Posted: February 3, 2004

Adventure: A Cyclist's Journey - Lynette Chiang In Mexico

From James Raia:

Lynette Chiang's web site:
Sponsor's web site: www.bikefriday.com

By LYNETTE CHIANG

I have just spent the night in the most amazing place. The owner of the Sacbe Camping spot suggested I stop by Hacienda Tabi, "a very nice place" where I might be able to stay the night or hang a hammock.

Well, after taking a premature turnoff and finding myself well and truly lost in a maze of orange orchards, bouncing along a rutted, potholed dirt road for around 4 km, the foliage miraculously parted to reveal a jaw-dropping sight. It was Hacienda Tabi, floating like a magical, mystical mirage on a sea of fuzzy grass.

It was like a chancing across the Starship Enterprise albeit in a bygone era. I did not pace out the frontage, but it was wider than my field of view. A bit like some of the massive colonial edificios in Florence where the architects cunningly countered the visual vanishing point and made the buildings wider towards the top, giving the mere mortal below a sense of being very small indeed.

Well, Tabi had the same effect, only in the horizontal plane, if you get my drift.

La senora who greeted me had worked there for 18 years, cooking for whoever turned up, her kids helping squeeze the oranges for the breakfasts and her husband working on repairs. She told me that tonight the place was booked out by - guess what - a group of 30 cyclists from Ohio. There was no room at the inn, but I could swing a hammock across one of the palatial balconies or in the library.

Sure enough, the cyclists arrived. Thirty kids from a privileged school with four teachers keeping them in line - and pedaling, I imagine. For the second night in a row, I rigged my hammock and mosquito netting, thus proving it to be a canny purchase back there in Campeche.

While the kids kicked a football around the massive prairie out front I explored the abandoned stone church, complete with trees growing high on the open air rafters, the roots running like plumbing down the pitted walls and into the earth.

Behind the arched colonnades which went on forever were 5 large simple rooms, looking like they were straight out of one of those Yucatan Style coffee table books. The rest of the Hacienda was in a state of semi repair. I was banished to the unrenovated bathroom downstairs and tried not to look up or down as I took a shower heated by an electric coil.

Dinner was tamales, fruit and a drink, for 35 pesos. Mexicans tend to eat very sparingly in the evening, say one tamale, but as I had not had much for lunch, I downed six in quick succession and later wished, as I tossed and turned in my hammock, that I had restrained myself. The night sky was expansive, black and silent, and even the hyperactive teens were stilled by the awe of the starry abyss overhead.

One of the teachers, Theresa, a travel writer who had been to the Yucatan 5 times, clapped eyes on my Bike Friday. "I want to buy one of those, much easier for taking on airplanes." Now there's someone we don't have to convince.

© Copyright 2003, James Raia

Posted with the permission of James Raia. Vist his website at: /www.byjamesraia.com.

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