The Circus at the Tulum Ruins

You might be thinking, as a certain reader wrote to be yesterday in reference to the stela with the carving of the 41.9 billion billion billion Long Count Calendar date on a stela in Coba, “What does your intuition say?”

I replied: My intuition is soooo confused and I was sooooo exhausted tramping around that huge Coba ruin. OK, I know that there’s something really important about Coba. Not sure if this is it or not. And, still not really sure if this is the correct stela since the carvings are so weathered that my conscious mind says, “You’ve got to be kidding. How could anyone see anything on these stelae?” Actually, the guidebook says that when the sun is at certain angles the weathered carvings pop out. I can believe that since it happened to me when I was in Chichen Itza this last time and, for the first time, saw and photographed a certain bas relief carving of an ancient warrior that one guide told me was Itzamna. When I visited Chichen Itza a year ago, I could hardly see the details of the carving. However, this time, the sun was in the exactly correct place and the image almost leaped off the rock! It looked as if it was outlined in black.

We had a rest-from-filming day today. However, at breakfast, while relaxing with the wind blowing off the beautiful turquoise water of the Caribbean, a young man and father at the next restaurant table leaned back and asked us, “Been here before?”

When we answered in the affirmative, he then asked, “Know anywhere cheaper to eat?”

“Sure,” we replied, “You won’t believe it, because you’re going to expect that everything at the ruins is so much more expensive, but our favorite and cheapest restaurant around here is at the Tulum ruins . . . the Argentinian restaurant. It also has the best coffee in the whole of the Yucatan!”

“Wait a minute,” the young man said, “Are you saying there are restaurants at the ruins?”

Obviously, this affable young man had never been to a ruin before.

“Yeah, sure, there is often at least one restaurant and also usually many craft stalls. Actually, Tulum, being about a 2 hour drive from Cancun, is inundated with tourists. It has a little train pulled by a tractor that takes you to the entrance of the ruins, many restaurants, tons of craft shops . . . it’s like a circus.”

The young man looked over at his lovely young wife and their two elementary-school aged sons. “Are you saying that the kids would find it interesting at an ancient Mayan ruin?”

I could see Miriam, who was sitting across the plata de fruta from me, started to roll her eyes because I knew she knew what was coming. Her mom and step-dad where about to wax eloquent about the ruins at Tulum and they might just go on and on and on.

“Heck,” I said, “The kids will love it! There’s a guy dressed up with feathers along his arms and a very realistic- looking imitation hawk’s head over his head. He spreads his wings and poses for tourist pictures. There’s also these amazing acrobats from some indigenous tradition who, dressed in their native costumes, climb a long pole while one of them plays a flute. Once they get to the top, they drop backwards tethered by a rope and slowly circle upside down until they are low enough to the ground to summersault onto their feet.”

“The best thing is the iguana,” John said.

“What?” asked the young man. His sons were definitely interested in what we were saying now.

“The iguana,” John repeated. “This guy carries around a huge ignuana. It’s tail is so long, it touches the ground when the man carries the reptile against his shoulder. The iguana’s body is almost three feet long and about 6 inches thick. You can come up to it and pet it or, for a small fee, the guy will put it across your shoulders with the tail draped down your front.”

The little boys’ eyes opened wide.

“Face it,” Miriam piped in, “if you get bored with the ruins – but my Mom and Dad never seem to – you can always go swimming . . . ”

“In a ruin?” the young man quipped.

“In the Tulum ruin,” Miriam replied. “Tulum has a fantastic beach and a beautiful protected cove. Many people come to Tulum just to swim. Forget about the ruins.”

“You mean, the water is less choppy and the wind less intense than it is here in Akumal?” the lovely young mother asked.

“Tulum beaches are some of the best in the world,” Miriam answered. “Your kids will love it. You will love it.”

The rest of the morning, Miriam and I lay on beach beds on the sand between our hotel and Half Moon Bay in Akumal. We enjoyed the sound of the surf, the refreshing breeze, and conversations about many things both about the movie we were making and anything else that came to mind. John swam and snorkeled past the pounding surf over the coral at the foot of the sand bar.

We ate Fritos with lime (Fritos also come with chile and lime flavoring here) for lunch and then headed out to Yal-Ku, a lovely snorkelling area where the salt water flows inland and is protected by limestone headlands. The water here was smooth and calm. The howling wind was a breeze.

We saw many beautiful parrot fish, some kind of turquoise fish, and the funniest, strangest fish I’ve ever seen in the wild. It was only about 3 inches long, had big protruding eyes like a frog, was reddish-brown colored, had a big head compared to the rest of its body and tapered to a small point of a flat tail. It liked to hide under the limestone rocks that hung over the water.

It looked so unusual that Miriam and I wanted to give it a name. Because it looked so unique, we named it Hermoine (after our beloved Harry Potter character), the slug fish.

It’s a good life.

Blessings,

Carol Chapman

Copyright (c) 2009 Carol Chapman