Chapter 3
Beyond Mérida
To leave Mérida, Carlos went aboard what he called a "third class train" to the town of Peto. The trip was hot and boring; the only scenery being a lot of typical Yucatecan brush country. Carlos had little to say about the town, except that it was a center for chicle production. Possibly unknown to him, it had been an often embattled border town during the bloody Caste War of the previous century. From here, he would head into what was still a frontier of sorts.
The next morning, Carlos heard about a mail cart leaving for a location in Quintana Roo. Unfortunately, when he arrived, it had already left before anyone had told him.
While Carlos ate breakfast, a young Yucatecan named Diego walked up to him. He understood that Frey was planning to go to Chetumal, and wanted to go along. They quickly agreed to go together, since Carlos always enjoyed having a companion who could enliven a long walk.
They left by 10 a.m., and walked fast on a flat, dry road. By 1 p.m. they even passed the mail cart. The day went by so uneventfully, and the road was so easy, that Frey thought of it as "sissy compared to Chiapas."
That night they stayed at San Mateo, a ranch owned in common by some Maya Indians. Diego proved his worth in being able to speak to them in their own language, since most of them knew no other.
By 3 a.m., Carlos and Diego were on the road once again. Along the way they saw remnants of the Mexican War of the Castes, which was particularly bloody from 1847 until 1855. There were old fortifications and trenches. Carlos described what he referred to as "ghost cities," which he called Saban and Sacalaca, which had suffered from being on the boundary.
For around fifty years following the war, Maya in what is now the state of Quintana Roo were independent of the Mexican government. Although it was with great hardship, they had made it very costly and frightening to subdue them — so much so, that the central government left them alone for much of the time.
The Maya of Quintana Roo carried on their ancient values under the aegis of their new religion, which began in 1851 and is known as the "Talking Cross." While the cross itself was probably not very verbal, it had a ventriloquist to help it out, at least, until he was found out and executed.
The independent Maya even had foreign relations, primarily with the British in what is now Belize. This was important, because they were the conduit for the weapons and ammunition needed both to harry the Mexicans and to defend the free Maya families.
When the Mexican army finished its final assault in 1901, the Maya disappeared into the countryside and remained quasi-independent. It was only with President Cárdenas in 1937 that peace was initiated, and only in 1958 that a formal agreement was put into place.
Carlos had a significant advantage of seeing the territory shortly after it began being forced back into Mexico. In this way, he visited after all the bloodshed, but well before the area was inundated with tourists.
The next day, Carlos and Diego moved on, arriving at a small village of five families called Santa María. They bought some tortillas for the next day’s hike and settled in. Soon after this, a cow died, and the locals decided that the onset coincided with Frey’s arrival. They thought that he brought a bad spirit with him. Though the villagers did nothing drastic, despite Diego’s best efforts in their language, they were not about to sell either of the interlopers anything else, and the two were certainly not very welcome.
The next morning, Carlos and Diego continued down the same road, making it as far as a place called Tabi. There, as Carlos later described, they had "a hard time buying a meal and then had to pay too much for it. From their attitude, you would think that the war was still going on."
While Carlos was probably unaware of it, one of the sparks igniting the Caste War had actually taken place in Tabi in January of 1847. What happened right there was a massacre by the Yucatecans of all the Maya men they could find, including the local Maya leader, or batab, who appears to have been tortured and killed, while supposedly being recognized by the very Yucatecan authority that killed him. This episode caused an unsurprising chill in the loyalties of many other batabs and played an important part in the beginning of the Caste War.
Also most likely unknown to Carlos was that Tabi was originally owned by a great leader in the Caste War, Jacinto Pat, who used it as an alternate headquarters. It is also around 15 or so miles from the former headquarters of the later followers of the cross, called Noh Kah Santa Cruz by them and Chan Santa Cruz by others.
In a sense, the war was still going on almost a hundred years later and there was little tolerance to spare for outsiders. In fact, Carlos and Diego were only able to purchase three tortillas for that night’s dinner.
Possibly the two had had enough of the rebel Maya, or perhaps, they were just anxious to see some variety in their food. At this point, they decided to take the remaining twelve leagues south to Chan Santa Cruz in one day. On today’s maps, the victors call it Felipe Carillo Puerto after a Yucatecan politician who was popular and managed to get assassinated. While the town was on the way to Chetumal, it was quite far for a one day trip on foot.
To get there in one day, they got up at 1 a.m., and headed off into the moonlight. Around 3 a.m., Diego suddenly stopped, and told Carlos to listen. Sure enough, they heard "a long low howl." Carlos hopefully declared that it was a dog, but Diego swore that it was a jaguar, and they started hiking onward at a quickened pace.
Carlos soon realized that, since it was an extremely rural area, and since there were no homes anywhere nearby in that wilderness that would keep a dog, the sound probably came from a jaguar. Fear can be so often contagious and Diego pulled out a knife while Carlos took up a big club. Diego raced quickly down the road with Frey running behind, cursing at the damage he was doing to his sandal clad feet. Obviously, neither realized that jaguars rarely attack people - unless someone is dumb enough to corner them or threaten their offspring.
Hurrying along in the night, Carlos eventually began to feel safe. Then he heard three nearby cries, which he recognized as the same sounds made by a jaguar he heard earlier at the colony of Lacandon. He later wrote:
"Diego didn’t have to coax me on after this. I guess I was really scared. I doubt if I was ever more scared. Straining my eyes to see into each shadow was nerve racking, and to make it worse, the moon was much lower. One’s imagination (is) awfully weird when it’s dark like that.
"Then the climax: the cry came again, this time much closer, but the scare was for nothing, as this was the last we heard of our pet jaguar."
Thanks to encouragement from the furtive feline, they arrived very early in Chan Santa Cruz. In fact, on their arrival, when they had the audacity to tell people that they had done a twelve (or so) hour hike in six and a half hours, no one would believe them.
Their eventual plan was to leave the next morning, but to take it easy for the rest of the day. Later, as Carlos was resting in his hammock, Diego brought in a man who introduced himself as the police commissioner. He told of a place called Vigía Chica, or Little Watchtower, where there was to be a boat directly to Chetumal.
Certainly, riding in a boat is better than hiking through brush and jungle any day of almost anyone’s week, and so Carlos and Diego hurried to catch a small gauge rail car that was supposed to leave for Vigía Chica at 2 p.m. They raced to arrive in time, and found that it did not leave until 2:30. Along the way, except for the usual overheated brush countryside, there were only a small Maya ruin and two chiclero camps as points of interest.
Upon arrival there, Carlos was very unhappy to find that no boats ever left Vigía Chica for Chetumal, though there was one that went to the island of Cozumel. He suspected that Diego was pulling some sort of scam, and merely wanted to go directly to Cozumel. Whatever the case, it was not the other man who had been paying for food or fares so far on this trip.
However, Diego was "good company," and Carlos preferred not to travel alone when there was a better alternative. He decided to announce that he only had a peso and a half left after all the expenses so far. Carlos gave all this money to Diego, and told him that he would have to be responsible for the costs after this. With Diego as the new money manager, they found a free return ride on the train, and were soon back in Chan Santa Cruz.
The next day they went south, passing Lake Ocom very early. The rest of the morning was uneventful, but in the afternoon, the road became very muddy and rocky. At some point, they came to a fork in the road, and as fate would have it, they took the wrong route. After a quarter of a mile, they came to a small ranch.
Knocking on the door produced no answer. Desperately hungry, they walked in and found a particularly beautiful young Maya girl, around the age of eighteen, dressed only in a loincloth and making tortillas in front of the household fire. She was in the old traditional garb, which was not in much use anymore.
The only item covering her well formed chest was a necklace made of jaguar teeth and some old coins. Carlos had no idea what sort of coins they were, but he regretted not being able to get close enough to examine them better.
The young woman was not friendly at all - who would be with two complete strangers barging into the home? Diego spoke Maya to her, but she would neither sell nor give them any tortillas. Between her attitude and all the rifles on the household wall, they decided it would be a good idea to get out of there — and right away, too.
Later that night, they stopped at a place called Zhuhos. A friendly host provided them with a welcome venison steak dinner, and they were off in the morning.
The next day, they passed Lake Nohbec and slept at a place called Retranca. It was an uneventful day.
By this time, the two realized that the cost of lunches skyrocketed if Diego bought them when Frey was present. They developed an approach, whereby Diego would come into a town first, and buy the necessary food. Carlos would arrive around twenty minutes later, and then they would both eat.
The following day, they hiked on to a mahogany lumber camp near the lengthy Lake Bacalar. The owner welcomed them, had his wife prepare a wonderful dinner, and gave them a room in which to stay. Carlos later remarked that it was the first time in days that he had a real room, not some hut or chicken coop to sleep in.
The next day, they followed the trail to the town of Bacalar. The path was rarely used, and the going was slow. Soon they arrived at a lumber camp called Buena Vista. After a pleasant breakfast with two very good looking young girls from Campeche and their mothers, they were on their way.
That night was particularly unpleasant. They stopped at a small rancho along the way, where the mosquitoes were bad enough, but once Carlos got them out of his net, he found that there were also many fleas to contend with.
The next day, the two strode into Bacalar. Carlos found the people to be very friendly and, in fact, despite the dirtiness of Frey’s and Diego’s clothes, they were invited to a fiesta being held that evening.
They soon discovered, however, that a boat had arrived that could take them down Lake Bacalar toward Chetumal. Carlos and Diego rushed over to talk with the captain, and he agreed to let them ride in the small boat he was towing. Again they were off.
The boats got caught in shallow areas several times, and had to be poled off. Later around dusk, there was a storm and Carlos and Diego got drenched. Finally, they disembarked, got a ride into Chetumal and slept under someone’s porch.
The next day, Carlos had had it. He "cut out the pretense" of not having money, and he found a hotel where he could wash up and spend the night. Diego went off with friends from his hometown, so all was well with him too.
Later, Carlos headed off toward the far southern border of British Honduras, now known as Belize. He noticed the dramatic contrast with Mexico. Gone were the officials dressed in drab khaki. Instead, he was confronted with English-speaking blacks in "flashy uniforms." He found it hard to understand their language, referring to it as "a combination of Oxford English and mush-in-the-mouth."
After a jarring bus ride south on "an awful road," Carlos finally made it to the capital, which then was Belize City. He described it as a "very ugly city, (which) reminded me of East Saint Louis." It does not appear that its atmosphere has changed much for the better in the years since. Carlos was particularly unimpressed with the canals, which still act as open sewers.
While in the colony, Carlos made the mistake of chatting with some Guatemalans, who, in the course of discussion, let him know that as far as they were concerned, British Honduras really belonged to their country. At about that point, a plainclothes policeman barged up, and demanded to see some identification. After the interruption, the policeman stalked off for some unknown reason, and left him with his new companions.
Later, Carlos stopped by the American Consulate to get some information. The very same policeman suddenly appeared, and asked him to accompany him to the local customs house. There, officials warned him not to do any more talking to Guatemalans, and told him to report in every morning at nine, to tell them what he had done the previous day.
Frey assured them that reports would be unnecessary, since he was going to leave the colony far behind the very next day. His next act was to head over to the Mexican Consulate, where, according to Carlos, the official put "a flock of pretty seals" in his passport and "signed it with a flourish," allowing his reentry into Mexico.
True to his word, Carlos was off the next morning to the northern border, arriving at the immigration office in Chetumal, Mexico. There, the officials told him that all the seals were not enough, and that he should have "form 11." A good guess might be that, as an essentially honest and poor man, Carlos did not try to bribe anyone, because there was no immediate solution to the problem. However, there was a temporary bureaucratic cure, and he was given "form 17," so that he could continue onward to his destination in Cozumel.
Carlos found the offices of a ship that could take him north. There, at twenty six years of age, he asked for and received a discount based on the occupation, "student," appearing on his passport. He was a student certainly, but not in the usual meaning of the word.
Two days later, Carlos scrambled aboard the ship with the rest of the third class throng. Having his wits about him, he quickly staked out a good location for his hammock. Despite the congestion, he claimed that he was more comfortable "than a first class passenger in a stuffy stateroom."
The ship soon arrived at the island of Cozumel, with a pregnant passenger in some kind of distress, but apparently not in labor. There was a wrangle with the local health officer. After dropping off Carlos and two other passengers, and ignoring the passengers still ashore, the captain shoved off and fled. Angry at this turn of events, the stranded people seized an available rowboat. Struggling and fuming, they just barely caught up with the fleeing vessel amid the cheers of all the onlookers.
Finally, Frey was on the island of Cozumel. The only others to willingly disembark were an Austrian actress and her Chilean husband. Carlos quickly found that yet again, he did not have the right papers, so he could not leave the island. As he later suggested, there are far worse fates than to be stranded on what was still a tropical paradise, and Frey enjoyed himself immensely. He loved the many hues of the Caribbean waters, the secluded beaches, as well as stories of pirates and treasure. He also saw at least one of the small Maya ruins on the island.
Carlos found the actress intriguing. She spoke six languages and, as a quick-change artist, did an entire show by herself. He learned that she felt she was always harassed by people who thought she was a spy because of her Germanic accent.
Frey saw her show, and was impressed at how cleverly and quickly she could change for a part. Always the kindly sort, he hoped she was really a spy, because he found her acting to be rather "hammy."
After an idyll of five days, the local government official finally received a Form 11, and legalized Carlos’ entry back into Mexico. The next day, Frey booked a ride on a small sailboat to the Quintana Roo coast. Reaching the shoreline, the boat followed it and he saw a number of small Maya ruins. The boatmen fished along the way, eventually reaching the chicle camp, Tancah, where Frey disembarked and spent the night.
In the morning, Carlos went to the seaside ruins at Tulum. At that time, the site was not the crowded tourist Mecca it is now. Recently rebellious Mayas, a portion of which were known as "Los Sublevados," were living near there, and he met their leader. Carlos’s only existing observation about him was that he could not speak Spanish, and so, was not very informative. Since Carlos’s Mayan language skill was as yet nonexistent, and it is doubtful if any outsider would be trusted, and not much information was exchanged.
The next morning, Frey walked inland to a work camp, San Jose Central, where he was welcomed, and was able to bathe in the local cenote, or large hole, in the limestone which contained water. Cenotes vary in size, and are the major source of water in an area as devoid of ground water as the Yucatan Peninsula. After two more days of hiking in the rocky plains, he arrived at the ruins of Cobá.
Cobá is a major Maya site which is situated near two lakes, and has numerous sacbes, or causeways, which lead out to other ancient ruined cities. In its prime, it looked out over a heavily populated area of twenty seven square miles, and was a major regional power.
Carlos enjoyed the ruins, and hiked around the pyramids, while exploring the area. Looking at the site even today, it is not hard to understand the feeling that the early explorers, such as Stephens and Catherwood, must have felt in walking along a jungle path, and coming suddenly into the presence of a magnificent pyramid in a lost city.
The next day, Carlos tagged along with a mule train which followed one of the sacbes for sixteen kilometers. He was struck by the engineering skill needed to create a straight road through such rocky and desolate terrain so many centuries ago.
Two days later, the group arrived at the city of Valladolid in Yucatan state. Frey rode in, bumping up and down on the back of one of the mules, much to the amusement of the locals.
From there, Carlos took a train back to Mérida. However, before his departure, he overindulged with "cream sodas, good food and movies." Having seen what he wanted to in the area, he rode back to Tenosique.