Whether you fly or drive across the border, Mexico will play a game of hide and seek with you. You never know when you’re getting the real thing or the fuzzy edge of the U.S. I once found the real Mexico, on a long driving trip 23 years ago, at Matamoros across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, and didn’t lose it until I reached Acapulco on the Pacific Coast. But that’s another story.
Tulum. Too-loom. When you say it, it’s like singing. Tulum is a thousand-year-old Mayan ruin set in a place as lyrical as its name, on a sea-washed bluff about 80 miles south of Cancun. I saw it in a movie some years back and have since longed to go there. Recently, I set out, and the old game began anew.
On a bright hot June morning my Aermexico plane descends into Cancun. From the cabin I see a thin peninsula dotted with hundreds of hotels. Nope, that’s not Mexico, I think, that’s Miami Beach. But as we circle to land, she begins to tease, to reveal herself, as I notice the colors. The waters surrounding the slender Miami replica are crystal blue, lapis lazuli, not greenish brown like Biscayne Bay. And beyond, stretching to the horizon, an endless forest of chrome green.
Heading south on Highway 307, a shoulderless two-lane strip of boiling pavement, the Cancun hybrid falls away: the signs in English, the Mexicans at the airport bar watching “Family Matters” in English on cable TV; the shop where goods are priced as marked and that’s that. You still pass touches of Florida: a crocodile farm, a Disney-esque eco-park called Xcaret (Skah-rett) with a $30 per person admission fee, a resort-condo-golf development named Playacar that is a dead ringer for Boca Raton (except going one better, the lovely Mexican touch: tiled streets). But soon the developer pestilence thins out, and you’re in the land of the Maya, circa 1996.
The El Dorado resort is about 10 miles north of Tulum, in a protected mangrove on Kantenah Bay, down a rocky milelong road fit only for burro traffic. It is a cluster of buildings in the condo-Mex style, all pink and cobalt blue, salmon and aqua, Prussian blue and yellow ochre, solidly built on a sandy beach replanted with coconut palms to replace those blown away last year by Hurricane Roxanne. The buildings are undamaged, a tribute to the Mexican reverence for solid building materials.
Settling into my suite, I switch on the TV and the game continues: There, live on HBO is the Wimbledon tennis tournament. Changing channels, I discover that I get only three: a cooking show, CNN and HBO. The Mexican muse is teasing again–CNN is without sound.
The shoreline in front of El Dorado is rocky, unsuitable for swimming, an outcropping of the Kantenah Bay Reef, but a half-mile south you’ll discover a beach of perfect talcum sand blemished only by the broken palms left by Roxanne, and–the muse reminds you again of Florida–the phlegm of the sea, coughed up everywhere: plastic.
Beware of dog
If you like isolation, you’ll like this Yucatan coast. There are miles of solitary beach between hotels; no houses, no roads, no one to save you if you get into trouble. As I take a run down the lonely sand, I come upon a sign on a stick that reads, “Beware of dog.”
Then another sign with the same thing in Spanish. In Ft. Lauderdale, where I live, if you see such a sign you can be reasonably sure that the dog is behind a fence, and that “Beware of dog” really means “Don’t climb this fence.” On this beach there are no fences, so I deduce that “Beware of dog” means exactly that.
I imagine a Rottweiler running out of the jungle, and prepare to stand very still while having my tibia crushed, thereby signaling to the dog that I have no fear, and picture him slinking away, having failed to scare me off his beach. But nothing appears, and I continue down the beach another mile or so. On the way back, as my fear begins to rise again, a small white dog with a friendly bark comes out to greet me. I think I hear the muse squeal with delight.
In the evening, at the beach-front bar before dinner with a cold Dos Equis, I watch the waiters come and go with their orders. The tables and chairs are handmade of sticks, whittled and bent, with pieces of flat wood arranged in decorative patterns, covered tightly with rough cowhide gone slick with use. The breeze comes through the arches. In Mexico there are arches everywhere: arches in stone, in concrete, in wood, in the shrubbery, mirroring the vault of the sky. As darkness falls and dim lights come on in the bar, I notice movement across the floor, tiny orbs gliding in all directions. Hermit crabs, squads of them, some the size of peas, some large as golfballs, carrying their shell on an unknown quest. There are many waiters, and many crabs. Crab disaster seems inevitable. The crab seems experienced with waiter feet, for when a foot is near, it retracts into its shell until the waiter has passed. I sit for many minutes watching the waiter-crab ballet and see not a single accident. I never found out why the crabs were there.
The search for a stamp
In the real Mexico, the post office is no big deal. There are plenty of postcards for sale, but just try to buy a stamp. The nearest post office, I am told, is in Akumal, five miles south. I try Akumal. No post office, no stamps. Maybe in Playa del Carmen, 20 miles north, or in the town of Tulum, 10 miles south. I go south. My stamp expedition begins with a search of my rental car by soldiers in full battle gear armed with automatic rifles. There are several of these “Military Control Posts” along 307, checking for drogas, armas, contrabando. The soldiers are smiling, polite. They ask where I come from. I stutter “Miami,” suddenly feeling I should have said “Cincinnati.”
They wave me on, but in my rearview mirror I see their long stares as I speed away. That, I think, is the dark side of the Mexican muse.
In Tulum, I see a ramshackle building marked “Correos.” A quick turn into the alley, and I wedge my car into the tiny rock-strewn yard. Closed. The sign says the hours are 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is 10:30. I back my car carefully into the narrow alley. I feel a slight bump in the rear and hear a wail from the corner where a group of men are lounging. Suddenly I am surrounded by a mob demanding I get out and look at the damage I have done to a bicycle. The owner suggests that I have, by my carelessness, destroyed his livelihood and that of his children and possibly his children’s children.
I offer to pay for repairing the ancient bike. He considers for a moment and says, “Fifty pesos.” I fork over the note, about $7. In an instant I am transformed from villain to hero. There is much back-patting and hand-shaking and the crowd is cheering as I accelerate down the highway. I hope I haven’t angered the muse–I forgot to bargain.
Tulum
I finally find my stamps in the mall-like complex of shops that you pass through to get to the “Zona Arqueologica” of Tulum. As I walk down the half-mile dirt road to the ruin, streams of tourists pass by on Disney World-type trams. Mexico is teasing again.
I pay my 16 pesos ($2.25) and hand the ticket to the man at the opening in the rock wall. Stepping into the low, dark passageway, I sense the muse has suddenly become very serious, as if to say “No games here. Holy place.”
The first thing you notice is the scale. Photographs never give you the scale–the size of things relative to yourself. Tulum is concave, a shallow square dish several hundred yards wide and deep, surrounded by a rock wall 12 feet high, and the sea. Containing some 60 buildings (about 10 percent of its original size), the compound was home to the Mayan gentry of the era, perhaps the hemisphere’s first gated community. It is not at all the place of thick jungle and huge trees painted in 1842 by Frederick Catherwood just after it was discovered, massive roots embracing the silent ruins. It is open, grassy, trampled by the feet and weather of 150 years, not to mention Roxanne, but still a place of breathtaking beauty. Tulum, which means “wall” was originally named Zama, “City of the Dawn.” It is an adolescent of a ruin, thought to have been built around 500 A.D., or 700 A.D., or 1000 A.D., depending on which guidebook you read. The only Mayan city still inhabited when the Spanish arrived in 1518, Zama awed the conquistadors, who described it as a city large as Seville.
I make my way to the Temple of the Wind, intending to find a place to sketch. It has a 5-foot-wide ledge with a 100-foot drop to the sea, and no protective railing. The tourists, are inching around one another, eyeing the precipice. I think better of the idea of sketching here.
The real Mexico has railings to protect its antiquities, but none for the tourists; the implication being that humans are capable of taking care of themselves. It may also be that Mexico has few personal injury lawyers. In any case, as far as I know there was no death from falling the day I spent in Tulum. Sitting in the murderous sun, I develop a theory on the disappearance of Mayan civilization. The Maya worshiped the sun, believing it increased their strength. The logic of this concept of a deity becomes clear when you consider the millions of rocks that had to be cut and stacked to construct the thousands of structures that sprawl across ancient Mexico: no one could complain about the heat. However, in my theory, as Maya human-resource techniques became more sophisticated, at some point a middle-level manager said, “Too hot to stack stones.” Thus began the Mexican siesta and the decline of the Maya.
Tulum closes at 5 p.m. The crowds of tourists thin out. I am left sitting in the shade of a tree sketching the House of the Northeast, a jumble of walls and steps and columns where someone lived, a thousand years ago. I wonder about them, about the tales told and secrets kept. It is here, now, that you discover the intimacy of Tulum. It has none of the scale and grandeur of Chichen Itza or Uxmal, or that Manhattan of ruins, Teotihuacan. Tulum was a town of human size, where lovers of the sea and sun built their houses and churches and schools, pretty much like any coastal town in Florida. Here, in the silence, I imagine a piano playing a Beethoven sonata as the sun sets. They would have liked that.
Xel ha
Speaking of intimacy, if you want genuine, major intimacy, head back north on Highway 307 about five miles. Look for a sign on the left that says “Zona Arqueologica Xel ha ” (Chel-hah). (About 100 yards farther on the right is the entrance to the Xel ha national park and aquarium. Xel ha is famous for its lagoon, but never mind for now, it’s full of tourists and we’re talking intimacy here.) Down the dirt road you’ll see a couple of thatched huts, some underfed dogs, chickens and assorted farm animals. Park anywhere and pay the lady 10 pesos ($1.40), and she’ll let you walk on up the road to the ruins of Xel ha. You’re utterly alone, but there’s a sign to guide you around the village.
Xel ha is an unimpressive ruin being slowly, so slowly, dug out of the jungle, but as you tramp down its hot road and over its piles of stone, you’ll get a sense of how the common folks lived. Walk its rocky paths (writer Alice Le Plongeon in 1878 described the roads of the Yucatan as “a stormy sea, petrified.” They’re still that way.) dodging trees and keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes, and you’ll come to a lovely cenote (a deep, natural well whose undergroud streams create ponds) overhung with ferns and orchids. You’ll have the urge to jump in, but resist it for now.
Now head back, and you’ll come upon a friendly Mayan gentleman who speaks perfect English. His name is Miguel Lopez; Mayan name, Cham Moo. He’ll offer to guide you through the jungle to a place of indescribable beauty, for just 20 pesos, which he explains is only $3. You nervously accept and follow him down the road, stopping first at the hut to have a cold Cristal orange drink, and browse among the souvenirs, which, with haggling, you can get for at about half the price they’re sold for in the tourist shops. While browsing, you listen to your guide and the lady speak in the musical Mayan tongue. If you’re respectful and alert, the real Mexico will reward you with such experiences.
Leave your car where it is, follow Miguel across 307 to an unmarked, hidden path into the jungle. (If you have no guide, you’ll find the path on the east side of 307, just a few feet south of the entrance to the ruin.) The walk is about three-fourths of a mile, but it’s cooler here, and you imagine ancient feet polishing the stony path. Miguel will occasionally stoop to pick up a bit of red clay, pieces of thousand-year-old pottery, or obsidian, which the Maya used for cutting tools (blood sacrifice, Miguel explains). Soon you’ll see the sunlight, and you’ll understand what Miguel meant by “indescribable.” You’ve come upon a corner of the Xel ha lagoon that is truly a small glory, your private crystal aquarium, ringed by rock walls ‘ with sun-dappled recesses, and hundreds of glimmering fish. You’ll feel an urge to tear your clothes off and jump in, so go ahead. But careful, wear your swimsuit. In the real Mexico you can end up in the slammer for skinny-dipping.
Just across the water, you’ll find a peninsula divided from the mainland by a huge rock wall built in the undulating shape of a rattlesnake (a solar symbol to the Maya). After crossing over through the snake’s mouth, Miquel will explain that the seafaring tribes did their trading here, and show you where they pulled their canoes from the water (the only spot in the lagoon without rock cliffs), which brought them from as far as Honduras and Guatemala. He’ll show you the remains of small houses (about 4 by 6 feet) built by the Maya for the dwarfs, tiny people they believed guarded the forests. Then Miguel will leave you to enjoy the beauty and solitude of this lovely place.
The real Mexico tugs at me as I ride a big Greyhoundlike bus back to Cancun, as the driver jabbers happily at me in Spanish, and has a cooler beside him with a sign that says “Cold beer, $1.” It tugs at me at the airport when I’m having a delicious black beer called Leon that you can’t buy in the States. And it gives a final tug as I board my plane for Miami, seeming to say, “Things are different here.” I’m on a smoking flight.
DETAILS ON TULUM
Getting there: There are no nonstops from Chicago to Cancun. However, Aeromexico, Mexicana and American fly nonstop from Miami, among other cities, to Cancun.
Lodging: El Dorado is an all-inclusive resort. Rates include air fare on Aeromexico, transfers, all meals, unlimited beverages, use of snorkling equipment and bicycles, taxes and gratuities. The rooms are oceanfront junior suites and range from $527 for three nights to $871 for seven nights, per person double occupancy. This rate is good through June. From July through mid-January, the rate will probably double.
Getting around: Rental cars are available at the resort for about $50 per day with unlimited mileage.
Information: Contact Aeromexico Vacations, 800-245-8585. For more general information, contact the Mexican Government Tourism Office, 70 E. Lake St., Suite 1413, Chicago, Ill. 60601; 312-606-9252, or call 800-44-MEXICO.
