eggs but good fruit again. Check out with SMALL fuss, but he subtracts 480P per day, not 462, and gets 285.40P balance! Back to room and brush teeth and zipper on bag BREAKS! It'll just have to last. Write some and fellow who met me at airport arrives at 9:20 and we go to Prado Hotel to find they're leaving tomorrow. To airport at 10, almost no traffic. Window seat first left and up to cool lounge to read found newspaper ("Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band" is here---let's hope it's in Merida!) Backs of hands very dry and pebbled-looking even WITH suntan lotion. Up to date at 10:30 am, still lots of time before flight. Number notebook pages and read "Profiles of the Future." At 10 they say flight is delayed till noon. At 11:40 they say it's delayed till 1:45. But it turns out to have been a DIFFERENT flight delayed till 1:45. WE board at noon, finally move at 12:45 and take off at 12:52, MORE nervous for INTERNAL flight than usual, DRAT! Land at 2:07 after bumpy cloudy flight and meager lunch. SWERVE on runway at landing, but OK. Chat with the Germans sitting behind me (who'd been the ones who stayed in Teotihuacan while we went to have dinner) as we exit, and I hear them talking about places to say, mentioning "Casa Bowen." I tell of Posada Toledo and information person says things are pretty full for Christmas, but Posada Toledo says it has, for ONE night only, a single for 380P and a double for 420P. Casa Bowen says they have rooms, but person has to return to say how much. So we three get on taxi for 100P (I pay 40) and drive through rather depressing town to see all streets NUMBERED, without any reference to N, S, E, or W! Guy tells us there ARE no rooms! "Un muchacho" talked on the phone! We stare, guy tried to phone Toledo but gets nothing, yet I keep hearing something BUZZ when he presses lighted button, and find he's using INTERIOR line, not EXTERIOR! Yes, they still have rooms. I get out to try for cab, out comes SF people: tell me how streets run (even numbers grow from north to south, odd numbers grow from west to east!). There are two CHEAPER than Toledo hotels around corner, guy meets me halfway saying Posada des Angeles has rooms, I announce my single, and for 275P get a DANK room in the driveway, with air conditioner. It's very loud; I unpack, read some about city, and want to get out when he knocks at 4:30: "Let's eat at 6." "I'll meet you in park." I get sketchy map of town, walk noisy streets to Calle 60 (N-S street 3 blocks east of our Calle 66), places still open, pricing blue jeans at 350-400P, into Cathedral, astonishingly BARE with service going on so I'm not inside; north to squares, movies, hotels, restaurants, Aeromexico office, and back to park to sit watching strollers, SEXY Mexican couple with wedding rings, some podgy sexy tourists, and DWARFS and mini-armed people, too, all listening to saccharine Natividad carols piped through angels on the sides of the fountain while tree inanely blinks on and off. Cooling off and LOTS of mosquitoes. They arrive at 6:10, listen, look for restaurant, and on way to Los Almendros pass "Thief of Baghdad," which I praise. Shorts at 7:05. Decide to go. I stand on line with 20P tickets, she brings me sandwiches, he comes in with theirs and two sodas. Shorts are FLASHY ads for Dodge and jeans and tires and trucks and LONG coming attractions for "Nosferatu," "Day on Fire" and 4-5 others, including "Mario Marini, Cantinflas" movie. People talking, kids crying, floor a TOTAL mess. TOB starts 7:45, AWFUL print, LOUSY sound, jerky, scratched, yet SOME magic remains. Out at 9:15, I want more food, search zocolo for no beer, too much noise, then south, then west, then back north to next to show for three "prohibido" beers and NO sweetbreads, so omelet with shrimp for 50P and they tell of their trip: seven days in Ladakh with a guide from Lei, funerals and festivals in Bali, smiling with the Pingala of a long-house "the next river up" in Sarawak, talking to Sankaracharya in a village outside Madras, getting adopted by a monk in Rishikesh, getting invited to a nontourist island off Fiji, trying to get to the Marquesas but not hitting the boat right. Now in 16th of 18 months around world; I tell them of Indian mission in Borneo, our shared places in Sri Lanka, my trip through India, and they stress the higher consciousness aspects. We leave as place closes at 11:30 and talk home till 11:45, agreeing to meet in Zocalo at 6 tomorrow. They have errands, are going to Cozumel and work WEST through Yucatan, Villahermosa, and Oaxaca. They loved Sankaracharya: tongue hung out as they told him about Berlin, he was so open; he said India wasn't ripe for holiness; the purpose of his life was to be an example to others, and he HATED all the adulation his followers thrust on him. I read few things before damp bed at 12:10 pm.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 22. Wake at 7 and listen to loud noises and feel cool damp of place, surely unlike MC, and up at 7:45 to debate giving them the Intro, and finally at 8 ask for their room number, be told 15, no sounds inside, debate, look over rear balcony, then door opens, I knock, it's not THEM. Back to check BOOK for Mullers in 20 (Hans-Jorg and Christal), get them OUT of bed, though they said it was so loud in back they couldn't sleep. I should have revved up more, they made LITTLE comment about intro, took it in. I left at 8:25. Papers VERY damp being put away. Up NOISY streets to NOISY "gay" Restaurant Express for FULL tables and Huevos Motulenos which turn out to be source of Huevos VIPs: cheese and onions on chipped ham on sauce on tortillas on fried eggs on tortilla on beans. Grapefruit juice has no tang. Lots of bread and butter and two cups of tea for 55+P, but place was SO noisy with busses and vispas and local people and beggars that I DON'T want to go back. Eat 9:30-10:30, to Aeromexico to 11 to GET Merida-Acapulco-NYC 7 am - 9:30 pm on January 8. SHE can't give $20 back, but I should TRY in NYC. NO Aeromexico flight to NYC EXCEPT via MC. Ask Tourismo for bank, down to find LONG line, read, listen to Australian-German quartet who'd met in Yellowstone and Yosemite and gotten camera taken in Mission Bay Campground in San Diego for which they got instant insurance payment, and out at 11:50. Over to market for deodorant, NOT 36-slide film for 297P, Cristal soda for 4P, and NO long-sleeved shirts in discount places. Try local place for lunch but flies and lettuce on EVERYTHING convince me to leave after a 5P orange, getting to Casa (moved OUT on my way north) at 1:15 and being told my room is 20 minutes. Finish this at 2! ALSO went to PO for 30 $2.50 US stamps and 10 $5.50 Europe stamps, mailing 8 cards. Read more, get room 9 at END of hall at 2:30, put everything away, wash socks and shorts and shirt and hang out to dry as I saw bearded guy do, then ask if I can join couple that told me (1) Tour Merida/Labna/Sayil/Kabah/Uxmal by bus, (2) Delores Alba for Chichen Itza Delores Alba, (3) This is a great place. Out at 5 to Alba, no room until 12/28. OK. LOVELY-eyed guy! 200P deposit. Buy jeans for 495P and dash down to bus station, figuring to be late to Mullers, and guy says "I bought two to Uxmal, you want one?" "YUP!" LAST SEAT, TOO! Out at 5:50, dash to hotel to change to longies (wore SHORTS all day, OK) on both arms and legs, get to Zocalo at 6:10, no music, no cuties, Mullers along at 6:15, all hungry, someone told them 67 for Alfredo's, not 57, so we go there, have GOOD 220P Yucatecan of GOOD broiled snapper, mediocre lime-chicken soup, good beer, interesting gift shop, and CAT held by next table. Talk of Shankaracharya and NEW body Babaji and jabber to 9:30 in restaurant, then down to Santa Lucia park to talk to 11:30 of Actualism and Amy and Russell, and she calls ME a teacher for HIM. Invite them back to copy down Cozumel hotels, hug "Sister" goodbye, bed at 12:10!
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23. Jolt up at 7:15, dash out to good ham and cheese and cafe con leche for 25 including tip next door, and to bus station at 7:55. 8:01: onto last seat at 8:02, which was bought at 1:30 pm yesterday! First hill encountered an hour out. LOVELY morning glories, thatched roofs, tumbledown villages, scrubby roadsides, though little traffic. Vultures in trees. All distant hills resemble pyramids. Six people standing on bus from Muna. 9:25 into Kabah, saw only half the site, 10P ticket, 9:50 out, and I decide to see them all AGAIN. Labna 10:05, ANOTHER biggie, out of grounds 10:35, 10P, bus leaves 10:04. 10:15 into Xlapak, NO ticket! Centering find as (?) stones inside. Lovely carvings. Buy his LAST roll of 135-36 color transparencies, good till 1982, for 100P---he's GOT to have made a mistake, but I'm not complaining! Out at 10:55, loading film, into Sayil at 11:05. At Sayil 20 slides are 160P! Hot, tired, and Sayil is LARGE! Out at 11:38. Into Uxmal exactly at 12 noon. GREAT place, bus fills up with standees at 1:35, really exhausting trip---I'll do it again. Pass HOTZUC, OXCUM, AND ITZINCAB! Kabah STARTLES with frieze, and not even across ROAD. Buy 100P book. See MOST of Labna but not FRINGES. Xlapak OK, but Sayil has NEAT trails I want to follow! Uxmal CAN be done in 3 hours, but almost Tikal-beautiful! Not DESERT or SCRUB-COUNTRY at all! LUSH! Two sodas for 8P each, refreshing, and talk to Mexican from Sacramento on the way back, eyeing LOVELY gray eyes of BLOND Mexican with NICE body. In at 2:30, buy ticket for tomorrow, #31. Out along to try museum, not TRANSFERRED yet. To Centenario Park through SLUMS, good felines, shitting hippo papa and cute cage-under baby, daddy with HARD-ON for a bit! Monkeys with schlongs or hemorrhoids, since mammas so scrawny BABIES have them TOO. Out at 5:30. Tourismo CLOSED, along 59th to Pok-chuc, where I have the following conversation: "Montejo, este negro?" "Es como negro." "OK, Montejo negro." It's pale. Restaurant Cantameyec for Pok-chuc. When the lights go out over a 10-block-square section of town for about 10 minutes, just as I'm finishing up, THREE people ask if I need HELP as I draw out my notebook to write down notes. Lights go out at 6:15 and it's pitch dark inside. Walk back through ELEGANT 57th Street, check movies, in at 6:45 for 6:50 "Los Ninos de Brazil" and it's ON already, so I get my 20P back and the others are no good, so at 7 I sit in PARK and watch NOT-cruisy Expresso and GANGS in park, ONE guy fabulous in bib-jeans and GOOD chest, another bigger and fleshier, but nice, and then CUTE kid from "Eugene, the Olympic tryouts? Oregon" sits and talks about being horny for his girl, liking pyramids, here at Caribe with mother. We part at 10:15, I back to chattering Germans on MY floor and TV below, so SHOWER warmly and write this comfortably naked till 11:10, hair dry enough to bed with, I guess. First shower since SATURDAY.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24. Wake at 6:45, shit, breakfast at 7:20, and bus is DOUBLE-booked! Sit next to Ken from Edmonton, his wife across the aisle. Into Kabah at 9:32, out at 9:58. Into Sayil 10:05. LEFT track to SMALL ruins, NO path as shown on map. "Temple 2" turns out to be "new-mound" position, leading back to parking lot past OTHER "Tops of rooms exposed" that are probably "newly opened mounds." Film is now 170P, not 160P for 20, and soda is ALMOST 10P before I HOLLER and it goes back down to 8! "Es tres pesos por boteille, 11 pesos con boteille." Out of Sayil at 10:37. Into Labna 10:45. I'd SEEN most but for BACKS of arch and FRONT of Palace from distance. Lots of shirtless numbers. Out at 11:15 after LOTS of horn blowing. Into Xlapak 11:20, wander woods for MORE piles of stone, out at 11:29. HOTTER than yesterday! Into Uxmal at 12 exact again. Lots of ERRORS and IMAGINATION on map. BEAUTIFUL clouds and sky and LOVELY shirtless ones from Germany on Cemetery temple. More standees on at 1:32. Into Merida at 2:45 and stand in line for first class to Chichen Itza on 28th. Uxmal cleaned up: walk along "San Simeon Road" and met two English from Muna who say there IS no arch, map is wrong, and THEY never found temples. In for 15P and go to left and FIND clearing of cockheads, SEE something to left with no path going to it, and circle around behind South Pyramid to find nothing BEHIND Centipedes. To EDGE of Arches for WEST group and meet a PRECIPICE of impossibility. Down old path to crossroads at ball court and there's a GOOD path to CEMETERY, but only a grassy, hot, stone-stumbling (unless these stones I'm STEPPING on are the "stelae" and the little pockets off to the side that I searched STILL hide treasures you HAVE to pay the GUIDES to show you) maze of paths interconnecting. Get almost back to Nunnery Quadrangle and turn BACK same way and climb temple to take pictures and change film, find that the Germans found nothing more, and climb pyramid again before returning for two 8P drinks and bus at 1:30. Ken sleeps and standees don't even have the energy to glare at the sleepers. Merida DOES start at Calle 100, but lowest seems to be Calle 89 on E-W. So MANY English-speaking tourists and so LITTLE English help. Guy in front of me dingles a little bell in his right pocket nervously. A sign? Ticket #16 by 3:15, shower and out in shorts at 3:45. Into FABULOUS museum at 4:15: places MARKED include Loltun, Dzibilchaltun, Izamal, Chutes (?), Coba, Tulum, and Tzibanche near Chetumal provided exhibits. EXTREME cranial deformations! Five periods of Venus equal 8 solar years: 584x5=365x8=2920 days. Solar year = 5x73 days; Venus year = 8x73 days, and 13x73 daysx20=18980 days = 52 years. This is the grand cycle of new fire. RELIGIOUS calendar of 260 days (20 names x 13 numbers) CIVIL calendar of 365 days (18 months of 20 days + 5 extra days). THESE two form a cycle of 52 years. Took picture, THEN found it was the museum! Grand pieces and six GREAT books for 150P. Out at 5:45, leg-weary, and search for lunch place and find elegant Hotel Montejo Palace for a mini-Palace pizza for 40P and Negro at 25P and when he charges 45P (and insists on it until I insist on the MENU) for the pizza, I leave 1P tip for grand total of 73P for LUNCH from 5:45-6:20. Curve UP Paeso Montejo at 27 (10 blocks!) and curve ELEGANT street to 21 and 60, GRAND! Neatly theatrically lighted. Two sisters chatting with a valet in a PALACE on that corner! South of 33, Avenida Cupules, Calle 60 LOWERS in class. A few TRUE palaces around Calle 35-37, then JUNK. Back at 7:45, EXHAUSTED and COOL and SWEATY. Read "Palenque," "Uxmal," and "Teotihuacan" until 9:50, then decide to eat. But it's too LATE: either Almendros has moved or it's CLOSED. Hotel Caribe won't serve me at 10:25, and finally I end at Comida Yucateca on Zocolo, trying Cochinita Pibil: onions and fatty sauce and pork, TASTY but fat, and NO dark beer so I have two manzanitas, and 84 (but it was 70!) and 16 equals 100 and I leave him 8.8P tip. AGAIN back to hotel, saying "Buenos Noches" to boy wheeling bicycle home, and place is STILL up and about at 11:20. Sounds like explosions are building, so I read until 11:55, then dress and go OUT again. How silly of me to have thought the Mexicans would do it SYSTEMATICALLY. Ken and his wife and friend WENT to Almendros and thought the food so-so and the portions small---and were looking for me to join them. Other couple tell about GOOD fire-filled paper balloons shooting up "on the first day of Christmas" 12 days ago. Watch distant fireworks (drowned by still-busy cars) and HEAR nearer ones till 12:15, then get to bed 12:20.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25. Wake at 9:15, jerk off, leave for Mayapan at 10:15. Breakfast of Huevos con Longanita turns out to be sausage, and cafe con leche; both are 60P, so I leave no tip. Couple from bus station say festival is at midnight TONIGHT. To bus station at 11:07 and get the 11:08 to Mayapan Ruinas, standing and squatting in front till 12:08, and wander in for 3P, cute kids and a turkey with 15 chicks, and take snap of root-embellished arch and tell an interloper with loud radio (as on bus) "Esta HORRIBLE" and he STOPS! Into Cenote-cave, eerie with fading flashlight and BATS squaking past, about 4-5 inches in wingspan in glimpses. Later about SIX bats with 6" wingspans fly about, rhythmically, tempting me to try photo, but I don't. DO get STUNG, by a WASP, the girl suggests. Two girls on Castillo, take picture, they come down. "Will it rain?" "No." It DOES, at 1:08-1:18! LOVELY rest atop pyramid after: quiet, birds calling, trees dripping, cocks crowing, wind moist and gentle, clouds moving VERY slowly, sun's rays striking dramatically here and there, only ROAD to south, hill a bit to the right (a hill like THIS I'm on?), and with binoculars lots of WINDMILLS and POWER poles. But why WOULDN'T Indians want a MIRADOR over the tops of the trees, if only to see the clouds and stars? AND the sounds of Merida-bound buses (hourly) at 1:35, AND a few minutes before 2. GIRL says there MUST be a bus to Uxmal Sound and Light, and SHE is the only one to whom I wish "Feliz Natividad." Coming down I find it is, really, JUST above tree level: six feet BELOW top, parts of horizon are obscured by TALLEST trees! Tikal, however, DID overbuild! Three-foot snake escaped along front of temple ABOUT as fast as I could TROT! Map of Mayapan on p. 27. Great peaceful feeling being there alone. Follow trails to "Juan's farm," where I find an inverted bowl with a neat script "Juan" on it, and fantasize being thrown back in time with the KNOWLEDGE of how to get BACK. Find a cenote with disused well apparatus, dry, and dry corn stalks but LARGE gourds---wild or cultivated? Back along trail I find that I'd MISSED a narrow but deep cenote that rather tempts me to attempts to descend, but it's too steep. Back, continuing to sketch and take pictures, the chest-sting not troubling me, but the slog through the forest after the rain left my boots SOPPING. Figure to catch the 3:35 bus, and get out at 3:10 and have to wait for the 4 pm. Ask for a strawberry, medium cold, and Mama offers me a bowl of chicken soup! Have a few tacos and when I have salt she asks "When do you use salt?" and I tell about sweating and being over-thirsty. Have a second soda, brother calls me "Robert," to my surprise, until she reminds me that I signed the book. She brings out dictionary and tells me about the walls and the "millions" (I hope she meant "thousands") of ruins in "ramparts of Mayapan." Time flows nicely till 3:50, out to road, and she tells how a younger sister said she'd marry ANOTHER tourist from the USA. We wait for bus on DESERTED street. It comes at 4:05, she gets off at next town, saying midnight feast TONIGHT is at HOME, only in public on New Years. I'm in back seat, everyone snoozing, not much happening outside but a flock of vultures rising off raw purplish meat by the roadside, and I get in to find this is NOT the station for Dzibilchaltun. Stop at the one at 62nd and THAT'S it, at 7 am. Back to hotel and EAT at 62x65, huevos salcicitos is VIENNA sausage, and manzana for 7 pm lunch, and take off wet boots and at 7:15 start on ten postcards, finishing at 8:15. Showered first, to let hair dry, and read some and get out at 8:45 to Faison y Venado for one of the MOST EMBARRASSING shows EVER. MC minces worse than a caricature of Art Ostrin doing "Cabaret," the male dancers are VERY aware of their bodies and the lead one is FAT. They're Mayas, doing simple stub-toe, cross-foot, hop dancing, except when they do Ruth St. Denis up-turned hands and do a Dervish spin. There's some foul-up on music, the audience is supposed to be at X and I'm at Y, so when they KILL her I have to avoid a priestess to see the knife plunge into the armpit. Almost NO applause, almost no AUDIENCE: Six drunk males, four embarrassed tourists, two I don't know what, and two OTHER tourist couples and another single and a husband (maybe of the new girl who was plump, bored, and unrehearsed, always peeking around to see what everyone else was doing) and two kids who blew whistles, banged on a toy piano, and crawled under my table and climbed over gates. AWFUL. Then they did "social" dance in huipilis and heeled sandals for BOTH sexes and leering looks at awful Spanish jokes. More music foul-up, simple cross-foot dancing (oh, FORGOT the finger-and-toe circles with FIRE by the stove-pipe-hatted fire fatty), then they teach the AUDIENCE. I had to refuse TWICE. Ordered Sidra Pina, thinking to get pineapple cider, but get a soft drink served over ICE. Drink it, and it's poor. Venado enterraneo is buried as long as I was, sourish slivers with French bread as tasteless as Wonder Bread and carrot slices on lettuce. 110+12+12+60 cover charge = 192+20 tip and I leave at 10:20 (show started at 9:20) GASPING at awfulness. Sore-footed back to hotel with LOTS of families settling down to family dinner on roadside houses. Bed 11:10.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 26. Wake at 6:15 and decide it's a sign I should go to Dzibilchaltun. Dress and out at 6:30 and to bus station expecting restaurant, but only across the street to a clean place for a ham and cheese on SQUARE thin-sliced bread and a glass of pulpy watery orange juice for 32P. Over to station at 6:50 to find it's 7:15. Debate more juice but decide "No" after seeing the sloppy shop. Sit and stare at passengers and find Dzibilchaltun bus is labeled Klabelach, or some such. Get window seat, leave at 7:20, fill up with people on way out, past ENORMOUS Coremex plant, and dropped off at gate at 8. Pay first 5P of the day noting museum and sodas and restrooms for couple from hotel, and past chapel to LOVELY cenote, quickly invaded by bathing couples, and follow ONE path thinking it's south and NEXT one turns out OK. 9:50: I find myself OFTEN urinating (or coming) at END of trails. Leaving outriders of ME? Rocks upon rocks upon ROCKS around Dzibilchaltun! Just a MOMENT of "God, I'm lost---got to keep calm, path back is here SOMEWHERE" is QUITE enough in those forests. NOT the pampas or desert I'd THOUGHT they'd be! INCREDIBLE parallel between gobble-gobble of turkeys in heat and the INCESSANT rattle of MEXICANS! Kids singing and clapping in Temple of Seven Dolls (what if I'd had a chance to watch an AUTHENTIC Maya festival?), and kids shout down "Amigo, amigo" as I vanish into the woods---and then they leave---behind---QUIET! Keep notes in GOOD guidebook, stele reproduction in PIECES below stairway, and explore Seven Dolls, ones between, the far standing temple for a 7" lizard, and lots of shouting people back at cenote. Guy looks at me: "Estados Unidos?" "Yep" "Brooklyn?" I stare. "Why?" "Jehovah's Witnesses!" More pictures, quick look at poor museum (except for National Geographic pix of finds in the 55 meter and then ONWARD cenote) and good stele, then out to JUST get ride: Great trip back: JUST leaving gate and couple from Louisiana pull up and pick me up. They're looking for Periferico for Chichen. I get off when they seem to find it, walk a bit and decide it's too FAR from Calle 5/35 and stick out my thumb for SECOND car to take me to Paseo Montejo bank and ONE ahead in line for $250 for 5800P! Walk to Bonny Burger for Super Bonny for 30P and Malteada Fresa for 14P, after 32P breakfast at 6:45, now 12:45, PERFECT! Now to tackle Uxmal Sound and Light! HAS to be tonight IN CASE I get stuck, since I have to be back Saturday night to leave Sunday! Content from lunch, pay deposit at Hotel Merida for 8 pm dinner and show tomorrow (MUST be better for 250P!), and back to hotel to take off boots and REST for about an hour, then dress and get BACK to bus station at 2:45 for NO line to second class Uxmal, 27P without question (not like yesterday when they refused tourist couple, insisting they pay for first-class ticket), but seat 37 FULL, and I go to back and sit on STEP between SQUALLING three kids on right with mama and over-solicitous grandma on other side and a line of 8-9 kids in back and an AWFUL greaser who's trying to impress the wife of a dreadful sandy-haired English-speaking gruff German by sticking his finger into a hole in the upholstery. Bus fills fuller, but my seat saves me. Push forward when I see the sign for Mision Uxmal, into Uxmal III at 4:30 and get to ticket office to think he says it closes at 6 but it closes at 5, but I get my chance to see Temple 1 under Temple of Magicians AND the phallic images on two sides of the Nunnery Quadrangle. Sunset pictures until 5:15, then walk to Hacienda Uxmal to find that singles START at 990+10%! Walk out and try Villas Archeologicas and they're full at 500P for singles. Look down road and Mision is TOO far. Back on steps to write to 6:45, and Spanish version is just SWAMPED with people 4-5 deep ALL along side of Quadrangle. HUNDREDS! At least 5 busses from town. Great colors, music, drama: Chac, Chac, Chac, rain, crickets, war, moaning. Over at 7:45, dash down first for dinner at Villas, rather mediocre: Juliana soup a beef-carrot broth, cutlet tiny but tasty with "pure mousseline" a scoop of mashed potatoes and "cor de Majo de ajo" (garlic) CELERY to me. Pay 222P and out without tea (Copa de la Villa is a cookie atop good chocolate sauce over ice cream over fruit OVER a coffee syrup!) at 8:40, and almost NO ONE at line but trio from Flushing who are unfortunately staying at the Hacienda tonight. In and talk to two trailer owners, then enjoy show a SECOND time, taking even MORE pictures. Out quick at 9:40 and hopefully hitchhike but bus and minibus and cars ALL pass by, lousy nearby Mexican spitting, and finally at 10:20 I capitulate and get 750P (+75P tax) room at Posada Uxmal, get in to shower and turn on fan while writing this to drown out chatter of giggly American girl and husband (?) and AWFUL German GABBLING away, and AWFUL rushes from street CONSTANTLY---my window must be RIGHT there! Bed at 11:10, pleased with deluxe hotel for a change (I HAVE to be) and DISGUSTED with PEOPLE for not picking me up!
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27. Wake at 6:45 to cars blasting past RIGHT outside and pipes humming: piss, decide to get dressed, and out at 6:50 am. Why not? Lovely humps of trees and hills with morning mist in valleys and long pointy shadows from low sun. Climb Temple of Magician and look at TOP again, then take pictures, and over to Germans and look at Chac-mool and few tourists. Out at 7:30, paying my 15P (for my FOURTH payment) he didn't have change for at 7 am, though he insisted I spread out my money. Back to Hacienda and pay 825P bill and have LOVELY breakfast of BEST and LARGEST fruit (whole banana, half-slice thick pineapple, three quarter-melons) and tasty eggs ranchero next to family of five from Pennsylvania. Pay 114P for all, out at 8:30 to wait for "8:30-9 am" bus. Chat with couple from last night, guy from Juarez who I'll meet in Hotel Caribe at 7:30 to look at possibility of car in Chetumal, and couple born in Bihar, India, and HE doesn't know names of temples west of Sravanabelgola (later I note them as being Belur and Halebid). Hitchhike fruitlessly---those stopping near SAY so, others pass by, full or snobby. FEW cars, actually. Vultures cruising before quarter-moon, great picture if I had a close-up lens. Lots of people waiting for bus and I debate momentarily REJOINING the Uxmal TOUR bus when it stops, on schedule, at 9:15. But NOW it's 9:55 and 8:30 bus STILL hasn't shown up! Finally, at 10:20, a guy picks up ME, the guy who'd been waiting BEFORE me, and a hotel clerk who had been waiting ACROSS the road---thank goodness the other two waiting families LEFT about 10 am. Speechless trip into Muna, and I find bus stop and wait for a sunburn. In two minutes a TAXI stops, asks the other two standees something, they wave at me, cab drives up. "Merida?" "Si." "Quantos pesos?" "20." "!!" and I get IN. I guess it's a returning tourist cab. They try to ask me something about women and I say yes. All silent. Trip WHIZZES into city from 10:30-11:15, he knows nothing of Casa Montejo. Lets me off at bus station so I find that Izamal bus is at 50 between 65 and 67. To hotel and pay for January 7 and leave her a bag of STUFF for me, and out at 12:30 to find it's not AT 50 but up the block a bit. Bus at 1 pm for 19P. At 12:45 have a cheese sweet roll and Crush for 8+4=12+2 tip. Back with seat 2 and find guy sitting there from seat 4, of course occupied. OK, I take seat I want, #20. Bus fills with OTHER people sitting at random, and by 1:05 there are standees. BUSY market streets. Loud radio gets on and mercifully turns it down SOMEWHAT. Apple sellers push through standees piping their calls. Radio turns up. Kids squall. Boy gets on with a triplex birdcage enclosing a single frightened occupant. Bus fills solid by 1:08. Leave at 1:09, in at 2:18, good ride by WINDOW (guy wanted to claim HIS seat, or trade with guy in front, and I just refused, laughing). Bus returns at 4:45. Into Convent in LOVELY light and clouds and across to statue of "Fray Diego de Landa/Contradictoria provincial de Hierro. Fanatico Destructor e incausable constructor. Luz y sombra. Perseguio a los Mayas como inguisidor. Como obispo lui defendio de los encomenderos. Hizo el auto de fe de Mani y las "relacion de las casas de Yucatan." Historiador primordial. Es figura eminente en las segunda mitad del Sigle XVI. 1971. Carlos Loret de Mola Mediz." P. 43 map of Izamal. SIZE of pyramid BASE is outstanding, like that "Raised field" in Polonnaruwa that WAS a pyramid. Are ALL Mexican church bells TERRIBLY clanky? WINDMILLS everywhere on horizon. Sound truck shouting about something like a circus. Lots of non-3P entrances on sides. Lovely QUIET (lots of things closed for Saturday siesta between 2 and 4?). Change from 4:45 to 4 pm bus, get seat 8, GREAT. AND back in Merida by 5:30! Funny to find my "Grupas des Monja" at CHICHEN-ITZA, NOT here; makes it easier to SEE. Tizimin fair December 30-January 11. XIBOOB/HOMBRES; XCHUPALAL/MUJERES. Great silence EXCEPT for radio in busses. Big BELL rings when bus is ready! Leave at 4:03, fabulous! One gas station: No fumas / No smoking / Madzudz. Forgot to mention the HUNDREDS of kids in line for Spanish "Can't Stop the Music" wandering last night. Mayan walls continue for MILES alongside roads. LOVELY clouds, almost quiet ride but for radio at end, in at 5:13. Casa Montejo still closed. Walter isn't in Suite 3. Shower and there's no spring water for washing teeth! Meditate at 6:30 and figure I'd better jot down Princess Sak-ni-te from Sound and Light, AND just remember Belur and Halebid in India. How simple! The DIFFERENCE between Mexico and NYC is KIDS. Hardly ANY in NYC, and seen, heard, and felt ALL over HERE! At 7:10 Walker's wife is frying him spaghetti in tomato sauce and they offer me a butter and cheese sandwich which I refuse. Out at 7:35 and get to Caribe Hotel to find no Gerard. Ask at desk and there's a note he's moved to Hotel Paris. Phone, he's not in. To Hotel Merida dining room for ceviche (shrimp, as usual), soup, mediocre halibut filet and pudding. Hotel MAY have been elegant, but loud busses two feet from open windows VERY ugly. Pay rest of bill with mediocre wine for 99P and at 9:30 the show starts, more LAVISH than Venado, but almost as tacky, using lots of flickering and black lights to add "interest." Then to Hotel Paris and get address to meet Gerard at his friends' in Chetumal between 2 and 5 on Tuesday the 30th. Tired back to hotel and drop into bed about 11:15.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28. 7:15 am: Dream EARLIER of almost jerking off but only pissing and then with a handsome Mexican whose chest I feel and it's VERY broad and hairy, and I tell him to hold off but a small drop of come appears at the tip of his cock as it darkens and hardens and throbs, and I throw myself onto it as he shoots again and again, both of us in great pleasure. Then piss at 6:10 and double over blanket and dream of wandering streets in Mexican-NY town looking for someplace for scuba equipment and pass a kid ALL decked out that I question, and he's at some local market and he AND clerk say that there's no place up here anymore at 48th Street, but I have to go downtown to the 34th Street area for supplies---and I remember thinking my GYM is here someplace. Wouldn't it be funny if it had OPENED on the 28th! Write dream and pack and get to loncheria across from bus station to AWFUL German crowd who KEEP asking for more and different as if THEY were the ONLY six customers out of about 30. I finally get served ham and cheese on PITA bread this time and glad I had LOTS of time. To station WITH 50 piece and no bus at 8:30. Flocking tourists fluttering tickets to Chicken-Itza finally mollified at 8:40 when bus LABELED that rolls in. I'm in about third (no flutterer I---and a RADIO sits two seats ahead of me!). Feel a bit down, is it "Let it be" or "To hell with it all?" Muchacho comes up: "Ingles?" "Si." "Espanol?" "?" "Both?" "English!" "I'm always a guide to Chicken, I have seat 1. You want to sit next to girl?" "No." Guy behind speaks in hoarse whisper. Platform quiet now; all flutterers found their seats. Bus leaves 8:50, seat empty next to me, bus full but for 2-3 seats. Guide moves next to me! In at 10:30. Delores Alba is 4 km away! Start hiking, cab takes me and bag for 30P. Out at 10:50 (room not ready) and get TWO rides, there at 11:05. 10P on Sunday and CROWDED. To OLD part. Look around, sit on Nunnery about 1-2 pm, LOVELY, then to OLD Chichen, arrive 2:20 after HITTING head on blunt twig-sawed-off (and most of scab only fell off TWO weeks after, last taking THREE weeks to clear up completely!). Two Americans atop old Castillo tell me to go to "Main group," so after wandering what turned out to be "Principal group in southwest" I pay 3P for great Date groups and Falos out of wall and other little ones, and go down to see 4 lintels and back to MISS ONE lintel and back to 3 with pleasant woman "on a hike" and explore caved-in cenotes and find other places "lost again" and wander road to 300 paces and back to main road BEYOND Mayaland and walk to fork and get RIDE last bit of way. Room 14 ready at 5:15 and I lay for a minute, then turn table over (blue felt "raccoon cap" walks past on Mexican!) for rack for drying washed socks (no soap) and let white stuff soak while I shower in slow but hot water in chilly room, and stretch out three shorts on shower pole (no curtain) and shirt on towel rack. ALL CLEAN! Then out to sit at lit pool and watch bats splash for insects, getting chilly, no special sunset at 6 pm, few bugs in air, lots of stars. Sit and stare. Guy gasps in sex behind, other guy knocks. "Who is it?" "Tim, with the newspaper." "Later, Tim." Other couple complains about no water in English. At 7 a couple tries closed dining room. Girls come out at 7:05, lights on, people gather, I stare at map, all sit cozily at their tables, I sit alone, Good fruit, great hot chicken soup, good pork chops with multiple garnishes, two beers, and at final tea cute Peter asks me to join him and Jan, talking to Frank (he says) / Helmut (SHE says), and we talk of travel and US and Mexico and rates and places. Pleasant till 9:30, then to bed.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 29. Wake at 6:30, must have been tired! To breakfast at 7 with Peter and Jan and they're out at 7:40 for 7:30 bus that comes at 8:05. Breakfast IS good for 60P, lots of fruit, then scrambled eggs and tea and rolls and butter and honey, dark and heavy and sweet. They say he DROVE them to ruins. I hitch and he AGAIN takes me to fork and I walk to Villas Archeologica and see buzzards by sign. Dead dog. I watch until 9:30, but meat isn't ripe enough. Walk to main place in time for open Warriors room. GREAT tunnel showing earlier Warrior-site temple, and GREAT colors and freshness of outline and columns. Exploration tunnels dug from TOP DOWN. Jaguars; BLUE shield circles, yellow figures, white fringed wraparound loincloths, green background, dark-green birds on right. Dun-colored huts and straw-yellow rooftops. Market (12:15 pm) is tranquil with its roofless Greco-colonnade. Leave that without seeing the BUILDING to get to Jaguars for 10-11 opening, taking pictures and talking to great-legged Englishman studying economics in Philadelphia, comparing fresco and drawing in HIS book that it turned out I had in MY book, too. Follow man with keys to Castillo at 11 to be one of first up, staying till 11:30 admiring Chacmool and throne until it got too hot and humid with PEOPLE. Down and BACK to Jaguars, to Market and Vapor bath and Southeast Colonnade, to Castillo at 12:30 for pictures and good shirtless chests, and down to Sacred Cenote, murky and crowded, then smaller pieces, ball court with GREAT carvings, and to old side to #18, wander for back cenote and find myself in Hacienda grounds!! (Notes in back of book.) That one "doesn't exist" and other is "across from Mayaland." At 2:50 meet Spanish ("th" sound) husband and Mexican wife (who has trouble touring KNOWING the language!) and look for cab to Balancanche. Too late for 3. They go to Caracol and say "meet at 3:35." I try hitching, dog's eyes and gums gone, but birds distant. Back at 3:30 and chat with Quebec husband with Mexican wife, taxi A says "Balancanche impossible." Taxi B says "back in 5 minutes." 3:40, NO one. 3:45 two appear. 3:35 Taxi A is back wanting to take me, but I say I have taxi B. 3:50 taxi B appears. To Grotto at 3:57, wait until 4:05, down fairly mediocre cave to central grotto at 4:20 when lights go out! People talk in English, Spanish, Russian. Earthquake? Monsters? "Day One of Mexican Cave hostages?" 4:30 lights back on. Continue to nice pond, then double back in INCREASING heat (they SAY they FOUND things in caves AS displayed---somehow I don't believe it), out to cool 5 pm air SOAKING wet. To Hotel for 66P, sit at pool with beer, and Jenny and Merv drive in and chat till dinner, which I eat with Felice and Gus, with whom I buy bottle of 100P white and drink most of it by 9:30. Nice talk and bed before 10, after sitting at pool a bit (lights go off at 9:45) with Jenny and Merv.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30. Wake at 6:10 and pack and ask for bill and eat with Gus talking about Freud's essays on the Uncanny, the encounter with REPRESSED prior experience. Bus passes at 7:40! Pay 733P bill, tip girl 30P, one cup of tea, and out to GET bus at 8:05. Stand and squat for lousy 15P ride to EDGE of Valladolid at 8:30, and walk to bus station (SEE bus turning in and coming out), and bus to Carillo Puerto at 11:15. Sit and write in station till 9, decide to explore. Continue east on 39 and find square, across square to San Bernardino, VERY plain inside, but BIG, and AT square there's arrow for Cenote Zaci. Follow signs down 39th, left, and pay 15P for entrance to BIG place, BLUE water and BLACK fish, and side passages to dead ends, and use men's room to take off sweater, hot at 10, and out to buy film for 159P and plastic BIG bag for 50P and soda for 5P and watch market, then to station to finish THIS by 11:15, still no sign of bus! Check, yes, it IS marked Carillo Puerto. Lots of busses to Merida and Tizimin (for festival), and one in LOT marked Valladolid-C. Puerto. Lots of people and radios and packages, thank God it's COOL despite loud crowd. I write till 11:25, saying no to blind beggars, shoe shines, books, and staring kids. Yitrf og esiyinh. Nsh holfd RBRTYYHINH---really? Tired of waiting. Bag holds EVERYTHING, but it's heavy. Hope it holds out for 10 days. At 11:30 bus pulls in marked Valladolid-C.Pta. Best kept SECRET. I'm RIGHT at door, two German women frantic for Chichen Itza. In first, left inside window for east shade and bus loads VERY quickly. Why only 5:30, 11:15, 5:30? Lots of women and children but I'm FIRST! Window gives air, comic PHOTO book-reading 25-year-old man sits next to me as nice baffle, and kids SCREAM as others squeeze on. Two blind guys file through and bus radio comes on jazz as kid pounds out rhythm on my seat back. And this has to SWITCH at Quintana Roo BORDER? Leaves at 11:35! Blind men whistle to be let out first. 48P, neat villages, road GOOD. Lots of villages, some roadside burning, some government projects, mostly forest, slightly hillier in the south. Driver had GOOD taste in music, including Evita's "Don't Cry for Me" and "2001" and something that COULD have been written for sweeping violins by Mike Oldfield. (Note about plane from Corazel to San Pedro town in Belize for $25, and San Pedro to Belize City for $12.50---by Chetumal-walking boat-guy). Into Carillo Puerto at 1:30 and beside the Chetumal bus, "Stopping for 5 minutes" is the Philly Briton! We chat, he looks for an orange, I write this at 1:50, looks GOOD for Chetumal by 5. HIS bus pulls out, wait on OTHER bus, insist on STANDING, and it's really a PAIN, sitting on chair-arm two boys offer me---rather, they "permiso?" me when I ask them. In to Chetumal at 4:30, and I can't find the CARD! Ask for Independencia and it's three blocks down from Heroes. Lug bag to 148 and plead for Gonzalvo Morin. No. Not in phone book. Try 129. No, try next door. No. Desperate I pull bag apart for THIRD time and it falls out of map: 128A. Ten kids and Gerard's off to Tikal! Damn! Gonzolo drives me to his friend's hotel, Motel Juan Carlos. Only double for 300P. Cheap, says Gonzalo; Gerard paid 400P for single. OK. Drop off bag and into Obregon: no tourist office. Back to Heroes to LOVELY bay, ask, STILL told that tourist office is out Obregan. Pass good-looking Dora Maria restaurant, walk and walk till 6:45, out of TOWN. Get booklets and maps, and chat with guy who lived with wife and son on Hathol, or something, in Honduras for two years. Back to dinner in Dora Maria at 7 pm: refried beans, spaghetti with tomato sauce, enchiladas, bacon, ham, cheese, rice, lime, onions, tomato, cabbage, tamales, all with potatoes ON the special steak. Stopped in Hotel Maria Delores to get a room for tomorrow for 159P, compared with Hotel Juan Carlos 300P for double. GREAT food, back tired, shower and water goes off AFTER I'm all soaped up. Wait and finally get out and holler: "Esta agua?" "OK," she says, and turns it back on. Rinse and dry and get to bed at 9:30 after coming. Earplugs GREAT blessing.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31. Up at 7, pack, leave key, switch bag to hallway of Maria Delores and try to breakfast in Restaurant Campeche, until they had NO ham and NO tea con leche, so I went to Restaurant Grijalva and had HORCHATA, quite sweet like coconut milk with sugar added. Their omelet con jamon was GREAT: mayonnaise in it, sweet catsup over it, good potatoes, and lettuce and tomatoes (which I ate) for 32P! To bus station at 9:30 and Xpujil bus is at 11:30. Ugh. Debate Belize, but 72P for 6-hour bus ride on awful roads sounds unbearable, like ride down to Flores from Tikal. Decide to FLY there some OTHER time. Out to price cabs for Kohunlich: first was 700P; then 1000P; then 1300P, who came down to 800P; THEN 600P and I say FINE. KOHUNLICH IS 8.8 km from highway, and NOT jungle, but cleared hot ROAD, so I would NOT have liked to walk it at ALL. Don't pay 5P. Climb small ruin, make map on p. 57, and it's HIGH above the rest of the area on a cliff, and see tourists around "straw-roof" hut, high up. Across drainage ditches and aguadas to base and find the MASKS underneath the straw: 3 on right and 2 on left. Take pictures of LOVELY forms and colors, though they're in the SHADE, and sign book where guy's supposed to STAMP my ticket. Wander around back for machinery sheds and what appear to be DANCE platforms of original stone. "Bleachers" turns out to be half of ball court, and there's a central plaza with dug-out ruins surrounding unevenly. Lots of rock piles off to right of road, though off to the left it drops off a cliff into pretty dense jungle. Blocks FIT well, though slightly wavery in line, probably reconstructed hastily? Some places they're still working. Huge area, could be important if they find MORE stuff, but there aren't many photogenic sites beyond the masks and one other place someone was setting up to work. There appears to be no map or material available. One hour good.
XPUJIL: Really on a hill about 2 kilometers OUT of town, so THIS wouldn't have been good by bus EITHER. Driver wants 600 more now, and 67 km exact to Kohunlich DOES turn out 62 more and a bit more to Xpujil, but it isn't as big as Kohunlich, as guy said. But it DOES stand out on hill, almost Angkor Wat-like in sheerness and proportion. Stop just off road, driver goes for gas, I have no change for 3P ticket. 100P bill smallest. Race to front for GREAT extant carvings high up on façade, and take far-group picture and climb around them. Up and over, one closest to road has a door on the INSIDE that leads downstairs to tight fit out roadside. FEW other people here, about 12 LEFT Kohunlich as I arrived, one minibus there when I left. Some small stacks of stones to east, but apparently nothing anywhere else in this area. Fifteen minutes OK. THIS guide talks of Becan and Chicana, however, 7 and 8 km farther. Well visible from road and SPECTACULAR for its unusual HEIGHT.
BECAN: Around turn on north side of road, another 3P. These HILLS partially denuded of trees give it a "Lost City" look. Double-titted rubble faces more standard "central temple" with "subterranean tunnels from the front of the top to lower levels in the back." LOTS of rubble in back and beyond, MAY BE caves there, but fifteen minutes gives no TIME. Voices from the rear from other explorers: romantic site. ANOTHER visible UNTOUCHED ruin from the road. Trees off rocks. ANOTHER pyramid fenced in back yard of Campeche rancho. CHICANA down 3-4 km bumpy road SOUTH of highway. Driver disgusted. OK Betanzos tour bus full of weary snippy German women saying they booked in Germany and got 18 ruins. I got 'em beat cold! There's a MAP to this place in the front of the sign-in book. Mask in next building, something else off in woods; sad not to have a copy of map. Around to center plaza and LOVELY face with huge eyes and complete fangs and open-door mouth. Driver poses for me somewhat grimly, but he lopes up steps of next building as I wander around back. Kid starts directing driver and we take fast walk through maze-like paths in woods, NEEDING guide. Then the temple: I GASP at freshness of carving. Are Mexican archeologists CREATING THESE rather than FINDING them? How could DETAILS remain so FRESH and new on a building so HIGH that it couldn't have been COVERED to protect it, and would BARE stone have retained the detail for 500 years? ANYWAY, I focused and tell driver to take picture of me in middle. He takes, he ORDERS me up side to HIGHER position. I clamber, he takes, I start down and he stops me again. I shrug and pose. I hope I remembered to set the light right enough. HE leads back, kid runs, and says something about "Otra," but driver is curt and pay kid change: 3-4 pesos, and we get into car. GREAT day but for 1600P demand at end and he's SO happy with 1500P that I should have stuck with my FIRST idea of 1400! Left city at 10:05, Kohunlich at 11:10, out at 12:20; Xpujil at 1:30; blowout fix 4:15-4:20, and into city at 4:50. Rained a bit, too. This was my first day in AGES with a passport (for getting an auto rental---kept asking, they all referred me to the hotels, the hotels referred me to ONE rental place, and it was EMPTY, wandering through and talking to workman who said there's no auto available EVER) and I NEEDED it in the cab to Kohunlich, passing over the Quintana Roo border into Campeche. Went to SEE La Cascada Restaurant and found Mimsey Farmer's "SOS Concorde" for 50P in BACK, not in FRONT advertisement. Walk down to Baalbeck Restaurant and try tecate: tecate+lime+salt=MINERAL water! Beer is strong and lime CANCELS it. Who needs it? Their chilequilas NOT zappy-tasty and crunchy like before. Jocoque Labin, he insists, is only milk. Woman with look: "I'm pregnant so I have NOTHING else on earth to do." CERVESA is 16P but TECATE turns out to be 20P. Hm. Back to hotel and "SOS Concorde" or "Concorde Affair" is awful, but shark in Concorde in water is a good scare and Mimsy is just AWFUL---NEVER believe a THING she does! Out at 10:10 and everyplace is CLOSED, So I HAVE no good meal; have Horchata for 8P in hotel restaurant and get to CHILLY bed at 10:30, hearing more and more firecrackers until midnight, but HARDLY on schedule. Worst night in long time: cold and uncomfortable with too few blankets.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 1, 1981. Wake at 4 am, then 6 am, then up at 7, pack, shower, and get out at 8 and wander EMPTY streets to Continental for their breakfast buffet---GREAT! Bread, sweet rolls, salt rolls, Danish, apple turnovers.
Juice of apple, orange, grapefruit, tomato, papaya.
Fruit of pineapple, cantaloupe, papaya
Eggs scrambled, with ham, with sausage, mexicana
Soggy taco-tomato dish, hot dogs, ham, refried beans
Main-course chicken, something like onions, cold tuna with tomato
Cheeses, quiches, fruit pie, Nescafe, tea, milk, coffee, cocoa
Present at Hotel Continental Caribe's buffet breakfast for 135P: me, "an American family," a Mexican truck driver type, a German "family" of three unrelated tourist couples, one couple identical in green velour pullovers and shorts; and a Mexican "family" of grandmother, daughter (wife), husband, someone's brother, and three kids about 13, male; 11, male; and 8, female. I thought they might be SORELY surprised, being somewhat plainly dressed and Grandma being dowdy, at the bill, but Mama pulls out a pink (never SAW one before) 5000P note, or $220! Cashier has no change but dowdy Grandma does, easily counting out 5 brown 1000P notes and thumbs through 5-6 more before putting her wad away, and then carefully considering another bill and deftly handling her 20P notes and peso pieces, like PENNIES to a $50 bill!! Solitary gray Helen-type eats at window two tables away from me and tourist-type joins truck driver. No killing HERE on food prices. However, maybe there IS. In at 8:10 and even with WRITING it's only 9:25, a $6 breakfast is MEMORABLE but not to be made a HABIT of. Change $20 more, $10 at Caja from a private individual and $10 back at restaurant, and wander to beautiful bay section, taking pictures. Back to hotel at 10:15, brushing teeth and packing and getting to station to fret at 10:55. All buses to Tulum marked either 11:10 to 13:00, NONE at 11:30. Ask information what the bus is marked. Cancun! Try to go to platform and guy says "One minute. Once media." I decide I'd better jot down YESTERDAY'S ruins, and I do. To platform at 11:25, Puerto Juarez bus loads 11:30, leaves 11:40, NO one in seats 1-4! GREAT open-window ride, killed a DOG (or suicide, since he raised his tired head to noticed the bus bearing down on him but made NO effort to get out of the way, and a sickening double-thump; of fender and tire on tender-boned body at 55 mph), and LOUD music. Hot day. Stop twenty minutes in Carillo Puerto at 1:25 and get soda and snap flowers and leave at 1:57! To Tulum at 3, walk to "Village," hitch to Hotel Paraiso, full, next is Tulum Hotel, 8 km from ruins. Hitch back to crossroads and get LAST room for 300P at Hotel Cruzero. Walk back to ruins and enter at 3:50, 10P, closes at 5! Bus from COBA crossroads at 11:30 am. UNKNOWN back! LOVE Tulum! Stay till 5:15, then to jammed Mexico Restaurant for pork and rice for 70P, rice and egg for 25P, and Noche Buena for 25P, total 110P (note addition) and she cashes $50 traveler's check, saying NO bank in Coba! (May have liked the place because of all the sexy bare-chested boys in the ruins when I arrived.) Out in COMPLETE darkness at 6:20 and get back to room to read Tulum/Coba book (for 55P) and try to get interested in ANYTHING else but fail---NO water, and get to bed at 8:25, hoping to make up for last night.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 2. DO, waking at 5:40, at LEAST 9 hours! Dress and out to BEAUTIFUL "old moon in arms of new" at 6 am, BRIGHT Venus, and many other stars. Walk to ruins to find they open at 8; climb wall and get to north tower to write at 6:15. RED-rimmed clouds at 6:22 am, other people on far Paraiso Beach. Great shadowed sunrise at 6:30, and I trek toward north, through gate "Prohibido El Paso" and there's a GUY who passed, shitting I think, and I continue along SHARP jagged limestone rocks and find (after getting wet in dew-soaked overhead plants) ONE of the tiny north temples, but hear WHISTLE behind me, "CAN'T be for me, and at 7 here comes guard and another guy (the shitter?). "Vamos." "Perque?" VAMOS!" "No entiendo." "Entiendo SI." "Perque?" "Fuerza?" I go. Out gate at 7:10, four Germans had to sleep in CHAIRS in Vicky's since I got the last room. Others sleeping out too, on tables under roof in OPEN air. Vicky had NO oil in car, has to go to Carillo Puerto, but enough for eggs and bacon for breakfast. Germans never heard of Coba but become interested while reading my book. I try to think of deal to KEEP my room but let THEM use it IF I find a place in Coba, but they don't seem interested. Vicky says Coba has "jungle and one hotel." No tortillas, but eggs, rice, beans, and "refrescos." They tell me of cats howling all night; I broke two apart at 6 am on the road; dog barking out back here---just over the swamp that appalled Germans---and barked outside MY place, too. They got in at 9 pm last night! Awful! The refrescos turn out to be tea. 45P a bit much, no tip. In at 8:10 and wander periphery. Without attractive PEOPLE it becomes tame and known. Looking forward to Coba? Stopped taxi that said 600P for going and two hours there and then return from Coba. Germans have cash-flow problems and only two would want to go anyway. Sit on dance platform and find it DOES feel decadent: not sharp, not vital, not FINE---even details LEFT on Diving Gods are more like DRAWINGS than CONSTRUCTIONS. Diving Civilization! LOUD MOUTHED Spanish mama shouts! To Cruzero at 10:15, pay 300P for tonight, shower in COLD water, leave at 11:03 and get to Coba crossroad at 11:20, four others there. Bus comes at 11:35 for 20P and JUNGLE till 12:10, driver takes me to VA road at 12:15 and I check in to room 708---GREAT, and leave at 12:45, ignoring people playing in the pool and reading at poolside. Coba Group to 1:50. From Los Pinturas (2:30), "Church" is just a hill of trees! 2:45 set out for Maconxoc Group. Pass two FEATURELESS (ARQ-numbered) stelae on ground. HARD climb up "Stele F pyramid" and Nohuch Mul is RIGHT behind tree atop ANOTHER pyramid between here and there! At 3:35 DOWN from climb---worst of all are MOSQUITOES that attack when rocks start to slide underfoot (5x), briars have to be held back (always), and I'm hanging on with both hands, with knees, and TEETH! 4 pm to 1200-meter walk to what should be Lake Xkanha, with big bullfrog (?) pig (?) Mayan monster (?) grunting contentedly but VERY loudly. SQUIRRELS, birds, grouse, ants, two HUGE "tail-eye" tumbling butterflies. 4:30 find small 80-yard trail to Maconxoc Lake, 440 yards from fork to Maconxoc Group and Lake Xkanha. From "Church" Macanxoc at twilight is placid and LOVELY. He shouts me down at 5:10 and he's gone and gate's LOCKED. Climb over and wend way home past stalking heron and flying birds and few fleecy purple clouds. Lovers on dock and in hammock, so I sit on a canoe and watch colors change until midges get too much. IN at 6 and wander halls: some display cases not lit, but dancing dogs are a GAS. Into room at 6:30 and wash face and change to sweater and out to bar for half and half for 38.5P. Dullsville! Archeological readers and families. Library dead and NO idea when they'd show slides. Back to room at 7:15 and write this. Finish writing at 7:40, up to date AGAIN, write 10 cards to 8 pm, dinner of vegetable soup, good but no 40P, fillet of fish, reasonable for 90P but rice tasteless, and FRUIT good for 60P: watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple, banana and APPLE. Plus two beers for 30P each for 66+209=275 meal and 20P tip, 300P for meal! As much as for ROOM at Cruzera! Chilly and longing for bed. Wash teeth, put blanket on bed, and write this by 9:20; sleep quickly.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 3. Wake at 3:30, again at 5:50. Up and out by 6:03, SLIGHT wisps of fog rising on lake, and climb "Church," rehearsing my "amante con el Sol" for guard, by 6:20, sunrise only slight rosy rim of clouds. Moon even thinner than yesterday; shards of fog draw sunward. Some distant hysterical chicken laughs like a hyena. Fog, below me now, drawn into a sunward, over-obscuring PEAK---paths now would be darker and damper. 6:26 and even PINKNESS is gone, only vapors, birds, and the omnipresent Villa Archeologica generator chug. Sunrise delayed until 6:40, and film could "take" 6:45 am with 500-shutter and over-exposed film opening. Fog REALLY covers ALL, and STAYS. Can SEE the birds on sunward-side of trees below me: the gray robin-shaped bird with exchanged "TWEEL, gulla tweak tweak TWEEL." The gray-chartreuse bird's "Churk," the chickadee's imitation of "twick twick twill." And some red-shouldered yellow-backed bird startles as it flies. NO chance of being seen from GROUND in such fog---good I climbed EARLY. NO mosquitoes or midges in frozen predawn, and EVERY LEAF twinkles with wet. A chicken repeats a cry as if being fucked. A composition in dewy spider webs catches my eye. Fog denser and higher than ever at 7:20, bringing me a CHILL of predawn back! Mosquitoes and midges now resuscitated. Glockenspectre! Out at 7:35. Breakfast coldly outside at 7:45, me at smallest available table: for 5. Family of three and two men are all. "American breakfast" for 80P is a rip-off, as is orange juice for 30P! So I order ham and cheese omelet for 40 and a fruit for 30 and toast (for 10P?) and no coffee. Ruins NOT visible in early fog---people NOT out at 6 would think gate impassable. Toast, as usual, arrives WAY before omelet. Nerve for 20P for two pieces of toast! I cross off 99 and make it 77P. Waiter superciliously says I won't be charged for breakfast at ALL---and I'm not. His business! Out at 8:30 and to Nohoch Mul at 9. at 9:20 at top---hard to tell TREES from PYRAMIDS on vague horizon that I scan with binoculars. Platform trees look HIGHER than THIS. Las Pinturas QUITE indiscernible, "Church" only craggy top. At least lots of pieces of LAKES visible in otherwise featureless horizon. Lots of COLORS of green and yellows, gray-white dead branches, specks of red and orange, and group of MY rocks and Church rocks and blue of sky and silvers of lakes---and yellow Kodacolor boxes, red Marlboro boxes, glints of cellophane. At 10 am I see huge ROOM remnants on SIDE of Great Platform. LOTS to them! INCREDIBLE EXPANSE OF ROCK! Work my way to a side for a glimpse of a horizon and a bit later actually SEE Nohoch Mul. Find a CORNER rampart and it's 10:15; I start to worry about getting BACK, and LO there's a path down. To trail, to hotel quickly and tiredly and hotly, and take a LOVELY shower and write five more cards and it's 11:30, time to pay my bill, WITHOUT breakfast, it seems, and get to gate at 12. Need 17 cards, cost 3P, 3 kinds, so 20 is 60P and 3 for me leaves 17! Start writing, waiting for bus. Caravan tourists come in and buy 24 bottles of Pepsi. Write 17 cards. 12:15, 12:30, 12:45. Where's bus? No hoy. No hoy!? It comes some days, not others. How many days of the week? Three, four five. Wed., Thu., Fri.? Three times or four times or five times" Anh! Ask people PLEASE take me to Tulum. SURE. Drive in clouded road. VIPs pass in police-guided headlight-lit caravans. They talk of beautiful place they're in, between Xel-Ha and Akumal. "If you were in one or the other, I'd take a look." "We could drop you at Xel-Ha." They get gas, I push stuff into bag, get to them in gas station. They leave me at Xel-Ha GATE. 10P. Long walk. I'm ABOUT to ask if I can stow bag in the ticket office when I seem to hear English from taxi. "English?" "Swedish." "Well, can I join you?" "Sure. We're just going in for ten minutes to take pictures." "Incredible, that's just what I want to do, would you bring me BACK to ROAD?" "Sure." In to LOVELY natural lagoon, GREAT clear water, GOOD fish, and SEXY nudes walking around looking. Take pictures. Out to cab. "Do you HAPPEN to be going north?" "To Playa del Carmen." "Incredible---may---?" "Of course you can!" LOVELY chat with her in back seat: they trade in skins and furs, travel lots: love Moorea, not Bora-Bora, not Tahiti, like Russia and Europe, WANT to go to Yellowstone and Yosemite and Canyons and SF. I tell my 5A's still to be seen. To Playa, he talking with driver about local politics. "May I treat you to a beer?" "That would be nice." We drink three beers in LOVELY patio of Hotel Reglos (or whatever) and they decide they want to eat and, since it's his 53rd birthday, they want to TREAT me. I protest just a bit, they think I'm a student, he remarks about gray hair, she guesses I may be as old as 35, he suggests I MAY be 40---from my travel experience, of course. Fish filet and more beer, she wine, he rum and Coke, and we chatter away until 4:10, having bought 55P crossing tickets, and we go to sexily laden ship (buxom woman with indolent kid tonguing her fat nipple, married guy obviously gay staring at slender hipless body of tanned blue-eyed Spaniard who stripped down to green briefs of swimsuit and jumped overboard and swam to shore and back before boat left, and pale city-shod tourist with straight nose and eyes who read going across, and big-chested Jean-Jacques face lazing downstairs). Rainbow and rain squall before we left, clouds swirling as we pass, rain to south, clouded sunset and rocking ship on my neat sea legs, instantly acquired, make a stormy crossing from 4:30 to 6 on the Princess Saknite. Meson San Miguel wants 800P, which they recommended as not being too expensive compared to the luxury hotels to the south and north of the town of San Miguel, so I look at full Lopez, Colonial, Manguey, Maria Carmen, Elizabeth, and a few others before going around the seaside corner to 430P Bahia. In and look at stuff and read a bit and out at 7:45 to Pepe's Grill for 350P, paying both with card to save cash at 22P rate for checks, and Tampiqueno NOT as good as Dora Maria's for 80P, this at 250P! Golden Fizz makes me muzzy and contemplative: would I FEAR an Eden of palm trees, beautiful men, lazy days and sexual nights? Only fear no one would have sex with me without MONEY! Walk a tiny bit, back at 9 to jerk off with detached bathroom mirror with Jojoba; JUST put things back when lights flicker on and off and I get to bed at 9:55, comfortable, raining.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 4. Wake a few times, itching, thinking I hear mosquitoes through earplugs, and up at 5:35 to dress and write this by 6:10. Wander south, cloudy, see beach, aquarium (tiny and shoddy, keeper sleeping in hammock in entrance, more comfortable than hotel man on FLOOR behind desk, who had to get up to unlock doors to let me OUT), government building and park, post and telegraph office VERY modern; watch sunrise, think of the German's advice: taxi must be 35P to El Presidente to rent snorkel equipment. See Lopez at 9 am for room. Cloudy. Suddenly it hits: I have NO contact lenses or swimsuit or beach shoes, water will be COLDER in January under clouds, and as I'll return to Mexico City I'll surely return to Cozumel, and I've SEEN it: seen moped and snorkel rentals; 120P for 1.5 hours glass-bottom boat tour, KNOW the reef is good, so I'll be back in better weather, when I fly to Belize, too. Check "Wilson" and next boat's at 9:30. Breakfast in Las Palmeras 7:30-8:45, when my somewhat silent Austin partner says he thought boat went at 9! Oh! Dash to hotel after WOMAN says it leaves at 9, push stuff into bag, raincoat on top since it's raining, and pay 55P to get on boat at 9 WITH Austin and wait till it leaves at 9:35! Rocky trip across to Cozumel (passing Sac-Nicte), in at 10:45, no dolphins, and around corner to waiting Cancun bus that leaves at 11, past same vapid jungle scenery except where they're digging limestone, and to busy bus station at 11:45. No Blaisdell at Hotel Cotty OR at Caribe Plaza, when he suggested they might be there. He says to wait for room. I read newspapers, funnies, Cancun yacht folder, and "What to do" thoroughly and write this to 1:15, still no room. City busy and hotel-y, sort of halfway between Cozumel and Acapulco. Guy across from me on bus has AWFUL cold and Austin got sick from two days in Flamingo Hotel in Merida after Isla Mujeres. AGAIN that reputation! Really slowing down in energy toward trip-end. Mark ALL the things I want to do in the "What to do" book (and note that Cotty tours to Tulum is $30 or 600P, to Cozumel is $50 or 1000P): Pirates night at Hotel Playa Blanca (which I decided NOT to do); boat schedule from Puerto Juarez to Isla Mujeres; bike rentals for 300P, which I might do tomorrow, but that tomorrow never comes; cinemas on the city map, though the one in Manzana XXI appeared to be gone; Cancun tourist zone; Archeological Museum, which I never get to; Los Almendros Restaurant, though I never find the Chevrolet it's across from; and then mark ALL the laughable typos! Finally I ASK them at 2:30 if they have a room, and they give me one. In and unpack and out about 3:30, and decide "what the hell" and take the bus that's marked "Ruta 1, Hoteles" for 3P, camera at the ready, and we go along Bonampak and double back and start encountering GRAND monuments and fountains for the tourists at the causeway to the hotels, and then in the dividing margin, with flowers and brick walkways, are reproductions of stelas, frescos, carvings, atalantes, so that lazy tourists can feel they've "seen" all these distant places without bothering to GO there, no doubt. The distances are VERY long and the busses go VERY fast, though I do manage to take some good moving shots from the bus of new-building and old-standing hotels, but there's no REAL chance to get a good shot of the BEAUTIFUL homes built along the golf course and the private palaces, particularly the white stucco one with pink trim and potted plants and palms way out between the Cancun Caribe and the Sheraton. At one point debate taking the bus AGAIN and getting OFF and maybe touring the lobbies, asking prices, seeing the beaches, taking a look into the Parian shopping center, but that's not very INTERESTING, even when I don't have much ELSE to do. Have to pay another fare to get back, and one guy gets tossed off the bus when he doesn't want to. Then decide to see where the OTHER end of the line is, and ride FROM Cancun I (the VERY expensive VERY touristy "strip") THROUGH Cancun II (the still-expensive, if the Parador went UP from 200P to 600P and down to 400P only occasionally for people like ME), to Cancun III (the "native" town, with CHEAP hotels and restaurants and shops, dusty streets, much more color and animals and squalor), and into the countryside, past beach shacks and army posts, and to a ferry slip that turns out to be all that's left of Puerto Juarez! Driver stops for a soda and I get off and look around, then back on for 5P for the ride back to my stop in town. Wander INSIDES of super-blocks, looking at parks and restaurants and cinemas, finding one JAMMED with a line for the 5 pm showing of "Mama Solita" and "Al Fin del Tiempo," translated as "When Time Ran Out," with Paul Newman, Jacqueline Bisset, William Holden, Burgess Meredith and some elegant aging star as Lunt and Fontanne. Around the corner to a nice hotel and the Restaurant Palenque, having soup and chicken in a cream sauce that was VERY filling, with mediocre wine that the waiter insisted on serving with RIDICULOUS flourishes and standings-back so that I can gasp freely in amazement. Chilly as the sun sets toward the end, some reasonably sexy people walking past, but the main show's around the corner on Bonompak. Pay the bill with my card and wait on still-long line for the movie, except they begin taking only "Time" tickets when it's about to start. Movie house JAMMED, lots of seats broken, screen dirty, sound track almost impossible to hear, so I move from front to back, at least BEHIND all the talking people, and it's just a HORRIBLE movie by Irwin Allen that doesn't even have reasonable representations of a "nuée ardente" but only sends flaming cannonballs from the volcano to wipe out a luxury hotel that seems to be in Kalalau Valley on Kauai. Out SICK of people and walk Bonompak until it appears to be getting empty about 9:30, and bed tired. Get two LARGE glasses of orange juice for 15P and 20P to assuage thirst beforehand.
MONDAY, JANUARY 5. Wake about 7, out to buy bus ticket for Wednesday, go to the post office at 9 and have to put NEW stamps over the old since the prices for US went from 2.5P to 4 and for Europe from 4 to 6, and mail off all the postcards anyway, then look for a crowded sidewalk restaurant for breakfast, NOT the more expensive one for orange juice last night, and service is slow, passersby boring, lots of rumbles from gas carboys being loaded and unloaded, and ham omelet VERY much underdone, but tasty anyway, and the fruit almost syrupy sweet for "dessert." Pack OUT of Cotty and am to "200P Parador for 600P room for TOMORROW reduced to 440P, leaving bag. Out at 11 to wait a LONG time for the bus, but with added entertainment: Tall handsome blond woman in high-slit blue long dress: "Are you American or Swiss or what?" "American." "They won't cash (OH, also cashed traveler's checks for an extortionate ADDED rate of 5P per $10, lowering effective rate from 231 to 225, almost as bad at the 220 the hotels are willing to give, but I'd STOOD in line and DIDN'T want to walk the three blocks to the Bancomer for ANOTHER line, so I PAID the 75P for $150, $3.50 to save half an hour) my Swiss money in the bank, and I have German marks (she fumbles in possible empty purse), and I need 20 pesos for the bus." I stare. "Can't you help me out? Only five dollars (that's silly, it's only 88!)? I helped people in the States before." I grimace, knowing I have a 20P bill, and give it to her. She grabs the bill IN my hand and pulls me forward to kiss me on the cheek. "Thank you," and she strolls swiftly off, pausing to ask a direction question from a Mexican. Bus finally comes at 11:35, to Puerto Juarez at 11:50, only 10P below and 20P above, and of course the Sultana del Mar doesn't leave till 12:30, laden with hippies and two beautiful blond shirtless boys I managed to get a slide of. BEAUTIFUL AQUAMARINE water going over white, yellow, and green and clouded bottoms. In at 1:20, walk CROWDED, rather TACKY island to north to Zazil-Ha, seemingly empty but still too many people swimming (walking, actually) in a lagoon waist-high between elegant houses and the pyramidal hotel. It's all BEACH life---at least Cozumel has a TOWN where people LIVE and WORK, and play ELSEWHERE. Tanning greasy bodies lying all about, acting uncomfortably brutish to be macho. I go to the INSIDE part of the Villa de Mar Restaurant and have Tehuacan (only their tasty mineral water) for 10P and tostadas de carne molida (hamburger, but GOOD) for 45 and leave 70P. AWFUL Texan saying, "Wal, I can't understand this shit, why can't they serve peas and corn like HOME?" Out at 2:30 and decide NOT to stay---Cozumel at least SEPARATES UGLY tourists from pretty hippies! Also, there's a Punta Sam ferry (that takes CARS) at 4, so I can see where CONTOY Island tours leave from tomorrow. Taxi out to point for 90P and take photos of GREAT ocean and ruins and lighthouse till 3:30, then catch cab back and get on board ferry (with loud radio, of course) at 3:50, and they actually LEAVE at 4:02, AND for only 5P for PASSENGERS. Obviously only ONE of these, but it's crowded with trucks, cars, motorcycles, and motor homes. Back about 5, having had a beer and feeling faintly ill, maybe from the TERRIBLE fumes from the boat---noting that the skies are almost ALWAYS hazed with pinkish pollution and smog. Punta Sam has NOTHING, no signs of ANYTHING to ANYWHERE, and people grab up cabs in groups and we others just wait for the bus back to town. Check into my room at the Parador after thinking I'd MISSED my stop but actually getting the PERFECT stop from the Parador, and take a shower while there's still heat in the room, unpack, since I'll be here two days, and get out to survey restaurants, not about to find Bluebeard's Tavern that Parador recommends over the Portal del Peregrino behind the POP restaurant next door, and want to find a SIDEWALK place where I can just sit and watch the passersby. That comes up, after much walking around and fatigue, after checking to find NO other movie houses showing ANYTHING I want to see, with Don's, where I order a shrimp dinner and milkshake inside and take it outside, and from a parade of effeminate younger Mexican males, I may have found the cruisy place in town, which even attracts health club older types in athletic togs and sneakers who are probably gay but would die before they showed it. For my thirst also get a large cock (oh, BOY!) Coke with ice, and maybe THAT'S what gives me stomach discomfort tonight so that I have to take a few Lomotil before I go to bed, about 10, streets DEFINITELY dying down.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 6. Up about 6:30 and look around for place to eat, and find only a place for locals where the "chef" fingers out meat and gravy and onions and hot sauce onto a tortilla and rolls it, while the others squeeze fresh oranges into soda glasses, so I order four of the VERY tasty things and a glass of orange juice, enjoying watching the workers eat, and seeing the tourists investigate, wrinkle their noses, and move away. To the bus stop about 8 and it almost NEVER comes, but finally it does, at 8:40, getting me to Juarez in time for the 9 am boat, THIS time the single-decked Ma. Carnita, 10P anyway, choosing to stay OUTSIDE listening to girlish talk from rich Florida tourists until wave-water gets too great, then duck behind tarpaulin and look out SIDE to protect myself from bright sun. Nice I've seen the route already. Expecting to be besieged with tours to Contoy and other islands, but now I have to go to THEM, and it turns out that only TOUR to Contoy leaves at 7:30 am! Damn! American tells me of his "boat to catch fish, fish for lunch, snorkeling, turtles" for only 200P, so I dash across to rent snorkeling equipment for 70P, glad I'd worn my cutoffs under my jeans for swimsuit and brought a T-shirt for sun protection for back. We WERE to be 5, but the boat ends up with a VERY crowded 15-16, people sitting on top, the SON an interesting bodybuilder case with NO smarts at ALL, in a family that HATES each other, very ugly to watch. Fat Texans talk and talk, and I just watch the scenery pass on the inland side as we bumble down to pick up two huge frozen fish for lunch from 11-12, and then around elegant-housed point into ocean channel way down BUILT island (it looks deserted from the spinal road, but it has houses almost ENTIRELY along the west coast) to what turns out to be Garrafon Beach, where they throw over PACKAGES of crackers to attract the fish, so we change there and jump overboard before I can WORRY about the water temperature, and it's not cold at ALL, and the schools of fish are so fascinating that it takes awhile to notice that they're mostly GRAY, edged in black, though there are a few black edged in iridescent BLUE that cluster around the bottom of the boat nibbling at marine life growing there. Swim in toward shore, where the reefs have been rubbed smooth by the passage of bodies, and there are lots of PEOPLE to watch in the interior, but not that many fish and hardly any plant life. Outside at the periphery there's some tiny bright blue-and-yellow fish, but the life isn't NEARLY as lush as that around the Virgins. Interesting to have SEEN, but no need to return, only to hope that the reefs at Cozumel would be LARGER, therefore less subject to EROSION from tourists, and slightly farther south might be slightly lusher, though Belize is still probably the best. In for only half an hour, but I'm almost too exhausted to pull myself up on the propeller mount and take off my flippers. Really POOPED, and I'm possibly deathly pale, too, as I try to catch my breath. Then we land a bit south at one of the turtle farms for our picnic at 1:30, and I go into a smelly john to change into dry clothes, and sit in the shade and watch the tourists getting burned, drinking beer, and being obnoxious. I'm still queasy, but by the time lunch is served around 2:30 I'm hungry enough to enjoy the shrimp-seviche with onion-water, and leave some of the onion-water for the broiled fish, which is quite delicious with pallid rolls. Don't recall dessert, I had a mineral water to drink, and took pictures of the people wrestling the enormous sea turtles out to photograph them. Some NICE bodies, but I didn't care for the sun's rays. At last onto the ship about 3, back just before 4 in time for me to run back my snorkel equipment, pick up my driver's license security, and dash back to the Sultana del Mar for the trip back, lying on the foredeck with others and actually HAVING two playful dolphins rush in from right field and leap and swim RIGHT UNDER the nose of the ship for 20-30 seconds while I failed to maneuver for a photograph. Back to another rush for taxis, I'm relieved that I managed to survive the day without shitting in my pants, and back on a very crowded bus to the Parador for another shower and an exhausted lay on the bed until about 9, when I roused myself DETERMINED to find the Blackbeard's Tavern. DON'T find it, return to the Taverna, and when I get the menu find that it IS Blackbeard's Tavern! Have wine and some kind of mixed dish of food and watch passersby and listen to the MOANS and WAILS of the mariachi music, sometimes SO funny that I think it HAS to be intentionally amusing. Out about 10, streets really DEAD, and drop into bed to sleep, leaving a call for 6 to make sure I get up and pack and eat breakfast before bus.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7. 5 am: LOTS of dreams this morning: something on "How to put together a workable city" and Dennis and I taking a subway to a circus on the 18th floor of a Manhattan building that's "in the same trench as the 5th Avenue subway at Canal, and the Rector St. stop." Pack, get my 6 am call, out at 7:15 to have a sandwich at the bus station snack shop, having again taken Lomotil because I'm still feeling delicate of stomach. 8:05 am: Definitely end-of-trip syndrome. Dull-witted, only wanting it to be OVER. Then ask for the Merida bus at 8 and they mention "otra terminal," and "Otra esquina." "OTRA?" I shout! Well, it's just down where everyone ELSE is, and it's now THERE with fuss with people with second-class tickets and Americans who sit anywhere until they're DEMANDED to move to their proper seats; then a baby yowls when she thinks mother's deserted her, and someone's brought a crying CAT onto the bus! Music on QUIETLY (by comparison) at the start and seat next to me's EMPTY when we leave at 8:10. Mexican irritations: practically ALL the people, ALL the kids, Pemex stopping traffic BOTH ways to pull up their oil exploration wiring, the layer of grayish-pink pollution over Cancun, Isla Mujeres, and surrounding points from all the FUEL burned, and the eternal LITTERING on streets, busses, theaters, EVERYWHERE. Road is clear, sky is clear, forest is almost unbroken, bus runs smoothly through little villages, though there's no sign of any ruins around X-can. Drive past the Cenote square in Valledolid and I wander into station for a soda during the 20-minute stop, then into the melee of Chichen Itza to leave off people, driving quickly through the ruins area, and then through familiar roadside sights from my trips to Chichen Itza and Izamal. Into the city about 1 pm, get off at the FAR station and lug bag through busy market for the last time stopping off at the bank for one last exchange into AMERICAN money, into the post office for MORE stamps than they could sell me at Cancun, and back to Casa Bowen about 1:30 to find my room not yet ready. Leave my bag and try Casa Montejo one last time, to find from the tourist information desk that it's CLOSED for at least two months for renovation; find the church near the "Mother's park" to be closed (and one evening I went to see the Posada Toledo, before dinner at the Merida Hotel, and it HAD a nice large inner court, but it didn't seem significantly nicer than Casa Bowen, and it was probably NOISIER since it was closer to the busy center of town); and back to the Casa at 2:30 to find HANS-JORG there, JUST in the process of leaving me a note, saying THEY were back too; I was in ROOM 8; THEY were in SUITE 8! Meet them at 6. In for my bags, unpack, and out to walk to the ZOO again, looking at inscriptions, walking around the back that I'd missed before, still loving the animals, and at 3 pm a young male deer (horns only thimble-sized nubbins) licking (or sucking?) his stiff young thin, definitely HEADED cock! Felines, hippos, birds, more tasty snacks, but finally tired about 5 and walk the long walk (the circus, sadly, was gone) back to the hotel, and change into night clothes and get over to suite 8 for hugs from both of them, and they'd bought "special" brandy that we shared, and then out to my suggestion of El Patio, which they think is expensive, so we're out to look at Cedres du Leban, which I thought might be cheap, but it turns out even MORE expensive, so we're BACK to the Patio and get good chicken dishes and a bottle of wine and enjoy talking: THEY loved Isla Mujeres and HATED Cozumel for its expensiveness, feeling they couldn't rent a scooter for 300P, long lines for everything, and expensive taxis. Interesting. Compare more notes, I suggest I take their photos, and THEY suggest back at the Casa Bowen, so we're snapping each other with HIS flash, since mine doesn't seem to WORK anymore, and get into bed about 10, having borrowed an alarm clock from Mrs. Bowen and found that it DOES work for 5:15, she insists that a taxi's coming at 5:30, for my ride to the airport by 6 for check-in for the plane that leaves at 7 am---they say.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 8. 4:35 am: Wake at 2 with dream of green-eyed handsome "devil" with VERY red WHITES of eyes, who was against me, and I found by BITING his rubbery chin VERY hard his face AND power would collapse and everything became "like Santa Claus was real" and had money and chocolates as thick as the packets of crackers that were crushed to feed the fish Tuesday at Isla Mujeres. I bit TWICE, wanting SO badly for the devil to switch to good. Then wake at 3 with dream of handsome men infiltrating German lines and escaping through holes dug at the bottoms of holes the Germans had prepared for TRAPS for the spies, but somehow it switched to an expedition into GUATEMALA that I thought I would leave when the going ACTUALLY got DANGEROUS. Then at 4 there was the wedding of Monica Mushinski with her knowing eyes bulging the "fact" of her virginity, languidly posing against a doorway, saying "And when they get too demanding I simply lowered my dress front and paraded my perfect bosom before their astounded eyes. They were so entranced by their beauty that I and my attendants could walk the last few hundred yards to my home in perfect safety." Then at 4:30 I seem really AWAKE, so shit, wash, dress, pack, drink water, and look over fog rising over lit Zocolo, and down at 5:25 JUST as cabdriver knocks at door. 50P to the old fart who probably cleans (who said "some muchacho" told us we had a room on Day 1), and 15 minutes ride to almost empty airport at 5:45. Talk to boring accented Canadian and check-in starts at 6 and I'm NOT on their list! Hope flight from Acapulco ISN'T full! Wait 20 minutes for my 20P tax change from 50, and still gray and foggy at 6:40. Read. At 7, announce flight delayed to 8. Finish "Profiles of the Future" at 8, still in lounge. Start "Time Probe." Finally the air BRIGHTENS at 9:25---gone is my LONG wait in Acapulco! Finally call for boarding at 9:30, and on to left window seat in front. Leave 9:50, much too foggy-hazy-smoggy for pictures. Still CLUTCH with held breath at sharp DC-9 turns. Cenotes DOT landscape with round little lakes. Fly ALONG coast, Cuidad del Carmen hidden under clouds, little bumps ALL the way keep me jumping. Land at Villehermosa 10:35, one of few LONGER than estimated rides of 40 minutes, and take pictures out of REFLEX, more than actual scenic value. Again forty minutes for Oaxaca, off at 10:56 and ABOVE clouds by 10:59, quite a turning climb! Breathing HARD, hands almost too wet to turn PEN! Arthritic CRAMPS in BOTH hands! Land at 11:35, somewhat less bumpy flight; view over HILLS and dusty roads/trails joining hilltop communities. Lots less "clutch" now. Flight's HALF over for today! Valley of Oaxaca VERY smoggy and hot looking. Fruit and some butter-less rolls welcome for breakfast at LAST after two large cups free Aeromexico coffee at airport and 7P for some sunflower seeds when I didn't want to pay 30P for dry sandwiches. Thirty minutes to Acapulco, leaving at 11:51, taking off to SOUTH this time. No new view of Monte Alban. Same clouds over same mountains, leveling off at Pacific. Land at 12:21, ONE flight left! Decided NOT to bother about reseeing Acapulco City. Woman says I AM on both flights today. Kahlua prices range from 185 to 220P. Sit and watch people at 1, said to start processing flight at 2:30. Read more, and flight opens at 2, so I pay my 100P airport tax, buy cheapest Kahlua I can find for 180P, get lunch for 143P and leave my last 8P tip, my worry how to face the pleasant waitress with such a puny tip greatly RELIEVED when she goes off DUTY. Check through at 3, giving up my tourist card, and find that Kahlua in the TRULY duty-free shop is 150P. Complain; cashier says "It's not right," but obviously nothing will be done. I begin (or continue to develop) to hate Mexicans. Into VERY warm waiting area to write this by 3:20---time passing! Feel just plain ILL---hope it's just nerves. Change waiting rooms at 3:40---looks light a pretty empty flight. Board at 3:50, 4.5 hours flying time; take off at 4:20, I'm just AWFULLY JITTERY! Acapulco again on the right, though there are lots of suburbs off to the left, too. Then hills, and not much to view since we don't seem to be flying over anything in particular, and they hold off dinner while it's still light outside, and then clouds begin to come in with sunset and the Caribbean, and they serve dinner which I have no problem eating, drinking nothing to protect my stomach, and family next to and behind me chats back and forth, people copmparing notes on their trip, mainly how expensive all the hotels were and how mediocre the food and how hot the beaches. Night falls with black clouds, but there are some scattered lights and then lines of lights along the Gulf coast, and LOTS of brilliant cities: one might fantasize having seen New Orleans, Birmingham, Atlanta, and other large southern cities, jewel-like in their black settings, and I wrap my coat around my head to look out past the brightly-lit cabin where epeople are talking louder and louder. They announce it's 14 in New York, so I'm glad I packed with multi-layered clothing! At last we're over the bright lights of Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, almost continuous, and Manhattan in the distance before they even announce landing. Flight quite smooth, but landing bumpy as usual. They tried out the wing light a NUMBER of times, making me vaguely apprehensive, but now we're over the shores of Long Island and I'm relieved, landing directly rather than circling, and it's only 8:20, flight having taken 4 hours, or 9:20 NYC time. Pull blue jeans, looser, over red trousers, put on all layers of shirt, sweater, jacket, raincoat, and across plane-bridge to terminal and walk a LONG way to customs, not even LOOKING at my passport, and customs doesn't even look through my BAG, so I'm out DIRECTLY to the cab stand and have to WALK to the cab for my only outside exertion, so I don't really feel the cold, and new cabdriver tells me about the cold and the storm that I've missed, and we drive Atlantic Avenue and I'm HOME at 10 pm, paying almost $20 for the ride back ($18.50?), happy to see the apartment in good condition, PILES of mail, a letter from Bill, notes from John about the plants, which seem in reasonably poor but savable condition, and I'm HOME, and with the end of nervousness I FEEL somewhat better, only TIRED from HAVING BEEN nervous and looking forward with eagerness to ALL the letter reading, phone calling, slide developing, journal transcribing, and catching up I have to do in the next MONTH, which this is now the END of!
10 flights
1) NYC - Mexico City
2) - Villahermosa
3) - Oaxaca
4) - Acapulco
5) - Mexico City
6) - Merida
7) - Villahermosa
8) - Oaxaca
9) - Acapulco
10- - NYC
DAY-BY-DAY LOG OF TRIP TO MEXICO: December 9, 1980 to January 8, 1981
TUE, DEC. 9: Fly JFK to Mexico City 9:20 am to 2 pm. Visit zoo. Fly to Villahermosa 5-6 pm, wander center city looking for hotel, most of them full. Finally "expensive" Hotel Olmeca for $21; eat in Los Faroles.
WED, DEC. 10: Bus to ruins of Palenque in tropical jungle setting, few tourists; buildings wonderfully reconstructed. Rains while I'm in the museum and take slides of rainbow afterwards with my new camera. Most of the slides come out better than I would have hoped. Quick, but adequate visit, bus back to Villahermosa and watch mall-walkers from mediocre Azulejo Restaurant. Not the most beautiful or exciting town in Mexico.
THU, DEC. 11: Walk to the adequate museum, lunch at Los Persicos overlooking the Grijalva River, in drizzle to the ruins of La Venta in a park-like setting---it's more fun WORKING to see them. Deer and lizards in park. Eating in Los Faroles when the Guadeloupe-celebrating parade passes.
FRI, DEC. 12: Fly to Oaxaca and meet couple who'd been there 3 weeks: they take me to markets, recommend Hotel Senorial right on the main plaza, and show me the Tourist Office. Santo Domingo Church and Museum for the fabulous treasures from Monte Alban's Tomb 7. Ask why the girls are all dressed up and get sent to the Church of Our Lady of Guadeloupe for the festival celebrations throughout Mexico today. Walk to the Casa de Cultura, the Cathedral (dismal), and eat hot and chocolate-y (black, almost) chicken mole at Cafe Guelatao, seemingly most popular restaurant on the square.
SAT, DEC. 13: Elegant breakfast outside at the Hotel Marquis del Valle, then bus to Monte Alban, buying TWO sets of tickets: to go at 10 am, NOT return at noon, NOT go at 2:30 pm, and return at 5, Even at $1.50 that's better than the regular tours (for shorter times) for $15. Hot, barren, mainly reconstructed pyramids on mountaintop overlooking Oaxaca. Best parts are the newly discovered tombs to the north and the still-unreconstructed rubble to the south. Meet a French couple who praise Kohunlich and other ruins in the south. Bus back in time for the stupendous Indian Saturday market until after dark, then collapse at an open-air bar until an American couple I'd met earlier join me and we dine together at the awful Senorial.
SUN. DEC. 14: Bus tour to Tula, for the 3000-year-old tree; Mitla, for a sketchy view of the Mayan mosaics; and Tlalteclolo for the market. Back to town for lunch of pork in RED mole (pronounced mo-LAY) sauce, but the day was too much: I read, feel sick, go to bed until 9 pm, when I get up for the best dinner at El Asada Vasco; they didn't even charge for dessert.
MON, DEC. 15: Bus to Mitla passed other archeological sites, so I took the LOCAL bus for pennies to Lambityeco for newly found clay mask decorations, to Dainzu to be the ONLY tourist in a newfound area, and to Yagul for an incredible view over the valley and hillsides from little-known ruins. Spectacular setting. Hitchhike to Mitla, join an English-speaking tour for the American Jewish Congress (doctors from NY and NJ) for a THOROUGH tour, including all the churches built right ON the outlying parts of the ruins, and then to visit Howard Leigh's collection NEXT to the museum, and his collection makes the museum's collection look pale. Bus back to Oaxaca and eat in El Patio; this time they don't charge for crepes suzettes!
TUE, DEC. 16: Fly to Acapulco 9:35-10:05, cab into city and HATE it: all for beach-oriented tourists with lots of money, and I'm no part of any of that. Cab back to airport after taking a few pictures of the admittedly spectacular hotels and bay, and fly to Mexico City 1:55-2:30, checking into the tour-required (for cheaper stopover fares) Hotel Doral---not a bad choice, except that I had to pay $36/day on the tour-basing for a room that was $20/day on an individual basis. Great central location, however, Walk the "Zona Rosa," the tourist area, dine with EXCELLENT food in the Fonda del Refugio, recommended by a NYC friend, and walk into Chapultepec Park at night to find everything closed, including the Amusement Park, and even some roads around the President's Palace, located in the park. (Not in the AMUSEMENT park, I might add). Lovely fountains outside the Restaurant del Lago. Altitude of Mexico City seems not to be bothering me at all.
WED, DEC. 17. Tour-based half-day city tour shows me the Rivera murals in the Government Palace, the Cathedral, and parks and residential areas. Get to Gray Lines immediately after for their tour to Our Lady of Guadeloupe---where they made an enormous mistake building something flashier than Madison Square Garden to house one of the most revered pieces of fabric in the Christian world. But the old Cathedral's sinking into the lake on which Mexico City is built. Too short a time here, too long a time at another market, and then to Teotihuacan for the enormous Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, and the current unearthing of incredible carvings in the Castillo. Rebel against the tour's shortening our time, so we have little time to waste at the dreadful La Gruta Restaurant in a cave before the Sound and Light goes on at Teotihuacan, with the voices of Charlton Heston and Agnes Moorehead and spectacular lighting effects. Chilly at night.
THU, DEC. 18: Gray Line tour (only way for a single person to get around) to Puebla, but I find the best museums on my own AWAY from the tour, have a great quick lunch of Chalupas in a local beanery while the tour's embedded in a hotel's restaurant, and then to a shop in San Martin Tuxmelucan, and finally to the Cholula Pyramid, where 12 MILES of tunnels hardly dent what may be the largest pyramid in the world---another church built on top! Dinner at the Rivoli, one of the most prestigious restaurants in Mexico City, but I find it a laugh: the Chicken Chichen-Itza is obviously based on the Aztec idea of tearing hearts out of people: this is red-sauced (achiote sauce) chicken meat wrapped in two layers of banana leaves which have to be pulled apart like a chest cavity before the meat can be pulled out, AND they brought my Grand Marnier soufflé (which was very good, however, so I'm glad I wasn't full) before I finished my meal! Drank water.
FRI, DEC. 19: Breakfast at VIPs Mexican fast-food, then on a tour of Tula with Swiss Miss Schnitzler who told me Tahiti and Moorea aren't worth visiting, but that Fiji retains native cultures. Feel ill (from water?) during lunch; tour guide is very obnoxious, the museum of Tepotzotlan is not very interesting, but the pyramids of Santa Cecilia and Tenayuca are interesting enough to be worth the half-hour spent at each. Sleep!
SAT, DEC. 20: City tour enables me to leave group and see the City of Mexico Museum with its models of how it looked in Aztec times, and it continues with the Museum of Anthropology, which contains the cream of Mexican artifacts. To the Saturday Bazaar, a Hawaiian restaurant for lunch, University City, and the Floating Gardens of Xochimilco, empty and depressing in the last of the afternoon. I return to the amusement park and enjoy two rides on the roller coaster before it closes at 8 pm, and then have the best meal in Mexico City at the Del Lago. Great climax for my visit to Mexico City.
SUN, DEC. 21: Fly (two hours late) to Merida in the Yucatan 12:50-2:05, and sit just ahead of Hans-Jorg and Christal, whom I'd met in Teotihuacan. They suggest the Casa Bowen, a great hotel for less than $7/night. I stroll the city and the Christmas-y parks and meet them for dinner at the Hotel Caribe.
MON, DEC. 22: Exchanging plane reservations and planning rest of trip and changing money all morning, buy bus tickets and making hotel reservations, and dine with Hans-Jorg and Christal at Alfredo's, an old hacienda.
TUE, DEC. 23: A cheap tourist bus makes the rounds of three small sites: Kabah, Labna, Xlapak; one medium site, Sayil; and one masterpiece: Uxmal. I see about half what there is to see by the time the bus returns to Merida at 2 pm. Walk to Centenario Park for the zoo, stop in a local restaurant, and talk to an Oregonian while watching passersby. No great entertainment town.
WED, DEC. 24: Take the same bus to the same places and see the REST of the sites; this is the only way to do it. Then to the Merida Museum in a grand white palace, stroll the rich Paseo Montejo, have dinner on the main square.
THU, DEC. 25: Local bus to Mayapan ruins, chat with the caretakers and their daughter, who sees me back to the bus to Merida, and dinner and show at one of the most embarrassingly awful restaurants I've seen: Faison Y Venado.
FRI, DEC. 26: 7 am bus is the only way to get to Dzibilchaltun, but I hitchhike back with Louisianans. Lunch is a Bonny Burger at Super Bonny, a touch of America, and then I return to Uxmal for the Sound and Light, seeing both the Spanish version at 7 (eating a mediocre dinner in the Villa Archeologica between) and the American version at 9:30, but NO one will pick me up to take me back to Merida, so I have to spend over $35 (having already paid for my room in Merida) for a room at the Hacienda Uxmal. Luxurious evening.
SAT, DEC. 27: Dawn at Uxmal, grand breakfast in the Hacienda, then spend two hours waiting for a bus to Merida, finally hitching to Uman and getting a cheap taxi who'd just left tourists off for the day. Meet Gerard, a Texas professor who says we should share a car out of Chetumal, meeting there in four days. Good! Local bus out to the Izamal convent and pyramid, a lovely unspoiled-by-tourists town (few of them left!), where conveniences are marked in Mayan and Spanish: XIBOOB/HOMBRES and XCHUPALAL/Mujeres. To the Hotel Merida for their dinner show, only slightly better than Faison Y Venado.
SUN, DEC. 28: Bus to Chichen Itza, checking in to cheap but distant hotel, and spend the day in the old section, avoiding the crowd of tourists across the road. Dinner in the hotel with Peter and Jan, pleasant Americans.
MON, DEC. 29: To the NEW section of Chichen Itza (500 years old), and incredible remnants of original color on frescos and carved columns. Dine with Felice & Gus.
TUE, DEC. 30: Bus to Valladolid with time for the Church of San Bernardino, not worth visiting, and the Cenote (natural pool) Zaci, filled with CLEAR water as opposed to the pollution of the cenote in Chichen or the DRY cenotes I've encountered before. Bus via Carillo Puerto (nothing) to Chetumal, to find that Gerard changed his mind and went to Tikal. Pity. One of the best meals of the trip for $7 at the Dora Maria Restaurant in this charming town.
WED, DEC. 31: Rent a cab for over $60 for Kohunlich, Xpujil, Becan, and Chicana, an extraordinary day and unbelievable QUALITY to what they're finding NOW, so that I think archeologists are MAKING them, not FINDING them. No guides or maps, since everything's so newly found. See the awful movie "S.O.S. Concorde" starring my friend Mimsy Farmer, and to bed at 10:30 pm!
THU, JAN. 1: Quality Hotel Continental Caribe breakfast buffet for $8, then a bus to Tulum, idyllic and overcrowded with tourists; I get the last hotel room (the Germans who come after me have to sleep on the floor of the awful restaurant---but then I usually have good luck), even though there's no water for an evening shower. Restaurant runs out of food. Bed at 8:30 pm.
FRI, JAN. 2: Watch sunrise over Tulum ruins, get chased out by guard since the grounds don't open until 8 am. Risk taking a bus to Coba -- NO ONE knows when buses LEAVE Coba. Since there's only one hotel, I pay for my room in Tulum in case I'll need it. Find a room in Coba: two hotel rooms again! The Coba ruins almost undiscovered, one of the most incredible sites in the Yucatan: enormous, overgrown, finely carved, unbelievably romantic, unforgettable site along lakes Masconxoc and Xkanha. Hotel pleasant but totally boring.
SAT, JAN. 3: Watch sunrise over Coba; fog rises soon after so even the guards can't see me. Back to breakfast where they charge me $1 for two slices of toast; when I complain they haughtily insist I don't pay the $6 for breakfast at all. Perfectly all right with me. Return to ruins and total enchantment with Coba. But no bus today! Bum ride with trailer caravaners from South Dakota, who suggest they drop me off at Xel-Ha. OK. Beautiful land-locked bay with tropical fish swimming as if in clear air. At gate, a long walk from bay, I hear English from a taxi. They're Swedish. Can I join them? They're fur and skin traders, world travelers; I tell them all about Yellowstone and Yosemite and Grand Canyon, where they want to visit next. They drive me to Playa del Carmen, where I'm going, then when I offer them a beer for their taxi hospitality, they insist on paying for my lunch. Grand! They tell me all about Cozumel, our destination on the ferry from Playa del Carmen (my second rainbow here, captured on film; first was over the Palacio at Palenque my second day out). I love the place, even though I can't get a room in the hotel I'd like. Expensive lovely dinner.
SUN, JAN. 4: I figure I'll be BACK to Cozumel for the world famed snorkeling, so I leave and bus to Cancun, not able to find Felice and Gus, taking local bus through the tourist area---VERY impressive but impossible to walk in, terrifically polluted, extremely expensive---not my place at all. Eat in a mediocre restaurant and see a dreadful movie "When Time Ran Out." Nothing else to do in Cancun.
MON, JAN. 5: Finally mail cards, needing supplementary postage for the rate raise---usual in this tremendously inflationary economy. Local bus to Puerto Juarez and a boat to Isla Mujeres. All beaches and hotels and sun-baking tourists. Had planned to stay the evening, but take the ferry back to Punta Sam to get a look at it, and return to Cancun to watch passersby.
TUE, JAN. 6: Cancun has NOTHING to do; bus back to Puerto Juarez and over to Isla Mujeres and find a tour leaving for a morning's snorkeling at the "world famous" Garrafon Beach (Virgin Islands much more colorful, and lots fewer tourists), lunch on the beach of fresh-caught fish, riding (if one gets a kick out of it) on sea turtles in their ocean pens. Like Cozumel much better. Back to Cancun and a decent meal in Blackbeard's Tavern.
WED, JAN. 7: Bus to Merida, revisit the zoo, re-met Hans-Jorg and Christal for a final dinner and plans to meet them possibly in Berlin sometime. We have so much in common it amazes all three of us---fast, lifetime friends.
THU, JAN. 8: Wake at 5 am to take the 7 am-scheduled plane which leaves at 9:50, so I'm glad I had books along to read. Skip via Villahermosa and Oaxaca and Acapulco (each of which I'd seen so thoroughly I don't both to leave the airport) to New York City, taking only four hours to fly back home by 10 pm.
So Mexico City (with all its noise, crowding, pollution, and horrible people) and Cozumel are the two places I'd like to return to in Mexico.