OR TRAVELLING TO A TOWN THAT’S LOST ITS IDENTITY AND HEART. POOR XPUHIL.
Alert: Latest article about Tren Maya that proves what I say in the below account has turned out right! It’s white elephant era has begun surprisingly quickly! Don’t want to say I told you so but, I told you so he he!!! Apparently it’s being operated by the military? I don’t know about you but a military run tourist route never has left me with a warm and snuggly feeling in my belly as a traveller. Do read the article it’s accidently extremely funny. It also says
“Today, the Maya Train is not a tourist product that can be offered. There are no clear routes, there are no defined prices, not even the schedules are well established,” he commented noting that travel agencies have not yet had any contact regarding train promotion.
“If they had a developed product, they would be here at tourist events, explaining what time it leaves, how much it costs, in what languages it is available. But we don’t know anything, everything remains a mystery,”
In other words it’s a huge cock up!
Alert: Here I mostly ramble on about getting to the prime archaeological sites area and the place I used as a base, Xpujil or Xpuhil. The inner fury I felt upon having seen first hand, Tren Mayas long hard line of destruction and devastation of the area rather overtook my original intention of just writing about the sites that I went to. Mexico generally had been a shocker since my last visit and sadly you can clearly hear my disappointment in a place that just three years ago I had worshipped. If you don’t care then I will publish a post tomorrow about the actual sites I went to while there!
And so back to the post:
The Journey to Xpuhil
Riding on the bus away from beastly Bacalar and started on my real road trip! Hooray I’m leaving and going to revisit Xpuhil to use as a base to visit surrounding archaeological sites that I missed last time. I celebrated on that bus to Chetumal after dragging my case miles from my little pension in the midday sun, and was ready to wait there for a couple of hours to get my connection. So in theory I should arrive at my cabin before it’s too late to feel safe, although it will be dark. Upon my joyous arrival (I had so hated Bacalar that any shit hole was now paradise!) I also found that I could buy an earlier ticket upon arrival the bus station, which was a huge relief, rather than the later one which would have involved me waiting five hours and much sighing and whining. However, I still had over an hour to kill and I was suddenly famished.
I celebrated with a very lovely pasta lunch. I’m rather over tacos now I know that they cook everything in seed oil and the food generally is of unknown provenance except in the villages. So I ordered garlic spaghetti with loads of cheese and a big knob of butter on top. I checked it was actual butter beforehand as I know the nasty little tricks they get up to in restaurants all over the world. I was in heaven getting some decent cooking too as this posh little place cooked the pasta al dente. These moments are very pleasing when you’re away, food that is really simple but good. the lovely garlic and butter aroma was serious comfort food to my frayed nerves. All would be well again, and it was! You’re in luck we come to a patch of nearly no moaning and whining from me! Give me some ruins and I’ll be a good girl!
Back to the bus station and straight onto my bus having passed my case over to be stored and with my copper flask of water and downloaded crap to watch on my phone should I be restless, or books to listen to should I settle well. Full of hope and feeling exultant about my canny journey planning, I settled onto the bus putting the Bacalar lake mafia firmly in the past and looking forward to my adventure in Xpuhil and my crazy looking little super cheap cabin.
The trip was more eventful than anticipated. Not only did the bus stop everywhere but it ran alongside where they were carving up hundreds of miles of beautiful jungle and god knows what amazing secrets of the ancient past for the fucking ‘Tren Maya’. This monstrous project had been on my radar since I arrived, it being on the lips of many to mostly bitterly complain about it. This controversial mugging of pristine land for a handful of rich tourists to be connected with the ancient sites easily and lazily, will be a thing in the future much akin to any other ghastly black mark on Mexicos history. The criminal destruction of pristine Indigenous peoples land and culture is another aspect to this vanity project of the Government and other shady companies. I would be going to stay in the hornets nest, right in the centre where the work was organised from, my poor unremarkable Xpuhil.
I have included a couple of paragraphs quoted beneath so I don’t have to rant and rave so much while you look on at me amused by my tantrum! If you’re interested all the links are there.
“Diggers trundle across the chalky earth just outside the town of Xpujil, in Campeche state, southern Mexico. The land is being cleared to make way for the Maya train line, a controversial megaproject that will cross the Yucatán peninsula, whisking tourists from the beaches of Cancún and Tulum to Maya archaeological sites in the heart of the jungle.
A sizeable area has already been gouged out of rainforest, the second largest in the Americas after the Amazon, for the 1,525km (948 mile) route that will cut through land largely inhabited by Indigenous groups.
“What is being done with the Maya train megaproject is not Mayan in any way. It is a decision from above,” Q’anjob’al Maya leader Romel González Díaz shouted through a megaphone in Xpujil earlier this month. Listening were about 100 Indigenous leaders, activists and international observers who had joined La Caravana el Sur Resiste (the south resists caravan), which passed through the five states where the train will run, encouraging community opposition to the project.
According to the government, the project received an almost 90% approval rating in a 2019 referendum conducted in the affected states. Opponents said there was a low turnout and a lot of the information – specifically details of how the train will affect the environment – was poorly translated into local languages. The Mexico office of the UN high commissioner for human rights said the government’s consultation process was flawed.
While López Obrador initially promised that not “a single tree” would be felled, the government now concedes that 3.4 million have been cut down so far, although environmentalists say the actual number is nearer 9 million.
For Ezequiel Cauich Cauich, a tourist guide at Calakmul, every tree is “a habitat where there are bats, birds, insects and water”. Cauich worries that the damage to the ecosystem will further affect water supplies in the region. Last August, Mexico’s water board said water availability has reduced by almost two-thirds in the Yucatán peninsula in the past two decades.
Water already has to be rationed in the dry season, says Cauich, pointing to the tanks on the roofs of the houses in Xpujil, where two hotels and a casino are due to be built.”
So my bus trip alerted me to the horror that was freshly cut huge tracts of land along with actual mining areas in a land rich in limestone. This carnage of brash almost white cut land, was in stark relief to the wondrously lush greens of the jungle with its huge assortment of wildlife hidden in natures arms, safe there until this assault by the same greedy people who have raped and pillaged in the past.
Xpuhil and my cabin at last!
Although it was dark when I finally arrived and I scurried over the main road passing my almost unidentifiable hotel where I stayed many years ago, the walk itself wasn’t too terrifying, after all it was only around five thirty. It was however a Sunday so I wasn’t sure about my fantasy of a steak dinner at that restaurant was going to be viable. The place of worship for delicious meat and a full bar with cocktails.
Finding anyone to let me in proved very trying, even though it was prearranged. It would prove to be the same fucking casual problem all over Mexico this time round, you are left with a very slim window of opportunity to actually check in. Anyhoo, I shouted my way to attention and was given a very strange key for a very strange lock on my little cabins entrance. To tired eyes it was fabulous. Very dinky but with a good sized bed and a rather smelly mosquito net, lots of plug sockets and a separate walk in shower room. Its own front terrace and nestled amongst trees and plants. The young bored girl vaguely indicated a place to eat and then disappeared into the house next door making it very clear I was not to disturb her any more than I already had done. So I ran off into the dark streets and finally found a truly bizarre restaurant which reminded me that Christmas was coming in a truly magnificently vulgar way. ( I would find out the next day this was prevalent and disturbingly vulgar in every place )
The restaurant I found was a mish mash of different styles, a vulgar office block building (Indeed it was called La Oficina!) with leanings to a classical Greek temple. It was covered with flashing Xmas lights and an inflatable reindeer stood guard by the door from where two distinct sets of jingle bells music was heard clashing and jarring in competition with each other. The grand restaurant had many tables and two TVs also at full volume in their own vile competition of being noticed. The full sized nativity scene in the corner left no doubt indeed that the establishment was forcing you into a very early yo ho ho. The restaurant was empty bar one man by the nativity who I hadn’t noticed when I entered as I supposed him to be one of the three kings. Indeed it was only when he moved I realised my mistake such was his still rapt look at some crap on TV. The waitress swooped in on me and I chose a place near the door to allow for a desperately needed fag and drink once I’d ordered my food.
Once I’d made her turn down the hellish cacophony I gazed numbly at a menu of more bloody tortillas and some very expensive meat and tried for what they called steak and a beer. It was all taking on a nightmarish quality especially because it was now pitch black outside with only occasional intermittent lights strung over the side roads acting as street lights. When it gets dark there it gets velvet black. Bear in mind, I was also exhausted from travelling and sheer stress but now it was taking the form of an episode of Twin Peaks and I was panicking about the walk back to my cabin.
I made small talk while I chucked the minced meat down my throat and downed my beers. I had seriously thought that I would hang out and feel the vibe that night, but after just one expensive tequila shot I escaped and practically ran along the now unrecognisable streets back towards my snug cabin. Dogs lurched out barking, from every sinister shadow and the place felt very hostile and scary.
When I got back and fished my extra long key out for the cabin I was dead on my feet but very grateful that I had made it. The tallow smelling mosquito net and my nylon sheets seemed positively luxurious now and I didn’t have to worry about getting undressed as it had become bitterly cold and I would have to sleep in my thicker clothes anyway. If only those dogs would shut the fuck up and the traffic zooming around the corner just slow down for the night?
Alas no. Seemingly not just the restaurant looked like a sleazy New York stage set but Xpuhil itself turned out to be a city that never slept. I would learn that bitter lesson over the next few days when the constant roar of builders traffic never stopped as their deadline loomed.
In the morning I peered out from my little cabin into the positively frosty early light and went to check if the grandly named cake shop was open for there was nowhere around that seemed to sell coffee or breakfast. This little part of town was bereft of creature comforts and my tummy was rumbling now. There was no kettle in the room and so it would seem that small luxuries were frowned upon even though nothing was offered as an alternative. You don’t realise how important a cuppa tea is in the morning even without food. Also when I tried the shower it pathetically weed on me so I had trouble rinsing off the soap I had enthusiastically slavered all over me. relatively fresh clothes on I went forth yet again to the cake shop and got myself a dubious brand instant coffee and a stale biscuit. My enquiries as to going to Calakmul directly on my first day were sneered at. You had to be up at six for that even with collectivo. Everything here had become more difficult which is rich seeing as last time I came in plague time. It would appear, when I asked some resident about it, that the town now was basically just for the people working on the railway line and not really for tourists at all. We were a nuisance, they wanted the shiny new rich tourists that the train would surely bring them, not us bunch of actual grubby poorer travellers that had suited them well enough before. Now they had superior aspirations. Until the new tourists would surely arrive, they preferred to cater to the company men working for the hideously corrupt Maya Tren. When I argued that this was a travesty and would result in an ugly white elephant eternally reminding them that they had carved up their sacred land and jeopardised the fragile ecosystem of the virgin forest its indigenous people, I was met either with full agreement of sneering acidic remarks. This gamble of theirs to betray their brothers and sisters would be hugely beneficial to all they would hotly cry, anger and sweat underneath their indignant white powdered faces, hacking coughs betraying that omnipresent dust lurking in their lungs which they had been inhaling for the last two years. Every surface you trailed your fingers upon betrayed that cursed reminder that indeed, every second of every day it was in the air around them and their little children. They seemingly did not notice that their small town had just been used for the railway builders and that no tourist hotels were popping up here only on the actual archaeological sites. No infrastructure for Xpuhils sacrifice in this bloody mess it was just being chewed up and spat out by the cynical company man and seemingly will be abandoned in their wake.
More tomorrow about the actual sites Calakmul, Becan, Chicanna and Hormiguero that I finally staggered around. I’m too tired now and I seem to have lost swathes of pics including my likkle cabin dammit. (just found it!) I’ll do tomorrow when I’m not so weary. I also want to separate this post of alarm and incredulity at mans inhumanity to man. So sorry to have been in such a frothy fury but I needed to get it off my chest, for indeed, they are murdering my lovely Mexico and I am heartbroken.
Old Bird Travels Solo! 