Dancharthos : Yucatan

Another Yankui in Yucatan

1 February/Febrero 1999
To Valladolid. Do laundry. Dinner with Jacqueline.

It is/was morning when I sat/sit in the tiny village plaza of Piste/Chichen waiting for the bus to Valladolid. No more proleptic past/future hints. Analepsis and out. Trucks are carrying workers away from Piste, out to the fields, and, they tell me, some of them down to the digins at Yaxuna, where the cutting edge of archeology is uncovering secrets from the war between that city and Chichen nine hundred years ago. Or was it eleven.

But no, I won't go there. Instead I take the mundane bus forty miles east to the "charming colonial city" of Valladolid. A small city, with all the comforts of civilization and almost none of the crime. Free from any industrial suburbs, it looks like, and quite old, two hundred years, three hundred. Already I am feeling the rising tentacles of my cold, but still, before I leave the bus station, I will buy a ticket onward to Coba in two days time, wondering if I will actually go, or get sick.

I will find the owner of the five dollar a night guest house. The Arturian/Avalon Brit pair couple yesterday at Chichen told me about this guy, old ex-baseball player. I arrange for a splendid little room on the edge of an abandoned private park with empty swimming pool. Quite strange, a ruin in and of itself, eh? Yes. It will do quite nicely.

Take all my dirty clothes to a laundry. Explore the center of town. Meet an English girl, sit chatting with her, decide we will take dinner together later, after I get my laundry. Jacqueline. We will talk about the great unknown new excavated old city up the road, Ek Balam, and wonder how one might get to it.

I see her to her hotel. She doesn't invite me up, which relieves me of all the worry of how to kiss her, so I don't. Well, a little hug and cheek kiss, yes, but no more. Sex sex men are always thinking of sex. Well, hell, it was damn pleasant just to eat and talk with her, and isn't that inter-sexual behavior of a refined sort? The pleasures of the company of the opposite sex. She was so pretty. Yes. And I am traveling alone. Sometimes it does get lonely and I want to meet others, especially who can talk my native tongue, even if we are "separated by a common language" Churchill.

Come back to my room and meet Chacho, Chris and Beefy, a local and two gringos. They invite me to go out into the bush with them tomorrow and give out packages of candy and school supplies at small town schools. I eagerly accept. Sense an entree into local culture. Turns out I speak more Spanish than the gringos and more English than Chacho. So maybe I can help them, too. It's a riot watching them try to communicate over beers and canned fish, but they do it all right, just no subtlety. Damn biased poet me. Also turns out Chacho is married to the landlord's daughter. Ah, yes. Begin to feel almost at home here.

I am looking forward to going with them tomorrow.