Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Security is a sensitive topic for Americans.  In the post 911/War on Terror/Iraq era, it's easy to see why.  Men are in harms way, and the country remains on a war footing.

At what price?

American airports are starkly reminiscent of George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.  People bustle to and fro, under the watchful eyes of security officers, and accompanied by the droning of propaganda.  "The threat level is orange", blare the loudspeakers.  Television monitors tell the stories boys and families damaged by combat.  Even the very name of the border patrol — homeland defence — conjures images of threats and war.

This photograph, taken on the F Concourse at Philadelphia International Airport, shows no fewer than 9 visible surveillance cameras, and as you walk further you will discover more — a dozen in total.  Some of them are less than two yards apart.

My friends in America, as you head to your elections, ask yourselves whether the fear fomented by the current administration is justified.  Is it rational, or paranoid?  Ask yourselves what the right thing is for Iraq, too. 

I am not discounting how hard these problems are, nor would it be appropriate for me to suggest that another could have done a better job than Mr. Bush. He's your President, you elected him, and presumably he's what the majority of your electorate wanted.  Besides, I don't have the right to vote in your country.  

The situation deserves a real debate, that's all. After all, the price of security is liberty.

Did you know that Winston Churchill and his wife took separate vacations — he to paint (preferably at a beach), and she on tour?  Well, we don’t take separate vacations, but certainly by the time Thursday of last week rolled around we were all ready for a little relief from touring around.  So, we shopped.  Guyaberas (the ubiquitous shirt worn by Meridano’s), panama hats, table cloths, soccer shirts, and more.  We had a great time.

We also ate and drank!  Ice cream at Colon (a 100 year old ice cream parlor on the square), exotic fruit juices at Jugo de California, Yucatecan specialties like Pollo Pibil and Pok Chuc at the Main Street Restaurant.  In the evenings, we also ate at Pancho’s (good food, awesome mojito’s), and Vino y Pane (poor Italian, to be avoided).  Best deal on a breakfast buffet?  The Colonial Hotel — $6 for adults, $4 for kids buys you all you can eat fruit, pastries, eggs cooked to order, juice and Mexican specialities.

Part way through the day we ran into our friend the saw player again, and this time I caught him on video using our Sony HDR-SR1 camcorder.  The original is in high definition, so this streamed video doesn’t quite do it justice. 

Finally, Friday morning we packed up and hit the road back to Cancun, for one more day at the beach. This is the view of the pool and ocean, shot with a Nokia N93 cameraphone, from the lobby of the wonderful Royal Sands where we were booked to stay. 

An unfortunate screw up resulted in them renting our beach front villa to someone else, so we were forced to stay at another resort — the Royal Islander.

Beach, dinner, margaritas, and one last sunrise the next day, which I caught on the N93, clamped into the tripod accessory you can get with it.  Apologies for the wind noise, but it was quite windy!

Then off to the airport.  It was a zoo!  Despite getting there more than two hours ahead of time, and the fabulous help of the very efficient Mexican team at the airport, we got to the gate just as final boarding was announced over the PA.

From Cancun, we flew to Philadelphia, then on to Ottawa.  I caught these pictures out the window of the airplane on the final leg, just as the sun was going down. The location of the plane, between two layers of cloud, creates a very dramatic effect.  Both taken with a Nokia N80i cameraphone.

Wednesday we headed west out of Merida to the Gulf of Mexico and the tiny fishing village of Celestun.  It’s only about 80 kilometres from Merida, but the lack of a high speed road, and the number of Mayan towns you have to travel through on the way turn that 80 kilometer trip into a 1.5 hour drive.

Celestun is known for its biosphere on the Rio Grande, and the birds (including Flamingos) which you can see there.  When we got there, we chartered a couple of  boats in town, and then headed out for a 2.5 hour boat trip down the river, and through the mangroves.

First stop was at Bird Island, a sanctuary for pelicans and cormorants.  Its shoreline jammed with birds, the island is quite a sight to see.

Next stop, the petrified forest.  This isn’t a fossilized forest, but rather a forest that has been preserved for 180 years after sea water flooded an existing forest.  The tree strunks are heavily salinated, and the ground hardened with salt.

The boats were tied up to some of the living mangroves, and we walked into the forest.

Peter chose to leap a puddle of seawater, not realizing that the ground on the other side was considerably less hardened than what he had leapt from.  What vacation would be complete without mud up to your knees?

After the petrified forest, our boat driver headed out in search of flamingos.  On the way, I snapped this photo of a white egret in flight.

The flamingos can be found in shallow water on the river.  Interesting flamingo facts:

• Female flamingos are bigger than male flamingoes.
• The pink color comes from the shrimp that they feed upon.  They need to eat for 12 hours per day
• Every evening at 8 PM, the flamingos finish feeding for the day, and then fly away in order to avoid the crocodiles that emerge from the mangroves at about that time to… feed on flamingos.

Here are three flamingos and an egret hidden in the mangrove.

There are hundreds of flamingos in the shallows of the river.  There were flocks all around us. 

Flamingos sure look funny when they take flight, running along the surface of the water, and flapping their wings until the are aloft.

Unlike the flamingos which feed in the open, egrets look for food in the shallows, amongst the mangroves.  I caught this fellow perched on a branch, just above water level. 

There are also osprey, which take fish from the river.  This particular bird in flight has a fish in its claws.

Next we took a trip through a tunnel in the mangroves.  It was quite a different from the experience of having been on the open river.  The mangroves completely enclose the boat.

There are crocodiles which live among the mangroves, but the only living thing we saw was this duck.

Next our driver pulled up to a dock at the mangrove edge.  A short board walk led into the forest.

We all had a swim in the cenote that the boardwalk led to.

On the way back, I snapped this photo of a couple of men crabbing. 

And then we arrived back at the beach for dinner, drinks and the sunset.  The house specialty was fresh caught grouper filet stuffed with… fresh caught crab and shrimp.  Yum!

Down the beach, in fact, there were a couple of fisherman cleaning their catch, and attracting a huge flock of birds wanting to help.

Following dinner we headed back to Merida.  We got lost several times on the way, but ultimately made it about an hour late.

Tuesday we headed North out of Merida toward the fishing village of Progreso.  Along the way we stopped at Dzibilchaltun, which is famous for the Temple of the Seven Dolls (an astronomical observatory), and a beautiful cenote where you can swim.  However, there was no swimming to be had on the 20th of March, nor the 21st, as this is the time of the spring equinox, when the sun rises directly through the doorway of the Temple of the Seven Dolls.  Thousands of tourists show up early in the morning on both days.  As a result, the cenote and the buildings are blocked off, to prevent anyone from hurting themselves. We purchased the services of a guide named William, for M$250, and walked the grounds looking at, but not touching, anything. 

What a bummer!

This is the Temple of the Seven Dolls.  We didn't come back the next day for the rising of the sun, but the central doorway is where you would see it. You can see a small image of the sunrise on this Yucatan Today page about Dzibilchaltun.   In the foreground, there's also a low platform with a stone set in it, which is oriented as a sundial.  At the solar zenith, the stone casts no shadow, which is the first day of the Mayan calendar.  Thus, the astronomers at Dzibilchaltun were able to accurately forecast seasons, and track time.

Here's a view of the cenote as well.  It looks like a very inviting dip, doesn't it?  Notice all the caution tape around the edges to dissuade you from swimming, however.

Right in the center of Dzibilchaltun stands the remains of a Catholic church, as well.  After the conquest, portions of this site were dismantled to create a church, a home for the priest and a corral.

When you pay your admission to Dzibilchaltun, you have the option of visiting the museum for an extra M$20.  It's worth the price.  The museum houses a small collection of Mayan artifacts, as well as providing a good selection of post conquest Mayan displays.  This is a spectacular incense burner housed in the Mayan part of the collection.

From Dzibilchaltun, we headed north into Progreso.  Progreso is a busy port town, boasting the worlds longest pier extending 5 miles into the Gulf of Mexico.  Here's a satellite photograph of the pier from Google Earth.

We ate dinner at Le Saint Bonnet right in front of the pier.  Delicious seafood, plus a steady stream of interesting people walking buy, including this character selling masks.  He asked M$250.  After some patient negotiating we settled on M$130 — about C$14.

After dinner, we took a stroll down the beach, accompanied by a pack of five dogs who befriended us, and photographed the sunset before heading back to Merida.

To the south of Merida there is an area of low hills called the Puuc Hills.  Rich in historical sites, it offers a number of Haciendas and Mayan sites to visit.  Monday, we hit four of them.

We began with Hacienda Yaxcopoil, in its time one of the most important rural estates in Yucatan.  With 22,000 acres of land in its heyday, the owners farmed cattle, and maintained a massive henequen plantation.  Today it's a privately owned museum, run by the descendents of those plantation barons. 

The entry is a moorish arch, with enclosing walls, and a tree in the center of the lawn. 

The facade of the main building gives you an idea of the scale of the estate, even though today the stucco is in a very sorry state of disrepair.  Within the walls are courtyards, bedrooms, a parlour, dining room, running water and a swimming pool.

This is a view of the interior courtyard, from the main entrance.

The richly patterned floor tiles, different in every room, give you an idea of the original grandeur of the house. 

And here is a view of the machine shop and workshops of the hacienda, where the henequen is processed into sisal, and from there into clothing, rope, and other products.  We were unable to enter the machine shops, however, because the floors are in such disrepair.

From Hacienda Yaxcopoil, we headed 56 kilometers south to the prime archaeological site in the area, which is Uxmal.  Uxmal is a massive ruin, with some beautiful large structures. The most famous structure at the site is the Magicians Temple, seen here from the top of the Governors Palace.

The Magicians Temple boasts rows of Chac (the rain god) masks up the steps, and a massive Chenes style monster mouth doorway. 

Uxmal is organized as a series of squares, or quadrangles, with living space in each. This gives Uxmal a very different feel from many Mayan sites.  It feels much more like a city, and much more lived-in and liveable.  At the center of each square is a chultune, or cistern, for collecting rain water.  Unlike most Mayan sites, where water was easily obtained from underground rivers and cenotes, the Puuc sites have no water.  The chultunes were used to collect rain water during the wet seasons, which  was then used during the dry season. 

This is a view of the main square at Uxmal. 

The famous Quetzal bird is a permanent inhabitant of Uxmal.  I managed to catch this fellow, sitting in a tree, with a 300mm lens.

The other great thing about Uxmal is that it's less than 20% uncovered.  If you spend a little time roaming outside the main area, there are plenty of opportunities to feel like a modern day Howard Carter.

After spending 3 hours at Uxmal, we jumped in the car and headed to a couple of the smaller Puuc sites — Sayil, and Kabah.  We arrived just as the sun was going down (after hours, but a tip to the caretaker solves that problem), and were able to shoot some great photos in that warm sunset light.

Here's the main plaza at Sayil.

Detail from the plaza's facade.

Detail from the arches at the Temple of Hieroglyphic writing.

 At Kabah, we were very lucky to catch the final rays of the sun on the structure called the Codz Poop (pronounced codes pope).  The Codz Poop is famous for it's repeated Chac masks, which illuminate very well with the light.

On the back side of the Codz Poop, there are a series of 5 figures.  Only one is still standing today, but there is extensive restoration work underway.