Adventures of a Sun Seeker: Headwinds & Hotel Hardships

"I don't think I'll have anything to write about tonight", I thought half way through the day, plugging along on quiet straight roads, "I'll just post some photos that've been backlogged."

And oh how I was wrong about that. Unfortunately I am pretty wearied, so please forgive any decrepitude in my writing.

This is a story about being off the beaten path.

This morning I again bicycled out of Merida (after delightedly consuming a SALAD and a real proper porter, both oh so rare otherwise. In your small town it would be pork instead of salad and some caramel-colored light cervesa---side note, googling "additives in beer" is highly disturbing).

After the endless suburbs of Merida, I found myself in hacienda country. I rode through countless small towns: Baca, Sacapuc, Telchac, Dzibilatún, all quietly happening places, tidy, with many open shops and fruterias. I imagine these are healthy little towns supporting the many surrounding farms. Haciendas are plantations, and indeed, I was seeing agriculture, where much of our riding has passed low scrubby forest. The henequin plants are agave species, and they are grown for fiber.

I enjoyed riding on these straight empty roads, quiet and carless, save for an occasional person on a motorbike or someone hacking away in a field with a machete. I was riding into a headwind, and my goal was to head up towards Dzilam de Bravo, a town that seemed to be the last coastal town on a reasonable road on my map. I would make a loop with this, banking my grueling headwind for a tailwind later, for an earned ride along the coast and towards Progreso and then back to Merida.

I am learning about Google. You may zoom into your Google map with sensible foresight, seeing hotels and restaurants in a place; however, on the Yucatan peninsula this does not guarantee they actually will be open. Or even exist.

I was imagining staying in the sweet coastal town of Santa Clara, even though there was a decent budget option hotel I had passed inland. And then in Santa Clara I found only empty streets of sand, rows of unoccupied vacation homes, two mean dogs, and one hotel right on the beach. I was like a corn tostado from the sun (even in protective long sleeves) and winded (sorry) from the wind. The hotel people were asking way more than I was used to for a stay, and I feel uncomfortable paying sums of money that reflect being a rich entitled American. And there was nothing else enticing me to stay in this tiny sandy town. Should I stay and treat myself? Go against the wind to Dzilam de Bravo? Go with the wind somewhere else? Decisions like this, when traveling in this manner, become not so much preferences but feel like they carry the heft of Life Decisions. Or maybe that just happens when you're tired.

I was so hot and bedraggled my brain was sweating out my armpits. Make a decision? Gah. How insurmountable.

Then I realized where I WAS. There was the SEA. So I left my bicycle on its kickstand and walked straight into the water wearing all of my clothes.

And oh my goodness did that bring me life's energy back again.

I decided to use the wet clothes as coolant, and to continue biking into the headwind, to Dzilam de Bravo, where Google maps showed many more restaurants and interesting things.

How harsh are the elements! The winds bend the tall agave spikes, sweep sand, crest waves. There is no quiet for the roar of it. And the sun slams down midday on skin and pavement and glints off the water. I was biking now with the sea on my left and lagoons on my right. The sand in the lagoons was pink, a striking and eerie color; I felt like I was on the face of the moon...a place so foreign and empty and buffeted by the elements. I saw flamingos in those strange sands and laughed and cried simultaneously as I was blown wobbly by the wind.

And then, lest this day let up in it's wildly heightened experiences, I bonked. Hit the wall, if you will. Aka: Blood sugar drop. I do this just frequently enough that I am an expert managing it. Emergency Backup Cookies! I deployed all of them. And they were the best things I had. ever. eaten.

At the end of my 64 miler headwind day, I approached the yellow hotel in Dzilam with nothing short of an arrival in heaven. And Señor Hotel dismissively said he had no rooms available. How disheartening. I cruised around town, found it to be more of a closed-up fishing village than I had hoped, took a horizontality break in the empty park, and then asked someone in my terrible Spanish where was a hotel. Hoping upon hope there was a second.

And there was another hotel! Around that corner. Heaven arrival again! "Hola?" "Hola!" I called around. Completely closed up.

My goodness. What a day.

A withered elderly lady came out of her house from across the street. I asked her, in my infantile Spanish, "hotel?". She had teeth only on the left side of her mouth and she explained a lot of fascinating things to me. None of which I understood. I think she was telling where to go to _find_ the hotel keeper. A treasure hunt in a language I struggled with?

But the phone number of the hotel was helpfully listed on the front of the building. I was so grateful to Senora Left Teeth for calling the number for me on her phone. Miss Hotel would be right over. Hallelujah! Senora had me wait with her, telling me many illuminating things about the town and her life and her granddaughter and whatever else because I comprehended not a word of it.

This young gringa visitor from out of town! Ah! How lovely it is to have someone new to talk to! But how she does listen with such a bemused expression.

My room is very clean, with firm beds, gentle sweet lighting, and a shower curtain with the Eiffel tower on it (?). I have never relished a space so much.

This was the wipest-outest I've felt on this trip so far. I padded slowly out to find dinner, after my first ever siesta (yes! there's a reason for these), and instead found mostly colorful fishing boats and more wind and the waves bristling with white caps. A single restaurant was open, where I was the only guest, and they cooked me an enormous platter of scrambled eggs. An entire egg carton of eggs probably. They were the best thing I had ever eaten since those E. B. Cookies. Until I set into them did I realize how famished I was and I ate the whole mess and felt amazing.

I've sourced my squeeze feedbag packet of yummy refried beans from a basic tienda, kept the extra tortillas from dinner, and thus am ready to ride tomorrow's tailwind as early as I please. Tomorrow night I booked a room in the touristy town of Progreso, which will be an enormous contrast to tonight, a contrast that will be both irritating and welcome.

Tonight's experience walking alone with the wind-beaten fishing boats, the swallowed sunset making the emptiness glow, is not what you will find written about in guide books. No tourist buses come through here. I felt like I was stepping into an untouched place. Challenging and barren-feeling. But precious and richer for that as well.