Blog
2, 1 December 2012
Ek Balam, our second destination, was
a nice contrast to Cancún. For one thing, it is smaller: 750K in Cancún, 75P in
Ek Balam
(P = people). Where Cancún has beaches and surf and boutiques and high-rise
hotels, Ek Balam has trees and trees and trees and homey guest huts in a swath of jungle called “Uh Najil Ek
Balam Centro Ecoturístico Cabañas Ecológicas.” Where Cancún tempts with a
thousand designed-for-tourists eateries and drinkeries, Ek Balam has one
restaurant, Las Delicias, on the
plaza, which advertises itself as Italian and opens on random other days but
not today. The main reason to go to this village is the ruins of the massive Mayan
temple-city of Ek Balam, built by the current villagers’ great-to-the-Nth-power
grandparents, which lies a five minute walk east of the village. Protocol,
however, requires one drive four kilometers round about so as to enter through
the gate with the ticket office.
We found the cabañas easily on the web. Uh Najil is conveniently located halfway
across the peninsula between Valladolid on the Cancún-Mérida toll road and Río
Lagartos on the northern coast, where we are going next. Finding the cabañas in the jungle was a little
harder, as signage was near nil and the entrance road to the village narrowed
and rutted with each successive bumpy kilometer. Eventually we did find the
village, and a friendly carpenter pointed out the dirt road that took us a
little further to Uh Najil.
The
village of Ek Balam in an ejido, which is the Mexican term for
land owned communally by an indigenous group (in this case Maya), and managed
by them under regulation and protection by the federal government. The concept
is something like tribal reservations in the US, except that ejidos tend to be village size, not
nation size, and they house at most a couple of hundred people, not thousands
or tens of thousands. And since there is no provision in Mexican law for their running
casinos, they tend to be dirt poor, not slot machine rich. As the INAH, the
government ministry in charge of cultural patrimony like archeological sites,
was restoring the monumental central cluster of the Ek Balam ruin, a sibling
agency assisted the village in creating a eco-friendly full-service lodge to
help foment tourism in the region. For their cultural excursion, most
short-term tourists visit only the ruins of Chichen Itza on a day trip from
either Cancún or Mérida. With more sites developed, more hotels, more
restaurants, coastal tourists might be induced to spend three or four days in
the interior, presumably to the benefit of the interior economy. Like the way
the Spanish government pumped the Compostela pilgrimage as a vehicle for
getting people in off the coasts.
Our cabaña,
one of about ten scattered among the trees, was an upscale example of the north
Yucatán oval house style. The walls were poles of wood, each about 1.5 inches
thick, laced together with lianas. The rafters were wood beams resting on a
frame anchored to four sturdy forked tree t
runks, lashed together again with
lianas. The roof itself was of tightly folded palmetto fronds clamped to
horizontal bars by the folded and crimped palmetto stem; tight as any shingle
roof in New England while allowing the house to breathe. All of this just like
every other home on Ek Balam’s grid of four or five streets.
There were differences, too. Our cabaña had
a wooden door that closed, shutters that closed, and mesh screens over the
windows: the houses in the village were all open. Windows were holes in the
walls; doors were sometimes only curtains; and some areas of the house had no
walls at all, just the thatched roof resting on poles. We know what Ek Batanos
had in their houses, because we could see into them with ease. Our cabaña had beds; everybody native to the
village slept in hammocks. Our beds were draped with mosquito netting. Theirs? No windows, some walls, hammocks hung in any
space reached by a breeze, take your chances with the mosquitos. Our cabaña had
a little mini-cabaña attached to one
end that housed a sink, shower, and flush toilet in 3 separate little rooms. Cold
water only, of course. Some of the Ek Batan homes may have had indoor plumbing,
but we didn’t see any. They all had running water, usually into an outside sink
which was next to a concrete outdoor washtub with one side corrugated for
scrubbing the soapy clothes against. Our cabaña had no kitchen; they mostly
cooked with firewood either in outdoor kitchens or in some hidden spot we could
not see. We both had electricity, but ours was eco-friendly: solar collectors
on a skeletal rack at one side of the clustered cabañas.
Ours was neat as an operating room; staff
cleaned it every day and we only used it for sleeping. Theirs were maelstroms
of constant activity: women weaving hammocks (the town’s principal source of
funds) while caring for five or six kids from newborn to pre-teen; older
children playing, studying, dancing, helping the adults, coming and going from
school; dogs greeting every passerby and each other. We came in a car; most locals seemed to ride bikes, or 3-wheeled bike-trucks in which they transport foodstuffs, firewood, farm implements,
and their aged parents and
young kids. The cacophony in the village was constant; our corner of the woods
was silent except for loud insects and birdcalls. The only real clamor was when
we were momentarily besieged by some flock of parrots or parakeets. Now THAT’s loud! One more note: we had no TV,
while every home in the village did, mostly flat screen.
During our one-day visit to Ek Balam ejido we talked with lots of people,
some directly, and some through an interpreter. Our guess is that about half
the villagers were bilingual in Spanish and Mayan. The other half were
monolingual speakers of Mayan. Kids in the street played in both languages.
Women in the houses chattered in both (remember, everything was open, and
overhearing conversations was easy (I was about to write eavesdropping, but
nobody in the Yucatán has ever seen an eave). The adult Spanish speakers always
marveled at our ability with the language. To everyone else we were just
another couple of foreigners, as exotic and incomprehensible as the tourists
from Veracruz or Mexico City. Outsiders.
All in all it was a wonderful experience,
with only a couple of minor points we
might have wished to improve upon. While our windows were meshed, there was a
three quarter of an inch gap between the door and the floor. Linda wasn’t fond
of the incoming. I claimed the biggest one was a cricket, but she fixated on
cockroach. Well, it was, but one of the jungle variety, big and pretty and
nonpolluting, so what’s not to like? Then there was the fact that while we had
water, we had only cold water. Good for one’s character, to shower like that, I
say. Lastly there was the business about dinner. The restaurant on the square
was dark. The larder in the Uh Najil Cabañas was bare, and there was no way for
them to get more (I think they may have left the actual shopping until it was
too late). There would be breakfast –somebody’s chickens were bound to lay
during the night— but no dinner. Fortunately, we had some fruit, and we keep a
loaf of bread and a couple of jars of this and that in the car larder for such
occasions, so we didn’t go to bed hungry.
And
breakfast was delicious.
By the way, if you ever take the road from
Ek Balam to Río Lagartos you will be obligated to drive through the center of the
small city of Tizimín. Save up your hunger for a lunch stop at the Restaurante
Tres Reyes (you know, Melchor and company, those three kings), directly across
the plaza from the church. There’s a sign on the highway as you approach town
proclaiming that the restaurant offers “¡La mejor comida del mundo!” (The best
food in the world!). It’s a big globe, after all, and with a claim like that we
had to stop. The atmosphere belies the restaurant’s presumed fame: six or seven
wooden tables, at the largest of which, in the center, sits the owner, going
over his accounts and keeping his eye on the yellow shirted cook and wait
staff. On the wall are bullfight photographs, a blow up of the National
Geographic pair of portraits of an Iranian woman, 30 years apart; some plaques
with the usual half-witty sayings. A statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe on a
shelf over the bar next to even more signs
(“Don’t drink and drive!” “Please do not smoke” “La major comida del mundo!”). Next to the
sink in the hall outside the bathrooms are several framed poems by the
restaurant’s owner, Willy Canto M, and some photos of his chanteuse wife, Nidia
Elena Rejón.

Surprise! The lunch really WAS good:
grilled fish in garlic sauce, chicken fillets sautéed in garlic, fresh tortillas,
perfectly refried beans, a shredded cabbage salad, fresh pico de gallo of
onions and tomatoes, little plates of hors-deuvres (sausage and sweet pepper
and pasta; a squash and red and orange pepper compot with an ali-oli dip); all
washed down with fresh-squeezed mandarin orange juice (Linda) and horchata
(David). The motto on the napkin holder summed it all up: “We serve regional,
national, international, worldwide, and intergalactic food!” You bet!! As
Michelin would say: “Worth the journey.”