San Gervasio

Ian wanted to sleep in today because he's been staying up kind of late. Mostly, he's been watching TV and hanging out on My Space. I got him up anyway and I told him that I really didn't care if he stays up late, but that he needed to get up and do stuff with the family while we were on vacation.

We finally found Coco's today. It was at the address the guidebook said, but the place indicated on the map was wrong by about two blocks. On top of that, the place had just been painted and there was no name on the outside of the restaurant. The owner stopped to talk with us and asked how we liked our breakfast. He chatted with Jillian for a while since she ordered a traditional Mexican meal including beans. He was really nice.

After breakfast, we did a little shopping. We bought a couple of painted feathers at a shop called 3alam. The women in there spoke Yucatec I believe. It was really fun to talk to them; they were so proud of their Mayan heritage. One of the women spoke to me a little while about some of the differences between Spanish and her native tongue. Of course, Jillian got a lot out of that conversation as well. We had a great time and the feathers were beautiful and interesting. The shop is just packed with framed feathers painted with different designs. I couldn't help wondering whether the artist was in control of his obsession.

We also picked up some t-shirts along with a few other odds and ends at the nearby shops and then we went on to reserve the boat for Tuesday's sailing.

At the boating office, we saw some of the same metal sculptures we has seen at Rockin' Java a couple of days before and we asked about them. The woman in the boating office actually knew the artist and gave her a call for us. We were looking for a dragonfly, but we hadn't seen one. She told us of a couple of places that have her work and said that one of them should have what we were looking for.

We didn't have time to look for metal sculptures today. We were headed for a music store called Unahi Pax. Ian and I had been there two years before. The owner of the shop has a collection of instruments that might also be on the borderline between passion and obsession. There are lots of toys in there including small bamboo flutes alongside some high quality traditional instruments.

This afternoon we went to see the San Gervasio ruins. If there was one thing I might do differently, I might suggest we take that tour earlier in the day. The trip out to the site took longer than I had expected. Google Earth doesn't really do the place justice. The road was pretty good, but it went on for about 6 miles off of the east-west highway. The place was open and there were a couple of cars outside the entrance to the park. There were some beautiful orchids growing where I parked. These were an unexpected surprise and I wondered what else the jungle had for us today.


The answer came to me a few minutes after I got out of the car. "Heat. Heat is what the jungle has for us." All the gift shops at the site were closed except for a little bar that served 40 peso bottles of water. That's $4.00 each. For small bottles, even. In town those bottles were 5 pesos each. What a difference 12 miles can make.

Fortunately, we had our own water. The start of our walk was fairly pleasant. We went to the Manita structure that had the red hand prints on the altar. Before long, we began to realize that there was a lot more to this place than just a few crumbling structures. There were roadways that had been overgrown with trees, there was an archway and maybe 6 more stone buildings. I really thought the site was interesting. Shelly and I wondered aloud what the place must have looked like 800 years ago.


I take a certain amount of pride in being able to tolerate heat. But the jungle was sweltering. I had sweat rolling down my arms and legs and tried to keep sunscreen on my slippery skin. Jillian and Ian were pretty good sports. Jill was clearly overheating, but we managed to get our way through the ruins without melting. We saw a lot of lizards and iguanas lounging around in the sun. Ian even found a black scorpion along the path.

After the ruins we went back to the east side of the island and playa bonita. Jill's friend Christian was there again. He actually came by to get Jill this evening around 10:40 to see if she could go to a party. Fortunately for me, she had already gone to bed. It was too bad she couldn't go to the party with him. I know it would have been fun for her to have met his friends and stayed out late, but that was kind of a stretch for her mother and I.