The entire town of Izamal is painted yellow, including the old, simple stone, occupied convent is. Steeped in history, this pre-columbian Mayan city was significant politically and religiously. Today it’s more of a tourist attraction. Decorated horse drawn buggies offer rides around the narrow streets, vendors selling the same stuff and food stalls line the square. Strolling around the public side of the convent I noticed how simply the women, nuns, live. Their habit is more like that of a monk, dressed and long brown, tied at the waist with cord. The cathedral is very plain too, painted bright white, no fancy ceilings, mouldings, paintings or richly carved sky high altars. Am not sure if this is because the men have taken all the decorations for themselves and their churches or if the women just don’t feel the need for all the glitz and glamour…hmm…
Climbing to the top of an old pyramid on the edge of town, a rope anchored for assistance as this one is also crazy steep, we sat and enjoyed the view and drying breeze. No entry fee, no restorations, just a pile of rocks kinda in the shape of a pyramid.
From Izamal we stopped at a few Cenotes before making our way to Los Coloradas at the top of the peninsular, then driving the very narrow sand road across the top to El Cuyo. On the way we passed the pink lagoon and salt mines. We saw a small amount of Flamingos, as it wasn’t the right season. But the main event was the narrow sand road. We had spoken to several people who made funny faces at hearing our plans to drive this route to El Cuyo. The 30km sand route is more direct, if we are forced to turn back, it would have been a 100+ km detour. So on we go, yes it was narrow, bushes and trees scraped all down the sides of the camper, our greatest worry was overhead branches, the tuck is 4.1 meters tall & 9 meters long. So the road is narrow, and two way! We had seen several vehicles coming from that direction, fingers were crossed we don’t encounter anyone else coming towards us, as there just aren’t any passing possibilities. Luckily we didn’t meet anyone. The last 10 km was the tightest, I was wondering if we would have any paint left on the box. The last 50 meters stopped us in our tracks. We could see the end of the road, but overhead trees blocked our way. Tim had to climb up and cut branches and ultimately got the chainsaw out.
Thinking we were clear, we found that the streets of El Cuyo are laced together with very low slung wires. Too many to keep an eye on them all, we did hook one which pulled over a power pole, a rotten pole at that. So out of the houses people came and gathered around to watch as Tim, who was already dripping in sweat from clearing the trees, was now digging a hole to stand the rotten pole up in. OMG, i thought it was impossible, but he always finds a way, and fixed it better than it was. We then used the height of the truck to restring the pulled wires, when the police arrived. Someone called them to report this gringo incident. Tim now soaking through and filthy changed before they took him down to the station to file a report. Leaving the kids and i parked on the side of the road waiting. The crowd continued to gather as word spread like wildfire. Tim was back in 20 mins, all was well, they just had to get a heavily armed officer to come and do the translations. The little old lady with her boobs down to her knees wanted 600 pesos for the cost of a new pole. We settled on 500p and were soon on our way with our new friends, the police, escorting us down to the beach, lifting the wires out of the way as we passed beneath them. They lead us to a perfect, free, beach camp, we spent 3 nights.
El Cuyo is a sleepy beach town, there is potential for resort development. The wind blows hard, there are a few kiteboarding schools and rental places. We didn’t kite here, the surf swell was big, with messy beach breaking waves that didn’t make me feel safe to kite in. We spent a nice couple of days playing games with the kids, reading books and hanging out on the beach before moving on to Isla Blanca,Cancun.
Isla Blanca is a small sand island North of Cancun. Known to have the best flat water kiteboarding in Mexico. On one side is the Gulf of Mexico, with turbulent turquoise waters, messy waves crashing in every direction don’t make it enticing to want to kite there. Separated by soft white sand dunes is the knee deep yellow water lagoon.
We set up camp on the hard sand beach and wait for the wind. Several kite schools are also located on this beach, they arrive at 8:30am each windy day and get set up. Kiters can be seen out on the water as early as 8am.
The wind blew strong and steady, we had 4 days kiting. The water is very warm & only knee deep, not enough to create waves, so it’s a perfect for learning new moves & tricks. Trying to get our jibes on the strapless surfboard is frustratingly difficult. Understanding the technique is the easy part, executing is the hard part. Persistence and practice, in the end I did pull off a few successful wobbly jibes, but plunged off the board a good 200+ times first. Tim had faster success and had the move down nicely before we left. Poor Jaxon was sick for the entire week, raging fevers, no energy or appetite and a runny tummy. Poor kid slept most of the days. It was his first dose of the flu. I have plenty of meds, and used them to help him sleep through the night. Some people managed to get their Jeep stuck in the sand and borrowed our sand tracks to get themselves out. They were exercising their beautiful horses on the beach and happily offered to give the kids a ride as a thank you. Charley and Jaxon were beyond excited and happily climbed up and enjoyed a good half hour ride.
Dad & Jen returned from a smooth trip to Miami with spare parts to fix their fridge, some bits and pieces for us and a couple of bottles of Gin.
Tomorrow we’ll head into Cancun and stock up on supplies before heading down the coast towards Belize.
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