Day 13: Dzibilchaltun

December 7, 2021

A couple of days ago we came across a dead animal on the road, that we could not identify. Not wanting to gross everyone out, we sent our photo just to Bill Shaneyfelt, to try for an I.D. Bill came back with a Northern Tamandua, which is an anteater:

"Description. The northern tamandua is a medium-sized anteater with a prehensile tail, small eyes and ears, and a long snout. The fur is pale yellow over most of the body, with a distinctive patch of black fur over the flanks, back, and shoulders, that somewhat resembles a vest in shape. The tail has fur on its upper surface for about a third of its length, but is otherwise hairless." Wikipedia

Our target for today is a Mayan town that is about 20 km north of Merida. Dzibilchaltun existed here from 3000 BC, but reached its peak in 600-800 AD. To get to Dzibilchaltun we followed a track we had made at home, taking us north and a little east of town.

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Before really setting out, we got a clear eyed early morning view of some buildings near the square:

The block with the bakery, an OXXO, and the Case Montejo

Along by city hall. Homemade ice cream in one of the yellow stores!

It's a city, with lots of people! Note that though this is outdoors, everyone is masked. Yucatan has a global mask mandate.

Very quickly we found ourselves on Paseo Montejo . This has been labelled the Champs Elysee of Mexico, and in fact the comparison is very apt. It's a broad avenue with amazingly large and elaborate Spanish colonial houses, and even a bike path for us. Remarkably, the street is completely free of garbage. In fact, the central square was garbage free as well. These were just some of the surprises that Merida would bring us as we cycled along.

Boy, it must be great to be the conquerers. At the beginning of the street there is a conquistador statue, that presumably needs to be toppled sometime:

However, in what must have been a massive reconciliation effort, at the end of the street is a massive Mayan themed art installation - giant statue thing:

All these soldiers and Spanish people in the detail work. What is this installation all about?

Merida followed up Paseo Montejo with another weird one - America! We passed into an area with giant glitzy shopping malls, Costco, McDonalds, Walmart, Starbucks, Liverpool. And it was all as clean as Vancouver.

And what next? High rise buildings, including a giant hospital.

We have been drifting among the outlying towns long enough now, that they have formed our image of Yucatan. But the contrast with these sections of Merida is mind boggling.

For our next surprise, Mexico showed that it can make a #1 bike path, if it feels like it:

This took us much of the rest of the way to the ruins.

At the ruins, the Mexico we have come to know (and love?) began to reassert itself. The entry price was very high, and this despite the fact that the onsite museum was closed "for maintenance", but we saw no maintenance going on. And the onsite cenote was closed as well (despite the promises of all the guidebooks). The cenote closed sign looked suitably old and weathered. But most importantly, many structures were being degraded by encroaching plants. Now that's something just our single 518 peso admission could have fixed with a few fellows with machetes for a day.

The site is very long, with structures at one end joined to ones at the other end by a Sacbe, which is an original Mayan road. At one end stands mainly the House of the Seven Dolls, named for seven figurines depicting people with various disabilities, that were discovered there. They are stored in Mexico city, but there are replicas in the museum. The museum, of course, is closed.

In front of the House of Seven Dolls is a platform with a stella, unfortunately eroded blank. To me this looked like the monolith in 2001, and I mused as to whether if touched it would end up on the back of the moon. Dodie thought this was stupid, but again, she thought 2001 was stupid. How did we stay married so many years with such fundamental disagreements?

Way down at the other end, we have a huge building with the longest staircase in the Mayan world:

Adjacent is a building called the Chapel of Indians of the 16th Century. This stands out because it uses an arch, something we have not seen in original Mayan construction.

Outside the museum, and protected by a glass roof, are some statues and stella garnered from around the Yucatan. They are very evocative, and especially for our poktapok fan, daughter Joni, one group that includes a ball player.

Dodie figured out that we could make our way back to town with a quite straight shot down the major road that otherwise leads north to Progresso. This really worked, in no small part because the road had a separated bike lane for part of its length, and then the right lane marked for bicycle priority for another major distance.

And hey, in case of mechanical difficulties...

We had a tip in the Comments from Leslie and Rob Cooke to try Mole at the Las Vigas restaurant, right by our hotel. We hopped right on that tip, although the place is upstairs and the sign not visible from below. We ended up asking what turned out to be their greeter if he had ever heard of this place.

The Las Vigas is a budget restaurant, for example offering Poc Chuc for 95 pesos. But our waiter seemed to have never heard of Mole. In fact when we asked for it, he tried to run away top find an English speaker to figure out what we were going on about. "Mole is a Spanish word, dumb dumb" we chimed (but without the dumb dumb). Ok fine, was the reply, but we don't have it.

Dodie instead chose Sopa de Lima (a local specialty chicken soup), which was really good. My Poc Chuc - let's see - was quite tender, had a nice guacamole and salsa, but it was not grilled - only fried. That way it also came with fried onions. But the whole presentation was very oily. Basically a fried thinly sliced pork chop. Still ok, though.

Also thrown in (instead of salad?) was a habanero pepper. I cut off a teeny bit of this, and gingerly placed that to my lips. Wow! Instant battery acid! I took my orange juice and swished it around and around. I sucked on my ice cube. And I begged Dodie for some of her drink. Unbelievably she took the position that if I was stupid enough to eat a habanero, I deserved to suffer. Readers, I am not making this up!

Sopa de Lima, Poc Chuc, and Dodie's disputed horchata.

The evil pepper. As we see, not actually eaten.

We also had a bit of a sortie into that Montejo house, which has been restored inside by a bank. You can see a lot of the original elegance.

There was also an art exhibit, that included many animals that will baffle our wildlife identifiers:

Not to mention this sort of "cannonball" tree. The skin of balls is hard and glossy, nothing like a pomelo.

Tomorrow we will check out the major Merida central market, before beginning to move toward the coast, and Celestun.

Today's ride: 44 km (27 miles)
Total: 579 km (360 miles)

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Leslie and Rob CookeHang tight your senses could be overwhelmed tomorrow at the market. Total chaos. Have fun.
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