Postcard from the Yucatán: Tulum-ing

Tulum was the last stop on our Mayan-ruin-hopping tour.  There’s a pretty complex of buildings, unusual among the many Mayan sites throughout the Yucatán, as it’s the only beachfront property the Mayans developed.  The site is dramatically perched atop a cliff that overlooks the beach below.

Temple Ruins at Tulum 3/22/10

For years, various people at work have mentioned going to Tulum on vacation.  Several went on yoga retreats, where they did yoga on platforms facing the sea, meditated and ate vegetables.  (Very relaxing, they claimed.)  Others went to something called Bikini Boot Camp, which seemed to be a sort of a pre-Hamptons preparatory ritual for young-ish New York women, with juice fasts and morning beach runs.  (Worth it, I suppose, if you get the results you want.)

Neither is particularly up my alley.  But both the yoga practitioners and the bikini boot-campers added that aside from these required activities, they spent the rest of their time lying on a beach doing nothing, and that it was heavenly.  This appealed to me and sounded like the perfect way to close out five days of intensive ruin-hopping.

The beach below the Tulum ruins 3/22/10

Before I left for the tour, I ran to Barnes and Noble on Union Square in the hopes of finding a good juicy novel to read in Spanish (because I can!) while lying on the beach.  The selection was disappointing; nothing but a lot of bad American self-help books in translation.  I began to despair of finding anything inspiring.  Then suddenly I saw a book with an image of the Pyramid of Kukulcán at Chichen Itzá on the cover and a provocative blurb about the end of the world in 2012 according to the Mayan calendar.  A brilliant archaeologist had decoded the mysteries of the Mayan predictions, and now his son – paranoid and delusional, locked up in a mental institution in Florida and being treated by a beautiful graduate intern – might be mankind’s only hope for salvation.  Could anything be more perfect?

The other thing that everybody said about Tulum was, “The town itself isn’t much to speak of.”  The tour operator expressed a similar opinion in an email, when I advised them I’d be staying on in Tulum for a few days and asked for a hotel recommendation.  They described most of the accommodations on the beach as being “rustic” with no AC, no electricity after 11pm, and some with no electricity at all.  They suggested a couple of resorts a bit up the coast from Tulum.

Undeterred, I went on Trip Advisor and discovered a small, trendy boutique hotel that had unanimous raves from reviewers.  It was owned and run by a Canadian couple, had a fantastic restaurant, showed movies on the rooftop on Friday nights, and although technically “in town,” was just a 15-minute bike ride from the beach on bicycles that the hotel kept for the use of guests.  I booked by email; paid my deposit by PayPal (balance due in cash), and on the afternoon of March 22^nd said my good-byes to my tourmates as I was dropped off in Tulum in front of the Hotel Teetotum.

Hotel Teetotum, Tulum 3/25/10

That night I walked into “town” – a generous term for the collection of single-story, concrete buildings that lines two sides of a few blocks along Mexico Highway 307.  I had spaghetti bolognese at a small Italian restaurant on a side street, but was surprised when the waiter said they were out of parmesan cheese.  That seemed almost as strange as the hotel restaurant in Copán the night before which was out of tortillas.  “Estamos en México.  We’re in Mexico,” I said to the mesero in Spanish, “how can you be out of tortillas?”  “We’re in Copán,” he replied, as if that explained everything.

Meanwhile, the beautiful intern – who was Guatemalan and, therefore, actually of Mayan descent – had fallen in love with the archaeologist’s son, whom she believed to be sane and the victim of a conspiracy masterminded by a former colleague of the guy’s father, who now just happened to be the Secretary of State of the United States.  She was plotting to help him escape.

I spent the next day riding one of the hotel’s bicycles down the sole beach road as far as I could go, until I hit the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve.  It was brutally hot, and the adjustable bicycle seat kept collapsing under my weight every time I hit a bump, so that I felt like I was riding a hot-wheels tricycle.  But I was enjoying the freedom of wheels, the exercise and the sea air.

That night, I had dinner with two women from Winnipeg, who’d been on my tour and who were also staying in Tulum for a few days.  Later, back at the hotel bar, I got to know Corey the bartender as well as Jane and Mark, two Londoners who were staying at the hotel, but heading off the next day for a few days at one of the rustic beach hotels.  I seemed to be a bit of a young couples’ magnet, as the next night at the bar I met Jeremy and Shannon from Chicago, who had just come from staying at one of the rustic places on the beach, and were passing their last few days in Tulum at the Teetotum.

I spent the next two days stretched out in a rented beach chair under a palm thatch umbrella at a place called La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful in Italian), where I had Tacos Arrachera for lunch each day (marinated skirt steak with guacamole and onions, and they did have tortillas), taking the sun and reading my novel.

I rode the bicycle there one day.  But on the second day, I took one of the plentiful taxis, which seemed to be everywhere and would appear immediately on the street the moment you wanted one.  Jeremy and Shannon showed up my second day at La Vita e Bella, which coincidentally was where they had stayed before checking into Hotel Teetotum.  They settled into some beach chairs at a respectable distance from mine,  assuring me that they weren’t stalking me.  The thought had not even crossed my mind for a minute; but once they’d mentioned it and denied it, it seemed like a distinct possibility.

The beautiful intern did help the archaeologist’s son escape, and they made their way to the west coast of Florida, where her adoptive parents lived.  They were oceanographers and were listening to some strange sounds emanating from somewhere deep in the Gulf of Mexico, which had started immediately after a strange radio signal was intercepted from somewhere deep in the constellation Orion on a particular day when the planets in our solar system all lined up in a particular way that only happened once every 65 million years.

My only other trip to town was to pay a second visit to Don Cafeto’s, a place our tour had stopped for lunch before we visited the ruins and where I’d first had Tacos Arrachera (and they did have tortillas).  Our van driver had claimed that Don Cafeto’s had the best food in Tulum.

I’m convinced that in Latin cultures, no one ever goes out to dinner by himself.  That if you do, it means there’s something hideously wrong with you that you can’t find someone to have dinner with, and it’s just pure arrogance that you don’t hide yourself back in your room and spare the public the sight of your lonely, pitiful self.

Maybe I was being over-sensitive, but I felt a little less than welcomed at Don Cafeto’s, absent the rest of my group.  To combat my discomfort, I picked up a copy of the local paper from the table next to me and read the news in Spanish (because I can!).  I was a bit disconcerted to read that our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, had just been in Mexico, promising assistance from the U.S. in Mexico’s bloody war against murderous drug gangs.  “Great,” I thought, “now there’ll be reprisal killings of American tourists.”  And I walked back to my hotel with a bit more haste than I might have, had I not been capable of reading in Spanish.

As it turns out, there was an alien spacecraft manned by Pure Evil, buried beneath the Gulf of Mexico, where it had lain dormant for 65 million years, awaiting the radio transmission from the constellation Orion to bring it back to life, so that it could go about its business of destroying mankind in December of 2012 per the Mayan prediction.

But the archaeologist’s son was able to dig up some magic weapon at Chichen Itzá, with which he battled Pure Evil in another dimension of space and time, and ultimately was able to save humanity.  The beautiful intern had become pregnant with twins, courtesy the archaeologist’s son; and their spawn was the subject of the second novel in the series, which I’d bought as well but still haven’t read.

Corey, the hotel bartender, offered to drive me to the airport in Cancun on Saturday for half the price the Tulum taxis charged.  He was good company and the price was right, so I said sure.  At breakfast on Saturday morning, I ran into the Londoners Jane and Mark, who’d actually gotten married on the beach the day before without telling anyone, and were back at the Teetotum for the French toast with caramelized bananas.  (A little rich for my tastes.)

On the way to the airport, Corey asked me if I could give him the money in advance of arriving there.  He explained that if the taxi drivers at the airport saw me handing him money for driving me, they’d bash in his car.  I felt a little like I was doing a drug deal, passing him the money – which he immediately hid in the compartment between the seats — while the car was  in motion, lest someone observe us at a stop light.

But we were in Mexico, after all, and on the Yucatán peninsula, which is bathed in the deceptively tranquil waters of the Gulf and is home to the mysterious Maya.  You probably can’t be too careful.

The deceptively tranquil beach at La Vita e Bella, Tulum 3/26/10

For more detail on how the archaeologist’s son defeated the forces of Pure Evil, read El Testamento Maya, by Steve Alten, originally published in English as Domain.  http://www.amazon.com/Domain-Trilogy-Steve-Alten/  

Or if you can read in Spanish (I can!) try http://www.amazon.com/testamento-Maya-Vintage-Espanol-Spanish/

Postcard from the Yucatán: Astro-Theatrics

I was never very good at geometry.

Algebra, yes.  The very logical, linear, deductive solving of equations came quite easily to me.  But angles and spatial relationships always boggled my mind.  I could follow an explanation for several seconds, but once explained, comprehension fled my brain like a teenager from a bingo hall.

Later in life, I attributed it to the fact that I lacked some degree of depth perception, owing to one eye being near-sighted and the other far-sighted, a condition that was not corrected with eyeglasses until sometime when I was in high school.  This also explained to me my poor performance in sports as a child, since I couldn’t judge how close a ball was to my head as it moved through the air until it hit me.

Maybe there’s no truth to either assertion.  Maybe there are other reasons I was so inept at sports.  But I prefer this explanation and fully intend to stick by it to the grave.

Equally annoying has always been my inability to identify constellations in the night sky.  There was an Astronomy merit badge you could get when I was a Boy Scout.  I must have considered going for it, because I can dredge up a vague memory of total frustration if I think about it.  I recall having one of those fold-out, laminated star maps with connect-the-dot constellations traced on a midnight-blue background.  But looking at the night sky without the benefit of the lines, I could never make out a single constellation.  I can spot Venus – the first and the brightest star (yes, I know it’s actually a planet!).  And I can find three stars in a row that are part of Orion.  But whether they’re his belt or his sword, I have no clue.   I can’t make out the rest of him to save my life.  Forget about the Big Dipper.

So I was very excited when I convinced myself I was following the explanations of our guide in the Yucatán, who had been billed on the tour company’s website as an expert in “archaeo-astronomy.”  My self-satisfaction was short-lived.

At one site, we stopped in a typical Mayan peasant hut, probably built fairly recently near the welcome center of the site.  Our guide explained that even today, Mayan shamans lay out the dimensions of a house that is to be built just as they did in ancient times, using the dimensions of the Golden Mean or Golden Ratio.  

You can look up the Golden Mean on Wikipedia, as I’ve done several times since I’ve returned from the trip, futilely trying to engrave it in my mind in some lasting way.  (I’ve had to look it up again just to write this next paragraph.)

The footprint of a traditional Mayan home will have the dimensions of a Golden Rectangle.  (In ancient times, they managed this with lengths of rope.)  You start by making a square.  Then mark a length from the midpoint of one side of the square to an opposite corner of it.  Then your trace a circle around the square with that length, anchoring the length at that midpoint.  If you extend the end  of one side of the square out to meet the circle, you will have created a rectangle.  And the ratio of the length of that rectangle to the length of a side of the original square will be equal to the ratio of the length of a side of the square to the distance from the end of the square to the end of the rectangle.

If you had trouble following that and also were not very good at sports as a child, maybe you should consider having your vision checked, if you haven’t done so already.  Just a thought.

Our guide’s contention was that the Maya had a good understanding of geometry, derived from their observations of the movement of the sun, moon, stars and planets, and used it in the construction of their ceremonial buildings.  Such that the light from the rising or setting sun, for example, on certain days of the year such as the spring or autumn equinox, could be focused through a window to fall on a specific spot in a building.

Observatory at Mayapan 3/20/10

They were employing “theatrical lighting,” he said.  Imagine a king or a religious leader standing at the top of a staircase of a pyramid, backlit by the rising sun on an auspicious day, such that a halo of golden light surrounds him just as the sun rises above the horizon.  To the masses below, it’s a sign from the gods; from the point of view of the leader, a clever bit of theatre.

For millennia, of course, religion has relied on theatrics to impress the masses. And to this day, it continues.  I vividly remember an Easter Sunday morning service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine here in New York that my sister and I attended sometime in the late ‘70s.  We sat in the darkened cathedral with minimal candlelight for the first part of the Easter service.  At a certain point in the service, the Bishop ceremoniously knocked on the doors of the cathedral (miked and broadcast over speakers inside the church) and announced, “Christ is risen; Christ is risen indeed.”  At which point, the huge bronze doors at the entrance to the cathedral were opened, and sunlight rolled into the darkened interior like a freight train.  At the time I was working in the theatre as an actor and director and recognized the brilliant theatrics that it was.  Nonetheless, I had goose bumps and tears in my eyes, the effect was so beautiful and moving.

Our tour was planned so that we would witness two examples of Mayan astro-theatrics.  On the Spring Equinox, the rising sun shines through a window of the Temple of the Dolls at Dzibilchaltun.  And at the more famous Chichén Itzá, the setting sun casts a shadow along the main staircase of the Pyramid of Kulkulcán that creates the impression of a serpent moving down it as it touches a carved serpent head at the base of the pyramid.  (Their god Kulkulcán was portrayed as a feathered serpent.)

Unfortunately, the weather gods were not our friends in this venture. Of the five days we traipsed around Mayan ruins throughout the Yucatán, the 21st day of March – the Equinox – was the only day of the tour to be overcast from sunrise to sundown, with cloud-cover completely obscuring the rising and setting sun.

Nonetheless, we arrived at Dzibilchaltun early in the morning, joining throngs of people hoping for a break in the clouds during the several hours in which the rising sun might be seen through a window at the back of the temple.

Temple of the Dolls, Dzibilchaltun 3/21/10

Everyone stood around facing the temple.  We posed for photos with mock amazement on our faces, in case we wanted to claim we’d seen it.  Someone took a picture of a poster of the effect.  She’d send it around, and we all could use that as evidence we’d actually witnessed it.  Three women dressed mostly in white with crystals around their necks held hands and chanted for a bit.

At one point, I was standing in an open space in front of the temple with no one else around me, facing the crowd of people looking toward the temple.  And I thought, if the sun were to break through the clouds right now, rays of sunlight would stream through the temple window and magically silhouette me.

I imagined people would start approaching me with their cripples and their babies, seeking my blessing.  What would I do?  And I thought, I would lay my hands upon their cripples and lift their babies up to the sunlight.  Why not?

I will leave it to my therapist to interpret these Christ fantasies that standing in front of the Temple of the Dolls engendered.  It should be noted that the sun did not break through the clouds at all.  Not one little ray.  I blessed no babies nor cured any cripples.  Although my loss of twenty pounds before the trip miraculously improved the mobility of my own joints.

Just before we left, when it was clear (even if the sky was not) that nothing was going to happen, a young couple with a stroller went up to the ropes surrounding the temple.  They stood there for a bit, and then the father took the baby out of the stroller and lifted it above his head facing the temple, while the mother stepped back and took a picture.  She made him hold the baby up several times, whether to get the perfect picture or to be sure the baby was properly blessed, I cannot say.

Blessing, Dzibilchaltun 3/21/10