Day 13: Valladolid - Day 2 - Grampies Yucatan De Nuevo, Winter 2023

December 25, 2023

Day 13: Valladolid - Day 2

A Sweet Christmas Day

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A very intriguing feature of the Yucatan peninsula is its varieties of stingless honey bees, and the way the Mayan people have worked with them to produce unique jungle honeys. As we have travelled along, we have seen several Mayan village sites, with advertised either tours of beekeeping or at least with honey sales. For today, Christmas Day, Dodie found a super place not far from town, with a complete tour, honey tasting and sales, and an included restaurant. The place was called Xcopek, Beekeeping Park. Its name comes from the Mayan words "Xkop", which means dry cenote and "Ek", meaning a hive of wasps.

We set off, through what were now the empty streets of town. I assumed that everyone was home, unwrapping their presents. Actually we are not at all sure that gift giving is part of the Christmas culture here. Certainly we have not seen a single reference to or image of Santa Claus. And people can't be gathered with the family around the hearth, because they have no hearths, exactly. But gathering for Christmas Dinner has to be the thing, right? Anyway, we saw almost no one out and about.

The Bee Park turned out to be extremely close to town, yet the site was extremely lush and seemed very big.

The reception included a small bee museum, with a small and random collection of local bee stuff, but all very interesting.

Showing the link that people here feel with ancient gatherers of wild honey, they had the famous "Bicorp Man" from 8000 year old cave paintings near Valencia, Spain.

As we were to be shown on the tour, the tiny local bees produce only a little honey, that is extracted with syringes. This accounts for the high price. The price on the bottles in the photo below is about 5x more per gram than commercial honey back home. That does not seem at all crazy to me.

This bookmark is a Motmot tail feather. Dodie wanted the shot because she is beginning to despair of seeing a live Motmot this trip!

There are 16 or 17 native stingless bee species in Yucatan, and 400 in the world's tropical zones. At Xcopek they have four species, but as everywhere in Yucatan, the major one is the Melipona. There is of course lots of info on this in the internet. This one random site, from a different tour, seemed to have a good short summary.

We assume this was a free hanging honey bearing hive, but it was unlabelled in the museum.

We went out to meet our guide, Eduardo, by these bee themed love seats.

Eduardo was super cute. He was a bit new at the job, but of course knew way more than us!

As hinted in the name of the park, the tour led down into an open, dry cenote. Our group had a mix of people, both old and young, and we were glad that Eduardo went reasonably slowly.

Here is the Ceiba tree. Eduardo demonstrated by knocking on it that it is hollow. It plays a role in Mayan mythology as a conduit between the underworld and the heavens.

All the trees and bees at the site had labels like this. You can scan the QR codes from the photos, but the additional information from this is unfortunately in Spanish only.

The descending trail ended in an open sided cave, where Eduardo pointed out the spots occupied by different kinds of bees. These required a bit of an attitude adjustment from what we are used to, because the spots were small holes in logs, or something hard to see on the roof of the cave. For example, in second photo below, the hanging bit of root is the home of the lemon bee, which is the only one to steal pollen from other bees.

The home of the Lemon Bee on the roof of the cave.

Below you see some homes other, non Melipona, bees. I rather lost track of what I was looking at. But the general theme is of small entrances to small bits of old logs.

We ascended from the cave and visited the "major production" area, which was an enclosure with about two dozen non uniform shaped logs or boxes on ledges. Here we had a moderate number of the little bees flying around and going in and out. The flowering season here begins at the end of December, so perhaps they do not find much to do out there.

A Mayan and bee graphic on the wall at the bee yard.

From the bee yard we were led to a long table where each member of the group had a bowl curiously refreshing honey water. This was meant, we expect, to cleanse the palate. Eduardo then brought a dizzying array of honeys and honey preparations to try. We really can not recall what it all was, but in most cases the honeys were introduced as medicinally good for various parts of the body. Obviously, the Mayans were not using them to bake muffins, so medicinal uses were probably the main thing.

The lady in the big blue hat, and her husband beside (neither actually visible) were master beekeepers from Alabama, well into their 80's. The lady later asked for the recipes of the various tinctures and potions we had tried, but I don't think she got too far. Many of the other people at the table were from Normandy, in France.

Also at the table with us were some European bees, that are also kept here.

After the tasting, we wandered back through the grounds to the restaurant, where we had what was to be our Christmas Dinner.

Just be the restaurant entrance we encountered leaf cutter ants, on the job.

This seems straight out of a nature video!

Clearly Christmas Dinner was not going to be Turkey and Cranberries this time. Our Club sandwiches had egg and ham and yes, probably chicken, so that's something! Our drink was what they call here Jamaica - hisbiscus.

Back through the wonderful grounds, and we hopped our bikes for home.

We passed the church San Juan de Dios along the way. Again, the stained glass at the front needs some interpretation.

Update: We went to the square again for a look and to find a coconut ice cream. The church, which is on the way, was very lit up and festive looking.

In the square more of the lights had been turned on. Among these was a reindeer. Since there is no Santa around, I assume the reindeer was moonlighting.

Although Santa was absent, we did have Beauty and the Beast.It was a popular photo stop for little kids.

The main reason for going to the square this time was for coconut ice cream. But the coconut stand was closed. The people pictured below had vanilla - OK. Unfortunately for poor Dodie, I got the last cone. It must have been a good night for the vendors. They definitely were very cheery.

Ok, we'll sign off finally, from the square in Valladolid, Yucatan!

Today's ride: 7 km (4 miles)
Total: 440 km (273 miles)

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