Hole In The Donut Cultural Travel

Palenque Ruins of Chiapas are a Mystical, Magical Wonder

Published June 19, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

Brutal sun blazed down on the Mayan ruins of Palenque, Mexico. Heat penetrated the thick rubber soles of my boots and crept up my pant legs as I climbed steep stone stairs of the Palacio – the Palace. At the top, I ineffectually dabbed my beaded brow with a too-wet tissue and blinked away sweat that stung my eyes. Beneath me lay the powerful city that once ruled over a large part of the states of Chiapas and Tabasco in southern Mexico. For miles in every direction, ancient temples poked through dense vegetation. The wonder of this place is not how it grew to be such a powerhouse of Mayan culture. The wonder is how it existed at all.

Palenque’s Palacio – the Palace – with tower that most believe was used for astronomical observations

Seeking respite from the suffocating heat and humidity, I descended into the Palacio’s inner chambers and wound through narrow passageways to ancient living areas kept blissfully cool by stone walls. Slabs of the same stone served as royal beds; keyhole windows in the thick block provided vistas of the funerary complex. Life and death. Eternity inextricably intermingled with everyday existence.

Templo del las Inscripciones – Temple of the Inscriptions – a funerary site

Back outside I circuited the upper walls of this structure that was both royal residence and political-administrative center. One side of the Palace looked down upon the ball court, a swath of lush green grass bracketed by ancient stone bleachers, where Mayans gathered to watch their favorite sport. The other side overlooked tombs where members of the royal family were interred: the Temple of Inscriptions, Temple of Continue reading →

Posted in Mexico travel |

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Mexicans Are Serious About Their Speed Bumps

Published June 17, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

If you decide to drive in Mexico, perhaps more than any other street sign you need to be aware of the ones that say “Topes”, or “Reductor de Velocidad,” both of which are usually accompanied by a graphic of two rounded mounds. These signs indicate a speed bump in the road, but unlike speed bumps in the U.S., the Mexicans mean business with theirs.

Speed bump decorated with tiles in Bacalar

It's a cultural thing - lacking concrete, they make speed bumps out of thick marine ropes

With the exception of toll roads, topes litter the highways whenever passing through a town. Most of them are high mounds of poured concrete – some are so large that Continue reading →

Posted in Mexico travel |

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Pio Barran Bertelli, Legendary Guardian of Animals in Tlacotalpan, Mexico

Published June 15, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

For most of his 86 years, Pio Barran Bertelli has been fascinated by animals. As a fisherman he became intimately familiar with the waters and estuaries of the Papaloapan River, where he cast his nets. Soon, however, he was paying attention to more than fish. He wrestled his first crocodile in 1959 and a second one shortly thereafter, carrying them home to share his tiny adobe home near the end of Carranza Avenue in Tlacotalpan, Mexico. Through the years his menagerie grew, as did his collection of memorabilia, until Barran had little choice but to open up his house as a museum of sorts.

Mini Zoological Museum of Pio Barran

He calls it the “Mini-Zoological Museum of Pico Barran” and charges a nominal admission of $20 pesos, which buys visitors a blow-by-blow personal tour from the curator. On the sweltering day I arrived, a rolling cart had been pulled across the front entrance. I peered through glassless windows into the dark recesses and spotted a stooped figure in disheveled white shirt, khaki pants, and unraveling straw hat. Continue reading →

Posted in Mexico travel |

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Tlacotalpan, Mexico – Rainbow Colors, River Shrimp, Riveting Conversation

Published June 12, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

On the spur of the moment I decided to hop on a bus to Tlacotalpan, a small fishing village about three hours south of Veracruz that is another UNESCO World heritage Site. Although the bus was not crowded I ended up sitting next to a young man named Miguel Angel Lopez who was returning to work after a long Cinco de Mayo holiday weekend. Miguel, who turned out to be the town judge in Tlacotalpan, spent the entire bus ride telling me about his adopted town and Mexican culture in general. Upon arrival I expected we would go our separate ways, but in the tradition of courtesy so prevalent around Mexico he invited me to walk with him to his office, where I met his secretary and we chatted some more. Half an hour later, as I was again making a departure, Miguel invited me to meet him for coffee at 9 p.m. that evening. I gratefully accepted and we talked until long after midnight, him teaching me about the area and me teaching him how to say English words that begin with the letter ‘y.’

“Como se dice esta palabra?” (How do you say this word?) he asked, writing out the word ‘yes’ on a piece of paper.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Jes,” he repeated.

“No. There is no ‘j’ at the beginning. It is pronounced yes.”

“Jes,” he tried again.

“No. YYYYYes.”

“Jes.”

In Mexico the letter ‘y’ is pronounced with a ‘j’ sound in front of it and I quickly realized I would have to approach this from a different direction. I said both words to myself – yes and jes – and noted that my tongue was at the bottom of my mouth behind my teeth, when I used the English pronunciation, but was at the top of my mouth when I said ‘jes.’ And so began an evening of hysterical laughter as I instructed him where to hold his tongue, complete with open-mouth demonstrations, in order to get the English version to sound correct. Miguel did finally get the ‘y’ sound down pat, and in return he walked me through the tongue twisting name of his town (pronounced Tla coh TAHL pahn), which I didn’t fully grasp until a couple of days later, and told me everything I needed to see while I was there.

Tlacotalpan is known for the multi-colored columns and pillars that adorn nearly every house in town

More multi-colored pillars deorate Tlacotalpan houses

Armed with this information, the next morning I set out to explore. Tlacotalpan is renowned for its neo-classic buildings, most of which have front porticoes supported by columns or pillars that have been painted lime green, pale pink, sky blue, bright orange, deep rose, burnished gold, lavender, purple, turquoise, and yellow. I wandered the cobblestone streets, enjoying this Continue reading →

Posted in Mexico travel |

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Help Open Cuba To Travel for U.S. Citizens

Published June 10, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

Today I received an email from a staffer at the Washington Office on Latin America, informing me about HR 4645, a bill that would eliminate the travel ban to Cuba for U.S. citizens and increase U.S. agricultural sales to Cuba. The bill is currently in committee in the U.S. House of Representatives but is expected to go to the floor for a vote within two weeks.

One-page summary of Bill to open Cuba to travel for U.S. citizens

Normally, I don’t discuss politics on this blog, but this subject is extremely timely for me, so I’m making an exception. Why is it timely? I’m currently in the Yucatan of Mexico and I discovered that I could go to Cuba for 4-5 days for as little as $500, including airfare, hotel, and all meals. I salivated at the prospect; going to Cuba has long been at the top of my travel wish list. Cuban immigration officials don’t stamp the passports of U.S. citizens entering or leaving the country, so there would be no way for the U.S. government to know I’d been there, since I would have flown in and out of Cancun. But in the end I decided against going because I couldn’t have written about my experience in Cuba and that would have killed me. So, like thousands of others, I decided to wait until the ban was lifted.

This could happen soon if the bill is successful, but our help is needed. If you agree with lifting the ban, please contact your State Representatives, tell them you support HR 4645, and ask them to vote for the bill. I’ve provided a one-page overview of the bill above. Click on the image to download it in a PDF format.

Posted in Caribbean travel |

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Speed is the Enemy of Cultural Travel

Published June 5, 2010 | By Barbara Weibel

When I set off on this four-month backpacking trip at the end of February, my cultural travel itinerary included Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Peru and Ecuador. I envisioned ten weeks in Mexico, followed by whirlwind tours of the other four countries, including hiking the Machu Picchu Trail in Peru and the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. Some of you are looking at the calendar right now and noting that it is now nearly four months later and my blog posts are still all about Mexico. Yes, I am still in Mexico and will not make it out of the country on this trip.

On my RTW (round-the-world) trip in 2007, I did 17 countries in six months. Although I’d previously traveled for a month each year, my RTW trip was my first foray into real long-term travel. I’d recently recovered from a serious illness that had filled me with fear of dying before I could visit all the places I’d longed to see, and I was determined to strike as many of the world’s travel wonders off my bucket list as possible. The trip was fascinating and exciting and educational, and exhausting. I well remember hitting the two month mark and wanting to pack up and go home. Fortunately, I took a couple of days of down time at that point and the urge to flee back home disappeared.

Strangely, the exact same thing happened on this journey, at exactly the two month mark. Not only was moving rapidly from one place to another exhausting, I had more obligations than in 2007. I had contracted to write four travel articles per week for one client, wanted to post to Hole In The Donut at least four times per week, and was writing an occasional feature story for other online travel publications as well. By day I would see the sights and try to learn about the local culture; by night I had to sort and catalog the 200-400 photos I took each day, decide which ones to use and size them, before finally writing and uploading my posts. I was averaging perhaps four hours sleep per night, sometimes less, and it finally caught up with me when I experienced chest pains in Queretaro. Fortunately, the pain was the result of a combination of Continue reading →

Posted in Mexico travel, Travel General |

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