Treasures of the jungle

     Before arriving at our house in Merida, my travel companions and I spent two nights in Campeche, now the eponymous capital of that state, and a beautiful city in its own right. We stayed in the heart of the old town, surrounded by walls built in the 1600s to protect against the (mostly English) pirates. These days the city walls and gates are primarily tourist attractions, as is the 18th-century cannon, now pointed at streetlights and utility poles rather than marauders bent on plunder.

Photo courtesy of Elin Jones

     We all agreed that Campeche is worth a return visit, but the real focus of our trip was a three-day tour of the Calakmul jungle and ruins with Chelita Travel. In my initial emails with the company, I neglected to give certain specifics about our group--like the fact that our youngest traveler was sixty-six, the oldest eighty-one, and that among us we have a variety of (probably mostly age-related, though one hates to admit such a thing) physical complaints. We did not want to scare the company away.

     We need not have worried. Our guide turned out to be Wilberth Pech, co-owner of the company with his wife Berenice, and perfect company for us. Not only was he unfazed by travel with our geriatric gaggle, he is passionate about Mayan history and a competitive birder (yes, there is such a thing); in our time together, he led us to the haunts of toucans, trogons, tityras, and the stunningly gorgeous ocellated turkey endemic to the Yucatan peninsula. 

Photo courtesy of Kate Fitzgerald

Unfortunately, this relative of Ohio's wild turkey is threatened due to habitat loss and over-hunting by human groups trying to survive in this not-always-hospitable part of the Americas. One hope of some people in the region is that the expansion of tourism brought on by the Mayan Train and the recognition of Calakmul as a Mixed World Heritage Site will lead to both increased prosperity for locals and a deeper appreciation of this special place.

     And the Calakmul region is special. Best-known as the home of the powerful Snake Kingdom of the Mayan Classic period, the Mayan cities in this area date back nearly 2500 years, prior to the Golden Age of ancient Greece. After the large cities were abandoned sometime during what in Europe is called the Middle Ages, the jungle took back its own, a process that continues today.

     But the buildings remain, and they are spectacular. We visited multiple sites over our three days and often had them completely to ourselves. (Why anyone feels the need for Disney when actual ancient temples and palaces can be visited almost for free is beyond me.) The triple towers of Xpujil were perhaps my favorite structures,

but two of our number braved the climb at Calakmul, (I was not one of them.) 

This best-known of all the sites on our trip did have perhaps a dozen other visitors the day we were there, and of course, one of them was on the same pyramid.

    Our three days flew by and at the same time felt like an academic semester in terms of the information presented. Though we were ready to collapse by the time we got to our hotel at the end of Day Three, we were already talking about when and how to explore more of this beautiful and historic part of the world.