Sun and Shade

"I'm eating a pecan pie!" I said to Jen, on the empty roadside, with happy recognition. I love buying food and not necessarily knowing what it is when traveling, and that had been the case with this little anonymous and enticing number from a panaderia. A pecan pie was a wonderful thing to be consuming on a 96 kilometer day.

The past two nights we had been in the colonial city of Valladolid, and we were biking to Izamal today. Pedaling into Valladolid, the cobble streets, the rows of bright pink and teal and orange colonial houses, the dignified stone cathedral, I felt for that place the instant attraction of an infatuation. So much commerce, not just key chains and tourist shot glasses, a healthy mix of ice cream and tortillerias, a few lucky tourists and mostly locals. Can you fall in love with a city?

In Valladolid we split an Airbnb space with Lady Elise and Amante Raphael, feeling proudly frugal at $7/person/night. An eccentrically decorated back garden (complete with a blow-up Santa, palm trees, and flashing Christmas lights) butted up against a sweet outdoor kitchen, and we cooked beans, i made popcorn, and had wine and laughter as our strange little family of four.

Indeed, we are traveling as a party now. A bike gang. Sharing citronella, all of our food, mapping ideas. Having Raphael's Spanish is a treat, and I am still crazy about Lady Elise, so I am happy about this arrangement until the time comes to take our separate routes.

In Valladolid (say "Vaya-doh-leed") we jumped from the mossy rocks into the heavenly waters of the cenote _in_ the center of the city (a cool dip like this, with stalactites, overheated sluggish bodies made magic, makes me believe I can do anything with my day, when just minutes before I'd been feeling torpid and totally unambitious from the blistering heat). I visited the Convent de San Bernardino de Siena, a huge and historic stone church and living quarters for their monks. I sat in the shade and gazed at an iguana for some time there, noticing the scales on his tail and spikes along his spine. That goes as a successful Rest Day for me, in the tropics, to sit and relax and study an iguana.

The magic of Valladolid culminated in a live cumbia band in the town square Sunday night. Elise and Jen and I were decades younger than most everyone else, and a sweet group of ladies beckoned us into their happy dancing circle. "More hips, more hips!" they directed us, becoming our dance teachers. I felt so much joy of life then, dancing to that music, in a warm night, participating in something so deeply of this place.

During the day, down the street from our Airbnb was set up a big tent and colored flags: an open-air catholic church. The bells rang for 9am Sunday service at 9:05ish and then singing and waiting in line to pay respects to a saint statue went on for hours. Sunday was a special holiday for this saint, and hawkers moved through the people selling white candles. "How does anyone have time for anything other than going to all the church services?" wondered Jen; later that night, we could still hear the singing. I even recognized a few refrains from my momentary catholic girlhood, and sang along.

After the wearying and de-sensitizing highway riding along the coast, we have been on deliciously quiet rural roads since coming inland. Roads have been flat, and the weather deluge-free. The cooking temperature climbs from medium high to high between 10 and 11am, the sun merciless above us.

On today's ride, the landscape changed from low thickened trees and shrubs where the road was a delicious shaded tunnel, to sparse dry plants unwilling to offer shade. The road was a flat strip though an oven. Around 11am I got out my medical thermometer (always carried to test for fevers), and I turned it on just to see if it would register. It beeped at 98.2. Whew, not quite yet a fever.

Moving through heat like this does amazing things to a body. I come here to seek heat and sun and when intense like this, I am a flaming hypocrite, seeking shade and feeling overwhelmed by it. It is a flattening and deeply draining experience to be this hot. But we had a tail wind. And I'd laid on the cold stone walkway in a tiny park in a tiny town. And stuck my head under a park faucet, the grizzled men on the park benches watching me with unimpressed curiosity.

We had woke at 5am to leave in the cool time of Cyclist Twilight, and feeling chilled for the first 30 kilometers was indeed delightful. The waning gibbous moon ahead of us, like the star for the traveling Kings. Pleasure and struggle mixed together. Traveling by bicycle in a place like this is a high-amplitude curve of deep lows and high highs. And I would want a "vacation" no other way.