Looking for Hobies - Finding Cenotes in the Yucatan

Last year I found a lonely Hobie Cat 18 with no mast on the beach at Tulum. This year I went searching for Hobies in Chicxulub, the home of the Cummins Cup Hobie 16 annual regatta. Forty Hobies sailed in the regatta in 2009. I could not find the 2010 dates on the internet, but knew the regatta was in late July or early August. I could not go then, so the last Saturday in August, I took the 6 a.m. ferry from Cozumel to Playa del Carmen and caught the 7:30 first-class bus to Merida. The bus has reclining seats better than any airline, with free individual headsets, soft drinks, bottled water, movies (in Spanish) and lots of leg room. It is a five hour ride to Merida, with one stop in Tulum. I took a local bus from Merida to Progreso. It was like any city bus: dirty, smelly, and bumpy. From Progreso I paid 50 pesos (about 40 cents) for a ride in a beat up local’s van-bus to Chicxulub, six miles east on the north coast of the Yucatan. The driver had installed a musical horn and every time we passed a female between ages of about 15 and 50, he pushed the horn, which was almost continuous.

It was 2:30 when I arrived in Chicxulub and I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since 5 a.m. I walked around town and found a restaurant with a lot of locals in it; always a sign of good food. I had grilled fish and a Sol and both were excellent. I am not that fond of beer but some how in Mexico in the summer, they always taste good. It had rained hard while I was on the bus from Merida and the dirt streets were covered with pools, about the size of my swimming pool at Casa Martillo, but not quite as deep.

I asked everyone who smiled (which was almost everyone ) where the Hobie Cat sailboats are kept. My Spanish is not terrific, but I can get by and I think most understood what I was asking (especially with my artful drawings). But no one knew of any sailboats, much less, Hobie Cats. I asked a couple of locals if there was a hotel where the sailors stayed and they pointed down the beach. So I started walking along the beach. The closes thing I saw to what looked like a mast were the fishing boats with long poles fore and aft. Not a sailboat nor hotel in sight. After walking about a mile along the beach in the heat, I saw nothing but sand and water in front of me, with heat waves shimmering in the air. I asked a few more locals, then realized that I was not going to find any Hobie Cats in Chicxulub. I took the van back to Progreso, hoping for better luck.

Progreso is like many beach towns with a wide sidewalk and a seawall on the beach side, and rows of hotels and restaurants on the other. Lots of people enjoying the beach, sun and calm seas, but no sailboats. It was getting late and I asked the rates at a couple of hotels. The lowest was 400 pesos, plus tax and it did not look very clean. I decided to give up my search for Hobie Cats and seek other adventures.

I took the bus back to Merida, which was celebrating both the bicentennial of independence from Spain on September 16th, and the centennial of the Mexican revolution on November 20th. The Mexican government and every state in Mexico are sponsoring events. On Saturday and Sunday in Merida there is traditional Mexican dancing, singing, marching bands, and lights shows. I listened to a lady sing about eight songs and she was sensational.

Many years ago my mother and I stayed at the Hotel Gran, which was built in 1910 (also its centennial this year). The hotel is beautiful but the room needed renovation, the bathroom was a poorly-converted closet and the beds still had their original mattresses. This time I tried the Hotel Caribe, which is next to the Gran and also located just one block from the central plaza. The Caribe is a former Catholic College from the XVII Century converted into a charming Colonial hotel. Although it does not have the grand staircase of the Gran hotel, it has a beautiful colonial atmosphere with a courtyard and fountain, air conditioned rooms with newer beds, and a nice pool on the top floor. There is also a great view of the cathedral, which is the oldest in Mexico. I got a sunset shot of El Ateneo, formerly the archbishops palace behind the cathedral.

The next morning, during my ritual café latte, I decided to go to the cenotes (sink holes) at Cuzama, located about 23 miles south of Merida. I found the bus station about eight blocks from the hotel, bought my ticket and had some breakfast while waiting for the 8:45 a.m. bus. It was another city bus with many families and five young gringos (actually four English and one Brazilian university students). About an hour later, the students and I got off the bus at Cuzama. There were pedicabs waiting to take us to the cenotes entrance and the students asked if I would like to join them. The six of us took three cabs. Two of them were powered by small motorcycles and mine was pedal powered. Of course I arrived at the entrance 10 minutes later than the other two. What we saw surprised me: Small wooden railcars on a narrow track hauled by horses. Each car carried six passengers, if two sit on the back board, which had no padding or rain cover.

After not-so-subtle urging, the old horse trotted down the track at quite a clip. The railcar seemed like it was going to tip over at every curve and I held on to the beam across the roof to stay in. The theme song of Indiana Jones kept going through my mind as we bumped and clacked through the jungle. After about a mile, we passed another railcar that had been lifted off the track to let us pass. There is only one track and the railcar going in has the right-of-way. On the return trip, our railcar driver had to lift the car off the tracks and put it back on about 10 times. He was a small wiry young man of about 20 with muscles of a weight lifter.

About four miles in we stopped at the first cenote. We climbed down steep wooden steps to a platform about 15 feet above a huge pool, about the size of a football field, with a domed roof.

After exploring all of the cenote, we got back on the railcar and went further into the jungle to the next stop. The second cenote was a little more challenging to get in and out. A 20 foot jump off a wooden platform and a climb up a wooden ladder of dubious construction. The two girls in our group decided not to jump, but the three boys and I had another thrilling dive and swim. There were several holes in the roof through which the sun shined and caused an illusion of a solid beam of light in the water to the bottom of the pool. I jumped in with my mask and snorkel and swam to the light beam, dove 30 feet to the bottom, and rose in the beam of light to the surface. It was a deeper than I thought and I felt a slight panic as I surfaced, gasping for air when I hit the surface. But what a blast!

The last cenote was on a spur off the main track. The entrance is a small hole in the roof of the cenote down a 40 foot wooden ladder to a wooden platform. The girls did not want to go down the ladder, so they watched our packs while we climbed down into the dark. There was very little light and it took awhile for my eyes to adapt. But in the center of the roof, which was covered with stalactites, there was a another hole with the sun beaming down. By now we knew the drill and jumped off the platform and swam to the light. This cenote was the most ethereal of the three and seemed to have a distinctive mystic quality. While we were down in the cenote, it rained hard on the surface above us. We climbed out to a steaming jungle and then rode the railcar back to civilization. In Cuzama we waited about 30 minutes for some young men to clean very new Mercedes van bus and drive us back to Merdia.

We arrived in Merida about 7 p.m., too late for me the get a bus back to Playa del Carmen, so I decided to stay in the hostel where the students were staying. After negotiating a rate for the night, the clerk asked for my passport, which was at the immigration office on Cozumel being processed for a new business visa. The clerk refused to let me check in without an “official” ID. I showed him my Mexican resident ferry pass with my photo, my Mexican Costco and Sam’s Club cards, all to no avail. So I walked back to the Hotel Caribe and checked in for another night. I was planning on meeting the students in the plaza, but we did not connect.

I took the 7:30 a.m. bus back to Playa del Carmen the next morning and caught the 1 p.m. ferry. It was a great weekend and I look forward returning to Merida with friends in December.