Mérida with Bucher

The trip—half business, half pleasure—was postponed once because of the delayed arrival of a ship and almost had to be cancelled because of another sailing foul-up. Fortunately that vessel was late enough to let us slip off Wednesday through Sunday.

We left at five in the morning, so most of our suffering was over by nine. The British Honduras “Northern Highway” is something. After twenty-some miles of quite decent roads, it becomes a wavy, potholed, multi-patched, single-lane strip snaking through the bush. Forty miles of that give way to marl, a packed clay surface heavily etched by weather, rough but of generous width to allow loaded sugar-cane trucks to pass each other.

There were only minor formalities leaving B.H., and hardly more on the Mexican side of the border. They have a beautiful new Immigration and Customs building and their officials are brighter, neater, more cordial, and less hungry than we remember from past years. Probably by direction from the federal government. They did not even examine our luggage, but just waved us on after we had cleared Immigration.

We had heard that the road from the border to Mérida now is fully surfaced and good. It is excellent. The first stretch of nearly one hundred miles seems to have been laid out by two giant surveyors standing at towns at each end, a straight line of double-lane pavement striking undeviatingly through the wilderness. For miles, a hedge of a sort of wild daisy made a yellowy-greeny border along each side of the highway, as formally as the white strips edged the paving.

 

At the first town past the border, Bucher decided to fill up our truck with gas, not knowing what sort of villages were ahead. We drove slowly through Bacalar without finding a station, so I asked a clutch of Mexican women standing outside their hut where we could buy gasoline. One answered enthusiastically with detailed directions illustrated by a flung arm. We turned around—followed exactly—found the central plaza but not a gas station anywhere.

On our second circuit of the plaza we stopped to ask. This man didn’t know, but sprinted across the grass to ask someone who did. More flung arms. No more results. This time we followed past the plaza toward the lagoon, around old Fort Bacalar, giving me the guided tour I’d wanted the whole time, and down to the pretty little beach resort area Callie Young had described from a visit a couple of years ago. But no gas.

Two inquiries later, we made it back to a yard we had tried once before, which had appeared to be the residential buildings attached to a school. Not at all. It was the gasolina. I’m chagrined to find that so many years of civilization in Belize have made me forget that gasoline doesn’t have to come out of pumps—it also comes through siphons from 55-gallon drums into pitchers and can be poured into the vehicle’s tank.

Naturally the next town, where we made our turn to Mérida, had a huge and modern Pemex station.

 

Quintana Roo, adjacent to the B.H. border, is a territory of Mexico, not a state, and has been something of a stepchild. The government now is making increased efforts to develop it. Tiny clusters of thatched huts had a neat modern market or government building or a pretty plaza laid out and being landscaped. In the middle of jungle, there would be a clearing and a miniature stadium, perhaps five tiers of benches, concrete, to accommodate fifty to seventy-five people, overlooking a rough baseball diamond. Around the next curve would be the handful of huts belonging to the sports field.

 

Quintana Roo and Yucatán would seem to have the market cornered on rocks. It is incredible that they can scratch anything out of that soil. Each plot is bordered by a dry masonry stone wall—sensible for purposes of defining lots and confining children and stock, and for using the material cleared from the land without having to lug it away. Even in the towns, each little house or group of huts is walled in. Even so, the proportion in cleared land seems 90% rock and 10% soil.

Once past the Rio Hondo, which separates the B.H. from Mexico, there is no river or stream all the way to Mérida. However, the entire area is underlaid by underground rivers, so wells are common and even large acreage can be irrigated.

Two things are sad through the area—the great derelict churches, and the vast fields of henequen gone to bush since man-made fibers took over the rope industry. The churches, often cathedral-size in tiny villages, date from the Spanish conquest. Doors and windows are boarded up, occasionally roofs are off, sometimes shutters are broken so that the stripped, barren interiors can be glimpsed.

The Mexican government tromped hard on the Catholic Church in the Twenties and while their proscriptions have eased slightly, they have not permitted restoration of these old churches. It as a shock after seeing the many churches of the same style and period that remain the center of village activities in other Central American countries!

Nearer Mérida, the villages grow larger, the stone walls painted white on the street side, and more thatched adobe homes than palmetto-and-thatch ones. Some villages obviously once adjoined huge fincas that are now drying up without the henequen industry. Bucher was reminded of southern mill towns during the Depression.

 

We had reservations at our former favorite motel outside Mérida. It has been taken over by a chain, enlarged, polished, and much of its charm destroyed. It used to have one of the best restaurants in Mérida, open-air under thatching, with superb Yucatecan food. Now it has a great glassed cafeteria with blue and orange booths and food to match. In the patio they have double-decked the row of pool-side bedrooms and removed the lovely overhang of thatch that gave both shade and privacy. They have filled in one end of the winding pool for no apparent reason, since it is now simply a great expanse of empty concrete. Still, the islands in the pool have great trees wound with jungle vines, and lush bushes and flowering shrubs line the walks and buildings. The rooms are as large and attractive as ever and, if possible, even more immaculate.

While Bucher and I still were in shock at the modern facade of the Príncipe Maya where we had expected our quaint Tropical Maya, we had a bit of confusion over moving the truck. I expected Bucher to move it while I checked in, but somehow the keys were handed to one of the hotel employees and I was rushed out to go with him to supervise the unloading. He made it into the boulevard before he stalled. I realized he probably didn’t know how to shift gears faster than I realized I couldn’t possible say so in Spanish, and by that time, he had restarted the truck and veered directly toward a truck that was passing us on the right. I screamed. He missed but I don’t know how. Bucher said he and the manager were watching and that, by that time, the manager was half-way on top of the desk trying to get out to do something.

My happy driver, whose smile wasn’t the even disarranged, buck-jumped the truck across the remaining lane, into the driveway, and to a halt under a tree, about one inch before the first tiled step. Beaming with pleasure at his performance, the grinning youth madly began unloading baggage—and it was too late for me to do anything but give a little prayer of thanks and remind myself that he probably never had had the magnificent experience of driving a truck before.

 

That night our business partners Billye and Robby Robinson flew in from Jacksonville and we met them at the magnificent new airport terminal, about half a mile from the motel. The building is gorgeous and modern—and they said that, although there wasn’t another plane in sight and they could have taxied almost to the door, they were offloaded at the end of a corridor and marched miles, as in Miami, before reaching Immigration and Customs.

I won’t go into details of our stay—sitting around the pool, looking for good food, a brief excursion to the market, and another brief one downtown in nostalgia for the old Gran Hotel de Mérida, which obviously is having a renaissance. It all was restful and fun.

 

Robby telephoned an old friend of his, a man he has known since the days he used to ship lumber out of Progreso. Sr. Palomaque came over to the motel to visit on Friday evening, and he insisted we all come for tacos at his drugstore next midday. It is a funny, dim, old-fashioned-looking place, mainly tables and chairs like my childhood drugstores used to have, and just enough drugs to be an excuse for keeping the shop. His wife joined us, a blithe little bird of a woman who talked rapid-fire Spanish and English, with no particular consistency.

And the tacos—I learned something. I put far too much in my tortillas. These had just a narrow strip of filling and rolled up as neatly as a cigar, and the filling—first roast venison with a garnish of marinated, finely chopped radishes and cilantro; then chicharrones (tiny bits of crisp pork skin) with bits of this-and-that; then diced octopus cooked in its ink in a bit of olive oil (delicate and delicious—the taste too fine by itself to kill with the sauce of finely chopped chiles and onions in lemon juice, which I had used—carefully—on the earlier tacos). And finally another meat combination, which almost did me in since she had said that it was baby pig and it was almost gelatinous. Billye told me latter that the Señora had turned and told her that it wasn’t really baby pig, that was just a nickname for it. Still, we used to have a baby pig named Montague and whatever those tacos were, I barely finished the one, just to be polite.

And after that lavish display, the Palomaques insisted that we all go to their house for a family breakfast Sunday morning before we left. They have a lovely home, which was out in the country when they built it and which now is in the middle of the industrial park between our motel and the city. However, they have ample land and planting behind a high wall, so they are perfectly content. The value of the property has skyrocketed, of course, and they are talking about moving back into one of their houses in the city.

Breakfast began with a dish of cantaloupe, diced, and a large glass of half-lemonade, half-watermelon juice, which was lovely. Then tamales—a fine, thin layer the masa with a thick filling of hotly seasoned meat. And for those who were strong enough, there was a little dish of chiles Eduardo had picked that morning, cut up with onions in lemon juice, to put on the tamales. After that bread! That is, five different kinds of breads or pastries with homemade marmalade. Delicious, but not what Bucher and I normally start a long trip on.

 

We had an easy drive to Chetumal, about five hours. Had a good lobster dinner and then checked in at a new motel outside the city. Quite decent. Left at seven and agonized through the B.H. end of the trip, getting home about ten-thirty—before the first of our ships had anchored.