26-Sept-00: Hotel Caribe

"San Francisco? Ah, cerca Redwood City!" --Young man in souvenir shop.

***
At eight o'clock Señor Antonio Bustillos was ready to drive us to the Puuc hills ("the Mayan Alps," he remarked). Among the pleasures of a guided tour conducted by Sr. Bustillos:

• his finger pointing out the delicate painting remaining on the ceiling of the Governor's Palace at Uxmal, clearly his favorite of the ruins.

• a stop at Santa Elena to cram into the adobe house and smoky cooking shed of a Maya family. Michael and I both confused as to protocol: what if Maya villagers came without announcement to tour our house? Sure, we didn't poke into closets, not that there were any. Our larger bodies seemed invasion enough.

• quiet talk with ruin site caretakers, all Maya. These people live at the less-visited ruins, have hammocks, flocks of turkeys, thatched-roof houses-- pretty much the same earthly goods as those of the sites' builders almost a thousand years ago.

***
Uxmal: Sr. Bustillos did not include the Temple of the Phalluses on our tour. At 9:30 a.m. the horsefly-sized mosquitoes already oppressive. Pyramid of the Magician beckoning for a climb yet closed for restoration.

Kabah: bats, flapping around Michael's head. A platform with one row of glyphs, all that remains of a two-room building, a book in architectural form. Sr. Bustillos takes a ballpoint pen and draws the Maya glyph for infinity on his hand, explaining to us how sophisticated this culture's mathematics were.

Labná: the arch, the disorganized piles of stones nearby, the sacbe, the Mirador. Sr. Bustillos sighing that twenty years ago the site was in better shape: there was even statuary on the now-desolate Mirador. The arch exerting power over my eyes-- I look at it again and again.

Sayil: several piles of stones shaded by jungle trees, and one building reconstructed. Image of the Descending God, born naked and headfirst. I am looking for traces of paint when I hear sounds familiar to me only from Martin Denny albums-- two or three tropical birds challenging each other. Sighting of a mot-mot, turquoise and yellow, on a limb above the caretaker's turkeys, these lean birds high-stepping around the mimosas.

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