Panam Reports
Extracts from Panam Report 5, by James Walker
By
Feb 23, 2006, 15:03

(23 February) San Cristóbal - Riviera Maya

We have now given our Tacoma a name: Lupita (pronounced Loo-pee-taa), after a charming young lady we met in Zacatecas.

Agua Azul Waterfall, Mexico

On the morning of Tuesday 7 February we left San Cristóbal de las Casas for Palenque. Our first stop was at the Cascadas de Agua Azul, about 160 km away, which took around 2 hours 15 minutes along a fairly fast, twisty asphalt road.

The falls are the best we have seen so far this trip. There are several restaurants - it will make a good lunch halt. Near the car park visitors can swim and cool off in a beautiful small blue pool - bring your costume! We followed a pathway upwards and enjoyed good views of the many cataracts as they cascaded into one another. Along the upper part of the pathway the falls grew higher and the panorama was impressive.

Next we visited Misol-Ha, the waterfall pictured in our brochure, some 41 km away. This was very impressive and powerful. I took the path behind the falls - quite an experience.

The journey on to Palenque was only 23 km. The extensive Mayan ruins here are superb. The Palace at the centre of the site is the most impressive feature; we climbed to the top and had a great view of most of the other ruins.

Our hotel, the beautiful Chan Kah Resort, is in a rainforest setting close by. The guest rooms are spacious but simply equipped cabanas set like a small village around the main hotel buildings. Each has a verandah on which guests can sit and enjoy the sounds of the surrounding jungle. The resort’s immaculate gardens and extensive grounds have many twisting paths which are especially beautiful when illuminated at night.

On Wednesday our journey took us through the wetlands of the Reserva de la Biósfera Pántanos de Centla, a very beautiful drive along an asphalt road. We saw a wide range of wildfowl, as well as horses and cattle, and passed through many seemingly nameless hamlets and small neatly organised farmsteads before we reached Frontera, a small town where our partcipants can pause for coffee. The journey of about 200 km from Palenque took around 2 hours 45 minutes.

At Frontera we turned east along the coastal Highway 160, and had our first sight of the Gulf of Mexico. We enjoyed the sea views, and discovered a very interesting shipwreck, a great spot for photos. After about 96 km and 1 hour 15 minutes, we came to the pleasant port of Ciudad del Carmen. We found a good waterside fish restaurant here - an excellent lunch halt for our people - where we tried the local fish specialty of cazon.

Nr Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico

We continued along the flat Gulf coast to the larger town of Campeche; this took about 2 hours 30 minutes, a distance of approximately 215 km. Our hotel here, the oceanfront Hotel del Mar, has good facilities, including an attractive pool and a small nightclub. The bedrooms are a good size, quite nicely decorated and have views to either the ocean or the swimming pool garden.

Our first destination next day was the small and pretty colonial town of Becal, 93 km away, famed for the production (and, of course, sale) of panama hats. The fountain in the town square is in the form of three large panamas. The most popular form of transport in Becal is bicycle, especially the taxis, most of which are trishaws. Kurt enlisted the help of a taxi pedaller to lead us to the house of a local hatmaker.

Hatmaking village, Yucatan

Our time with this gentleman was very interesting. He first showed us the plants from which the material used for making the hats is taken, and explained the various processes to prepare the material. The production of a hat is a much more laborious task than I had envisaged. A hat can take between two and eight days to make, an eight-day hat being of a much finer quality than a two-day. The length of time needed to make the hat is also naturally reflected in the purchase price, a two-day hat costing two hundred pesos (about £11) and an eight-day hat twelve hundred pesos (about £65).

Shortly after leaving Becal we entered Yucatán. At this point we decided to head straight to Chichén Itzá in order to catch that evening’s son et lumière at the Maya site. We were also a little concerned about a warning light that had appeared on Lupita’s dash, so Kurt arranged for a diagnostic check the next day at the Toyota dealer in Mérida.

Muyil, Yucatan

When we arrived at the hotel I opted to meet straight away with my contact, whilst Arne and Kurt visited the show. They reported that it was good, and provided a lot of interesting information about Maya culture.

The following day Arne and Kurt took Lupita back to Mérida for the diagnostic check - nothing serious. They then completed the large section of route missed the previous day, which consisted of two themed drives, one around smaller and less formal Maya ruins, and the other linking some villages with good colonial churches. They reported that this was worth doing as it took them to some attractive less-visited places.

I stayed at the hotel to catch up on some work and visit the Chichén Itzá archaeological remains, a short walk from the hotel. This is probably the most famous Maya site, and was certainly the largest that I had visited. There are several zones, each with different examples of building, many in excellent condition.

The Mayaland hotel at Chichén Itzá is in a particularly attractive setting. It is not unlike the Chan Kah resort at Palenque (rainforest location, lovely gardens, etc) but with more emphasis on luxury. The gardens are beautifully manicured; there is a decent sized main swimming pool, and two smaller pools near the cabanas.

The next leg of our trip was to the Riviera Maya, a part of the journey that I had been very much looking forward to very much, of course for the beautiful weather and not the abundance of beautiful women I expected to see! Unfortunately I experienced neither!

Our first stop was a lovely cenote called Il-Kil, which we discovered only 4 km from Chichén Itzá, a very professionally run and well presented attraction. Cenotes are circular pits or caverns, usually filled with pure clear blue water, that dot the limestone bedrock of Yucatán. This one is underground, reached along a long torchlit tunnel. There is a large hole in the roof above, which can be looked down through from ground level. Long vines dangle through the hole towards the pool. There were quite a few people swimming - it looks like a great place for a quick dip!

The cenote of Xkeken at Dzitnup (a journey of some 36 km that took around 40 minutes) is more famous. This pool, also underground, is much larger, and is accessed down narrow stone steps. Again we found people swimming. The only natural light comes through a small hole in the vast roof; the rest of the lighting is artificial, which added to the experience. The atmosphere round the pool was very humid.

We found yet another cenote just a five-minute walk from Dzitnup on the opposite side of the road, called Samula. This pool was again underground, and was quite large. There is a large hole in the roof of the cavern and the roots of a tree growing above stretch from the hole to the water, an interesting sight. This pool was not quite as attractive to swim in as the other two.

From Dzitnup we drove to the Maya site of Cobá, a journey of around 75 km that took approximately 1 hour 40 minutes to complete. Well before we got there, it started to rain, and Cobá was beginning to look more like a swamp than a Maya site. We had a quick look around while we darted from the shelter of one tree to the next. The site is has some attractive ruins in an interesting rainforest setting. There are several restaurants that make it a possible lunch halt.

From Cobá it took around 40 minutes to cover the 48 km to Tulum, which I found to be one of the most interesting archaeological sites that we had visited. It gave me the firm impression that it once acted as a purposeful, working Maya community (it was once a port), rather than just a sprawling collection of ceremonial temples, pyramids and palaces. The fact that it overlooks a Caribbean beach is also an advantage!

From Tulum it was a short distance to the twin cenotes at Dos Ojos (Two Eyes), two very interesting open-topped pools with unusual rock formations. Scuba and snorkeling are available; it is even possible to swim from one cave into the other.

Dos Ojos Cenote, Riviera Maya

We decided not to visit the nearby rather commercial family tourist attraction of Xel-Ka, a kind of nautical Alton Towers, even though they allow visitors to swim with captive dolphins - not exactly in line with current environmental thinking!

In about 15 minutes we were at our hotel, about 23 km further on. The best way I can describe the Barcelo Maya resort is very big and very modern. It is essentially four hotels in one (two five star, two four star), sharing most of the same facilities. Our group will be staying in the Colonial (five-star) section. The resort as you would imagine has very many facilities, which include lots of bars and restaurants, a huge outdoor pool, private beach, night club, gym, two theatres and a spa.

The Riviera Maya has of course recently been struck by two hurricanes, but the part we are visiting, around Akumal and Tulum, was much less seriously affected than the area further north around Cancun, which was really quite devastated. The main evidence of the hurricanes I saw was in the forestry, undergrowth and jungle that line the main coast road. In many places the trees were tangled, twisted and mutilated, bent forever under the power of Emily and Wilma, power that is simply unimaginable.


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