Introduction

The Story
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9

A Few Personal Stories
Francis
Faith
Anne
Silva

Once Upon a Time - Page 3

The Trail to Xtul

By morning, a couple more people in the group had decided to head back home. The rest of us waved goodbye to the bemused group of villagers watching us for entertainment, and headed off down the trail.

To our left was the shore of the Gulf of Mexico; to our right, about a mile in, a lagoon. Somewhere further along ("Too far, too far," said the villagers) was the next village, Chuburna.

The winding trail ran alongside the ocean. You couldn't see much, just lots of tall grass and palm trees on either side. And mosquitoes. By 10 o'clock, it was getting hot and we were already tired. By noon, when we stopped for lunch, a few more decided they'd had enough and turned back to go home to England. By mid-afternoon, a couple more. It seemed kind of pointless to go on, but I think the rest of us were just determined not to give up.

At about five in the afternoon, the sun was lower in the sky and filtered through some high clouds. We were thinking about the fact that we would soon have to stop for the night. We had no camping gear. Nothing.

And then, as we rounded the next bend along the trail, there, coming toward us, was an old man with a stick and a dog.

Just beyond him, the tall grasses on the ocean side of the track gave way to a clear view between the trail and the beach. Three buildings were roofless and largely in ruins. To one side of them, a circle of palm trees was bathed in the golden light of the setting sun.

Two of us spoke some Spanish. "Que es este lugar?" I asked the old man.

I wasn't sure he understood me. A lot of the older people in the Yucatan still spoke more of the old Mayan language than Spanish. He just smiled and said, "Es para vosotros," ("It is for you.") And he waved good-bye and continued on down the trail.

We walked, or rather tiptoed, across the sand and the brush toward the buildings. Two seemed to have been old houses. The other a huge, open, roofless, empty stone ruin with tall walls.

We sat for a while, not quite sure what to make of it all. But we were now low on water, so a couple of us decided to be practical and continue on to Chuburna, which had to be not much further along.

It was, indeed, only half an hour away - a small fishing village with a couple of stores that sold Coca Cola and sweet-tasting cigarettes called Alas. Next to one of the stores, a small shop serviced the new outboard motors that proud fishermen now used on their boats.

One of the villagers came out of his house to greet us. I explained that we were travelers and that we'd stopped at the place with the three buildings in ruins. Our welcomer introduced himself as Jose Sosa, and said that all the land out that way was owned by a businessman in Mexico City, who exchanged fish for supplies in the various villages along the coast.

"Can we call him on the phone?" I asked.

"Hay telefono en Progreso," Jose replied, and offered to drive us there tomorrow.

"Does the place have a name?"

"Se llama Xtul." (Pronounced shtool.)

The next day, two of us went out to Progreso, and called the landowner, explaining that we had found this beautiful place, and that we didn't have much money, but that we would like to stay there if possible.

 "Yes," he said in broken English. "I dreamed that you would be coming. I rent it to you for one peso a month."

The scene at nearby Dzibilchaltun on the morning of the equnox

The ruins at Xtul dated back to Mayan times. Not far inland, on the other side of the lagoon, was Dzibilchaltun, a temple ruin with an arch perfectly positioned so that at the spring and fall equinox, the rising sun shines straight through and lights up a stone plinth a few hundred yards away.

For the next three months, we lived at Xtul. The first few weeks, we spent our days repairing the big stone building. We made friends with the villagers, who would bring their music band, Los Tiburones, in the evening once a week. Their instruments were a washboard, a string-pole-and-bucket bass, and other home-made devices. One of our group, a musician, fashioned a guitar out of a gourd.

Each time they came visiting, the villagers would ask us to tell them again where we were from. Each time, we'd draw a map in the sand. They understood the Gulf of Mexico and knew of a place called New Orleans. We tried to explain the Atlantic Ocean and the countries on the other side, but they would always look baffled and ask: "And where you live, does the sun rise there, too?"

Next page: The Hurricane