Day 28 – Wham Bam Ek Balam

I was King Pakal of Palenque’s girl. I knew my way around his palace, I wore his symbol around my neck and I carried a portrait of him in my bag (safely protected with the 90% cotton buffer of my cheap Mexican turtleneck). So I felt like I was cheating on him by visiting Ek Balam, the home of another great Mayan king with the easy to pronounce but really hard to remember name of Ukit Kan Lek Tok. (Now that I’m back home you know I totally looked that up.)

Ek Balam was the main reason I’d base camped in the Quintana Roo region for a few days. I’d heard about this ornate Mayan ruin and figured Cancun was the best place to drop the red pin nearby, given that I was coming from Cuba. During my travels, I’d visited the Museo de Maya in Merida and dropped my jaw like one of those Ghostbusters 2 action figures from the 80s when I saw a reconstruction of Ek Balam’s acropolis. (That’s the main building).

So it was my last day in Cancun. I’d hit Coba, I’d hit the local Museo, I’d hit the free scotch on the railroad coin – now it was time to go hard on a full day tour of Ek Balam, a swim in a cenote and a visit to the town of Valladolid. My resort’s travel and attractions company, Thomas More, ran a tour with an itinerary the equivalent of a party pizza with the lot so big it could barely in fit in a metaphorical UberEats delivery backpack. (Jo nerd note – I did spend three days in Cancun thinking about Thomas More who was Henry VIII’s Lord High Chancellor until he opposed the marriage to Anne Boleyn and separation of church and state and was executed. He has an awesome Holbein portrait. There is surely some other guy it’s named after but the irony of Thomas More’s name being used in fleshpot city Cancun always made me think of him on a lounge by the pool in his chain of office, a fur and Speedoes. We return you to your regular scheduled train of thought now.) Pickup for my tour was 7:30 so I had to shovel in another ‘ocean view junior suite breakfast included’ meal immediately upon the application of clothing.

The nice server at the hotel restaurant was back. Loyal readers may recall his promise to challenge the omelette flipper to go off-menu to make me huevos motulenos when I came back next. Let us hope that the chef wasn’t hung over and seeking a cruisy morning making boring old ham and cheese omelettes and waffles for Americans with dead palates. While the others slopped up the horrors from under the buffet silver lids, I swigged some green juice and a coffee until the 10th wonder of the breakfasting world arrived on my table and I wondered how to eat it in time before the tour bus arrived. I was also feeling plenty guilty over my large pizza and ice cream binge the previous night but down the HockTales hatch it went!!!! And more coffee (there’s always room for more coffee). With excessive mucho gusto and gracias, I headed for the foyer just in time for the bus to pull up.

Those of you who have ever taken these types of day tours will be familiar with the usual bus pick up and then drop off to some random depot to use a random toilet, and hang around to get on your actual bus? Good. I won’t bore you with that then. For those of you who don’t know about it, I just summarised it pretty thoroughly. Although it just occurred to me that as a single person, I was practising social distancing without even knowing it on occasions like these. Standing a good two metres away from people I didn’t know – e.g. everybody. Be safe; be antisocial until you realise who is on your bus.

So my bus number was called and I immediately grabbed the nerdiest seat I could find. No, the seat itself wasn’t sporting Coke bottle glasses, a pocket protector and a subscription to Painting Historical Miniatures Weekly but it was right up the front where I could absorb all the information from the guide. Place secured, now scout the environment. I turned around. One couple up the back and the guide. Whaaaat? I was told this was a six person minimum shebang.

The guide was named Jose but asked us to call him Chepe as this was his preferred name. (Apparently it’s short for Jose like Bob is for Robert in that kind of a way.) He started talking about the itinerary, how he was going to show us around and then started talking generally about the site before the man from the couple up the back interrupted. Insert thick German accent in your own mind and try not to make it sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger (I know he’s Austrian but you’re totally going to do it now …). “Excuse me. We do not want to take your tour. We only want you to drive us to the place and leave us please.”

This was pretty shocking to Chepe. He looked offended and I’m not surprised. He told them that he had a lot of information to share about his culture and the site, but they weren’t having any of it. They sat sullenly up the back of the bus. Didn’t even want to listen to his bus commentary! From that point on, it was a HockTales private tour for the price of a group tour. Winning!

Chepe was a rock star. The journey to Ek Balam was about two hours and I had planned to knock out a blog on the bus, but we had such a fantastic chat about Mayan culture that there was no time for my own stuff. Chepe was about a year younger than me and it was cool to hang out with somebody my own age after hanging out in the resort of the early bird special, and then on the tour through Cuba prior to that where I was the youngest by far. I told him about all my favourite places in Chiapas – Palenque, Bonampak, Yaxchilan. Those struck a real chord because it turned out he was from Chiapas and over in Quintana Roo working. I showed him my travel photos and videos, he showed me his folder of Mayan sites and goodies. I asked him why there were only three people on the tour and how could they justify running it with the costs – the large bus, the driver, the guide, all the other costs. I had been told that it ran at a six person minimum. Apparently, it was because I had booked it through Thomas More which was the big daddy of tour bookings and his contracted tour company was too scared to cancel and lose future business. They would have had no compunctions cancelling on the Germans who had booked online through another site. So I had inadvertently saved the day – everybody was going to get paid and I was going to get an information monopoly. It was a great two hours. As for the Germans, I think they continued to sit sullenly in the back. We didn’t really care. Ich bin eine happy camper. (I know the tense is wrong but it’s a joke.)

Armed with freebie water from the bus – well, I guess i had paid for them through my tour fee so drink up – we walked past some labelled labelled trees and into the ticket building. There was a massive Mayan calendar on the ground with the symbols of each month on a dial. Mine was Ceh for November which looks looks a bit like a 50s TV showing a documentary on some small islands. From memory, you pronounce it as ‘Keh’. Chepe was a Ceh too. Incidentally, Mayan astrology is extremely complex. It’s not as simple as whacking a dial on the floor of a ticket booth and we all go away with our course in life. My other tour guide Tanya had an app on her phone and I came up as something else entirely. There are various systems used depending what’s taken into consideration. Shamans can do your horoscope or I paid for INAH (like National Heritage) at Chichen Itza to bang out a printout of mine based on a computer program that processed what they know based on the glyphs found at sites. Not that any of it’s analysed. I’m a Ceh on that so that’s what I’m going with. Vamos to Ek Balam!

Ek Balam means Jaguar Star, the name of the original ruler. People started to settle on the site around 200-300 BC and the city peaked at 700-900 AD when the biggest buildings were constructed. The city declined around 1200 but was still inhabited in the 16th century when the Spanish arrived on the Yucatán. Amazingly, the next mention of it is in 1882 when the French anthropologist and photographer Desire Charnay published photographs. (He was a guy despite that name which is meant to have one of those twiddly things on the e but the ipad won’t let me do it.) Even more amazingly – super amazingly – Ek Balam pretty much fell down the back of the couch after that archaeologically speaking. In 1984, a kid was mucking around and found an entire ancient city which led to full-scale archaeological investigation and survey. That’s some real-life Goonie action there. He lived my dream. I want to go back in a DeLorean, tie that kid up to a tree with gaffa tape, wipe my own memories except keep a note that there’s something important to discover maybe over in this direction, and then wow!!!

Unlike most of the other Mayan sites, Ek Balam doesn’t start with the wham balam of a huge temple or pyramid. Once we got past the front gate with a forlorn looking dog, a short path and a small wall (apparently the defensive wall – one assumes it was higher back in the day), the first structure was this one with the distinctive Mayan arches. (Almost more prolific than the Macca’s Golden Arches!) It’s the Arco de Entrada.

See that slope? It’s mirrored on the other side with stairs. This was to make visitors inadvertently bow down in reverential fashion to the inhabitants. (Come on over – just worship me on the way in.) Water pooled in squares with raised side edges near the stairs. Chepe informed me this might have been to grind maize or any other snacks for visitors at this entrance house, given that the Oxxo wouldn’t be open for Pringles for another 1000 years yet.

We walked a few metres to the back of a building that my tourist guide calls the Twins, presumably because of its double barrelled temples up the top. But this wasn’t why we stopped. Chepe was more interested in the rounded stonework. He pointed out that architecture with rounded edges rather than hard corners was associated with the belief and worship of magic dwarves called ‘aleutians’. He was super impressed when I asked if this explained the rounded edges of the Sorcerer’s Pyramid at Uxmal which was designed for a short statured owner. (See previous blog post on the hunt for the Penis Temple of Uxmal.) Fun fact slash rumour – apparently the builders of the airport designed an overpass that fell down three times. But, after somebody made the required obeisance to the aleutians, the overpass held up on the next go …. I’m definitely investing in some aleutian worship next time I put in a job application. Want something done? Get a shortass on the case.

Next stop was the ball court. Yes – another one. Every site has one. They are pretty much the double garage of Mayan sites. Chepe gave me the lowdown on this one. There once had been a ring but somebody had flogged it! Chepe revealed that the rings were hot items for thieves – carved, iconic symbols of Mayan archaeological sites so a no-brainer really. As for this ball court, no rings for goals, no magic tiles on the ground but it was the entrance way to the Underworld like all ball courts where two teams played against each other in a ceremony that was more ritual than game.

Ek Balam is divided into two main plazas with a cluster of buildings around them. First, the Southern Plaza. We checked out a nearby stelae depicting a pretty weathered and battered Ek Balam, the first ruler.

A nearby little statue demonstrated influence of Teotihuacán, the far distant civilisation that was near Mexico City but pre-dated the Aztecs. Those Teotihuacanos got around, trading their obsidian down to the Yucatán. (Presumably they took huevos motulenos and some soggy chimichangas from the breakfast buffet for their road trip back on the white sacbes home.)

The other two buildings in the Southern Plaza are the Oval Palace and the Twins. The Oval Palace looks like an observatory at the top, kind of like a rounded cake Marilyn Monroe might jump out of. (More aleutian action???) The Twins are pretty unremarkable with two stock standard temples on the top of stairs. But the Palace was interesting because it used to be student digs. Anybody studying to be a scribe for old King Tick Tock (I forgot his name every two minutes) holed up in one of these rooms with a desk, a chair and hope of a career. I wondered if these student dorms were rife with frat parties, beer pong and 3AM strippers. Just got to bang out another page of glyphs before I can hit the kegger. Somehow I doubted this was the case. Although the upper class got high, it was purely for religious purposes and only the lucky few were allowed. This was a social privilege for the elite only. The Mayans were more into ritual abstinence and clean living. Sometimes public drunkenness was punishable by death. No UniBar for you, young scribes.

So up the guts of the site to the main event, the Acropolis complex! (That sounds like something you give yourself after you visit Greece.) Chepe stopped me just before we reached the steps of the great building, saying that there was something most people missed in their rush to climb the stairs. I turned to my left and saw what most people would think was a well. Nope. This cobbled collection of stones is a real indication that you’re in the presence of power, wealth and status. It’s the sauna! The king loved to come down here to purify himself with sweat and let his spirit leave his body. These days, it’s known as spacing the fuck out.

And beyond it is a tiny little building resembling a pizza oven. It’s another aleutian hut. Pray to the magical dwarves here!

Ok. Vamos! Chepe led me to the steps of the Acropolis. It’s pretty big. It’s hard to believe that the Acropolis was still a mound in 1998 – excavations on this bit only began then. Coba is the tallest Mayan pyramid in the Yucatán; the Acropolis is the second at 31 metres in height. But Coba is pretty much straight up and down with only a tiny temple up the top that you can’t go in. The Acropolis is 160 meters long, 60 meters wide and it’s filled with 40 rooms where the professional scribes worked. It’s not possible to climb over the lot but you can get to a few parts. The Acropolis is also much better preserved than Coba. I mean – check this out. It’s a giant snake with a massive tongue spilling out and the glyphs commemorate the building’s construction, saying something along the lines of ‘This is Ukit Kan Lek Tok’s place.’ There’s one on either side of the stairs.

Chepe told me that the Acropolis was constructed on the three levels to represent the Underworld, the Earth and the Heavens. Hence the giant demon snakes from the Underworld at the base of the stairs. So we ascended from the Underworld to the Earth and literally up to the gaping mouth of the beast – the Balam of the El Torre!!! (Balam means jaguar.)

The El Torre was every bit as awesome as the reconstruction at Mérida but this was the real deal. Can you imagine being the archaeologist who unearthed this??? During his lifetime, Ukit Kan Lek Tok hung out here inside this room with the entrance shaped like a giant jaguar jaw. Just look at the teeth! What a badass! Then Chepe told me that his favourite activities were reading and drinking tea in this room. So Ukit Kan Lek Tok built possibly the first nerd cave. Bet he would have loved a good LEGO set too. When he died, he was entombed inside with all his favourite things that were later sent to the Museo in Merida. I too hope to be entombed in my nerd cave although I understand this may affect the resale value of my property.

The facade is incredibly ornate with carvings and figures adorning the entrance. There are people above the entrance. Chepe said they were the king’s closest allies such as his family and political inner circle. Fun fact – you will notice that the carvings aren’t out of stone like Chichen Itza or Uxmal. It’s stucco and limestone mortar- much more pliable but sooooo environmentally bad. To make the mortar, the Mayans chopped down trees galore and cooked up a deliciously toxic brew with limestone from quarries. The mortar helped them glue their stones together, was pretty good for a surface to paint on and it was probably easier to create pretty statues and whack them on buildings too. They did this with all their cities to paint their sacbes (white roads) and everything else. Deforestation is always one of the main suggestions given for the collapse of Mayan cities.

Below is a prime example of a stucco figure. This is the famous winged Mayan figure on the corner of the facade. It’s not an angel like Catholics thought it was; just a powerful deity or maybe a shaman. Mayans loved a bit of feather work. I’d seen it at Kabah and at Bonampak. The Aztecs loved an EagleWarrior too. Didn’t meant it was the international symbol for cuing the Robbie Williams Angels song. Check out the skull on its belt and cool headdress combo.

Ek Balam is famous for its murals and wall paintings. I didn’t see much of it but I suspect that it’s all hidden away inside the jaguar jaws. This is apparently quite a famous wall painting of the king. The zoom on my camera picked it up. Is it his book club? Possibly. The king ruled from 770 to around 800 AD, so at least he wasn’t inflicting Eat, Pray, Love on them.

The whole thing is inside a palapa hut to protect it from the elements. Not sure how well this fence protects it from people though. Over on the far right was a lovely view of what might have been an entrance to an underground water system. Not wasting my WordPress gigabytes on that. This was the point where Chepe dumped me. Only briefly though so I could explore! This was cool. I’d absorbed the information and now I could run amok! It was time to say a sad goodbye to the king and climb to the top of the Acropolis. Unlike the saying, Heaven couldn’t wait. I had to be back at the bus in 45 minutes.

The top was … er … the top. No small temples or altars. Just an awesome view and a horrific wind that whipped my hair around my face, increasing the difficulty level of selfies about tenfold. Unprompted, a nice chap offered to take my photo. I am always dubious about these offers. Will they steal my camera or my bag and leg it down the street? Unlikely at the top of the Acropolis where it was standing room only for maybe five people, particularly since this guy seemed to be hanging with three other family members. Apparently on a clear day you can see the tallest buildings in Coba and Chichen Itza. I could only see the South Plaza. Oh well.

Back down a level to Earth on the opposite side of the stairs was another little hut with some glyphs. But it also provided an excellent vantage point for the stairs. See? Plenty steep. Pity this poor guy who carried a kid on his back. And sure, they were steep, but not steep enough to lounge around halfway lady!

I had a quick stickybeak inside the scribe rooms in the Acropolis. Much roomier and there was even a draft from a hole in the wall. I dare say students these days get ventilation from holes in their walls, but the Ek Balam student digs didn’t have this feature. This would have been great in the summer heat for the professional scribes.

The one place I didn’t feel I’d explored was the Observatory back in the South Plaza, so I power walked back in that direction. Oh look, a building over to the left! What’s that? This is pretty much how my explorations of sites go when I’m left to my own devices. There’s an ultimate goal and I will get there but if there’s an element of discovery on the way, I’m going off on an Indiana Jo adventure even if it’s just for two minutes. There wasn’t anything in that building at all, but I saw a weird tree sticking out at a gravity defying angle. Now off to the oval palace!

I observed this view looking back towards the Acropolis and over the South Plaza. No information panels so I didn’t really take in much other than the spectacular views. Was I late back to the bus? Absolutely. Did I care? No way. I was Thomas More’s VIP. Those Germans could schnell, schnell all they liked.

Indiana Jo was happy with her explorations and sad to leave Ek Balam. It’s a bit of a pain to get to. Three hours from Cancun, probably similar from Merida. I’d love to go in the future but it’s tough logistically. Chepe apparently does motorcycle tours on other days. My Mum would shit a brick.

The archaeology phase was over but the headlong dive into Mayan culture continued with Itinerary Item Two – a one and a half hour assault on Hubiku, a Mayan cultural complex. Totally sounds like some Japanese origami but actually translates as ‘Iguanas Nest’ upon further Googling. Hubiku refers to the cenote – Aussies may use the less classy term of ‘sinkhole’ – which did not deliver on its lizardy promise in the slightest.

Chepe let us off the leash here too. He pretty much left us to our own devices with a ‘see ya back on the bus’. I had no idea where the Germans went. But, after dodging the tourist trap of shops on the way in, I had to be uber efficient with my time or I was never going to get everything done. All cenote swimmers were required to shower beforehand to remove all oils from the body to preserve the condition of the water. Presumably this also removed the taint of nasty things like Lynx Africa which surely caused more permanent damage to the environment and psychological damage to swimmers wondering what terrible crotch rot emanated from random swimming companions. So I hit the showers as they say in all the American movies involving schools and gyms.

Swimming in a cenote is a Mayan bucket list item. Climb a pyramid – tick. Clap hands in a ball court – tick. It’s one of the things you apparently have to do. Mayans viewed cenotes as sacred places where the earth met the underworld. That’s why they hurled pottery and people to their deaths down these holes. So there’s been archaeological gold in them there pools. The Yucatán area is filled with networks of underground caves – there are thousands of these cenotes dotted around the Yucatán and the prettiest ones attract the tourists as swimming holes. It may seem a bit sacrilegious to swim in the sacrificial pool of death but everybody seems cool with it.

I’m not a big swimmer. Not at all. I can’t see without my glasses and I’m kind of loath to put those sexy prescription goggles on. I don’t like getting my face wet. I can swim in that if I fell out of a boat, I wouldn’t drown. I just get no pleasure out of it out of flailing about like a fish out of water while in the water. But I had to do this just once to experience it. Then I could go back to wearing my landlubber clothes again for the rest of my life.

So I descended the 115 steps down to the viewing platform and was rewarded with this spectacular sight.

Ok. Lockers available. Good. A further scourge of swimming. What to do with all your stuff as a single person. The locker was a price gouge and wouldn’t exactly take a safe cracker to bust it open – I suspected any of the random stuff in my cutlery drawer would do the job but this was a non-negotiable, HockTales Mayan activity. I stuffed my crap in the locker, strapped on my prescription goggles, donned my necklace locker key and I made my way down to the wooden dock of the cenote.

I dipped a foot in the the water on the entrance ladder. Holy God, that was freezing! Turns out that underground water doesn’t really have a water heater like a pool. Who would have thought? The attraction is more in cooling off from the searing Mexican heat but it was only about 25 degrees Celsius. This wasn’t searing. It was Mexico’s kind of winter off season after all.

I forced a foot back in the water. “It’s for cultural heritage!” I hissed at myself under my breath. Then I took the icy plunge. (Note – actual process of entering water may have taken significantly and agonisingly longer than this short summary that shows me in a more positive light.) I clutched at my bracelet and necklace – yes, the valuables were still there. Commence moving! Breast stroke – the only way I know how to move forward. Ok. One lap. That’s it. Nothing to prove here. Just one lap for cultural heritage. Just keep moving or freeze like Jack in Titanic and sink straight to the bottom. I felt something move in the water. Was it the zombie reanimation? The skeletal remains of sacrificed Mayans reaching for my pale gringa ankle? No, turns out the pool was filled with catfish! I started to warm up a bit as I swam in a big square, following the lines of demarcation. But still, I was happy to reach the ladder at the far side of the dock. I’d done it. Nothing to prove. And, like after every other time I’d been swimming, I was starving!

But first, I saw these guys on the way out. (Obviously, there’s another one but he’s taking the photo.) They were charging money for photos but it was tips only so pay for whatever you want. I figured there would be limited opportunities in my life for being photographed in my bikini with guys dressed up as Mayan warriors. (The other guy was better costumed with fake yellow jaguar pelt – kind of disappointed he wasn’t in the shot.)

After a hurried costume change, it was time for lunch. As far as lunch buffets went, it was pretty limited. Somewhat similar to the dinner buffet at Coba with only a handful of things to eat. I smashed the Yucateco pork and chicken as always. The dinner package also contained free alcoholic beverages – you can see why the tourists were all given limited time to attack everything in the complex. Otherwise they would be hanging off the Dos Equis bar tap all afternoon. HockTales practiced excellent buffet eatiquette, only stealing six tortillas from the table out of fear that I would have to eat crumbly salt crackers on my flight out the next day as I had on the way in. I got to the buffet quite late after the showering, swimming and changing and I could tell that people had been hoovering up the goods for a while. I managed to cram in two pints of Dos Equis Amber as well as the food and watched a dance performance with the woman balancing an amazing array of condiments on her head!

I also felt smug in that I managed to ask the servers to change some of my big fat American fifty dollar notes into the much more socially acceptable 10s and 20s for the next leg of the trip. Nobody wants to deal with those large denominations. So after food, alcohol, a cultural performance, theft and some international money exchange it was time to go again!

I dashed back out to the intersection between the bathrooms, the cenote, the Mayan village and the tequila museum. I had already visited a Mayan village at Coba. I wasn’t quite sure of the time but suspected I was pretty much ready to punch my time clock card out for the day. There was only one thing left for it – a quick visit to the tequila museum …

This was a museum like no other. It wasn’t a museum at all! I should have known by the readiness of the young fellow at the intersection who clearly worked knew his way around every area of the complex there to show me around the tequila museum. It was only the size of a house. Perhaps the exhibits were small. I figured we’d be through it fast and I’d be back on the bus with only a few dirty Deutschlander daggers shot my way. Turned out it was just like like the mezcal outlet but in fast forward since we were in a time crunch!

So instead of telling me the history of tequila in the region or the cultural importance of the agave plant, it was straight to the bucket of the crazy bottled flavours. I knew this drinking game and I played it well. I can hold at least double my bodyweight in agave-plant based shots … temporarily. A bit like Hodor performing the fantastic feat of holding up that door for a little while before being overwhelmed (surely that’s still not a spoiler by now). Long-time HockTale readers will remember the Oaxaca incident where we visited the mezcal factory for free samples and then hit the textile factory for a demonstration and I ended up buying a massive rug that I then had to ship home to Australia. (I do have exquisite taste in tipsy buying.)

Tequila is the poor cousin of mezcal. It tries but it’s just not as clean, neat or pure. It’s the BBQ Shape to the Pizza Shape. But it tastes not all that different when it’s bombed with coconut, coffee, chocolate, mango and a bevy of other beverage sugar syrups. Then the hard stuff came out – young, reposado and viejo. All were sampled. Truthfully, I hate being in those sorts of places alone. It wasn’t a museum – it’s a shop where they strong arm you into buying stuff by being super nice. There was no overt pressure to buy stuff yet but I got out of there with a mini-bottle (the kind you get in hotel mini-bars) before I ended up buying something crazy that I couldn’t drink before my flight the next day.

I headed back for the bus. I didn’t think I had that much time but I passed Chepe who said I had a few more minutes. So I explored some of the shops near the entrance exit. Young people were banging out Mayan hieroglyphs of your name on necklaces. Cool. I even went with my full name of Joanne so I could get more letters out. Now I definitely had exceeded the bus time but Chepe was cool with that.

Next stop was Valladolid, a colonial city quite close to Hubiku. It’s meant to be quite famous and quaint. Sadly, all we saw was the square. Not even a full walk around. This was a definite failing of the tour. I would have swapped the cenote for this any day. Not Chepe’s fault as he was just fulfilling a provided itinerary but I would rather have spent more time in the town with a local lunch provided here and walked around the colonial architecture. We only spent about 20 minutes in the square vicinity. This was enough time for me to buy ice cream (Chepe recommended a shop but I went to the wrong one), cross the square and get yelled at by more modern day costumed Mayans looking for photos (didn’t need two of them in one day; they didn’t seem to appreciate that), check out a shop where I bought some earrings and a little jaguar head to remind me of the Bright Star Jaguar, and admire the famous cathedral that I couldn’t go in.

Upon return to the bus, it was time for the long drive back to Cancun. Chepe and I raided the esky. It was time for the all-you-could-drink segment of the afternoon. The driver had been hinting that the esky was filled with beers and tequilas for a full bus. I’d been drinking waters out of it all day. Before we took off, the driver made us all a tequila sunrise (tequila and juice). Chepe and I talked about his dogs and Pearl Jam for a long time. Then we dispensed with the sunrise and proceeded to drain the bottle of tequila. We dropped off the Germans and then bid a tearful goodbye at my hotel. It had been a truly great day.

At the Royal Islander Hotel, I was not really ready for bed. In fact, I thought it was time for a bit of an exploration of the Cancun beach situation while I still had some beans left. (I knew the minute I sat down, it would be all over). So I dumped all my stuff up in my room and headed for our resort’s portion of the beach. I know it’s weird to say this but in three days of staying at the Cancun resort, I hadn’t hit the beach once. I don’t mean swimming. I mean even just standing on it. Now it was dark. Like I said, I’m not a huge swimmer. I had no intention of braving the dark rolling side. I just wanted to say that I’d been on the beach at Cancun. I walked along as far as I could go in the dark, holding my thongs (flip-flops) in my hand. Then I ran along in a little tipsy jog. Each of the resorts have their own little gated communities. I think I managed to get as far as two or three resorts along to the left before a security guard with a torch asked me what I was up to as I investigated the foundations of a new building about to go up on the beachfront. Indiana Jo’s explorations are not limited to Mayan ruins. Adventures can be anywhere!

Looking back now, I’m not sure what I ate after that. I strongly suspect I hit a combo of the resort’s mini-mart and my own snack stash because I couldn’t face the guilt of inflicting another large pizza on myself. I also couldn’t face the final pack before my flight to Guatemala the next day. That was going to have to wait until the morning.

As another adventure ends with me faceplanting, another one will begin anew. Thank you for hanging in there. There are plenty more HockTales in the tank!