Walking the Americas Read online

  I’d already gathered that, I thought to myself.

  ‘And I like to listen, Alberto, but for the sake of the next four months, maybe spread it out a bit,’ I said, punching him on the arm in a brotherly manner.

  ‘OK, OK, I’ll try,’ he chuckled.

  After we’d passed the town of Acanceh, with its looming Mayan ruin slap bang in the town square next to the church, we decided to take a small track away from the main road. The plan was to reach Tekit, where I knew of a hacienda we could spend the night in. It wasn’t too far and we had some time to kill, so Alberto suggested we go and meet an old friend on the way.

  ‘I’ve got an idea for something fun. I’ve not done it in ages, shall we go and explore one of the cenotes?’

  It sounded like a good, if terrifying idea.

  The rough trail led for three miles deep into the bush. It was flanked by an ancient drystone wall, the kind you get back home, except this one was doing battle with the jungle for its very survival. Lianas and vines threatened to entangle the pitted stones, and a vast network of roots from tropical trees pushed through the gaps. Evil-looking thorn bushes strangled the boulders, and in parts, it simply vanished.

  ‘This way,’ said Alberto, leading from the front as he swung his machete to chop away at the dangling leaves. I felt like we were entering another world, where nature was triumphant and the apocalypse had already happened. ‘He’s out there somewhere.’

  Eventually the trail came to end in a small clearing, which had once been the entrance to a flourishing hacienda. A wall was almost completely covered with bushes, but a series of weathered steps remained and they led to what appeared to be a raised-earth terrace that surrounded a sprawling fig tree.

  Aaron was already waiting for us under the shade of the gnarled branches. Here was the man we had come looking for.

  ‘Welcome to San Antonio cenote,’ he beamed, pointing at the base of the tree.

  I looked down and was surprised to discover that he’d laid out all the gear that we’d need for our forthcoming adventure. But it was what lay beyond that caused me to feel a shudder down my spine. I peered into a dark abyss.

  ‘Cenotes used to be regarded by the Maya as the portals to the underworld,’ said the diving instructor with a smile. ‘Look down there and you can see why.’ I stepped carefully forward, avoiding the neatly placed oxygen tanks, wetsuits and diving masks that were laid out around the hole.

  ‘Wow,’ grinned Alberto. ‘It’s so deep.’

  ‘Twelve metres,’ said Aaron.

  I looked down into the black crevasse. It was about the size of a grave, two metres long by one metre across, and only the faintest glimmer of light reflected from the pitch-dark pool of water below.

  ‘There’s, like, three thousand of them in Yucatán,’ said Alberto.

  ‘Six thousand,’ said Aaron, correcting my guide. ‘Maybe more. Only a few hundred have ever been explored. I’ve been into thirty or forty, but in my lifetime I’ll never see them all.’

  Aaron was one of the world’s leading experts in cave- and cenote-diving and he’d offered to take us to see one of his favourite cenotes.

  ‘This one is quite safe. It’s only a small hole at the top, but when you get inside it’s very big, you’ll see. It’s dark, but we will have torch lights so you’ll see everything, so don’t worry.’

  I was worried.

  ‘It’s super dangerous,’ whispered Alberto, nudging me as we looked down into the abyss. ‘Ask him about the Japanese divers.’

  ‘What Japanese divers?’ I asked.

  Aaron was quiet for moment. ‘Well, some of them are dangerous, of course, the caves with no open water; you need to be experienced. A few years ago, some Japanese divers came and dived a new cenote, an unexplored one, but they got lost in the caves and must have run out of air. Nobody heard from them again.’

  Cenotes are the result of a unique geological phenomenon meaning that there are almost no rivers or surface water-sources in the Yucatán peninsula. All the freshwater drainage systems are underground in a network of subterranean caves, linked by these sink holes. Some cenotes are vast open caves, others, like this, mere sockets into the underworld. This one had been used as a well by the Spanish hacienda owners. But even before the conquest and the dismantling of the Mayan cities, the ancient people used these holes as a means of sustenance for both this life and the next.

  ‘Wait till you see what’s down there, it’ll be worth it,’ said Aaron.

  I gulped.

  Alberto sweated.

  ‘But be careful, don’t touch anything.’

  ‘Touch what?’

  ‘Wait and see.’

  ‘Any other helpful advice?’

  Aaron raised his eyebrows. ‘Yes, of course. Remember to breathe.’

  ‘You first, my friend,’ said Alberto, zipping up his wetsuit in the sweltering heat of the forest. ‘You’re the explorer, off you go.’

  I couldn’t quite believe what I was about to do. Here we were in the middle of the Mexican jungle, about to abseil into an ancient well that only a handful of people had ever been into, and what’s more, it transpired that divers had been down into these things and never returned. But I couldn’t back out now, we were here, and how many times do you get the chance to go diving in a black hole in the jungle? Plus, I couldn’t lose face in front of Alberto, nope that wouldn’t do at all.

  I zipped up my wetsuit and donned the fins that Aaron had magically produced. First went Aaron and then my BCD and tank of air on a rope, lowered into the pit. After that went a small inflatable dinghy, and then it was my turn. Aaron had constructed a pulley system and employed the services of two local farmers whom we now trusted with our lives, not only to lower us down into the water-filled cave, but also to pull us up again in two hours’ time.

  Attached by a carabiner and a harness, I found myself being slowly shunted down into the grave-like hole, watching as Alberto’s grin got smaller and the sunlight eventually became nothing more than a shaft of light.

  As I wondered what I was letting myself in for, I began to think back to what had led me to this point in my life, holding on for dear life to a rope while suspended above a hole in the earth that promised to swallow me up.

  ‘I’m down here. Keep coming,’ echoed the reassuring words of Aaron. I looked down. He was floating in the water with all his gear on, directly below. Soon enough I was lowered into the cool depths, which was a refreshing change from the searing heat of the jungle above. Aaron swam over and unhooked me; the rope was immediately hauled back up for Alberto. I struggled to put on the diving tanks and lay there floating in the still water, waiting for Alberto to join us.

  Attached to my wrist was a torch, which I turned on, and I had the chance to look around. Aaron wasn’t wrong. We were now inside a vast cavern the size of a cathedral dome, surrounded by dangling stalactites. Bats fluttered silently in the crevices and the only sound was a constant dripping of water into the pool from the porous rocks above. I shone the waterproof torch down this time and to my astonishment the water was so perfectly clear I could see the bottom of the pool some twenty metres down. I could just make out rocks and stalagmites and piles of sand and centuries of debris that had fallen down the well into the watery pit.

  ‘Yeeehaa!’ yelled Alberto, as he slid down the rope.

  I heard him shout out loud, ‘Mum, Dad, forgive me, I’m sorry for all the bad things I did as a kid.’

  And then as he splashed into the cold water next to us, his fear was gone. ‘This is incredible,’ he bellowed.

  It certainly was. After a safety briefing and checking that all the kit was properly fitted, we began the dive, leaving spare gear and camera equipment in the dinghy.

  Down we went, equalising our noses to the pressure as we descended. It didn’t take long to reach the pinnacle of the sand mountain under the water. I saw bits of wood, unnatural in shape – clearly carved – perhaps planks used for the well of the hacienda that had fallen in o
ver the years. Then there was what seemed to be the remains of a bucket – the same had happened. There were fragments of shells and odd-shaped stones, and then … a ceramic bowl. What was that doing there? Aaron led me and Alberto closer to the ancient artefact. He pointed and spoke through the underwater radios that were built into the masks.

  ‘Mayan sacrifice bowl,’ he said in a crackled voice through the intercom radio. He then beckoned us to follow him. Kicking our fins, we swam through the crystal water ever deeper into the depths, following the course of the sandbank. Then I saw a huge horn poking out of the sand. On closer inspection, it seemed to be attached to a skull: it looked like a cow or a buffalo. ‘Sacrifice,’ came the crackly answer from our guide.

  Further still and we came to something even more remarkable – and disturbing. There, on a rocky ledge, was another skull. But this time there were no horns. It was clearly that of a human being. Nearby, scattered around the bottom were the rest of the remains – thigh bones, ribs, spinal vertebrae, a pelvis.

  I took a gulp of air. For a second I lost sight of Aaron, I was transfixed by the gaze of the eyeless sockets. I felt a tap on the shoulder. Aaron beckoned once again and I followed. Alberto was below now, motionless, staring at a rocky ledge and its eerie remains. I descended to get a closer look. There they were, dozens of them. I couldn’t even count, there were so many. Dozens and dozens of human skulls and bones, scattered around the bottom of the cenote. Some were upside down, others sideways. Some had the bottom jaw still attached, others had been badly smashed. There were holes and fractures in several of them. It was undeniably murder.

  ‘Sacrifice,’ came the muffled voice across the radio, yet again.

  The ancient Maya killed thousands of men, women and children every year as offerings to the gods. Some had their hearts and guts ripped out on top of the stone pyramids such as Chichen Itza and Coba, others were decapitated and thrown into the cenotes. Some, especially princesses and virgins, were simply thrown into the pits alive and left to drown. I couldn’t imagine a more horrible way to meet your end than in this watery grave.

  I looked at my air meter. I was almost out of oxygen. Thirty minutes seemed to have passed all in a few seconds, but that’s what diving is like. Not wanting to suffer a similar fate to the victims of the Mayan death cult – or the Japanese tourists, for that matter – we ascended back to the surface. Thankfully, the farmers were still on hand to pull us up and out from the cenote.

  The locals winched us up, chuckling to themselves. They couldn’t understand why we had any interest in this old pit, full of heads and bones. They suggested we would have a much better time if we visited the local fiesta, where there was cheap beer and good horses, and maybe a bullfight if we were lucky. Did we want a lift? No thanks, I explained we were walking. They shrugged their shoulders and said they never walked anywhere unless they had to. Horses were much better. Pick-up trucks better still, but more expensive, of course.

  As I looked up at the sky, the afternoon clouds were already dark and foreboding and in the distance the rumble of thunder seemed to shake the very heart of the forest. It was time to move and so I thanked Aaron for his introduction to the underworld and we set off to the south towards Tekit.

  It was almost dark by the time we reached the town and the footpath that led into the village took us past a cemetery. I was all for carrying on and getting to the hacienda where we could find a bed, but this was no ordinary graveyard, this was a Mayan burial site. There is no human sacrifice anymore, but it seems the manner of bodily disposal wasn’t all that different for some people, even in this day and age.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ said Alberto, ‘I want to show you something.’

  So we entered the walled garden though an iron gate. Inside were hundreds of mausoleums dating back a hundred years. You could tell the rich from the poor by the size of the gravestones, and the peasants again by the lack of graves altogether.

  ‘The really poor people,’ Alberto explained, ‘get buried in a communal plot for two years. After that, the grave is dug up on the Day of the Dead and the bones are taken out.’ He looked sinister in the half-light of the cemetery, a solitary streetlight flickered across the graves. ‘Then,’ he carried on, ‘they are put in boxes, skulls and everything, and they’re here.’ He pointed to the inside wall, where I could see what looked like small pigeonholes less than a foot wide. Each of the dark crevices contained a rusty old metal box. We got closer. Some of the compartments had bars blocking entry to what lay within. Others were open. Many of them were filled with candles and offerings. The dead are venerated here in Mexico, and nowhere more so than by the descendants of the Mayans here in the Yucatán. I opened a creaky box and there inside, looking up, was the skull of a man, on a pile of bones. I closed it quickly.

  ‘Let’s leave,’ I said to Alberto. ‘We’ve seen enough death for one day.’

  The next morning, we walked from Tekit to Mama in an hour and a half. Already we were managing to make four or five kilometres an hour, which was good going considering the immense heat and dripping humidity. Until now we’d simply carried what we needed for the day’s walk in a small daysack. A litre of water, to be resupplied at every shop, our cameras and phones, with maps stored, some sunglasses to avoid the terrible glare of the Mexican sun, and the most important thing – a sweat rag. We’d left our main bags behind and arranged with Aaron the Divemaster to send them forward to Mama, where we would collect them later on. After that we needed a way of carrying them.

  ‘They’re too heavy to carry ourselves,’ said Alberto. He was right, all the stuff we had came to over twenty-five kilograms. We used to carry much more than that in Army, but rarely for these sorts of distances, and almost never in this heat and humidity. I had already made my mind up that I wasn’t in the mood to break any world records, and I had nothing to prove. This wasn’t some sort of competition as to how much weight I could carry, so I agreed that we should find a way of transporting the bags as we walked.

  ‘What about porters?’ I suggested. It had been a reliable method in the Himalayas.

  Alberto laughed out loud. ‘Ha! Do you think you’ll find a Mexican to carry your bags? No way, they’re too busy sleeping under trees.’

  ‘Even if we pay someone?’

  ‘Not a chance. Anyone with that kind of a business mind has already left and gone to the USA. Don’t worry, I have an idea. We can get a tricycle in Mama, I know some people there.’

  Mama was similar to most of the villages we’d passed. It had an old Spanish church in the main plaza, which was dilapidated, its paint peeling off and with holes in the roof. Most of the houses were single-storey concrete blocks with small verandas and tin roofs, although there were many thatched mud houses as well, where the elderly and poor Mayans live.

  The central square was nothing more than a waste ground, filled with feral dogs and boisterous chickens. Some children played football barefoot in the dusty park, as the old men of the village looked on saying nothing. A few teenagers trotted around on horses, doing nothing in particular. Only the women seemed to work, carrying baskets on their head.

  ‘I like the old Mayan houses more than the new ones, I think,’ I mused out loud to Alberto. It seemed a shame that they had traded in the beautiful traditional thatch for concrete and tin.

  ‘Me, too,’ he said, ‘but that’s what happens when they send money back from the US. They can earn good wages, sometimes six or seven hundred dollars in a week, especially if they have three or four jobs. All the money comes back to these villages and they upgrade their huts. You know what it’s like when it rains, they’d rather not get wet, so they get the tin roof. It’s seen as superior, so when one of them gets it, they all think they have to get it. If you still have a grass hut, people think you’re poor and won’t talk to you.’

  ‘How many people from here have gone to work abroad?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d say four or five hundred men from this village alone. Almost half the population,
I think.’

  As the first droplets of rain began to patter on the floor, I could sympathise with the locals.

  ‘This way,’ said Alberto, as we found ourselves in a side street. We walked up the driveway of one of the more modern houses. It had a big gate and bright turquoise walls and a satellite dish for TV poking from the tin roof.

  ‘These are my adopted family,’ he said, waving as a group of young men bounded out of the garden where they had been drinking beer. A man called Fabian Tzib Tchu hugged Alberto warmly and shook my hand.

  ‘We want to buy a tricycle,’ said Alberto to his old friend.

  ‘Of course, but first you must eat with us.’

  We were taken into the garden, where six or seven women of all ages, all wearing huipils, were busy over a fire pit. Some were roasting a pig, others making handmade tortillas for the tacos. They were all chatting away in Mayan, not Spanish.

  ‘I know a few words,’ said Alberto proudly. ‘But it’s hard, it’s almost like Chinese or something.’

  ‘Go on then, tell me something,’ I challenged him.

  He paused. ‘Pelaná,’ he said.

  All the Tzib Tchu family began roaring with laughter. I guessed that it wasn’t something pleasant.

  ‘It means your mother’s genitals. The Mayans use it all the time.’

  We sat down and ate with the family. They never stopped joking and laughing the whole night. They weren’t rich, but they weren’t poor either. They had their whole family around them at all times and were hospitable to the point of it being too much. We ate more tacos than I could possibly imagine and drank an entire crate of beer, as well as several bottles of their home brew, so that we were unable to leave.

  The next morning we forced ourselves to begin early, knowing that if we stayed for breakfast we’d never leave before lunch, and if that happened we’d be obliged to stay for dinner, too. But we had to push on, there was no time for a break this early in the journey.

  Fabian had promised us a tricycle and went off to find one, but not before insisting that we take up the offer of a blessing for our journey.