When we woke up this morning, early to go to the meeting place in Tulum for our all day canal tour at Sian Ka'an Biosphere, it was grey, windy, cool and rainy. Yes, we were still on the Mayan Riviera, but a cold front had rolled in from the north overnight. I guess most of the world is colder than usual right now -- and yes, it is still global warming. As Al Gore explained, the warming part is preceded by extreme dislocations of weather patterns.
Anyway, we couldn't cancel because the trip was confirmed with my credit card, so we set off thinking, "It will probably burn off by 11:00 and be a great day." Always optimistic, I am. But, this is not Cape Cod, and it did not burn off. In fact, it got increasingly rainy and windy. When we finally found the meeting place (the directions were not quite specific enough), the young men greeting us could not have been more upbeat and enthusiastic with a real passion for what they were doing -- working in a wildlife habitat, trying to preserve the wetlands and create a model for man and nature working together for a sustainable environment. That evidently is what a Biosphere is, as compared with a National Park -- a place where there is some private property, but the humans have agreed to certain rules for maintaining the natural system so that it continues to function as it has for centuries.
According to Renee, our guia, since the 1970s when the Mexican government decided to develop Cancun at the extreme north of the Caribbean coast, the area of natural wetlands has been seriously degraded -- I think he said 50% has disappeared. You can certainly believe that when you drive south on 307 and see one mega resort after another. The rub is that the local people welcome the development because it means jobs. Christina, where we eat breakfast in Chemuyil sometimes, talks about how much people around here have been hurting this past year after news accounts of the H1N1 flu epidemic devastated the tourist industry.
The population of Quintana Roo (the state we are in right now), Yucatan, and Campeche is very Mayan -- many older people here still speak their Mayan dialect in their homes. But that tie with the ancient culture is weakening. Renee told us that 15 years or so ago, he went in the McDonalds in Cancun, and it was empty -- it subsequently closed. But this year he returned, MickeyDs had reopened and it was full of local young people of Mayan descent. I suppose it is a natural evolution -- globalization and all that -- and development has brought greater prosperity to this region, but I'm afraid something of value is being lost.
Anyway, we made our way to the Sian Ka'an area with our Cesiak van picking up some other intrepid tourists at hotels on our way. We arrived at a building perched on the edge of a pristine quintessential Mexican Caribbean beach. After a very interesting talk about the history of the wetlands and the non-profits involved in preserving it, we struck out in the other direction from the open ocean to a bay where we were sorted into 3 motor launches. Luckily, they provided us with foul weather gear, a la Maine lobstermen, because we were being pelted with wind driven rain. We motored across the bay and then entered the "canal" which Renee explained isn't really a canal, but a river, because it is not man-made. There IS a short little canal which the Mayans built to connect with an inland waterway, but we didn't go there. There is evidence that the Mayans used the river to trade with the Mayan cities in Guatemala and Honduras. The river meanders through mangrove(four different kinds which are vital to the survival of the wetlands), savannah (saw grass and other grasses) and hummock (more solid ground where larger trees grow).
Then we stopped at a little dock..... to disembark and float back down the river from whence we had come..... our bodies in the river.... without boats. Now all of us had worn bathing suits knowing that this was part of the tour. But somehow with the wind and the rain, and already being quite cold, it did not seem quite so inviting. My friends were hesitating, but I thought "What the heck, we're here, our bathing suits are on under our clothes (which were already somewhat wet) --- why the hell not!!!" So in we went -- about a third of the people opted not to go -- and floated off down the river. It was a lovely, albeit cold, experience, and the river carried us along with no effort for about half an hour. The hard part was getting out, back on the boat, and motoring back across the very choppy bay which seemed to take much longer than the trip out.
On the way, we stopped at a small post-Classic period Mayan temple that is believed to have been used as a way station or "toll booth" for travelers on the river. We also saw Little Blue Heron, Wood Storks, Great White Heron, Great Blue Heron, Night Heron, Laughing Gull, Brown Pelicans, Ibis, Black Vulture, Roseate Spoonbills, and a nesting pair of Osprey with 2 babies. Renee also mentioned that he had gotten a message that further down the coast someone had spotted a jaguar (the animal, not the vehicle). There are quite a few mammals that live in the wetlands as well as birds: anteaters, grey foxes, ocelots and a bunch of others I don't remember because I didn't see them.
When we returned to the main building, we were served a nice lunch which was a bit hard to enjoy because we were so cold, and then were returned to our cars instead of "enjoying an hour or two on the beach" which had also been part of the plan. On the way we stopped at a cenote. I'll write more about cenotes another time -- they are a fascinating phenomenon here on the Yucatan Peninsula.
ecause of the heavy wooden shutters that protected the windows.
