I’d dreamed of visiting the Copan ruins in Honduras since I was tiny. (Ok – I’m still tiny but I mean really tiny. Well, it’s not like I’d had a growth spurt since the original Sonic the Hedgehog came out.) But my youthful dreams didn’t bank on my encounter with the most powerful, demonic jungle spirit of them all – Honduran rum.

I awoke from the sleep of the dead in my damp bikini, mercifully intact from bites. (I had not been so lucky two days previously in Antigua with about 10 mosquito bites on one arm that still itched.) Loyal readers will remember a number of HockTales in which our intrepid heroine embarked on a few experiments with local beverages and ended the evening in unflattering poses, only to rise again like the proverbial Hulk Hogan from a bodyslam. This was next level. I don’t know what was in that Honduran rum (Motor oil? Bong water? Black magic?) but I was completely shattered. I was grateful that I did not travel to Vomit City on the porcelain bus. At least rum seems to agree with me in that sense.

Today was going to be a challenge.

Despite my handicaps at independent living that morning, I showered and was the first one out on the scrounge for food. Our guide, Pamela, expressed great surprise at my resurrection and general level of vitality. (Red life bar of 80s video game goodness surprisingly high.) The hotel served breakfast as cooked by the housekeeper and diligently served by her six-year old daughter. I went for the desayunos tipicos which was pretty much what I was about to eat for the next two weeks although I didn’t know it at the time – scrambled eggs, plantains, beans and cheese curd. Plus coffee. Please for the love of God. All dirt cheap in limpies too. (Recap – the Honduran currency is called limpia. I call them limpies because I’m juvenile and that just seems funny.) Mark and Debbie, two other breakfast club members, turned up by then for their own cheap eats.

We caught three person tuk-tuks out to the Copan site which was fairly close to the town. Awesome riding in them with the wind on my face. I felt like a dog sticking its head out the window of a car. Usually vehicles are a motion sickness risk and I was worried that the fragile stomach – now full of ammo – might switch to projectile mode on the back of the driver’s neck but all was fine. We disembarked and entered the central building for purchasing tickets, although we didn’t have to do that as it was already included in our tour but we seemed to hang around in the waiting area for an inordinate amount of time.

Copan is about as far right as the Mayans go. That doesn’t mean that they’re neo-Liberal conservatives looking to privatise more assets or shave their heads and go all nationalist. Nobody’s wearing a Make Copan Great Again hat. I just meant that the ancient Mayan culture clustered mainly in the Yucatán Peninsula and stretched over to Honduras and a bit into Nicaragua, but Copan is the biggest Mayan site out of the Yucatán. If you’re a Mayan enthusiast like I am, you know Copan is pretty much the end of the line if you’re travelling south from the Yucatán. The Mayan influence starts to peter out from there.

In 1839, the American lawyer/writer/politician John LLoyd Stephens (an original slashie) and the English Stephen Catherwood swapped their top hats and etiquette for machetes and malaria on an exploration for Mayan sites. There were rumours of cities in the jungles but nobody seemed that interested in them. They couldn’t be as grand as the Egyptian pyramids, the Greek Parthenon or the Roman coliseum built by the greatest, wisest civilisations because they were built by the … er … locals. Some of the big cities with huge temples that stuck out were known but there was a legit belief throughout the privileged world of white dudes with $$$ or long lineages – particularly those who had travelled on the Continental grand tour – that these architectural wonders were built by the Egyptians. (Apparently they’d just surfed over on the back of a flotilla of crocodiles from the Nile.) So the Mayans couldn’t really win either way. A good dose of racism kept the Mayan cities safe in the jungle canopy for a while. As they uncovered these amazing jungle ruins and found a few more that nobody else seemed to know about, Stephens was the first to call bullshit on all this Egyptian crap and attribute them to the Mayan people in his account of his muleback road trip with Catherwood. His book, Incidents of Travel in Central America, featuring Catherwood’s outstanding illustrations, was a huge success. They came back for more a couple of years later. (The second one is an even better read. Bizarrely, they start conducting eye operations on the local populace up in Merida, I think. Who knew snipping retinal nerves was an essential moneymaking explorer skill.)

Copan was the first Mayan city they found and he was gobsmacked. “Architecture, sculpture, and painting, all the arts which embellish life, had flourished in this overgrown forest; orators, warriors, and statesmen, beauty, ambition, and glory, had lived and passed away, and none knew that such things had been, or could tell of their past existence … It lay before us like a shattered bark in the midst of the ocean, her masts gone, her name effaced, her crew perished, and none to tell whence she came, to whom she belonged, how long on her voyage, or what caused her destruction … All was mystery; dark, impenetrable mystery.”

Cool!

Famously, Stephens bought the entire site for $50 from the local owner who considered him a fool for purchasing such useless land. (I guess not a big subscriber to the History Channel then.) Stephens considered removing the entire city by boat and floating the lot up to New York to dump in a museum, but mercifully thought against it. Today, we know it’s bad to steal other people’s cultural heritage. Back then, Stephens probably figured that the owner clearly didn’t care about any of the contents of the land and it was now his to do with as he pleased. Plus remember, he was North American. Land and ownership was everything. It was purely the logistics that stopped him.

We met our tour guide, Marvin, who introduced himself as Marvin the Martian, a sarcastic nod to the 1968 Erich von Daniken book ‘Chariots of the Gods’ which attributes the great archaeological and marvels of the world to aliens. (Stephens did what he could but numbnuttery prevails.) His point was that von Daniken’s book stripped him and his people of their cultural heritage entirely. He went around getting everybody to point out where they were from – eg America, Germany, UK etc – and saying that they had a cultural heritage from there, whereas he had no idea if we believed Uncle Eric. Then he turned his back and moved on. This was Marvin’s style – dry humour, abrupt and not that chatty.

He led us down a long, dusty, tree-lined path which was originally one of the Mayan sacbes or paved, white roads. He stopped at a a ditch which was part of the original Mayan drainage system. I was starting to suffer with my pounding head, rapid pulse and shortness of breath. A mob hit and a topple forward into a Mayan aqueduct wouldn’t be a bad outcome. In 2000 years, archaeologists could question the presence of the bones that would probably still smell like rum and conclude I was a lady pirate. A long guessing game concerning what Mayans used for toilet paper ensued. This must have gone on for 10 minutes or at least it seemed like it. The answer – corn! In my white girl wasted pain, I may have missed a critical element of the conversation here as I doubt it was actually the old corn on the cob. I can’t imagine that being too comfortable. Plus you wouldn’t want to wait for somebody to finish their cob when there were needs. “Hurry up and eat that maize cob, Jaguar Bird! I really have to go! I ate soooo many tortillas last night!” I have considered this in the light of the great TP Crisis of Aussie COVID-19 2020 and believe it to be the corn husks.

Marvin’s next stop was a magical mystery botanical tour of fruit and trees along the sacbe. He’d show us an avocado (local) and then quiz us on where other fruits or vegetables were from. I was starting to get a bit edgy. Bring on the ruins! I didn’t care for fruit quizzes. I looked at my watch. We had barely an hour before we’d been told that Marvin would bundle us back in the tuk-tuks. We’d wasted loads of time waiting, then a ten minute toilet guessing game, now fruit quizzes, and we’d only seen an an aqueduct when I knew this place was loaded with Mayan historical treasures. I was tired, frustrated and suffering. I saw a cocoa bean tree – insert sarcastic hooray.

Finally, we reached a wire fence that marked the entry to the historical site. Two macaws flew overhead and perched in a tree right above our heads. The group lost its shit and went on a photographic bonanza. The previous day many of them had paid to go to a macaw sanctuary. (I went to the archaeological museum of the ruins for a small taster.)

Marvin gathered us by a map of the site next to the fence, talking us briefly through the site’s history.

That’s when I saw it.

The horror.

The turkey.

I fled.

I have a morbid phobia of turkeys. They terrify me. Some people have spiders, some people have snakes. I have turkeys. I was attacked in a petting zoo when I was 2. That’s the source. I know it’s not rational – that’s why it’s a phobia!

It was guarding the fence from the inside. Warning me. Letting me know I was about to enter its territory. With its flared feathery tail and disgusting wrinkled wattle, it was a big fat gobbler about to gobble my soul if I got too close (e.g. 10 metres).

Welcome to Indiana Jo and the Curse of Copan.

I have no idea what Marvin said about the site as I trembled behind a tree and tried not to wet myself out of terror. So please take this moment to appreciate a brief history lesson from ‘Scribes, Warriors and Kings: the City of Copan and the Ancient Maya’ by William F. Lash’. An aside – I bought a few books online during my travels and shipped them home to my parents only to find them trapped there during the recent lock-in debacles. I have since been reunited with these beauties that Mum diligently sprayed with Glen-20 just in case …

Copan was the capital city of a Mayan kingdom from the 5th to the 9th centuries. It was occupied for over two thousand years. At its peak, Copan covered an area of over 250 square kilometres and at least 20,000 people lived there. The central area covered 0.6 square kilometres with 6,000 to 9,000 people there. It seems that King Specsavers (see earlier post) left the Tikal region in Guatemala and founded Copan in the Preclassic period. It took a while to build momentum but Copan became one of the more powerful Maya cities with a heyday around the 7th-8th centuries. But bad stuff happened in 738 when Copan’s famous and long-reigning king, 18 Rabbit, was captured and beheaded by the rival city, Quirigua. This was a devastating blow (sorry) that took 17 years to recover from but they started rebuilding again. Copan hung on as a power until the 9th century but the population in the greater city from the original 20,000 to about 5,000. The jungle reclaimed the monuments and the temples but the site was so remarkably stable that that it didn’t begin to collapse until hundreds of years after it was abandoned.

After Marvin’s speech, he presented our tickets at the gate and we went through the turnstile. The vicious bird of death had waddled back down the path on its side of the fence, so I entered cautiously. In the distance, I saw another one. Great. My eyes darted from one to the other. I would be vigilant. Keep the enemy in line of sight at all times.

The ruins were at the end of a long path. The way down was like a mini wildlife park. A family of agoutis running in the undergrowth, popping up like little large rodents – only cuter!

Macaws wrapped their claws around wooden perches under huts, eating fruit or whatever else they were into. I went over to check them out and the turkey was there. The pressing need to see the macaws suddenly receded. The group was really into the macaws and the agouti and the blackbirds (were the turkeys nursing years of resentment at not being as cute as the other animals and ready to lash out???) but I was becoming more and more conscious of the time. Birds, schmirds. Would we run out of time for the ruins? Would my stomach hold? I wanted to see it all! I think we’d spent about forty minutes at that point and we hadn’t even got there yet. My frustration and headache was increasing.

Finally, we were there! On the lawn of the Great Plaza of Copan! Unlike other Mayan plazas like Palenque or Chichen Itza, the Copan plaza doesn’t surround and overwhelm with massive temples. It’s pretty open. You could probably have a few picnics and kick the footy around if you didn’t want the Honduran government to deliver a few stern words or the the birds to scab your food. It’s flat as a tack. We can think of it as a bit of a square. The far three ends are enclosed by steps that would have led up to bleacher type seating to watch public events. The closer end features a small and unexcitingly named Structure 10L-4 which I think was more of an altar from memory?

However, the drawcard down here are the famous stelae of 18 Rabbit that stand in the Great Plaza. They are recognised worldwide as outstanding examples of sculpture. The detail is amazing. Look.

The Great Plaza, or Stelae Plaza as some like to call it now, consists of 7 of these massive stelae. Marvin told us that they are all of 18 Rabbit because he was a massive egomaniac. That seemed a bit of a harsh call. I like to think of him more like a Ninja Turtle figurine in all their different costumes in the 90s. For example, another stela was thought to be a woman. No – it was a Rabbit in drag. The king was wearing a ceremonial skirt.

But look at the marvellously intricate detail. You can imagine the jade earrings, you can see the distinctively semi-Asian features on the face and the work on the headdress is unbelievable.

The stelae are unimaginatively named Stelae A through to F. Those are not tiki huts. Rabbit is not waiting for a mai tai from Don the Beachcomber. Each of the stelae are under a bit of Stratco sheeting to protect from some weather damage. I know, the rain’s going to get straight in the side but Rabbit’s been here without anything since the 8th century so I’d imagine he’s pretty happy to see a bit of shade. (Actually, he was captured and beheaded in Quirigua so to have 7 heads covered under shades must be marvellous.)

These stelae represent the majesty of 18 Rabbit’s rule. He was nice enough to erect a couple of his ancestors close by too. It would have been impressive to sit high on the bleachers, looking down at the massive stelae casting their shadows in carefully positioned spots like a giant sundial as public ceremonies such as executions took place here.

At the foot of each stelae was a massive rock that was actually a sacrificial altar. That’s as far as I got. BECAUSE THE DEMON BIRD FROM HELL WAS HERE!!!!!

It had stalked me down the long pathway from the wildlife area! I abandoned the tour group, dashing for cover behind a 1,320 year old giant Rabbit. I poked my head around the side. Where was it now??? I was frozen to the grass. The newest monument of the Great Plaza – Stelae H(ockTales). Me so terrified behind a MesoAmerican monument. Photographic evidence of cowering is not available. I don’t quite know why I pulled out my camera, but I caught the exact moment when the HELL BIRD started to come for me again.

A scream audibly caught in my throat, partially choking me for a split second as I shot out of my secure spot and bolted for the protection of another stelae. It could smell my fear. It was after my soul. I was the Brody family and this was a feathery Jaws with a face like a malignant tumour, hunting for its prey.

The Mayan gods were angry that day, my friend. I had incurred their wrath and they had sicced their nightmare war bird to tear me limb from limb as punishment. Had I disrespected them by entering their sacred plaza with a hangover? Was it because I wore the symbol of Palenque’s King Pakal on my chest? Were they mad because I was leaving the Mayan kingdoms on the way to Costa Rica?

Something spooky was definitely going on. The thing I loved the most was derailed completely by the thing I feared the most. Coincidence?? The Mayans sacrificed turkeys – now this one was here to sacrifice me. Speaking of sacrifice, before I lost 10 minutes of historical guided commentary darting between the stelae like a phobic pinball, Marvin was talking about the sacrificial altar. He pointed out this one (resemblance to Cornish pasty noted). And look who returned there, preventing me from getting any closer than this zoomed in shot. I really wanted to get in there and examine it in detail – an excellent opportunity to get up close without fences or railings – but the beast was guarding it as effectively as a Rottweiler with an AK47 in his mouth.

By this point, I was shaking and almost crying. Add in the headache and total body annihilation and it was a physical and mental assault on my entire being. For the record, I apologise for nothing! My turkey phobia is stupid but it’s just strong as any normal person’s phobia for snakes or spiders or heights or deep water. I felt like I was being stalked as this horrible wrinkled pecking monster was there at every turn. I was sad to leave the Great Plaza but so relieved to escape with my underwear clean.

We left the stelae for a brief interlude at the small building at the edge of the Great Plaza where Marvin showed us the original paving of the sacbe on the ground. He also talked some about sacrifice here and most of the group thought it was barbaric from memory. The thing is – most of it was voluntary. It was considered a great honour to give your life so that your blood could keep society going and you got a free ticket to the next phase in the afterlife. It was a sacrifice with honour. That’s why it’s a sacrifice – not a murder. You put your hand up for it or got picked as the best of the best. At Copan – and all the Mayan sites – the elites practiced bloodletting with thorns or stingray spines to pierce their skin. Blood was life. The blood would nourish, but also help them communicate with their ancestors because they were high as kites while they did it. So when people were sacrificed or self-harmed, they didn’t experience pain because they were drugged up or it happened quick. A barbaric society inflicts pain and torture and horror on its people – that’s not what happened. Prisoners of war probably weren’t so lucky. Ask Rabbit.

We cut through the ball court – we would return there later – for the most magnificent stelae of them all in front of the Acropolis. On the way, I sensed I needed to build the bonds of camaraderie a bit with Marvin. I’d been to many Mayan sites and normally form a pretty tight bond with the guides over the hour because I’m normally the only one who has a real passion for Mayan archaeology and history. After the tours, they’ve sent me reference materials or their own photos or told me their own special stories because they know I’m really interested. But Marvin was a stone wall. I tried to explain my bizarre behaviour, because he undoubtedly thought I was a weirdo. He just told me the turkeys were friendly. He asked what my favourite bird in Australia was. Not really the right question for somebody who doesn’t like birds in general due to influence of the Great Turkey Attack of 1981 and whose brain wasn’t functioning at its peak. I think I might have named a Rainbow Lorikeet out of desperation because it was the only one I could think of that wasn’t a duck. This wasn’t going well.

The Great Plaza was the province of 18 Rabbit. Now, we entered the Court of the Hieroglyphic Stairway. (Just wait – we’re not at the stairs yet.) This is a section of larger monuments built by a ruler that I was sure Marvin called Smoke Snail but all the books I’ve bought called Smoke Shell. Hmmm. Personally, I prefer Smoke Snail as an evocative term but it makes me wonder whether I heard him wrong the whole time. The rulers’ names are very exact because there is a huge list of them (more foreshadowing). Let us call him Smoke Shell then.

As promised, we reached the most magnificent stelae of them all!!!!! Whereas 18 Rabbit was the most prolific in terms of stelae, this stela of Smoke Shell to me was the most beautiful, detailed and intricate of the lot. It too comes with the mandatory altar and hut accessories in the Stela Action Figure Set.

The Acropolis – a popular Greek word for old Mayan temples – may contain Smoke Shell’s remains. Like 18 Rabbit, he holds the magic serpent bar of kingship. He was the 15th ruler in the dynasty and this stela was constructed in 761 AD.

This stela stands in front of a massive set of crumbling stairs. They once led to a huge, double storied temple with a treasure trove of facade sculptures and hieroglyphic panels (thanks William L. Fash). The A listers sat up the top, watching the ritual games and happy/unhappy endings on the ball court. A bit like Eddie McGuire lording it up in the best spot at the MCG to watch a Collingwood game with the best and fairest decapitated at the end.

Copan’s stelae are legendary. Mayan sites are usually famous for something unique and special. Palenque has the tomb of King Pakal, Tikal has the magnificent high temples and the jungle setting, Coba has the tallest temple, Ek Balam a tea house built to look like jaguar jaws and Bonampak has the most colourful, haunting murals. Copan is renowned for the detail of its sculpture and carvings.

Whereas other Mayans carved their glyphs or stelae from limestone or rock, the Mayans at Copan used the unique raw materials of the Copan valley. William H. Fash refers to it as “green volcanic tuff” which is a type of stone. It is apparently super stable, but to me also looks super malleable like clay. I remember Marvin saying that the people had access to raw materials unlike any other Mayans and that it was easier to carve more detailed monuments that preserved for longer. My book also says that a source of obsidian was only 80km away which means that they had great knife blades and cool bracelets.

Back to the stela – it was simply awesome. The detail was phenomenal. Both sides depict anthropomorphic beings and animals in a wild tree of life.

Apparently two small figures sprouting from behind the knees represent his ancestors being born like ears of corn at the beginning of life.

Look at the glyphs on the ground. It’s like the best bathmat ever. Ikea – please make this and name it something Swedish now. Smoke SlingaShell.

And, as for that altar, Marvin had no idea. Just animals. Take your pick because there were literally a few of them it could possibly be. A choose your own adventure altar. Ok then. Let’s move onto the ball court.

Remember all the scarlet macaws at the start of the wildlife strip? (Incidentally, I don’t have a problem with them. They’re not wrinkly and terrifying.) They loved them in Copan. Look at the beak. Makes it look friendly like a budgie!

This is a pretty killer view of the macaw head and the dilapidated stairs of the Acropolis with the top of Ol Smokey’s head just visible. This shot is a bit of a primer for the view from the top – just imagine two temples whacked on the top.

Behold Copan’s ballcourt. No Jordan like dunking or three pointers from the line here. But it’s the second largest ballcourt in the Mayan world, after the giant Wembley Stadium equivalent of Chichen Itza, and is considered their entrance to the Underworld. Note – matching bookend macaw on the far side. The ballcourt features two of these long panels. The two teams of 3-5 players would square off against each other, hipping and shouldering a hard rubber ball around without using their hands. That ball was HARD. Players wore a heavy yoke around their waist to protect their essentials (needed for precious stingray spine bloodletting later). Rules unclear to us now but part-game, part-ritual, part-harvesting of blood to keep the gods happy, the rain falling, the sun shining, the crops growing and the ancestors smiling on the reign of good king Smokey, Rabbit or SpecSavers etc.

This was the best bit of the ballcourt. It’s another macaw but how creepy does it look with that tongue?? It’s hard to get a decent shot of it from the angle but you can make out the talons and the wings. It’s truly spectacular. It’s a bit like a Skeksi from the Dark Crystal – a film with horrifying killer bird creatures in Jim Henson puppet form in the 80’s.

After my headache reached eye watering new heights, we stepped about three metres to the right to discover Smoke Shell’s masterpiece -the Hieroglyphic Stairway! It’s Copan’s highlight and the big ticket item that I knew about beforehand from my visit to the archaeological museum the previous day. The stela is another Smoke Shelfie. All the glyphs up both sides tell the story of the rulers and the history of Copan from Smoke Shell’s time. William L. Fash reckons the point of the stairway was a bit of a political boost for Smoke Shell and his dynasty, legitimizing it in the face of 18 Rabbit’s humiliating capture and decapitation. A rallying cry to the people of the glory days. Hey – we got our arses kicked but we’re back, baby! Imagine it all painted a deep, punch-you-in-the-face red too with a hint of blue/green on the stelae to look like bird feathers.

In the middle of the steps are figures of Smoke Shell’s illustrious ancestors. Actually, it’s Copan’s version of a Snapfish photobook of the important events that happened in the city’s lifetime. The inscriptions are still being deciphered but we know that it references Yax K’uk Mo, the founder (King SpecSavers), the births and deaths of kings, important rituals and dynastic heritage. There’s a figure that may represent 18 Rabbit despite his gory ending. As the Mayans ascended the stairway, they went back in time past their illustrious ancestors. (The Mayans were big on ancestor veneration. Smoke Shell would have been first on board with a premium Ancestry.com subscription.) Some figures are entirely broken off but you can see where they originally were from the gaping holes.

This is a close up with my 20x zoom on my camera of one of the rulers on the Hieroglyphic Stairway. Even just the trim on the brocade at the bottom of the throne is marvellous. The raised mouth sticking up a bit like an angry puppet is the headdress. Underneath, you can just make out the face with the earrings. Then the entirely trashed body (I felt a lot like this at the time.) He’s ‘armless. But you can can get a sense of what he might have looked like whole back in the day if you have a good imagination. Also, look at all the steps. They aren’t entirely flat and boring. Stuff has been carved onto them. In fact, the entire stairway has more to glyphs than 20 stelae put together and I believe they’re still working on decoding them.

Interestingly, Fash’s book reveals that the mortar in the Hieroglyphic Stairway is the weakest of all the structures at Copan. It is ironic that the stairway designed to illustrate the power and longevity of the dynasty was the first one to disintegrate.

We headed back past Smoke Shell’s first stela, over to a set of stairs to climb up on top of the Acropolis. Back in the day, the Mayans would have climbed up the Hieroglyphic Stairway or the Acropolis steps. But the tree roots were popping out the stones in the Acropolis, making clambering not an option.

A more modern set of steps up the back of the Acropolis hill led to the top. This view of the Hieroglyphic Stairway group from the steps gives a bit of perspective.

From here on out, it became pretty clear that Marvin was quietly freaking that he wasn’t going to get us into our taxis in time. We stood on top of a temple called the Acropolis and looked over the West Court (thanks Fash). At the time, I had no idea what was down there. It’s only now that I’m looking at the map in the book that I am piecing together that we took this route out.

We came around the top of the Acropolis to the East Court which is a much smaller, rectangular plaza. In fact, some Googling reveals that it was the original plaza. It’s older than the other areas and was built in 573 by the king , Moon Jaguar. You know when a city builds a bigger, better football stadium and leaves the old one behind? That’s what happened here. 18 Rabbit built the epic Great Plaza for public events but Moon Jaguar’s plaza kicks on. Apparently the tomb of King SpecSavers is underneath …

Anyway, the East Court is all about the Jaguar Sun God. Cats love the sun, right? Apparently they like dancing too. The plaza features two dancing jaguar gods.

And this ripper of a sun god.

The East Court is also the entrance to the Rosalila Temple. Rosalila is the most complete temple discovered at Copan and the best preserved of ANY Mayan temple. It’s a red temple literally whole and untouched inside the Acropolis. But Marvin informed us that we weren’t going in there. He said the project to view it wasn’t entirely finished. So, in his opinion, the ticket price to see the temple was not good value for money. Hence, he had not purchased that ticket type for us.

My little HockTales heart broke. I commenced a silent, invisible, full-on Donald Duck epic quack attack tantrum inside my suffering head. I’d travelled halfway across the world to see Copan, which is not an easy place to get to. Hours of driving and a border crossing from Antigua in Guatemala, and now hours of driving and a border crossing to Suchitoto in El Salvador. Probably 10 hours in a van all up. Let’s not even get into how much money, time and effort had been expended travelling from Australia. The odds were stacked against me returning to Copan anytime soon if ever. So for Marvin to deny me the opportunity to see that temple because he didn’t think it was value for money (not because of lack of time because we could have gone through there with a few less games of ‘Which Country Was that Fruit From’) was a kick in my already churning guts. Even if the project was partially finished, just seeing something of that temple with my own eyes would have been better than seeing nothing which is what happened. Of course, I said nothing because there was no point. We didn’t have the tickets.

Onwards with heavy heart, pounding head and poker face.

We came down to the West Court which is the interior of that selfie with the pyramid I took a while back. The side of the Acropolis has these skulls halfway up it.

Cool. Skulls always make me feel a bit better. Fash says these are human but they look like monkey skulls to me.

The Acropolis is a bit like an apartment block with every ruler building their own unit on top of the previous occupant’s. It all looks like a bizarre giant hill with steps on all sides now. This particular side was built by the king Yax Pac who built a huge reno over the top of everybody else’s at the time. But the most famous part is not the building, but the altar at the foot of the steps – Altar Q. Whereas the Hieroglyphic Stairway certainly features all the kings, it was a bit of a bitch to decipher by all accounts. This handy rock has them all in order in a square! Starting with King SpecSavers on the corner, it goes around to portray all 15 Mayan rulers in chronological order seated on their name glyphs to end with Yax Pac(man) and his date of accession in 776. The deal being that Yax had a chat with his ancestors on the day of his accession and received their blessing. One suspects an artisan had been carving this for a while though. Doesn’t look like an express 24 hour turnaround to me. A bit like – here’s one we prepared earlier – we were just waiting for that accession date and let’s bang that out with a chisel. Fash states that Yax Pac sacrificed 15 jaguars in a crypt under the temple – one for each of his ancestors. Apparently two were juveniles. Even for the king’s accession, the Mayans had to settle for only 13 prime specimens which might indicate the extent to which the jungle was receding at the time. Fun fact – Altar Q here is a replica. The original is in the site’s Sculpture Museum. Something else we weren’t allowed to see …

Below is a picture of the Rosalila Temple encased inside the Acropolis exactly where I was standing. (The stairway to the right is where Altar Q was.) See what I mean about the temple inside a temple? It’s like a babushka doll inside a babushka doll. The colour is meant to be amazing. The previous day I had bought a pair of earrings of the Rosalila Temple thinking I was going to see it. Now I wear them and think of this picture and the book of the Sculpture Museum I bought online with the Rosalila Museum on the cover.

This was cool. Features look simian like the skulls to me. Also loving the glyph down the bottom that looks a bit like the glyph for ‘lord’. Could mean monkey lord? Who knows? I can’t remember and I was on my last legs at this point. I told Marvin that I had read Stephens and Catherwood’s accounts. Finally, now that it was time to go, he had shown a spark of recognition that I might have a shred of interest in his culture.

Note – a bit more reading reveals that this was another Reviewing Stand like the jaguar East Court. Essentially a grandstand or bleachers if you live north of the Mexican border. This creature was a decoration on the steps.

It was a morning I would never forget. Copan was terrifying in its beauty as I found most Mayan sites but the detail on the sculptures and engravings gave it a special edge. There was so much more that we never got to see – an entire cemetery complex for one – don’t get me started on the other stuff – and so much that I missed out on due to that wretched demon bird from hell blocking me. Fear, joy, beauty, pain, sorrow. I’d experienced it all and I was knackered. I am desperate to go back for further explorations like Stephens and Catherwood, but it’s logically very difficult. We’ll see.

We tuk-tuked back to Copan town for lunch. Most of the group had skipped breakfast and was starving. The quest was on to spend the remaining limpies before we crossed the border to El Salvador where we could spend as many ripped US dollars as we wanted. We patronised a cool cafe, dining on the local specialty which I think was called a balleada. It resembled a quesadilla. I recall mine was chicken and cheese. I recall it being super filling and delicious and eating the entire lot. (I always eat the entire lot.) I also went for horchata because it was nice and cool. The weather was heating up and I was not feeling like an Americano was the go. I remember happily keeping some limpies in my back pocket to buy some more Mayan earrings from the girl on the jewellery stand outside the cafe.

I limped back up the steep hill to the hotel. My stomach lurched dangerously. Oh god. Now it was full of chicken and corn-based tortilla products ahead of a 5 hour or so drive. I dashed straight for the hotel’s guest bathroom, thinking perhaps a strategic spew could prevent public shame in the mini-van. But my efforts yielded no fruit. Then we were on the road to Suchitoto.

The curse of Copan wasn’t over though …

We entered pothole hell. My position in the backseat middle was unfortunate. Since I wasn’t feeling well, I should have been up the front but those spots went fast and I was shuffling at a sub-optimal pace too slow to secure one. The back was all that was left. The group luggage was tightly packed in the space behind me. No divider or cage though. Under normal circumstances, this might have been ok. However, the Tetris like packing skills of the driver were no match for the terrible, bumpy roads and the crappy suspension of the bus.

This shot out and smashed me in the back of the head.

Ironically, this was my rucksack. Fortunately, I had been struck in the skull by the end containing the dirty laundry so damage was minimal. But I was super lucky. The other suitcases around it were the hard candy ones. If they had shot out with the comparative speed of a poorly tied log on the back of a lumberjack’s truck like old bluey had, I’d have gone down with a concussion.

A couple of other bags tumbled forward with a key part in the Jenga tower now gone. After a brief pit stop to change up the luggage arrangements, we moved spots because some of the bags had to sit on the seats. I scored an even worse seat over the right back wheel of the bus. For the rest of the trip, I felt every lurch and jolt and so did my stomach and head. It was a long drive. A very long drive. I suspect we stopped at a couple of service stations for toilet breaks as we usually did. There may have been a futile attempt to cat nap. I probably wrote one of these blogs on my phone. We crossed the border into El Salvador and I have no clear memory of it, but suspect I did what I was told and there was no incident.

The day was not over yet, even though we pulled into Suchitoto and it was dark. The hotel was on a Main Street. I couldn’t make out much. It reminded me of Antigua in that it was a front door of a single storied building on a street. It was lovely inside though! A nice open area overlooking a garden, lots of tables and chairs for outside seating, some couches in the foyer. It was very cute. Jardin de Isabelita. I remember that we were meant to arrive at 6pm for a briefing about some activities for the following day – decisions had to be made that night. We had arrived super late because of the border crossing and the crappy roads – maybe 8pm? I remember I had maxed out nice functioning Jo at this point. Poker face slipping after hours of being jolted around on the right wheel with the bus’ crappy suspension and my head hurt. I was tired and grumpy. I’d hit hungry hours ago and gone past it – a dangerous sign that I was unstable. Decisions were not my strong point at that time. Verticality was not my strong point at that time. Poor Renee, the service provider, talked us through options for the following day that I barely took in. Thankfully, I had done my research before the trip and knew all about these options – they were on the Trip Notes. Yay me. I sorted out that I would do the walk in the nature reserve with the guerilla war fighter. Done.

Pamela started handing out the room keys. Everybody received theirs and started heading off to their rooms. I sat there, virtually comatose on the chair. Where was mine?? Some shuffling and low voices. Time passed. I shut my eyes. The shitstorm might pass me by if I didn’t acknowledge its existence.

The curse had struck again. Not enough rooms. I had missed out. Pamela and I were to go to another hotel.

At that point, I was so tired that I was beyond rational thought. Five women on this tour were on single supplements but it had to me right here right now barely conscious that had to go. Pamela said we were to come back for dinner – the famous papoosas – but I told her all I wanted to do was die. I got into a car with two guys who drove me in the dark to God knows where and they set me up at the hotel desk. But if I had wanted to go back for dinner, there was no way I could have met the others back at that hotel. I would never have found it. I was so disorientated.

The new hotel was the opposite of Jardin de Isabelita. No garden, no outdoor area. It was in fact, an inside dog box. Turned out it was the back of a cafe. All I knew at that point was that I was alone in god knows where, nobody had noticed my absence, and I was too exhausted to care.

With that, dear reader, the curse of Copan finally lifted because I crashed.

Tune in soon when HockTales takes a jungle walk with a machete wielding guerilla!

Due to my crappy sleep pattern of waking up every few hours during the night, getting up at 3:30 wasn’t actually that hard. My gear was mostly packed already and I was down in the foyer with about 5 minutes to spare. Out of 16 new comrades, I think only two were present and accounted for. As the rest trickled in, it was clear that the 4am start was not as glorious for them and they would not be fit for active duty for a while. I settled in for my freebie coffee from the foyer and watched as the bags were hefted onto the bus roof with more style than grace.

The early start was necessary as we were fleeing Guatemala after only one night. (No, the foyer coffee wasn’t really that bad.) This was the first real day of our tour and we were about to gun it to Copan, Honduras. Phase One of the extraction plan involved getting clear of the traffic around Guatemala City although we were in Antigua. Confused? The traffic to Guatemala City is so bad – epically bad – it’s probably inscribed on a Mayan stelae somewhere in glyphs that look like little Hyundais – that we had to get up so early just in case we got caught in a traffic jam. What a sad decline for the Mayans who were such proud builders of the white roads called sacbes that paved the way between the cities for quick and easy travel. Mayan society also didn’t have the wheel so no congestion on the I-90 turnpike either.

The gods smiled on us in the darkness as we avoided the traffic in our mini-van. Technically, we weren’t gunning it straight to the border. There was a mercy breakfast stop for the gringos which was fortunate for everybody involved – HockTales has to eat or it’s HockZilla for the rest of the day. We pulled into what appeared to be a petrol station and I saw a restaurant with dinosaurs out the front!!! So cool!!! Then crushing disappointment. That wasn’t our restaurant. With heavy heart, I abandoned all hope of eating with a twenty year old damaged fibreglass triceratops and entered a plain old restaurant with no dinosaurs. So boring.

We ate out the back near a pool with a reconstructed fibreglass mountain with waterslide. Two of our party hopped in. I was a bit baffled. It was only 9am. It wasn’t hot. Then it dawned on me; they were English. Due to their infernal weather, their countrymen worshipped the sun with a Bronze Age intensity using bathers or hotpants. I would come to suspect that a few of my trip mates could regress back to early amphibious life forms at will, hopping into any available body of water with such gay abandon that I wondered if they possessed mutant gills. I happily ate my scrambled eggs with minced meat, plantains, tortillas, and two coffees of course. One of the girls told us that there was an alligator in a cage over in the back but I really didn’t want to see the condition it was in, so declined the offer.

Like the coffee, trouble was a brewing. Guatemala was the land of the Q (quetzale) but would take $US. However, the restaurant would only accept Qs or perfect US bills. Absolutely golden, sweet, freshly minted, no creases, just out of the ATM bills. There were lengthy delays also in that we were all trying to get exact change in US for our border crossing which required slipping a note into the passport. According to the day, it would either be in US or in Honduran limpia. So we had to have the right amount in US in case we could give that immediately or in limpia to change it. I can’t remember exactly what it was but I think it was about $13 US. A few of the people got caught paying for their breakfast with less-than-perfect US and we had to wait ages for that to sort itself out. Eventually, we were on the road again.

Copan Town is called Copan Ruinas. It’s not the ruins but the town near it. The trip was a couple more hours. That included a border crossing that I don’t recall being too onerous. I exchanged some US into limpia, or limpies as I decided to call them because it was funnier. Our time in Honduras was the equivalent of taking a shower with a broken leg. Quick lick and a spit and you’re out. We gunned it to Copan town today, tomorrow AM we were visiting the ruins (one of the main reasons I decided to take the tour) and afterwards we were hightailing it straight out to El Salvador. There was no real need for serious limpie investment, although I did want to purchase some Copan goodies increase the difficulty on my backpack carrying to boss level. (I like to have one thing from each of the ruins.) Honduras is a bit of a rough place. Our tour guide, Pamela, gave us a lecture in the mini-van but I am sad to say that I have forgotten a lot of it. (Sorry Pamela, people generally have to be dead at least 500 years for me to remember their history.) Around the tourist areas like the Mayan hotspots, everything is sweet though so we were safe as houses.

We stayed here!

To be more specific, I stayed in the room down the stairs!

It was pretty on the outside with the garden. But the room was pretty basic. It was the worst one of the entire trip actually. But it’s not like I was in there for very long and it had wifi in the room as the router was relatively close, so not all bad.

A chunk of the group went to a macaw sanctuary for a couple of hours. However, I wanted to check out Copan’s archaeology museum so no brightly coloured birds for me. Plus, Pamela had told me she didn’t think the sanctuary was as ethical as it could be so I was even happier. A couple of others wanted to check out the town too, so Pamela led a handful of us down the steep slope to Copan Town. It’s much steeper than it looks here!

There’s a town square with wisteria. There’s a coffee shop and a small market. There’s an ATM. The best thing I found was an alleyway of jewellery sellers with a lovely girl selling earrings. I’m a total sucker for earrings. These were in cool Mayan designs from the Copan ruins – the girl even Googled it to prove it. One was the facade of a temple I was going to see tomorrow! Goodbye limpies. I struggled to keep some in the back pocket as I’d only just got here!

The Copan archaeology museum is small and I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t provide more exhibits and context, but it did excite me for what was to come so I guess it served its purpose. English was sporadic but I muddled through with good old Google Translate.

This is K’Inich Yax K’uk Mo’. He was the founder of Copan. We know this because he is depicted in the starting place on the corner of the Altar Q which is a big square block with carvings of all Copan’s kings in order. He ascended the throne in 426 AD and possibly founded the first Specsavers. (The big boggly eyes are a link back to Teotihuacano style representations of Tlaloc, the rain god which look a bit like this. This guy was not from around here. Actually, he was from the Yucatán.) This is an incense burner in his image. So burn baby burn, disco infer Mo.

Copan has a hieroglyphic stairway. More on this next post. But this was a taster. Not sure what this slab was. It was super cool though. And remember what they carved all of this with. Not exactly modern day mason tools. Flints, chisels and swear words were it.

The Maya loved jade as a representation of power for the elite. Jade earrings, jade necklaces, jade cuffs. These were beautiful pieces of artistry that were traded to the top strata of society, possibly for cocoa beans! But some of the more powerful nobles and members of the royal families went one better by deforming themselves, embedding jade fragments into their teeth in an act possibly not covered under their comprehensive health insurance policy. The jade would have created quite the impression.

This skeleton was found in Copan somewhere. Its placement and assemblage of goodies was reconstructed. We can see the jade earrings and their favourite green Thai curry cooking pot. I have no idea what was going on here. The Mayans did believe in provisioning the soul on its way to the Underworld so food and drink may have been left in the containers. Although the ceramic ones could very well have been decorative.

There were a couple of reconstructions of the major monuments and stelae of Copan but it seems a waste to load up photos of these when I’ll be talking about the real things at the site in the next post, so you’ll just have to wait! There were more things in the museum but not much context around it all. I’ll save it all in the next mega post at the actual site.

I am struggling to remember what I ate for lunch and have come to the conclusion that I must have scarfed some service station snacks upon returning to the hotel. There was not enough time for me to have seen the museum and eaten a sit-down meal. We had left the land of the street taco, so there had been nothing to grab. (God, I missed them. So handy. So delicious. So cheap. So good except for that one that I think gave me the trots.) Anyway, the top layer of my backpack was typically edible at any time. These were most commonly my beloved salted plantain snacks and an array of almonds or protein mix nuts. I believe this was probably the first red flag …

That night, we went to the Copan Ruinas Hot Springs (possibly not what they were actually called). We went via a supermarket to pick up some supplies, given our intelligence that beer couldn’t be purchased at the springs . I have a definite memory of purchasing more almonds so evidence that I had scoffed mine was mounting. The drive out to the springs was meant to take only 3/4 of an hour or something but the drive went on, and on, and on and on. Literally, it was more like 2 hours. We travelled in two buses. I remember being pretty jolly at this point at the promise of ‘The Fabled Honduran Rum’ that awaited us. I consumed a can of the Honduran national beer on the bus. It was staggeringly average, but my mission to drink a beer from every country was still on track.

We arrived at the hot springs and look how super exciting and Indiana Jonesy it looked as we walked on the way through to our dedicated rock pools!!!!!

The next photo was taken by my mate Dave from tour one who was now on a different tour going to the same places three days behind me. He also enjoyed a particularly ace camera on his phone. But I’m using it here to convey that certain areas of the hot springs were off limits because they were boiling hot springs that would strip the flesh from your bones like something out of a horror movie. 90 degrees. That’s more than you have to sit through at a graduation ceremony at uni!

After my time through Cuba, I was bulletproof with straight rum. When it’s good rum, I don’t like it diluted with a mixer. Plus I really don’t like juice. It’s just too super sweet. So let’s say the open bar with the Honduran rum might not have seen much juice in my glass. I was playing bartender for everybody else too, serving them directly in the pool while they sat in the spring. Remember my feelings about water? I’m just not that keen on it. Granted, I’m better at sitting there than swimming but I get bored very easily and am generally rubbish at relaxation. So I was pretty happy making everybody else drinks and handing them out for a while. One for them heavy on the juice, one for me not so heavy on the juice because I’m a tough little unit right? After a while, I did get in the spring and sit there. It wasn’t super hot. I’ve run the bath hotter than that by accident. Clearly the 90 degrees was upstream a fair bit.

Then a brown muddy substance – probably mud! – was passed around for us to rub all over our bodies like partially melted Cadbury dairy milk exfoliant.

There are no more pictures because I don’t remember much else. The curse of the Honduran rum hit with full impact. This part of the blog is a bit like my favourite explorer, John Lloyd Stephens writing his account of travelling through the Mayan world in the 1840s whilst being delirious on malaria. I can remember little grabs of it but require accounts from other people to piece it all together. I remember shaslicks. I am reliably informed that I ate so much food that it was remarked upon (and thank God I did too – no regrets there!). I had a nap in the front seat of the bus on the way home where I was assisted into my room by Rupert, the oldest person on our tour and one of the loveliest. I don’t know how this could be but I was hungry again and started downloading the Uber Eats app, not quite considering how anything in the main square was going to be in the Uber Eats Honduran pantheon of restaurants, how the delivery guy would get through the hotel gates or how the account would handle the purchase of anything in limpies. But turns out I faceplanted into my phone in a wet bikini before I had to worry about any of those considerations.

And with that, our HockTale comes to a classy end.

Next time, our adventures take us to our final Mayan ruin where I am haunted by the physical manifestation of my nightmares in the Curse of Copan!

It was time for a sombre(rero?) Mexican wave goodbye. My flight from Cancun to Guatemala City was scheduled for lunchtime with my transfer booked for a 9:30am pickup. Plenty of time for a final visit to the breakfast buffet with its omelette flipping and plantain delights. I’ve described this buffet in the past three posts. There was nothing new. Although I don’t think I ever lamented the total absence of bircher muesli on it which, to me, is always a buffet breakfast staple. So fill er up with more huevos, more platanos, more cafe – frankly I was unsure about when the next food window might open. My previous aviation horrors with Interjet had trapped me in a queue at the airport forever. Today, I was flying with Volaris but didn’t want to repeat the experience of a blood sugar drop in the line. I was prepared to queue with a fat gut and a full stomach this time.

After thanking my friendly servers, it was time for the dreaded final pack. The airport pack is a time of ruthless brutality. Volaris had been trying to upsell me additional luggage allowance via email for weeks. I was expecting to to be accosted in the line by a Con the Fruiterer type with a luggage weigher. ‘100 grams over, Miss! That will be $200 American dollars unless you upgrade to our special Volaris deluxe package now before you reach the check-in desk.’ So I had to leave some things behind. The maid surely made out like Pancho Villa with a thank you package of abandoned goodies!

Sacrifices had to be made. (At least they weren’t traditional Mayan ones.) My Bluetooth keyboard and a semi-dinged Jack Reacher novel that I never got around to reading had to go to make way for the booty from the Cancun museum shop. It was like reverse cultural repatriation. I had legitimately purchased my own pieces of cultural heritage and was taking them to be revered in another country. I wrapped the precious things in t-shirts and protected a couple of sketches in the bottom of my bag with a dodgy but useful Oxxo bag.

Then I opened the fridge … It was 9am … Time to get rid of the free coconut with straw – easy. Only a mouthful in there. Generous. There was also a full 500ml unopened beer can I bought from the Oxxo, miraculously untouched. (Well, I had been busy filling my gob with so much other crap that a simple can of beer was low on the list of priorities.) Now it was there next to the remaining half a litre of post-binge surviving chocolate ice cream. No way could I risk that can exploding in my luggage and I couldn’t carry it in the cabin. (I was already stashing a small bottle of tequila from the so-called Tequila Museum in my hand luggage.) It was Indio. It was a good beer. It was Mexican. I was leaving for Guatemala, where Indio was extinct and other beverages freely roamed the bar taps.

There was only one thing to do. Crack it open and chug half a can to retain some civility.

Hooray! So I was in a happy mood as I checked out and paid for all my meals and tips and the laundry and that pizza I ate the other night and god knows what else I charged to the room. The best part was getting rid of the big fat US notes I’d been lugging around from Australia and asking for the change in smaller bills – the Cancun resort was like a delightful international house of banking where the service was great and yet you witnessed acts of terrible abuse on the staff from the other customers. One guy was being a total pain in the ass, rudely complaining about the resort’s app not integrating all of his family within the same villa. Boo hoo. I was there four days and didn’t bother even downloading it. Maybe get out of the villa or, god forbid, leave the gated community of the resort and live life, asshole. I would miss Mexico but I would not miss the entitled Americans of Cancun treating the staff of the resort like their own personal slaves. I saw it many times and it was truly appalling.

With heavy heart, it was off to the airport. I was feeling a bit antsy because the flight was scheduled to arrive at 3pm and I was meant to meet my new Intrepid tour guide and mates at 6pm. If this had been an Interjet flight, I would probably have been at the airport bar on my third mezcal by 5pm. But a pleasant surprise awaited me. Volaris was no Interjet. The staff were at the desk, information was on the screens, and the flight was on time. Nobody tried to upsell me on the luggage allowance and nobody tried to test the weight or size of my red carryon backpack which was now a flagrant violation of the ‘Your Luggage Must be This Size’ box. (My policy was now to always keep it on my back so check-in staff couldn’t see it. What bag?? No, I’m just weighed down by the burdens of life.) This was easy! No worries or de nada!

I quickly popped into the mobile store for a new phone cover since the glue was gone on mine. (You may note a dark smudge on the corner of some of the other photos – that’s the cover slipping over the camera lens.) Then it was through the gates again. I was getting to know the Cancun airport well now, given that this was my second visit in the international departures area. (It was also the route I took to Cuba a few weeks prior.) I checked my watch. Plenty of time. It was only a short flight of about an hour. No way I was going to get fed. I knew that I’d shovelled down a big breakfast but I wasn’t going to get lunch on that flight and there would not be any opportunity to eat until dinner time. I wolfed down three tacos from the food court. A few explorations around the shops and the flight was called. Nothing eventful to note.

Guatemala City is the capital of Guatemala. (You’d never have guessed.) I had no intention of visiting it though. After the usual fun and games of customs and passport control, I left the airport with my pre-arranged Intrepid transport. (After my transport in Cuba failed to turn up, it was a huge relief to see the sign with my name on it). I settled in for some Spanglish banter with the driver for the next couple of hours.

My destination was Antigua, the picturesque city that has had some seriously bad luck. In 1541, the nearby water volcano (Volcano de Agua) erupted and the resulting mudslide destroyed the town. The inhabitants decamped and moved to the current location. Antigua then became the capital of Guatemala for a while, before a huge earthquake destroyed much of it in 1773. Its history is dotted with earthquakes but this one was terrible. It killed approximately 600 people outright and then a further 600 from starvation or disease. The capital then moved location but the city of Antigua Guatemala (meaning old Guatemala – like ‘antique’) remained. Many of the old buildings (mostly churches), proudly demonstrate this heritage with cracks that no Selley’s spakfilla will patch. Antigua is known for its brightly painted buildings, cobble stones, quaint feel and scenic location nestled between three volcanoes. El Fuego – the fire volcano – actually blew its top in 2018.

After I arrived, I only had about an hour and a half before the group meeting so it was time for a walk. Dear reader – are you wondering why I am not devastated that I only had an hour a half to explore this historical wonderland? You know I love the 16th century, Spanish architecture, historical stuff and new places! It’s the spirit of HockTales! Well, the thing is, I’d been here before so there was no FOMO for Jojo. If I’d had a day spare, there would have been a full-scale HockTales assault on the town. But with so little time, there was no point getting upset about what I wouldn’t see and I just enjoyed what I could shove down my eye sockets.

I didn’t even need a map. I was staying in the same hotel from a previous Intrepid tour. So I knew the neighbourhood too and was confident from the get go. Right around the corner from the hotel was this.

Iglesias de La Merced. Stunning. Not many ladies can pull off yellow but the Our Lady of Mercy sure can! The design incorporates some earthquake proofing with low height and wider columns. The church was originally a male monastery for the Mercederian order. It opened in 1767 and that big earthquake hit in 1773. Surely somebody was deservedly smug that the building was still standing.

Literally across the road is Antigua’s most famous landmark – the Santa Catalina arch.

This arch was basically built to keep nuns off the street. In 1694, the two buildings on either side were convents. The arch allowed the nuns to cross from their dorms to the schools they taught at on the other side of the arch. These nuns were seriously black ops. Hard core incognito. So off the grid they didn’t even know where the grid was. They had taken vows of seclusion which meant nobody was allowed to even see them (other than during their teaching duties, I guess). Jesus would be on everybody’s case if anybody on the street caught so much as a glimpse of one of these women. The arch completely hid them from the world. Nuns? What nuns? We’ll be having nun of that! (Incidentally, the clock on the top was added in the 1800s and needs to be wound every three days. It’s French. Sigh.)

The main square is about a five minute walk from the arch. I began to notice changes from my last visit here in 2017. A craft brewery, a Subway, more shops in general. Commerce and entrepreneurship was booming. What was in these spaces before? Unsure. At least the killer coffee shop was still there. In Guatemala, the currency is the quetzal. Like the bird. It’s cool because the bird is on the notes. But I didn’t see much point in changing my US into Qs for only a few hours, knowing that the tour itinerary saw us leaving Guatemala first thing in the morning. So I paid in US for an awesome cold brew Americano at the killer coffee shop.

I did do one thing that was new in that I visited a jade shop. Guatemala is famous for its jade. The Mayan royalty and elite wore all over their bodies and even drilled it into their teeth. Mayans from the region traded it all over to other areas that didn’t have jade deposits. The shops are impressive affairs with reconstructions of famous Mayan masks, animals and all kinds of expensive jewellery constructed from jade. And not just the dark green stuff like you would think. I think there are about 15 different kinds including lavender and blue. Those are extremely unique to the region, but they do remind me of Mrs Slocomb’s hair. (Are You Being Served? Look it up.) The gentleman following me around hoping that the backpack and the travel garb didn’t rule me out for the purchase of a $10,000 jade ornament was quite impressed by my knowledge of the masks and which sites they were from. I did capitulate and buy my own little piece of jade with my birth month on it. Remember in the last post I pointed out that my birth glyph was Ceh? Well, the calendar here had me as Toj and Ceh wasn’t an option. I’ve been Toj before so I suspect a variety of calendars are used depending on interpretations. Bizarrely though, I opened his book of dates to show him my birthdate and it was already underlined!!!! The only date underlined in the book that I could see!!!! Weird and bizarre coincidence. With the Toj pendant purchased, it was time to return back to the hotel to meet the new Intrepid crew.

Upon my return to the Intrepid hotel (which provided free coffee and water in the lobby – winner!), I performed the very important task of swigging a couple of sips out of that mini tequila bottle. Tomorrow we’d be crossing the border into Honduras. I’d crossed a few of these borders before – AK47s and total obedience were the norm. I didn’t know how a bottle of alcohol was going to go down. So, as a result, it had to all go down today …

It was a large group indeed. 16 people! There was only 6 on the Cuban tour. A broad mix of English, Aussies, American and European with people both older and younger than me. We went out to dinner at a soup place where I reunited with an old flame of mine, Gallo beer!!!! Gallo means rooster in Spanish. Gallo beer is the only acceptable avian version of an actual gallo to me unless I am eating it. I even have a giant Gallo beer t-shirt that I gave my dad that he rejected because it was too small so I now sleep in it.

It was never going to be a big night. Pamela, our new guide, informed us that we were leaving at 4am sharp to beat the traffic on the road out of Antigua to Copan, Honduras. So it was an early night for everybody. I decided to get the jump on showering the night before, having been burnt (or the absolute opposite actually) by this hotel’s hot water service in a similar situation. We had left at 5am on a previous trip and I remembered freezing my butt off waiting for hot water that never kicked in. Not this time buddy. I made use of the world’s most bizarrely shaped shower before I retired for the evening.

The room was hot as hell for some reason. This was great news because my bathers still hadn’t dried from the cenote swim the previous day and had wet some other things. So I set up a drying station with all the hangers. Everything else was packed and ready to go for the morning. Just one more thing left to do – a final swig on the mini tequila bottle to knock it off. It was a sad farewell to tequila. The last I would sample on the entire trip actually since we were leaving the land of the agave plant. That night, it was a bit of a sedative, putting me to sleep just before the horrific 3:30am alarm …

Join me next time for HockTales and the Curse of the Dreaded Honduran Hot Springs.

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!

Excellent news hit my inbox overnight. The Scooby gang at Qantas’ fraud squad cracked the case of my missing cash!!! Well, Fred didn’t unmask any actual thief under a white bedsheet and Velma didn’t solve the puzzle of how the criminal mastermind who probably spent 1k on Havana Club and cheese Pringles managed to get my PIN, but all the money was back in my account to spend on Scooby snacks!!!! Problem was I couldn’t access it without a card and Qantas would only send it to my Australian address. It didn’t matter. I had a backup card. I had all my money back with minimal effort and no need to suffer the torturous emotional agony of a travel insurance claim. I was absolutely stoked!!!!!

Today I had planned to check out the nearby Mayan museum and hang around – even this loose plan was colour coded on my spreadsheet. Nerd!!! The weather was perfect. Maybe 25 degrees Celsius. It was not the peak season for Cancun, which tends to be a lot warmer and more conducive to guests to do bombs (or cannonballs for translation purposes) into the pools. Although judging by the age of the clientele in the resort, it was more likely some of them were headed for a triple bypass than a triple pike into the pool.

Check out my view from the double junior (way to make it sound like a kid’s burger meal) room with sea view and breakfast included discount package.

After the luxury of the hairdryer and the high powered toilet flush – two things a Cuban might never experience in their lives – it was time to brave the breakfast buffet. For starters, I had a wonderful conversation with my waiter about the return of my money and the helpfulness of the reception desk staff. He laughed when I explained my bacon and capsicum omelette in broken Spanish, appropriate guts gestures and animated head shaking. Huevos good, waffles make Americano gordo (fat). I told the waiter that the best huevos in the world were huevos motulenos, that unbeatable combo of eggs on tostadas with peas, ham and plantains. He told me that tomorrow I would dine on huevos motulenos because he would get the cook to make me some, even though it was not on the menu. I smiled and winked knowingly, acknowledging the promise of a future illicit egg transaction as if a drug deal was going down. Dona Hock would have those eggs. In the meantime, she would drink a lot of coffee refills.

Today’s Mexican offerings involved Yucateco pork and plantains!!! Possibly not an ideal combo with the runny orange sauce and the fried fruit on the same plate, but I stocked up on the protein and potassium, knowing it would be a really long time until I would eat next. Since the weather was so nice, I then decided to grab a table for one outside. An elderly American gent – weren’t they all?? – came past and greeted me with a “Good morning!” Then he cast a very weird glance at the orange achiote Yucateco mess on my plate, which happened to be the same colour as his leader from the shoulders up. Well mate, Yucantake your judgment elsewhere. “Buenos dias!” I retorted with a friendly smile! I was a genuine pork-eating foreigner and proud of it!!!

My guts were starting to accumulate more rolls than a black market cart out the back of a Cuban bakery. Time to start today’s adventures.

As stated in previous blog posts, I picked the Royal Islander Resort simply because of its walkable proximity to the museum and access to the daytrips out of the city that I wanted. There are a good many resorts on the main beach strip – I figured this one was close to what I needed, had an airport shuttle, and the price was ok. I didn’t intend to spend too much time there. Enquiries were not particularly in-depth. No evidence of legionnaires disease or Redrum homicidal rampages? Tick.

So I left the artificial bubble of the gated community for the first time, exiting the lobby. What was the real world like? I felt like a prisoner escaping with a giggle and pair of flip-flops/thongs (note: international word conversion provided to prevent confusion and offence!!!) Immediately, I felt the rubber begin to rub the top of my foot. Well, it wasn’t a long walk surely …

I turned onto the road with my old mate, Mr Google Maps providing directional and spiritual guidance. I loved having access to 3G again!!! (Vodafone was supported in Mexico. Everywhere else on my trip would be wifi only.) This was a pretty big road. More like a 4 lane carriageway. I think. I don’t drive a car so I am just babbling car related words like a toddler copying what they hear really. I limped along the footpath with the rubbing getting worse. Rookie move there … Was far too excited to wear thongs after strapping into the clompy walking shoes so many times.

The Museo Maya de Cancun (yes loyal readers, there have been other Museo de Maya like the one in Merida but they are all a bit different with regional variety) has a big sign stating that it doesn’t accept US dollaroos because it’s not legal tender! Let me explain money stuff. I had a wad of US that I lugged around from Australia, virtually useless in Mexico and risking downright hostility upon sight in Cuba. Now, in the gated community of the resort, it seemed to be the preferred legal tender. The Royal Islander was like a weird American Embassy where the currency, culture and plumbing of an entirely different country soiled foreign soil. Back to my fat cash wad. It was in large denominations and, as the next tour to uncharted countries loomed, one thing was for certain – nobody would take my Ben Franklin one hundred or my classic foldable fifties. Like MC Hammer, I needed to break it down. It just wouldn’t be here at the museum. So I pulled out handy Mr MasterCard to buy my ticket.

The museum was awesome!!!!! First, it was a long walk up an external circular ramp up to the very top of the building to a singular doorway. To the right was a section on the Maya in general. It was the very model of a modern Maya general! (I really hope somebody got that one …) No hablo English captions but I hit on the brilliant idea of brandishing Google Translate in front of the Spanish captions. The Spanglish danced before my eyes like sugar plum fairies but helped me figure out what each artifact was. Stoked! The sections were the standard ones on the material culture of war, death rituals, astronomy and other bits pulled from buildings and I loved it all!!!! I was a particular fan of these braziers.

Next to this brazier, was a giant mega brazier behind frosted glass. Photo looked like blurry brazier taking a shower behind frosted glass so no point posting it here. You can imagine it in your minds. No caption to explain the giant size or bizarre frosted glass presence so that’s one for my Mayan mystery memory bank.

Oh boy, was I excited to see the next room! An exhibit of MesoAmerican codices on a road trip from the National Museo of Anthropology! These rare Aztec and Mayan texts explain things like creation or migration history. They are rare because the Spaniards burnt as many as they could find in the interests of converting them to Catholicism. The Dresden Codex (named after the city where the ancient text is located – this one is probably a facsimile) is one of four ancient Mayan codices to survive the enlightenment of the Spaniards. It’s a bit of a Rosetta Stone for Mayan glyphs with linguistic experts using it to crack the meaning of the Mayan numerals and short /long count calendar. It contains ceremonial information, astrological tables and 134 representations of Chac, the rain god. So another Chac attack like at Uxmal and Kabah! Baby got Chac? (I am here all week, try the veal …)

The other side of the building was dedicated to the local Maya in the hood. Cancun is located up the top of the state of Quintana Roo, also known as the Riviera Maya. The first exhibit is a sabre toothed tiger! Cool and unexpected!!! Other exhibits include obsidian traded from the north, a tiny engraved needle and this awesome plate!

I don’t normally dig the ceramics that much, although the archaeologists clearly did (boom, tish)! A short film screened on a TV next to it. The centre of the dish depicts a bird up a tree trying to survive an onslaught from the hero twins on either side. But it’s a bad bird so it’s ok to celebrate trying to shoot it. It’s a demon macaw!!! The macaw essentially proclaimed itself lord of everything and was vain, egotistical and generally up itself. He had jewelled teeth and a metal nest! The twins didn’t go for this, deciding to ambush the demon and shoot it in the face. Plan backfired spectacularly with the evil avian severing one of the twins’ arms and fleeing the scene instead. But they had wounded him in the face. The twins then disguised themselves as an old couple (element of not dying of blood loss from amputation of femoral artery somewhat glossed over), offering to fix the vain bird’s injuries. Apparently swapping out the magic eye and teeth with corn sucked his power dry and the demon macaw died. Truly a-maizing!!!!

With the Museo exhausted and my archaeology spirit soaring, I descended to the ground floor. The Museo is attached to the only local ruins, the San Miguelito Archaeological Park and Gardens. It’s more like a garden with staff raking leaves away from some foundations of original homes but a nice relaxing vibe.

No climbing, no big temples. Just the basic foundations and some walls where people lived. It’s a pretty recent Mayan site – 1250 to 1550 AD which puts it in the ballpark of Tulum, the more famous beach ruins neighbour for age. Lonely Planet refers to it as an “underwhelming” “cultural diversion” which is true if you compare it to the big all-you-can-eat-cultural buffet of Chichen Itza for example. But look around the 4 lane carriageway, LP. It’s the only thing other than the Oxxo convenience store to visit on the way back to the resort. It’s this or the 350 peso taco buffet and fake Mexico of the gated community that was even more artificial than the plants in the resort lobby. I enjoyed every minute of my underwhelming cultural diversion. Actually, with nobody there, it was 500 times more relaxing than sitting by the pool!!!

Readers of my previous post may recall a photo of a faded stelae at Cobá. I mentioned that it looked a bit like the ruler was carrying an AK47. I was thrilled to discover a clear reproduction of the same stelae on the way out. Now I could see it was actually more like a bazooka and also make out the figures on the bottom. No, they were not up for a spot of apple bobbing – they were bound captives.

Despite the increasing gordo status of my bags and the knowledge that I had half the trip to go, there was a HockTales peso payday haul for the Cancun Museo shop. A small mug of the Dresden codex, some small booklets, magnets and best of all, two beautiful sketches of a head from Palenque and King Pakal of Palenque! Easily the best museum shop of the trip. Random discoveries in a fairly remote little place with nobody around. Happy as Larry!!!!

After a strategic snack shop at Oxxo to avoid the high cost of the resort’s mini mart, I trudged back to the gated community. I was hungry for a real lunch and not thinking straight. I regret not taking my life in my hands with a cheap sandwich from Oxxo, rather than sitting down for the massive, expensive and average plate of nachos that I ate at the resort. Why did I even do this? I think I was eating culturally appropriately for the location, adapting to my environment, figuring that bad nachos with American cheese had to be eaten here if anywhere. Guilt was high. I felt like I had betrayed the Mexican people and myself as much as my digestive system.

It was time to explore the resort. I walked around the pool area, checked out the massage area, saw shuffleboard tables, and walked on some mysterious green stuff that felt like mini-golf surface. I could see the beach from the weird green AstroTurf. All the spots were taken. Back to the pool. I saw a lounge and sat there. I noticed everybody was sporting blue pool towels. I was the only sad loser carting a white shower towel from my room. This is how infrequently I swim or hang out poolside. I have no idea of etiquette. Where did these blue towels come from????

Frankly, it’s always a pain doing this poolside gig alone. If I get up, there is the threat of somebody flogging my seat, room key or my phone. I bet those geriatrics could move fast – they knew how to hit an early bird dinner special with real speed and agility. My phone would be down some budgie smugglers (Speedoes) butt crack and I wouldn’t want it back!!! If I continued to sit there, I wouldn’t get served as all service stemmed from counters and there would be no swimming. The latter didn’t really upset me too much but the former certainly did.

Solution. I dumped my towel all over the chair and walked to the pool bar in the picture above, carrying my phone. I intended to grab my drink and go back but got chatting to two guys and a girl in town for a railways convention. I wondered if they were the descendants of old railroad tycoons. One was the lady’s security guard, going by the name of ‘tough motherf******’, according the other one. Maybe the lady was next gen Vanderbilt??? I don’t know but railway money was good money. It kept me in at least three scotches and two weak tequilas, as I watched the three of them frolic in the pool and earn stink eye from the pool guard. Tough mofo was particularly livid that the younger guy had accidentally booked this resort, which he discovered to be a timeshare. Hence the presence of geriatrics on holidays with their grandkids in a safe space and the behaviour of the pool guard who was possibly not accustomed to such high levels of frolicking. Lady Vanderbilt nearly lost her bikini bottoms, perilously close to full-blown underwater nudity at one point. (Instinctively, I double checked my own knots. No shame imminent.) I had a good chat with Tough Mofo who was comparatively in control. They all left for a conference dinner, which would have been fascinating to watch given how much they drank in the pool. Sadly, none of my best scam attempts could get me in as a plus one. I headed back to my room.

I couldn’t face going back to the restaurant again. It was time for the time honoured tradition of room service. The only menu item for delivery was a pizza. Lame!!! Where was the club sandwich?!?! I told myself I didn’t have to eat it all. That the leftovers could be a snack. Dear reader, you and I both know that reality of implementing that thought after a few beverages was on par with me performing a triple jump at the Olympics. I knew the entirety of that delicious large pizza with all the salami, olives and anchovies was going down the HockTales gob hole the minute I made the phone call of shame.

But it got worse … All the salt had to be counterbalanced by sugar. I got the craves up for a sweet treat and did a mini mart run for a Sara Lee sized container of chocolate ice cream and god, it was divine!!! I scoffed half of it down my face like a two year old in s high chair, forcing myself to shove the rest back in the fridge through sheer willpower alone. See, friends – when I go for calorie and soul destruction, I really go to town.

So it was with bloated stomach and guilt-ridden heart, that I crept into bed to dream a badly digested dream.

In the next post, we venture deep into the centre of the Yucatan to climb a temple with jaguar jaws at the top and swim in a freezing cold cenote. Oh yeah – riding all day in a bus with free all-you-can-drink tequila!

Welcome to a brief intermission in our HockTales adventure. Let me dump the giant blue rucksack and red backpack bulging like fat wrap-your-own tacos for a sec.

I am safely back in Australia. I managed to finish my entire trip on schedule without any requests from Australian DFAT to get dfuq back home with a mask and a Ghostbuster proton pack spraying multiple sanitiser streams.

I arrived home two weeks and one day ago. One week later and it would have been 14 days self-isolation for me. Australia kicked off that policy too late for it to apply to me. Extensive breathing has been involved since my return. I’m as clean as my travel account that the Cuban guy robbed.

Corona was nipping at the heels of the international community when I first heard about it. It slowed progress at borders but it was not a pandemic. But no spoilers!!!!

To be clear, I am not currently gallivanting around these exciting places and risking my life with the Russian roulette of truck stop food. I am writing retrospectively. Loyal readers (and disloyal – it’s ok – you can read other blogs – just wash your hands) will have noted an increasing lag between my posts. It just wasn’t viable to cram in so much eating, drinking, exploring and random adventuring and then go back to my hotel to write every night. Mostly, I would go back to my hotel room and pass out as if chloroformed by the Invisible Man most nights. (Bastard never paid his share of those double rooms.) I hammered away at this blog on buses, planes or Interjet queues. Now that I am home, this is just the same time lag with workus interruptus getting in the way!

Just know that I am safe and everything is cool with me in Adelaide where I live. I have a job, I have an apartment, I am safe, I have wifi, and I have three months of free Stan through a deal with Qantas. Sadly, I do not have my duty free Havana Club 7 Anos anymore but there is no ancient Mayan mystery about where it went …

So, dear reader, HockTales goes forward! Vamonos!!! (Spanish for come on, let’s go!) I will continue to report my remaining adventures in exactly the same fashion. There’s plenty to go! We are only halfway!! I promise not to mention the dirty C word unless it becomes relevant to the story.

I send a shout out to my friends, Clare, Deb and Jason who are in enforced self-isolation. (I prefer the term lock-ins because it sounds like Timezone circa 1990 and makes me nostalgic for kicking people in the nads on Double Dragon and Ninja Turtles.)

I think we can all use a laugh about now. Like many of the cafes and restaurants, I am happy to deliver.

Stay tuned for the next exciting instalment of HockTales!!!!!

My double room (extra comfort for all my bags on that second bed) in the Royal Islander Resort in Cancun was super comfy. I even managed to sleep in until a whopping 7am. I did not miss those urban chicken 4am wake up calls in Cuba!!!

I had selected the Royal Islander Resort not for its spring break or beer pong party potential, but for the absolute opposite reason – cultural heritage! (This is what you get when you take a nerd to the beach – I am all at sea!) The tour provider, Thomas More, ran daytrips from a dedicated desk at the resort – one was to Cobá, a Mayan ruin featuring the tallest pyramid on the Yucatan. Attendance was virtually mandatory for a Mayan super nerd like me.

The bus wasn’t leaving until 12.30, so a few jobs were in order first. I stuffed a sack of stinkables and headed for the laundry. The Royal Resort was on the Caribbean so I should have expected piracy. Rather than a washing machine and a few quarters, I had to dump the sack on two laundry ladies for a fee to be deducted from my hotel bill at the end of my stay. Come back in an hour. Thanks. Oh well. Time saved I guess.

So breakfast was next. After a week of Cuban spam, guava and thermos coffee of questionable quality, I was expecting big things from a resort buffet. I entered the restaurant which was jam packed with chunky American Boomers chowing down on chunkier waffles. I spied the Iron Chef Egg service point, and ordered an omelette with bacon, cheese, mushrooms and capsicums. I took particularly great pleasure ordering it all in Spanish to show up the Americans who made zero attempt at leaving their own cultural-linguistic snow globe for even a minute. Omelette delicious! Coffee excellent and refilled frequently! Other stuff on the buffet? Fail! I wandered the rows, lifting and slamming shut silver lids of culinary horror scenes. Where were the tortillas??? There were always tortillas!!! Mini burritos? More like mini burrit-no’s!! Chimichangas? More like chimi-chuckers! Like the toilets that flushed properly, this was the fake Mexico for Americans.

I looked at the Americans with their waffles again. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be them. 25 days in Central America and I had come too far. I couldn’t eat their Western or bastardised Mexican food. I went with the least offensive options with scrambled eggs, and tamales. I chatted with the staff in my broken Spanish as much as possible. I could tell that they really appreciated the effort. I really stuck out – single, youngish looking girl eating not waffles and speaking Spanish to them. No wonder my coffee was always full!

My next challenge was to complete a form to get my stolen Cuban ATM funds back!!! I needed a printer and scanner. Funnily enough, I wasn’t packing either of those. The desk staff at the Royal Islander were extremely helpful, using their own email accounts to scan and send the signed document to my account. I submitted the form. Job done!!!

I returned to the laundry where the ladies raised their eyebrows at me as it was later than an hour, handing me a bundle of wet laundry. WTF???? They told me there would be another charge for drying it and did I want this. No. I think I want my entire travelling wardrobe wet, thanks. Funnily enough, I had assumed an expensive laundry service might dry my clothes. How naive. I hurriedly hurled the lot in a dryer and realised that I would have a grand total of five minutes to grab it, ditch it back in the room and make the bus.

I returned to my room to get my kit together for the day. (Shorty – get our stuff!!!) Miraculously, I made the laundry run and the bus on time. Turned out they would have waited anyway because it was just me! Undies are important!!

First stop Playa del Carmen to pick up the other passengers so I settled in for an hour or so of blog writing. Six Americans eventually boarded from various hotels. (Was I seriously the only non-Yank in town??) Two Boomer couples and a younger couple about my age, Corey and Elizabeth. The road trip to Coba took another hour and a half. After more than three weeks on the road, that was basically nothing. I enjoyed the scenery and chewed through vast amounts of 3G blogging until we picked the guide up at a truck stop. She was fairly young but nice, and armed with the mandatory folders to prep the Americans about Mayan culture well before the bus pulled into the car park (or parking lot for my bus mates). I was the only one who had seen a Mayan ruin before or had any knowledge of the culture. I was a bit dumbfounded as to how they could share a continent with the Mayan people and yet be entirely clueless about them at ages of over sixty and yet I could live half a world away and know more from comics, cartoons and kids books before I was 10.

The guide passed around a legal waiver for anybody intending to climb the big pyramid. Whoa! If there was a potential lawsuit involved for falling on my arse, it had to be good!!!

Not that I knew much about Coba other than its giant pyramid, so I was all ears in full nerd mode when we arrived. Sadly, it was not to be a day of learning much about the people and history of the site and its specific place in the mundo Maya from the guide. Much of the information was very general, although there were definite highlights. I confess that some of this blog post is pimped with a little bit of background research.

Like this essential nugget from a pamphlet I picked up. Coba flourished between 300-900 AD, maxing out at 50,000 people. It’s around 80 square km. And I should mention here that the pronunciation is Co-bar!

Like many Mayan sites, Coba is clustered in groups of buildings. The guide led us on foot to the first group, the very originally named Coba group. (Apologies here but the iPhone will not let me get the accent on the a anymore for some reason. It’s driving me crazy.) The first building was a temple called the church. This was not a Mayan name. Somebody in the 20th century thought they once saw that prolific Virgin of Guadeloupe – tell you what – for a virgin she sure gets around – there in a rock and the crowds predictably flocked there looking for miracles. No mention of toast Jesus though. Apparently there were also secret tunnels for the ruler to pop in and out around the back. We walked through a short access tunnel – through to not really anywhere – with the familiar warning to duck which I ignored since I am definitely perfect Mayan height.

Next stop ball court number one which elicited a long description of the ball court game and ritual. It was not just pre-Colombian soccer. Nobody really knows how it was played – archaeologists, cultural historians and anthropologists all have varying theories, there are regional variations and different ways of playing – eg goal through a hoop on the wall, goal by hitting a plaque on the ground, no goals at all. The consensus is that it was a mix of ritual and gameplay because the ballcourts were the entrance to the underworld – not exactly where the players’ underground passageways go in an AFI stadium. Two teams played with a rubber ball. One of the women in my group asked the stupidest question I have heard in recent memory, “Was the ball made of stone?” Seems entirely likely that men would launch a solid stone ball through the air to each other using no hands without breaking every bone in their bodies!!!!

Unlike the other ruins, Coba doesn’t have a central plaza. It sprawls broadly over a large site with pyramids, stelae and other features located in those clusters and the odd random spot. It’s a long way to walk so the tour included a free bike. Cool!

Predictably, the Americans paid extra to take the other option – sit in a two seater carriage on the back of a bike with and a suffering Mexican pedalling their breakfast waffle-ladened bulk around. It just seemed so imperialistic and wrong.

I loved my bike!!! I pedalled on what I like to think were the ancient sacbes (white roads) connecting the main sites. (Coba was apparently known for its many original sacbes I would later learn but the guide didn’t tell us that piece of info.) I pedalled hard when the group saw a wild turkey in the bushes!!! The hardest part was negotiating my own personal space between those Yank chariots coming and going, and dodging a few potholes. Every time we stopped to see something, I dumped my bike at a tree and then picked it back up again later.

We stopped at a large stelae (stone tablet) with an engraving of one of the rulers which was badly faded from exposure. The Americans laughed their heads off when I said it looked like the ruler was carrying an AK47.

The next stop was another ball court but this one was different. Whereas the first one was a bit more standard with a hoop on the side, this one featured two stone skulls on the ground.

These were meant to signify the entrance to the underworld. A huge panel of glyphs on the wall caught my eye. I love glyphs! They could literally be a Mayan takeout menu and I would think they were beautiful.

The panel was apparently a reproduction to show where the text sat in situ, so the guide led us over to a nearby hut containing the original stone glyph tablet. She said that it was thought to be the tablet stating that the end of the world was nigh in 2012 which had sparked off a bunch of astrological crazies and great coffee mug production about the end of the universe. For the Mayans, they only ever meant for it to be like the end of a particular phase – not the apocalypse. (I later heard that this was not the message on the tablet at all, so am not sure what to believe!)

We (I) then cycled up to the big boy, Nohoch Mul, the giant pyramid. It is a miracle that INAH is still letting tourists climb it. Possibly it’s because it’s Coba’s big draw. Coba lacks the intricate carvings, huge plazas or perfectly chiselled buildings of Chichen Itza or Palenque. It’s not a famous site. It’s far away from everything. The buildings are crumbling like vintage cheddar. But tell the people they can climb the tallest pyramid in Central America! Oh boy!!! They’re on it!

The pyramid is 42 metres high with 120 steps. The highest pyramid on the Yucatan Peninsula. According to my pamphlet (shame), the next biggest is my favourite, the Sorcerer’s Pyramid at Uxmal. The most efficient climbing strategy is the zig zag, contrary to what most of these people are doing.

I wanted more information about the temple, the people and why this was so big but it was not to be. Clearly the point was to climb, not really to learn. I felt for the guide. Day in, day out, she must be so used to dealing with people who thought the Mayans hip and shouldered stone balls that she had no idea how to deal with somebody like me who was at an intermediate level of knowledge and wanted to know more. She did tell us that the temple at the top, or what was left of it, was dedicated to a bee god. Oh well. I would climb.

Despite the long catalogue of holiday beer, rum and carbs, I climbed that sucker no problems. Just kept going. Sure I sweated a little bit and I had to be constantly vigilant with the uneven footing but my feet fit the steps and I wasn’t a fat lard so it was relatively easy. No waffles, no worries. Huevos all the way. I reached the top and the view was amazing. See picture of me looking smug at the top.

My new friends, Corey and Elizabeth, joined me soon after. Poor Elizabeth was afraid of heights so full credit to her for getting the guts up to climb but – more impressively- make the difficult descent. The small crowning temple at the top didn’t have anything in it. It was all about hanging out up there for a little bit, surveying the canopy of the jungle and just making out the tops of the other temples in the distance. I was actually quite chill, despite the heat and a sudden call for us to get the hell off the pyramid because the park was closing soon.

Descent was slow and not graceful. There was a woman with a kid who couldn’t have been more than three. WTF??? Poor Elizabeth struggled down with the promise of multiple wines with dinner. I was the last one of the group. Not because I was scared but because, as usual, I just didn’t want to leave. Thanks to Corey for snapping and airdropping this classic pic to me later.

The guide gathered us all up. Where was my bike??? Some bastard had stolen it!!! No matter. Of course, I had left nothing in it. After the theft of my ATM card, I trusted nothing and nobody. I chose to continue the domino effect by stealing somebody else’s bike as the group left without me for the next building. I quickly nicked a blue treadly, chucking my bag in the basket. The perfect necessary and retaliatory crime!!!

We stopped at our final building before they kicked us out of Coba. This building was different in that it was round like a beehive rather than a pyramid with steps. I later learnt that round buildings were associated with magical dwarves so I wonder if that was the case here. My pamphlet tells me it was called Xaibe.

I also noticed my original bike against a tree and spotted the thief, a French girl. (For the uninitiated, it’s always the French who seem to always rip me off.) On one hand, it was interesting that I was not the only non-American. I considered reporting her for a stint in some local Bastille equivalent but my usual fear of confrontation and general couldn’t-be stuffed-ness let her get away with it. I had my inferior bike with the crappy kickstand. We were all leaving soon. I would deal with it. We pedalled – or sat – our collective butts off back to the bike kiosk before heading back to the gate.

But the day was not over. It was a Coba sunset tour and the sun had not yet set. Corey and Elizabeth headed off for zip lining while the Boomers and I went with some other randoms to a local home for a cultural lesson in living and working Quintana Roo cultural style today. (Note – Quintana Roo is the state in Mexico where Coba and Cancun are located. )

Firstly, we stood outside the gates to the compound where two boys and a girl engaged in a cultural performance of a mythological story of the Mayan hero twins. It kind of just looked like two kids fighting. They really did slap each other! It was a bit awkward and I think everybody was glad to move inside to watch women make tortillas. I was even more glad to eat them. God, I was starving.

The elderly gent of the compound was Antonio, who kept bees! Yucateco bees have no stinger and check out how weird their hive looks! That bit on the right looks like a skull for sure!

After the hive inspection, we made a beeline to a room where we attempted to make Mayan ceramic pots. This was never going to go well. I hate making stuff. My hands are useless lumps of clay trying to mould useless of lumps of clay. Mentally, I checked out the minute I walked in the door. We made tiny, shallow little dishes fit for stubbing out nasty smokes. For comedy effect, I scratched a face on mine and abandoned it mercilessly without a second thought like Macauley Caulkin in Home Alone. I was already protecting valuable treasures and refused to waste a t-shirt wrapping this crime against the arts. I did buy a cool pottery head that somebody with actual talent had made.

We returned to the front gates of the ruins as the restaurant was right next to it. There was a simple buffet of delicious Yucateco pork with the bitter orange achiote (despite us being not in that state but happy to eat!!!), chicken, rice, tortillas, salad and and free red wine of questionable quality that I did drink. I did wonder about this vino tinto. Mexico is not known for wine. Most decent red hails from Argentina. Red sangria is known as the repository of nasty red to get tourists trashed. Why was the beer not free? Corona was cheap and nasty enough to give away. Anyway, I inhaled my free red.

The buffet was accompanied by entertainment. Local kids and a few adults dressed in traditional Maya costume with body paint and re-enacted their take on the ball court ritual. This helped me understand how the ceremony and game could have been played centuries ago. The stage was a reproduction ball court with a net so nobody got hit the face. Children played drums and it was great to see girls involved in the ritual lighting the incense in pots, singing songs and dancing. The traditional image of the ball game is two sets of guys going hard at it with losers – or the winners – headed for the sacrificial altar. In this demonstration, the game was broken up by song and dance then resumed with attempts to land the ball through the goal. Then the community leaders would step in, sing and wave the incense pots around. Ritual was so closely intertwined with the gameplay – the girls were just as involved with the singing as the men trying to sink the ball through the tiny goal up a slope without their hands. Was this the historical reality or was this just to involve all the kids? That I cannot say and I doubt anybody can with any certainty. Women were priestesses back in the day. It’s possible they were hanging around the ballcourts performing rituals to open access to the underworld. It’s also possible that they were excluded in some places and that male priests performed these roles. The performance must have run for 45 minutes to an hour. I really enjoyed it for opening up my eyes to possibilities.

I managed to score a picture with the kids afterwards. Of course, I tipped them. It’s so important that these kids keep their cultural traditions going. Not that they ‘keep them alive’ because they are not on death’s door after thousands of years and that’s a patronising attitude, but there are so many distractions, options and other things for kids to be doing. I wanted to do what I could to keep these kids active in their culture.

After all that, it was time to sit back in the bus and chill in the long, dark ride back to Playa del Carmen to drop off the Americans and then back to the Royal Islander for me. It was pretty late by the time I got back. Midnight maybe? But I got a second wind, hitting the resort mini mart for an ice cream sandwich that I scoffed poolside on a lounge chair in the dark like a true introvert. Aussies – it was no Maxibon …

Tune in for the next exciting instalment when I wear my lovely fresh laundered clothes, visit Cancun’s Mayan museum and scam free scotch out of executives attending a railroad conference.

I awoke on tenterhooks. Well, awoke was a pretty loose term as it implied sleep. Anxiety ran high; I was on edge about my missing ATM card and my account that was cleaner than a unit before a landlord inspection.

My flight to Cancun was in the afternoon. I was Castro fleeing Cuba for Mexico, feeling that bad things had happened but relieved I was in one piece. But I couldn’t sit around in my room all morning. I would go bananas (or platanos???). Plus such egregious arse sitting directly contravened the cram-it-all- in spirit of HockTales. I was certainly rattled, but I couldn’t let it stop me experiencing Havana to the max. (Could I be more 90s???)

I left the room for one final desayuno on my own, getting up at least half an hour earlier than breakfast time. I could happily sit on the terrace, enjoying the view, writing my blog and waiting for the inevitable arrival of guava-based products to the table. However, the staff were up and about and quite happy to start the breakfast service early. I chatted with the young chap to see if he could offer advice with my stolen card. No bueno. He told me to speak to Hector (not the bus driver – the guesthouse owner was named Hector too).

Half an hour later, I found Hector who was sympathetic but could offer zero assistance. International phone calls? Not possible. Internet on his PC? No way. He could at least free my passport from its prison of the safety deposit box on my room. Thanks. My anxiety was still through the roof, aided by the full thermos of coffee I downed on my own. I had to get out of there.

I headed for the Plaza de Armas. I had just enough time to check out the Governor’s Palace, return to the guesthouse, checkout and be ready for the transport to the airport. Two hours. Solid plan. I headed off via the waterfront walk again.

The Governor’s Palace was another no habla Espanol mystery. Truthfully, not a lot of captions in Espanol either but at least no book fair. Despite the huge exterior, it was quite small on the inside – the size of a large house with a big garden atrium in the middle which was a Spanish fashion statement at the time.

The rooms were numbered and I started with 1 – the coach house. Two women sat on chairs between the rooms. This is a common sight in museums as guards typically just observe from a strategic vantage point. One was a uniformed guard and the other a civilian. What happened next was absolutely surreal. The civilian grabbed my elbow and started leading me through the coaches, taking pictures of me with my camera in the coach doors as if I was a fashion model. The uniformed guard was her accomplice, aiding her in this operation by opening doors or holding bags. The woman whirled me behind ornamental gates, fixed my hair, posed my arms, told me I was beautiful. Evidence of photo spread below.

The entire time, I could see what was coming like a big fat elephant trying to hide its fat rolls behind a lamp post. My Espanol was good enough to make out a greatest hits of reasons why I should pay the woman for this unprompted Vogue photographic spread – it was her birthday, she had many grandchildren, possibly it was her grandchild’s birthday, she needed the money for all of the above. Regardless, it was all crap because she was a seasoned professional but it was easier to throw her a few CUC that I had to get rid of anyway than risk her trailing me throughout the building for the next half hour. It was pretty unbelievable that the guard was in on it. Whatever. At least she hasn’t stolen my ATM card to make a buck. Standards were low at that point, as was my mood as it was clear I would have to leave the country before I could take action about my missing card and bare-ass account.

Upstairs were more fancy rooms with nice vases and chandeliers but no explanation. Who was the Governor? Not Ben that was explained. He had a nice rug, some nice statues, big guns, amazing dinner sets, the obligatory dead animal heads and portraits of famous Cubanos on his walls. I may never know what it was all about. I left feeling mystified and a tad disappointed.

I headed back to the hotel but first – espresso! The others told me about a hipster pirate themed café with smoothies and organic products. This had to be seen to be believed. Wow! The booty included organic beet bread and banana bread, lots of vegetarian options, and excellent espresso. This was modern, entrepreneurial Havana!

I had been trying to log in on yesterday’s wifi card as I was unsure whether I had maxed out the 1 hour access or the signal was just too flaky the previous night. All my attempts now indicated the former and it was too late to buy another card. I would have to wait until Cancun to deal with my ATM card issues. I headed back to the guesthouse, settled the breakfast bill and travelled back to the airport with my original driver, Junior! I informed him about all my adventures during the week!

So much had happened that I had forgotten the horror of waiting an hour in the Interjet queue in Cancun to get into Cuba. I was really not in the mood but yep – I faced the sequel. This time, an hour and a half in a queue with no indication it was the correct place. No Interjet employees or screens. Just a bunch of customers turning up three hours prior to departure as requested. Seemed familiar. With a huge seething mass of bags and people, no staff and an hour and a half before scheduled departure time, I knew I was flying straight into another Interjet shitstorm. Plus I was hungry. It was 2pm and I needed to eat!!!! The floor started to move in unnatural ways.

Eventually the staff sauntered on up with no inclination towards urgency or apology. On Australia, the passengers would be verbally beating them to a pulp and then posting all over social media about the inconvenience. Nobody said a word. Not one complaint about the hour and a half wait in line seated on our bags like refugees. Was Interjet’s strategy to deliver such consistently awful service that passengers expected it, behaving with calm resignation and mentally factoring that hour and a half into their plans? “I know it says 5pm on the boarding pass dear but it’s Interjet – you can continue watching your show and I will text you when I land.”

After checking my bag in with the expressionless clerk, it was time for a supermarket sweep! CUCs were useless outside Cuba. Dead money nobody would exchange. I had to spend my leftovers in the airport hall before I crossed the security threshold because the guy next to me in the Interjet line told me they couldn’t be used after passport control. I didn’t have much. Could I spend it on food? I scoured the vendors. Clearly the blockade rules didn’t apply here – wow Kit Kats, Hershey bars – disgusting American chocolate at disgusting, exploitative prices. I literally didn’t have enough money for a bag of Kit Kats which had a going rate of around twenty US or the like!! I threw my CUC away on a bag and an Havana Club t-shirt that probably won’t fit my brother upon further re-examination before heading for passport control.

The international departures area was a complete schmozzle. Three food vendors with huuuuuge lines snaking out of their shops and clearly running on Cubano time with the staff not overly concerned that most of the people waiting would board their flights before their food was ready. The Interjet gate or staff gave no indication as to when the flight would leave. I was forced to purchase the most dismal lunch of all time – salted crumbly crackers for $1 US – in case they announced boarding and I had to abandon a cooked plate of food. Naturally they did not announce said boarding for another hour and a half.

The airport was a lawless Wild West frontier land – planes came and went without an aeronautical regard for passengers, currency and economic blockade laws did not apply, service and courtesy out the window, the unique flavour of beer at the airport bar was alcohol-free malt, humans had to scavenge any food to survive. This was not the real Cuba. It was not a question of where’s the beef but where’s the spam???

Eventually, the flight was called and I left the land of cigar smoke for the big smoke. The flight was uneventful. Quite short. It’s only an hour or so from Havana to Cuba. By the time, I exited Customs my transfer guy was entirely not amused as he loudly announced Thats he had been waiting all that time. Well mate – you had access to phone, Internet and probably more communicative staff at your end than mine. There was no way I could have notified him about being late so I apologised profusely, hung the appropriate amount of shit on Interjet and hoped we could all move forward. He was cool.

The van drove me to the Royal Islander Resort, a place I booked based on its proximity to the Mayan museum of Cancun and the tour desk’s daytrips to Mayan ruins. No spring break for me, friends. Sorry to disappoint.

The first thing I did upon dumping my bags was to call the Qantas travel card emergency number. My phone worked! Hooray!!! The process was relatively simple. Fill in a form, scan and send. Fraud squad will get on it, refunding anything they believe was not you. In the meantime, the card was well and truly cancelled. I would just have to keep using my backup account because there was no way Qantas could send me another card to Cancun in time before I left. Interesting point though. The money was all stolen through ATM transactions. How did the man get my PIN number???? There was nobody behind me in the queue but a man was lurking in the vicinity. Was I filmed with an overhead camera???? Mystery for the ages.

I checked out the hotel room. Palatial! I had four rooms? A bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and hidey hole cupboard with a safety deposit box. After my pokey monk’s cell, this was a revelation. Coconut in the fridge, lots of toiletries, hair dryer!!! Wow! Real discovery of note – the toilet flushed with amazing force. I marvelled at this modern miracle of plumbing. But where was the bin I threw toilet paper into? This is what you do in Central America and Cuba. Toilet paper in bin. No bin. What? In toilet? No!!! This was the first sign that I was, in fact, in an international satellite city of the United States in all but passport control.

The second sign was dinner. I descended downstairs to the resort restaurant. Let me explain the geography of my situation. The resort was located on a spit on the beach. The city was at least 30 minutes away on foot- it was late, dark, and I was essentially a captive audience to the only food still being served … the taco buffet. The good news was that one type was the al pastor taco – the famous taco from Mexico City which is kebab meat served with pineapple. The taco dispensing dude seemed impressed that I knew that when I asked for al pastor. But where was the big vertical kebab spit that the meat cooked on??? I suspect it was reheated from freezer bags out the back. Every other person in the restaurant loudly asked for chicken in brash, grating US accents. It’s pollo in Mexico, numbskulls. You’re in their country. I realised I was the only one attempting to ask for food in Spanish. Every American was literally in another country using their own language and expecting ‘the help’ to serve them as if they were in their own living rooms. Sure, it was a restaurant and service is expected but there’s service and then there’s treating people like they’re less than you which is what I believe I witnessed. I looked around at them drinking their giant margaritas. Their experience of the real Mexico was as hollow as a Dunkin Donut. I hoped – and suspected – that their margaritas were watered down. I heard one lady complain about how sweet it was. It’s a margarita! If you want something bitter, have a Campari. If you want something sour, suck on a sour gummy!

I was more outraged that I was lumped in with these clueless Yanks when I knew my way around a good street taco and how cheap they really were. 24 pesos for two delicious tacos and a free soup in Mexico City. I ended up paying 300 pesos for 4 average tacos and some salad in Cancun. Then there was the mezcal at the bar. After a week of solid rum and weak mojitos, it was time for a joyful reunion with my one true love – mezcal. I remember a fancy, artisan shot of mezcal going for 45 pesos in Playa del Carmen and thinking that was high. The hotel bar in Cancun slugged me 100 for bog standard normal, middle of the road mezcal! Oh, the horror!!! In contrast to Cuba where I had been legitimately robbed, Cancun was applying a financial shakedown to my wallet as a member of a captive audience. Oh well. I did only have myself to blame. I could have eaten the leftover crumbly crackers after all …

Tune in next time vigilant readers, as the HockTales juggernaut returns to my (May?) happy place, riding bikes in the jungle and climbing Central America’s tallest pyramid!!!

I awoke knowing the day was mine and mine alone. No Barbara, no Hector, no bus. I knew the rest of the group was up there devouring their last guava, rolls and questionable coffee though so up to the rooftop terrace I went for the goodbye desayuno (breakfast).

Brij, a nice Irish girl, kindly donated one of her wifi cards to me, as I was trying to negotiate the hotel shuttle pickup in Cancun, the next phase of my trip. I was sad to leave Cuba as I had learnt a lot and wanted to learn more revolutionary stuff but I missed Mexico, which is really at the heart of the childlike wonder and excitement of HockTales after all. Jungles, temples, glyphs and Mayan history beckoned. It was like coming home. But first, I had to double check the pick up. The hotel had been stuffing me around, putting me onto the transport company who were supposed to send me a transit voucher. So complex. Unnecessarily so.

Anyway, with the usual exchanges of emails and promises to be safe, it was time to say goodbye to the others and strike out on my own for one last day in Havana. I packed like the Girl Guide I was in my youth. Snacks, rain jacket, hat – all eventualities covered. After that initial downpour on day 1, Havana was simply not to be trusted!! Wet pants are bad!!

Today’s plan was to hit the Military Parque Historico – two big old forts on the other side of the island. No camino. Accessible only via the underpass with a vehicle, a few hours of dedicated swimming or the ferry. Barbara recommended a cab for ease but I was hesitant to pay a taxi driver to sit there for God knew how long while I took my time through the forts. After brief confirmation on the ferry at the tourist centre which I had discovered by the waterfront the previous day, I headed for the terminal.

The ferry was public transport for the locals. Sardines and dogs packed into a transport with dangling hand holds like a bus. So cheap though – 1 CUC which is pretty much a buck – and well-timed as I managed to walk straight on. The ferry was full of teenagers. I didn’t think anything of this at the time. Good on those kids. Interested in maritime history. Forts are cool. The boat bounced on the waves, crossing to the other side in maybe 15 minutes.

The ferry spat me out at a gauntlet of nasty looking food vendors and some stairs. The throng of teenagers knew where they were going. I followed them to a very badly signposted ticket booth. How much would this cost me? Who knew but I had another Camillo to break. I thrust a $20 under ticket lady’s nose. ‘No senorita, CUP.’ CUP?????

Time for a money lesson. There are two currencies in Cuba. CUC – pronounced Cook -is for white chicks from overseas like me. It stands for Cuban convertibles. Like a car. It has pictures of monuments on it. It’s pretty. It’s tourist money, although I think people who live there can use it. Most things in shops and restaurants are priced in CUC.

The other currency is the CUP – Cuban Peso. Locals use this in bodegas or in places I guess that are less touristy.Theoretically, I shouldn’t have been in possession of any CUP as all my transactions were in CUC but I noticed that somebody had pulled a swifty and given me change in useless CUP that had been pointlessly clinking around my wallet. That act of dodginess now transformed into an act of fortuitousness as it exactly paid for my entry into the park complex. Hahahahaha! Take that, fate!!!

I clearly entered the fort via the back door with the ferry entrance rather than the underpass. I emerged from the ticket booth into what looked a bit like the fort moat with no obvious way up and out. With huge stone walls all around me, I trudged through grass and weeds. I started to feel a bit of a weird vibe – like I was in the wrong place – but there was nowhere else to be so I clomped on in my Kathmandu walking shoes. I rounded a corner into a wider, flatter part of the moat – right into the path of two boys galloping horses at full speed right at me!!! They reacted first, seizing their bridles to avoid a collision with the random Aussie girl who just popped up in their path before bolting back the way they cane.

This was now officially weird. What was going on??? I saw people lined up for horse riding, trampolining, snack vendors. It was a festival. Over there! Steps!! I could escape this deadly moat hell!!!!

I climbed to ground level into a mad throng of people entering the old fort. It was a sea of bodies I hadn’t encountered in a long time. It was insane. Reminded me of the showbag pavilion at the Royal Adelaide Show when I was a kid one year and Mum was grabbing us. (I was more afraid of losing my Sunnyboy and Freddo showbags than myself at that point!)

Then I saw the sign that shattered my illusions about any teenage love for military history. Expo libris. It was a giant book fair!! I remembered Barbara saying this was on. But my god, I didn’t expect every single Cuban under the age of 20 to be here!

Like an archaeologist searching for evidence

 of the original fort under bright yellow educational signs and directional arrows, I scoured the walls and hallways. Nothing. Not one caption. I entered a room marked ‘Mexican comics’. $2 find a words, Disney princesses, packed to the gunnels with people. This was a way worse than spam. I hadn’t seen any bookstores the whole trip, come to think of it. Was this it??? Fidel ensures everybody could read but what were they reading? Havana Club bottles? There was surely a library around – that’s a very communist concept. But I guess cheap books was the next best thing.

But at the high price of removing all the trace of information about the historic fort? I was lost, literally and figuratively. I wandered past educational DVDs in otherwise empty rooms. This 16th century fort was listed as Lonely Planet’s number 2 thing to do in Cuba. I couldn’t help but think a staff member had spent hours the previous night with a screwdriver and a shopping trolley removing all evidence of historical information to dump information panels in a massive pile in a staff room somewhere. I walked around enjoying the view over as best I could, dodging the teenagers with their Bluetooth speakers and litter.

At one point, I entered Che Guevara’s house only to find all the exhibition stripped or sections closed. Oh, Che. I apologise for the betrayal of the Cubanos. You fought and died for the freedoms of people you barely knew, and now the military base you commanded is overrun by weird cheezels and groping teenagers in skinny jeans draped over cannons that used to protect the city from pirates. I had so been looking forward to z big morning of history; it was easily the most disappointing moment of the trip.

With heavy heart, I trudged out of the fort. Maybe I would have better luck at the fort at the other side of the complex if I could shake the heaving wave of humanity dogging me. Plus I was getting hungry. As I exited the main fort complex, I encountered a car park of food vendors hawking a variety of expensive carnival prices death mystery meats. It was an expensive recipe for diarrhoea. I purchased a cheap jam roll looking thing, hoping its little spirals harboured minimal bacterial threats to my digestive tract.

The second fort was much smaller. The first one contained multiple rooms and houses. I saw a passageway but no bueno from the security guard. Enter from the bottom. My access point was the ground level of the fortress as opposed to the lower ground where I could see steps leading up through the first. Ok so I would first circumnavigate this level. But I didn’t get too far. This was only a small fort. I could only walk maybe a hundred metres around the moat. I glimpsed Havana on the other side of the Caribbean between two big rocky pieces of fortress.

Then I felt the first few drops of rain. Uh oh. The sky was the colour of a Russian blue cat just before the clouds tore open. With roughly the same speed, I tore open the zip on my raincoat. (Take that, Havana! Prepared!!!) I felt so smug as I hid in my little bolthole of fortress for five minutes, as the worst of the downpour subsided. I emerged after a little bit, not wanting to waste too long hiding away. I wanted to see if I could get inside the fort by descending the hill and climbing the stairs. So I followed a larg around, taking maybe ten minutes as I passed a ham and cheese roll vendor. (Death by spam??) I glimpsed three things in quick succession – the entrance, a sign for a ticket fee and the dreaded book fair symbol. Here too!!! Even the last bastion was filled with activity kits and Spanish romance novels! No bueno!!!! In disgust, I turned around and climbed back up the hill again.

I just couldn’t face walking all the way back to the ferry. It was so far away and there was definite risk to my life with those horses. Fort number 2 was good for something though – a taxi rank. As the rain started a steady drizzle, I stride over. A bunch of guys were clearly waiting for white chicks fed up with their crappy book fair and dismal weather. I hopped a blue cab that was probably a 50s car but not one of the beautiful specimens for rent. This was a bit more used on the inside but fine. I asked the driver to take me to the revolutionary museum as I knew it was back on the main side of the island but quite close to the underpass. For a tenner, thy will be done!! It was time to finally visit Granma’s House!!!

I was hoping there would be food near the Revolutionary Museum, but no death spam vendors or cafes in sight. A hunger pacification expedition would have to occur before cultural and political enlightenment. I walked along the nearest main drag, which incidentally had the Capitolino building on it in the far end. This end of town was classic car central. Chevies everywhere!!! I didn’t have time to be choosy. I found a hotel that looked abierto (open). As I entered through the doors, an English guy in his 60s happened to exit at the same time and informed me I was entering Paradise. A five star write-up indeed. I was dubious of this review as I absorbed the wide variety of soccer bar towels and other paraphernalia. Oh well. Literally every place served grilled pork, rice and beans. It was the most staple and hard to stuff up lunch around. It was quick, ok, relatively cheap and there was a toilet. Standards for Paradise were low. All requirements met. I exited, half expecting to perform the same informative function but nobody was coming in as I left. I backtracked to the Revolutionary Museum without incident.

A huge army tank was parked out the front with an information panel letting the gringos know that Fidel used it to bring down planes at the Bay of Pigs invasion. (Presumably so the pilots could then go snorkelling and drink the national beer at the kiosk?)

A piece of the original city wall protecting Havana from rum-soaked pirates (although those are within the city these days) sits proudly out the front too. The Revolutionary Museum is housed in the spectacular former Presidential Palace, which I would have expected the revolutionaries to have destroyed upon taking Havana but they didn’t so much as scratch the paint. The building is a real symbol of conspicuous consumption and the opulence of the Batista years. Fancy state dinners, ceiling frescoes, gold filigree work, massive high ceilings and glitzy chandeliers. Much of it was under restoration during my visit but at least three of the rooms I could enter or view were 18th century French influence. Think Marie Antoinette frou-frou. I couldn’t imagine Fidel, Che, Raul and Camille going from jungle dentistry to this.

The plainer rooms housed two displays of revolutionary memorabilia. It wasn’t really a history of the revolution- more of a ‘here’s Che Guevara’s radio’ – on the top floor.The ground floor told the post-revolution story of Fidel holding onto power a bit better –  Patria o muertre. Homeland or death. It went all the way through today the 80s with a strong military focus. I found it interesting that Castro also kept the title of Prime Minister for a few years before ditching it as the farce it obviously was and then holding elections.

I was starting to vague out in the last few rooms. Coffee needed. I headed for the back where I noticed there was a little on-house coffee shop. And it was a cracker. The counter was a beautiful carved wood, more suited to La Bodeguita than the back of the museum, although I reminded myself it was the former presidential palace. I ordered an espresso shot. This was not the place for an Americano! The young barista, eager to please, tried to talk to me but it was a stilted conversation with his limited English and my limited Spanish. But he understood I was Australian. Suddenly, he grabbed a pen and scrawled a note on a piece of paper. I opened it, nearly spraying my espresso everywhere, as I read the words, ‘Air Supply is a good band.’ Cuba – what a timewarp!!!!! Loved it! Had to order another espresso just to hang there for another minute!

After I was All Out of Love and coffee, I headed out the back of the museum to check out the display of vehicles used in the revolution. But first, Granma!!!!!

The small boat is housed in a glass shed, guarded by two soldiers wielding machine guns on either side. That’s some serious protection for the old duck Granma. I peered through the glass. Granma was green and reminded me of a slightly larger version of my Dad’s fishing boat. 83 revolutionaries must have been hanging off the edges with arms and legs everywhere. I’m surprised they weren’t towing a few of them on banana lounges or inner tubes – it would have been packed to the gunnels. I walked around the perimeter, stepping back onto the grass to survey the impressive spray of bulletholes on a delivery van when a harsh whistle blew. A soldier barked something to the gist of ‘don’t step on the grass’ in my general direction. Jeez. I hastily made my re-acquaintance with the pavement. The rest of the vehicles included an impressive array of small planes, cars, the tail of an American plane shot down over the Bay of Pigs and another army tank that Castro used to shoot down planes. Did they have moulds of the original tank? Did he tank hop? That was unclear, but the pride in everything was crystal clear!

On the way out, I was particularly struck by this small statue of the three leaders of the Revolution. Very simple but very moving.

With my revolutionary appetite satisfied, it was time for my tour in one of Havana’s famous convertible cars! The meeting point was close to the museum – maybe 19 minutes walk.

The car was beautiful. A 1955 red Chevy. All these old cars have modern engines so that they can actually run. (Well, given you can’t buy anything other than Pringles or rum, you’ve got to cut them some slack with sourcing 1950s original car parts!) Two other girls joined me – very young Chinese Americans from New York – and we piled into the back seat. The guide for the next few hours was Raphael, who narrated while Guilliam chauffeured us in his chrome beast.

We drove through different neighbourhoods and Chinatown to our first stop, Revolutionary Plaza. This had three famous landmarks on it. Two huge iron artworks in the shape of Che Guevara and Camille Cienfuegos, and a tower that was previously Cuba’s tallest building with a statue of Jose Martí on it. Revolutionary Plaza is the location for huge public events such as the visit of the Pope. Prior to the revolution, it was called something suitably civic that I can’t remember but it has always been the place for big crowds to gather. It’s also ringed by a series of soul crushingly depressing structures such as the communications building (that one should have been the worst – for shame!), and government administration offices. As for the Martí tower, that’s purely ornamental.

One of the New York girls said, “Che Guevara? Maybe I have heard of him?” Then proceeded to spend the next ten minutes draping herself over the car for Insta photos, barely holding her precariously loose décolletage in as she posed. Dear God.

Our next stop was the Havana forest, a green oasis of trees and a river in the dilapidated opulence of the city. This natural park was a photographic hotspot for weddings and girls celebrating their fifteenth birthdays – a huge thing in Cuba and Mexico too. It was also a prime location for practitioners of the Santeria religion to leave offerings whenever they were essentially after something like a new job, good fortune etc. However, the offerings were sacrifices of chickens. There were literally more chicken bones down there than the dumpster behind a KFC. It was beautiful but a bit creepy – a bit of an Ivan Milat vibe. (He was a notorious Australian serial killer who murdered backpackers in a forest.) As I walked along the tranquil banks of the beautiful rushing river and absorbed the green trees like photosynthesis through my own skin (badly needed in Havana), I dodged fly-ridden headless carcasses and clouds of feathers. The girls whirled the hems of their dresses for slow-mo Insta movies. I despaired for humanity.

We cruised the Malencon and the wealthy neighbourhoods on the way to the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. It was perfect weather for cruising in the convertible. The wind whipped my hair into a tangled frenzy that my nasty, broken $2 shop hairbrush had no chance of combatting but no rain and a pleasant temperature made for a fun ride!

Guilliam dropped us at the front and we we walked through to the back to eyeball the waterfront and back end of the hotel. The hotel was beautiful. It was built in 1930 by the Americans during a time when Prohibition hampered enterprise at home. So the enterprising Mafia and other wealthy Americanos set up a string of casinos, hotels, brothels and generally fancy places for a good time in the pleasure backyard of Cuba for rich Americans. It was basically a weekend away in Vegas. Cubanos were very poor at this point in time – there was no trickle down economics happening here. The money went into the hands of Mafia dons and men like Myer Lansky who ran all the dodgy casinos here but also in Vegas. It was exploitation like this that fired up the revolutionaries to begin with – although that was maybe 25 years away.

The National was the jewel in the Americano hotel crown. Frank Sinatra played here. In fact, he was the headliner for the biggest Mafia convention in the world when hundreds of representatives from the Mafia families convened at the hotel to decide how to divide Cuba up amongst themselves. Miraculously nobody got shot. The Sopranos has led me to believe that half the men should have been whacked in the car park.

Raphael led us to their famous bar for our free drink, the Mafia mojito. Not more mojitos, no!!! At least this was different. It was a normal mojito with an extra shot of dark rum in it. Well, ok then. It was even better! That Cuban dark rum is magical!!!

The hotel is very proud of its history. The bar has photos of every recent famous person (2000s onwards) who has played or turned up at the hotel. Raphael led us to their memorabilia room filled with full-length wall photos of d as mould people who rocked up decade by decade.

Walt Disney was here in the 50s. Raphael reported that Trump was here in the 80s during his dodgy entrepreneurial bankrupt deal making days. Oddly enough, no physical evidence of this survives on a wall. Maybe they covered him with Kevin Costner. Then I turned back to the bar and glimpsed something red out of the corner of my eye. A slab of Coke cans!!! I was floored!!! Shocked!!! I had not seen a single bottle or can of Coke in Cuba. It was the national cola or it was nothing. I guess with the blockade and the lack of supplies, Cuba was living in an enforced kind of Prohibition on general everyday groceries. (Obviously not a rumless Prohibition.) I smiled at the thought of the Nacional still selling bootlegged beverages to rich people staying there nearly 100 years later.

It was time to go. We slipped Guilliam some extra cash to drive us back to the centre of town in style. When we arrived, I walked with the two girls into one of the tourist shops on the Main Street where I bought two t-shirts and then said goodbye to them. Surely they had a big night of editing and uploading their videos ahead of them.

Realising I was now a little short on cash for dinner (no EFTPOS facilities for dinner – always cash only), I hit an ATM to withdraw minimal funds to see me through until my flight at lunchtime tomorrow. I flipped through my wallet for my card. Not there. Flipped again. Oh shit. Adrenaline spiked one way while my heart sank the other way. Mad rifling through wallet. The card was most definitely, 100% not there. Ok, think. Money needed. I used my backup card to another account to extract funds.

The last time I used the card was at the ATM last night to withdraw money for dinner. Had it been stolen? Had I left it in the machine??? Did it matter??? It was gone and I had to a) see the damage b) stop any further damage immediately. I remembered the wifi card Brij gave me that morning. I just needed a hotspot. And a toilet. I was about to puss myself. Why did it all have to happen at once??? I desperately strode Obispo Street (a big street) with my legs half crossed looking for a place with a wifi signal, a toilet and food – the purchase of which would justify my access to the first two things. Most of the places were too small to have a wifi. I needed something bigger.

Then on the corner! The Hotel Floridita Restaurant! I remembered the scrawled board from La Bodeguita del Medio – “ my daiquiri at La Floridita”. This was clearly the restaurant arm of the daiquiri bar – but I needed food and hated daiquiris. Perfect. I was the easiest customer of the night for the tout on the corner. At his confirmation that there was wifi, I barrelled in and barged straight through to the toilet. Thank God.

I ordered something and ate it, but I have no idea what it tasted like. I was far too concerned about my missing card. La Floridita’s signal sucked. I had to log in three times due to the flakiness of the network that went in and out on me every few minutes. The most I got out of the hour was maybe 10 minutes of constant connection before the signal faded out and then kicked back in again. My banking app revealed that I had indeed been cleaned out of all funds in that account – approximately $1000 USD. My email revealed that the card had been cancelled due to suspicious activity and to please contact Qantas Travel Money at my earliest convenience. The best I could do was send a message via my account on the app. With all the Internet flakiness, that was literally the best I could do in the hour of internet access I had. The app provided a number to call in case of emergency card theft for any country in the world. I would have happily paid top dollar for piece of mind with that phone call. Evidently, every country in the world does not include Cuba because the number didn’t work. I don’t think Cuba’s phone infrastructure can handle international calls.

Cuba – the timewarp is fascinating but it all goes pear-shaped when something goes wrong and access to modern infrastructure is needed. I was so on edge about it all and so frustrated that there was literally nothing I could do about it. I did manage to achieve one final goal though. I hopped a coco taxi to drive me home!

Fearless readers – return for the next post as HockTales returns to the big smoke of Mexico for new adventures on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Aside from buzz on the street about a new bread shop opening, it was an uneventful morning. We piled into the van for a pretty silent few hours to Havana. Barbara normally played a DVD or talked, but we knew about Havana so it was silence. Hector gunned us through to a refuelling stop. That was another thing. Fuel supply was unreliable. Sometimes petrol stations were out of supply so Hector had to be very careful about when and how he fuelled up. I think sometimes we stopped more to ensure we would actually get there. I remember another time by the Bay of Pigs where we must have been running really low because we pulled into every petrol station on the way.

We checked back into the same guesthouse from the start of the trip. I was so looking forward to that palatial room again. Wrong. I had to carry my cumbersome rucksack and Bach of treasures up to the very top floor to a much smaller monk’s cell. This would be my accommodation for two nights. Oh well. I wouldn’t be here for long. Immediately, I locked my passport in the safety deposit box and couldn’t retrieve it. Better too safe than too sorry. I would sort it later.

Barbara and Hector were waiting for anybody looking to join them for lunch. We’d skipped lunch on our dash through to the capital and I was starving. Only I took them up on their offer. We went to a cool hipster looking place around the corner where we waited ages for our meal. It was nearly an hour and a half by the time we’d eaten and paid. Barbara warmed us about Cuban time and service standards on day one but this was bad – there was only five people in the café including us and five staff standing around. The chicken was delicious. But I never cope well with lunch finishing at 3.30. What inbetween meal hell is this???

Time for exploration. I didn’t have much time. Our group’s final farewell dinner was tonight. The plan was to meet at 6. I had originally planned to see a museum but tardy service put the brakes on that plan. So adventurous waterfront rambles it was.

I walked along the waterfront, seeing what I could see. I spotted the Havana Club museum with its last tour closing just as I passed by. I briefly poked my head in the shop – all high end cigars and multi packs of rum. Felt dirty and wrong having held onto that 4 buck bottle for 5 days. The only 4 bucks in the Havana Club shop would be your change.

The HockTales Express pulled into the back of the St Francis cathedral which had a lovely garden and a strange mosaic pool. Did the priests all sit in a jacuzzi and plan services? Brother Benedict, pass me the holy Coca Cola of Antioch while I organise this week’s schedule for confession and chemical dousing of the pool. The was a tiny statue of a nun, a cat, pretty plants. A nice place to hang out.

I kept walking around to see the Havana sign in the distance and then crossed into the Plaza de Armas where the Palace of the Governor was just closing. I found out the opening times. I still had time the day after tomorrow just before my flight.

I continued my walk down a similar route to the one Barbara took us on originally. I pulled my Havana map out of my pocket. Left was one famous bar, right another. Couldn’t really go wrong. I thought I went left but I actually went right. Whatever. I found the home of the mojito, La Bodeguita Del Medio.

I am over mojitos. Bad mojitos are sugary, syrupy, weak and pointless. I drank my fair share of them throughout Cuba with the others to be sociable until I could do it no more and turned to rum. I now largely blank Ron blanco. But the iconic nature of this place is evident from the crowds spilling out on the street with their drinks and the band in your ears before you even get there! Something was happening. There was a definite vibe!

I pushed my way in. The bar is a tiny little place with a wooden interior and a wall of rum. A jolly five piece band of oldsters plays on the corner. This is not the place to chat with the barman about your day. He’s flat out splashing Havana Club blanco into 10 or so glasses in front of him, then mashing the rum and mint leaves with the minimal soda water with a small baseball bat. I think he would be horrified if anybody ordered anything else. Although other bottles suggest you can. But the mojito is THE THING. You don’t even ask for it. Just money out and he slings you one. Equally speedy is the girl next to him filling glasses with dishwashing liquid. (Finally, I had figured who was buying all that washing up liquid from the mercado!)

I looked up to see a beaten up old wooden sign hanging over the bar. Handscrawled –  ‘My mojito at La Bodeguita. My daiquiri at La Floridita’ – Ernest Hemingway. Cuba’s most famous retiree. I understood the fame.

It was standing room only, but I could turn to watch the band of oldsters with my mojito which redeemed my faith in the drink. Strong and delicious! Old Ernie was right! Actually, it was the exception that proved the rule that most are crap. I tried to video them and the singer came right up, pressing his nose against my iPhone!!!! They loved a laugh! They asked me where I was from, then burst into a spontaneous rendition of Skippy! I will never forget that!!! How did Sonny’s bowl haircut and old Skip penetrate darkest Cuba in the 70s??? That’s a mystery for the ages. I chucked a tip in the hat before begrudgingly heading on my way.

I had to hit the ATM before dinner and make it back in time to get changed. Time was marching on. The light was starting to fade. The Havana streets start to look very similar in the dark. I wanted to get home ASAP. Note foreshadowing …

Hector and his faithful minibus took us via the undersea underpass to the other side of the island where an enormous Jesus statue points to the main city of Havana. Batista’s wife erected it back in the early 50s just because Cuba didn’t have anything like it. (Didn’t have any literacy programs either but a giant Jesus was totally required.) The views of the harbour and the city at night were stunning from the foot of Jesus. Che Guevara’s house was also on this side of the island, as was the military fort I planned to visit the next day. We piled back on the bus for dinner.

We enjoyed our final meal at a restaurant with free ranging poultry, causing me to remain on edge the whole time. I was pretty close to jumping on the table at one point. I ordered the most classic Cuban dish on the menu – ropa vieja (shredded beef) and went all out this time, Havana Club Anos 7. The big guns of rum. Well, the fancy one I could afford. It was a nice meal. Afterwards, Hector ordered an espresso and split it with me! (It went as far as you could imagine.) No hablo English but I showed him a lot of my photos from Mexico and he loved them. He really was the best bus driver ever. For the rest of this big trip, we tend to have a different guy each day who sits in the bus. Hector was with us the entire time, he ate with us, he was funny and friendly. I miss him. There have really been some crap bus drivers since.

Yvonne, Kim, Barbara and I then went to the famous Buena Vista Social Club. The building is absolutely amazing. Constructed in the 1940s, there are big swooping blue arches and columns and only an open sailcloth for a roof. Tickets are about $30 which include three drinks (one had to be a mojito – I felt dirty). The performers were focussed on a stage with backing singers and dancers quite far from our table but they walked around the audience with a microphone, so we got a good view. For oldsters in their 70s, their voices were amazing!!! God knows what they were singing but it was fantastic! Some of the women had outstanding lungs on them! Wow! There were younger performers too – I guess this was Buena Vista succession planning. The salsa dancers with motorised hips came around too. At one point, Yvonne and I were dragged up to dance by the stage and we went for a laugh. It was all great fun! The performance lasted two hours but we went home after about an hour and a half because we were pretty knackered by then.

Back to the old Havana guesthouse it was.

Stay tuned for my final day in Havana where I cruise the streets in a red 1955 Chevy Convertible and make a horrifying discovery…