A Day of Adventure in the Jungle
Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico- This world we live in is very small indeed. I discovered that my new friend Cynthia Castle not only knew about Waring but had actually been to the Comfort Little Theater which they hold across the street from my house in Waring Hall every year. Not only that, but I sat by Cynthia on the plane down unknowingly and ran into her again at a small store here in P.M. the other day. What does that mean? It means she and I had amazinlgy crossed paths three times in this world, once when she was in Waring at the same time as me, once on a plane from Austin, and once in a small Caribbean fishing village 30 km from the airport.
Bizarre.
At any rate, we are now friends and Cynthia took me and Jonathan on quite the adventure yesterday. Buried in the jungle on the Mayan peninsula are many many freshwater sinkholes, the result of underwater caves that collapsed. They are called cenotes. This particular cenote, located down a bumpy jungle road about 10 km from P.M., was largely unvisited except for one or two rowdy groups of tourists who stayed for twenty minutes each and then left.
The cenote, if you can use your imagination, is like a boy hood dream. Limestone walls surround the ice cold water on all sides and rise 10 to twenty five feet above the waters surface. The only ways in are by a ladder, a zipline, or simply jumping. It takes some nerve to jump, because it is so high. One of the jumps is 25 feet, which I of course tried, and in the process got water in and up every possible combination of places. (My left ear is still ringing today.) But how breathless and amazing it was, truly. It takes courage to jump into openness and plunge into the water, but ultimately I guess it is a metaphor for life. Sometimes you jump, sometimes it hurts, but looking back it is most certainly worth it.
I even applied my new free diving skills by retreiving a mat that had fallen from high above on the jumping platform. It was at about 15-18 feet depth and I proudly resurrected the lost mat and returned it to its proper place.
Examining the day, I can appreciate the days of Hemingway. After swimming all day, mostly just the three of us, we snacked on goat cheese, crackers and fresh fruits. Tastes, simple tastes, are exquisite when contrasted by an elaborate Swiss Family scene. Sometimes, we would sit and listen to the breeze as it whipped through the jungle canopy, leaving the sanctuary of the cenote undisturbed. Sometimes, we would drift into the caves that drew underneath the limestone walls. You could drift under them and peer out into the daylight from within the cave.
Places like where we were dont exist. Even after being there, I think I believe this.
When the day had passed, and my pulse had grown accustom to hearing nothing and seeing no one and feeling the laziness of the day, we gathered up and returned to the Colonia for the second half of our adventure.
I got to attend a backstreet Mexican political meeting in a the taxi cab drivers union building. It actually wasnt an adventure. It was intolerably boring. BUT, having the journalism background that I do, I went and learned. Basically, the town is in danger in the next twenty years of being swallowed by the tide of consumerism coming down the beach and the good folks of P.M. are worried about it, which is what the meeting was all about.
With all that said and done, we returned to Cynthias house and ate a dinner of rice and beans, which again tasted wonderful.
A hot shower and a drink at La Gioconda topped off the evening. Sadly not, though, my thoughts turn toward home. As it turns out, I somehow managed to miss the place where I was supposed to get a visa in Mexico City. (No one bothered to tell me I was supposed to do this.) So according to my friend Javier I am technically an illegal alien here. But this are minor details which I will concern myself with at the appropriate time.
And as a completely irrelevant side note, I learned recently from my good friend Kelton in Waring that the good folks who adopted Willamina (remember her?!!) named her new baby goat...you guessed it...Winston. So now I have a goat n named after me running around in the Texas Hill Country.
Este es la historia de me vida...
Bizarre.
At any rate, we are now friends and Cynthia took me and Jonathan on quite the adventure yesterday. Buried in the jungle on the Mayan peninsula are many many freshwater sinkholes, the result of underwater caves that collapsed. They are called cenotes. This particular cenote, located down a bumpy jungle road about 10 km from P.M., was largely unvisited except for one or two rowdy groups of tourists who stayed for twenty minutes each and then left.
The cenote, if you can use your imagination, is like a boy hood dream. Limestone walls surround the ice cold water on all sides and rise 10 to twenty five feet above the waters surface. The only ways in are by a ladder, a zipline, or simply jumping. It takes some nerve to jump, because it is so high. One of the jumps is 25 feet, which I of course tried, and in the process got water in and up every possible combination of places. (My left ear is still ringing today.) But how breathless and amazing it was, truly. It takes courage to jump into openness and plunge into the water, but ultimately I guess it is a metaphor for life. Sometimes you jump, sometimes it hurts, but looking back it is most certainly worth it.
I even applied my new free diving skills by retreiving a mat that had fallen from high above on the jumping platform. It was at about 15-18 feet depth and I proudly resurrected the lost mat and returned it to its proper place.
Examining the day, I can appreciate the days of Hemingway. After swimming all day, mostly just the three of us, we snacked on goat cheese, crackers and fresh fruits. Tastes, simple tastes, are exquisite when contrasted by an elaborate Swiss Family scene. Sometimes, we would sit and listen to the breeze as it whipped through the jungle canopy, leaving the sanctuary of the cenote undisturbed. Sometimes, we would drift into the caves that drew underneath the limestone walls. You could drift under them and peer out into the daylight from within the cave.
Places like where we were dont exist. Even after being there, I think I believe this.
When the day had passed, and my pulse had grown accustom to hearing nothing and seeing no one and feeling the laziness of the day, we gathered up and returned to the Colonia for the second half of our adventure.
I got to attend a backstreet Mexican political meeting in a the taxi cab drivers union building. It actually wasnt an adventure. It was intolerably boring. BUT, having the journalism background that I do, I went and learned. Basically, the town is in danger in the next twenty years of being swallowed by the tide of consumerism coming down the beach and the good folks of P.M. are worried about it, which is what the meeting was all about.
With all that said and done, we returned to Cynthias house and ate a dinner of rice and beans, which again tasted wonderful.
A hot shower and a drink at La Gioconda topped off the evening. Sadly not, though, my thoughts turn toward home. As it turns out, I somehow managed to miss the place where I was supposed to get a visa in Mexico City. (No one bothered to tell me I was supposed to do this.) So according to my friend Javier I am technically an illegal alien here. But this are minor details which I will concern myself with at the appropriate time.
And as a completely irrelevant side note, I learned recently from my good friend Kelton in Waring that the good folks who adopted Willamina (remember her?!!) named her new baby goat...you guessed it...Winston. So now I have a goat n named after me running around in the Texas Hill Country.
Este es la historia de me vida...
posted by Winston A. Hall at 9:40 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home