On the Road & Chetumal…

From Catemaco we headed due east to Chetumal, spending the night in a Pemex station that had long lines waiting for fuel. I’d fueled up 2-300 miles earlier and could easily make it to Chetumal so I spent that evening cleaning up the grassy area in front of the station rather then waiting for fuel. It was a mess of plastic bags, cups, bottles, papers and the like people had tossed out of their windows and since it was my front lawn that night, I didn’t mind spending 45 minutes picking it up. Filled two big bags with trash then brought out my lawn chair and a beer and enjoyed the distant sun sinking into the jungle, I could swear I saw steam rising as it set.

Next day we’re on our way and pass this odd suspention bridge. Cool design.

Around noon, we stopped along side of the hiway for lunch:

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On of the many types of flowers right around here in the jungle:

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When we arrived at Chetumal, we had time to stop and do some shopping in a giant mall, then tripped out to the property of one of the travelers. This land was inhabited by the Maya for a thousand years and on this property, there is both a platform for a house, tons of broken pottery on the ground, and a small pyramid. Wow. It’s not everyone who can say that their property is an archelogical find.

Where I parked:

The ancient mound where there use to be a house, the current property owner is allowed to build over it or around it but not dig into it:

Another view of the mount behind the modern palapa with it’s hammocks:

Next day, I rode my bike up the road maybe 2 miles from where we were staying, to a Mayan ruin site…I don’t recall the name and a quick check of my guide books turns up nothing, but it is an improved site, with a parking lot with restrooms, and a charge of $50 pesos to visit. It took me from 7:30 am to around 10:30 at a leisurely pace, without having to dodge any other tourists, to circumnavigate the entire site. This is one of the estimated 12,000 ancient ruin sites all over Mexico. This one I would call…cozy. It was a working town until the Spaniards arrived, murdered a bunch of people, forced many into slavery, then built a giant church on the grounds to show how powerful their god was to the natives. The church is interesting in that it has a couple of huge arches incorporated into the building. The Maya seemed to never figure out the arch, they built what’s actually an inverted V, like this ^ only steeper, and it could not carry much weight, or they just preferred to ignore the superior load bearing abilities of the classical arch for their own reasons. Whatever the case, they didn’t use the arch. Or wheels:

This was the first pyramid I was able to climb in Mexico…:

An example of how the jungle can cover huge buildings, there is another large pyramid just up this trail but it’s totally invisible until you’re nearly on top of it:

The top of another pyramid, this one has (had) what appears to be a home on top, the sign said that it was a female gods home or something like that:

A thousand years ago, this plaza would have been devoid of trees, but filled with merchants and shoppers:

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This is what the sign said is one of the rulers dwellings. There are several bedrooms, and a large kitchen nearby. These rooms are on top of a large but not very high pyramid overlooking a plaza, with a religious pyramid on the other side of it and administrative pyramids on either side. There does not seem to be what we would call a living room in the dwellings I’ve seen. But the weather here is so fair, I’d imagine people, including the rulers, would hang around outside until time for sleep:

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That was just one of the thousands of towns and cities that the Olmec, Toltec, and Maya built over here in the Yucatan.

A day or two later I moved over to a nearby RV park intending to stay a month or so…but the place wanted $32 per night and the weekly rates were not much better. They never told me what the monthly rate would be. Anyway, I didn’t see much in the area that would be all that interesting anyway, so I headed on up to Cancun and Chichen Itza. But here’s a few pictures of the RV park anyway. The ocean was pretty nice:

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