Cancun

Cancun, Burning Man called and it wants it´s noise pollution back. Man, you should really let people know when they check into your overpriced hostel that their kickin´ air conditioning system will be augmented by a non-stop stream of ¨DOOF DOOF DOOF¨ into the wee and then the not-so wee hours of the morn.

But that´s neither here nor there.

So the last stop of the trip! I cannot believe that this is where seven months of mayhem has brought us... Cancun, the Señor Frogged, high-risen, underaged pina colada center ring of the ugly tourist universe. I suppose it serves as a kind of decompression chamber for us on our re-entry into the States, although this is nothing like any America I´d want to live in.

But I can´t say we haven´t had a blast. The last week has seen some serious budgetary concerns on the part of Team Erik and Caitlin- some haphazard math left us with about 189 pesos per day between the two of us. A little disconcerting when your tent spot alone runs you 125. But we lived lightly, discovered the utility of red dresses and blonde hair when hitch hiking the Yucatan, sold our loyal tent to an interested Mexico Cityite, and came up on a few extra bucks for celebration on our last night in Latin America, hell, even enough for the bus ride to the airport.

Cancun gets a whole lot more fun with a six-pack of Sol. My only regret is missing the Lucha Libre fight that went down across the street from our hostel. Big, burly men grappling in superhero masks? Si hombre, los mejicanos son locos.

Mark my words, I´ll be back in Mexico before long. I´ve fallen in love with Oaxacan cheese and the phrase puta madre, yelled at a shrill pitch and high volume.

Sigh. But onward and upward! Thus concludes my last missive from abroad.

Over and out,
La Catalina

Fish Tacos in Paradise

The laguna our buddy Pete took us to on our epic Yucatan road trip. Glory be...

Last camp of the trip. Please note our cinderblock table and improvised tree-shelf in the upper- right hand corner.

He´s a man of many talents...

If you´re going to quit eating all animals for a few months, a Mexican fish taco is a great way to break the fast. Eat them at your campsite´s thatched hut beach joint, where the staff is always sleeping and everything, but everything comes with a lime. Delicious little cubes of fried fish and corn tortilla and salsa and FOUR alternative condiments on the table to speed your way... now this, this is living. Thank you Tulum, your grub is awesome.

I wish I could say the same about the Yucatan Peninsula in general.

This being the bell lap of the Latin American adventure, I am more broke with more miles between me and gainful employment than ere before in the life of Caitlin. We had carefully crafted a budget a few weeks ago that would get us to that June 19th flight outta Cancun without resorting to illegal vending or straying too far south of that line between backpacker and hobo.

And then we got out here, to the ¨Maya Riviera.¨ And we realized our backpacking trip had ended earlier than we anticipated. Cuz there´s no ¨budget travel¨ here.

An old man who called himself ¨Tasso Picasso¨ and sold his dubious oil pastel portraits of jungle lesbians on the beach told me the saga of Tulum. How once, long, long ago, hippies ruled this land and there was free camping on the beach and ¨lots of grass and naked girls.¨ Oh, the glory. And then the landowners got wise to the scene, and realized that while hippies had very little disposable income, yuppies had bunches. So they razed the camp grounds, put in concrete cabanas at prices the poi set could not afford and generally deprioritized public transportation.

And Tulum is still considered ¨earthy¨ by Yucatan Peninsula standards. Venture north and you hit Playa del Carmen, where Lacoste stores and your overweight uncle from upstate New York have taken the place of taquerias and fishermen. The beach is parceled out into ownerships by massive, all inclusive resorts who seem to be in a competition for who can build the most monolithic security gate. Venture further north and you hit Cancun. ´Nuff said. ¿Donde estas, Mexico? Sooo a bit of an odd place to spend the last weeks of a trip characterized for the most part by places where the McDonalds´arches don´t shine.

But don´t feel too bad for me. We went swimming in one of the cenotes that dot the Peninsula other day, the natural sinkholes that one person told me were the result of a meteroid impact on the area. We´ve managed to snag a pay-to-camp spot under some mangrove trees a few meters from the beach, where on most days the most taxing activity is stringing my hammock between the right palm trees. Yesterday we went snorkeling off a reef in our front yard and I communed with purple, orange and green parrot fish.

Oh, and did I mention that the real Tulum is right down the beach? The Mayan city, built from white stone on a sea cliff where craaaazy happenings are rumored to go down at night? Did I mention we snuck in for a midnight commune with the cosmological ancestors themselves? How did it go you ask?

I mean, I have to save some stories to tell for when I get back, guys. Buy me a beer in a few weeks and I´ll weave you the tale. ´Cause God knows I won´t be able to afford my own.

Love,
CD

Palenque

Chiapas, once you descend from the mountains where San Cristobol sits in it´s chic urbane sachet, is hot. Very hot. And humidity that likes to melt ladies of Celtic-Euro ancestry like yours truly.

But it´s a pretty, if moist, descent into the jungles. Your colectivo passes you through the heart of tierra zapatista, past the community-run schools and the caracoles, the seats of pueblo power that strike fear into the heart of Mexico City bureaucrats. There are homemade signs that tell you not to litter and federal government erected signs that tell you not to make your own speed bumps (why haven´t US neighborhood activists just done and made their own speed bumps?). We changed vans in Ocosingo, a tiny town where bloody shoot-outs went down between campesinos and their government´s army, all over the right to use the land their ancestors are from as they saw fit. From the road, I saw nary a plaque in commemeration. I was silently impressed.

And then we swam through the heat waves to the ruins of the Mayan city Palenque.

Like the lands of the Zapatista struggle, I was struck surprised by how much awe Palenque generated in me. It was like standing and looking at the Parthenon, so epic were it´s proportions. There are some sites that strike a chord somewhere deep in your soul, like touching on a treasured human archetype. This is one.

I liked the Temples of the Cross the best, which were constructed by some long-ago Mayan king each to honor a god, the glyphs on the walls designed to bridge god-time and Maya-time, looping them into the same continuum with the temple at it´s focus. I stared at one elaborate stelae for a long time in the blessed shade of one of the smaller temples and suddenly it´s meaning of sun worship became clear to me, sans explicatory map, sans bi-lingual sign. These Mayans, man, masters of disseminating information.

Plus, it´s deep in the jungle. The buggy, sweaty jungle. We emerged after our day at the ruins exhausted and gratified and ready for our jungle cabana.

Oh yeah, those. So Mom says I think everywhere I stay is ´super great!´ and I guess up to this point that´s been true but El Panchan, the hostel-jungle path-campout where the backpackers hang, was by far the most depressing place I´ve hung my hat in awhile. There was this elaborate hippie camp, Rakshita, that we´d heard about all the way down in Guatemala and when we got there it was deserted and run down and under construction and rainy and unloved... a jungle palace gone from it´s glory days.

I think I see a theme here. On to the Yucatan!

Love,

CD

San Cristobol de las Casas

Hey, do you like lychees? They are spikey, but you don´t eat the spikes, and inside you find a taut little white fruit that measures up within an inch of it´s spectacular outwardly appearance.

Also, we are in San Cristobol de las Casas. It was here that the Zapatistas, the Chiapan-Mexican rebel group (popularily referred to as the ¨first postmodern revolutionaries¨) took over from the national government in the mid 1990´s. They took over the city in the name of democracy at all levels of Mexican government, land rights for the indigenous and social justice in general. They are awesome. Nowadays they sell little black-masked figurines affixed to earring posts and on silk-screened T- shirts, which I find infinitely preferable to the ¨I Heart Tacos¨ t-shirts and it´s souvenier market ilk.

I could live here.

Love,

Sub-Commandante Donohue