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Freedom

August 7th, 2002 ~ Day 6

We slept in again, partly due to the effects of the previous night’s festivities, but largely due to our rapidly diminishing interest in any more hotel activities. By this point in our stay we were beginning to feel a little trapped at the hotel. We had pretty much exhausted all the venues of entertainment that we were interested in, and taxi rides into town were expensive, usually yielding disappointing results. We had endured La Casona, the novelty of free drinks at the bar had dwindled, and we had slept too late to be able to go snorkeling. We spent the better part of what was left of the morning just walking around, apathetically wondering what to do next.

At about one o’clock in the afternoon, we struck gold. We’d rent a car, and be able to go anywhere and do anything we wanted. Now that was a plan. We hurried to the main hotel lobby¹, where we met with the car rental guy. By this time in the day, there was only one vehicle left - a Geo Tracker with a destroyed and essentially absent canvas top and automatic transmission. We took it. With a map of the island in hand, we set out to make the rest of our day count.

Storm clouds were gathering as we took off, and as we headed for the southern tip of the island it began to rain. It turned out not to be too bad, though, and we discovered that the faster we drove, the drier we stayed, apparently due to the aerodynamic properties of the Tracker. By the time we had traveled only a few kilometers, the rain had slackened and eventually ceased. We rounded the southern point and continued, now north, along the eastern coast. We had heard that the beaches on this side of the island were beautiful, and short of their being smallish and at times dotted with boulders and scattered vegetation, they were. They at least had an unspoiled feel to them, as they weren’t the type of beaches that really fit in with hotel development. That alone made them more appealing. At one point we saw some larger rocks being pummeled by waves left over from the brief storm, so we stopped to take a few pictures. Kristina walked out onto one of the boulders, but I never could catch a good picture of a wave hitting the rock with her on it, so we moved on.

We passed a few ramshackle shops here and there, and stopped at one to purchase a good-looking blanket for $5 US. That was, and still is, the best bargain we encountered during the whole trip. We kept on cruising.

I was somewhat interested in seeing the famed Mayan ruins that we had heard so much about, so we turned and headed west along the main road that led to town, looking for the road leading to San Gervasio, where we had heard a large site of ruins was. When we arrived, we were greeted by a very nice man who told us where to park and informed us that he would keep an eye on our vehicle and any personal belongings in it, then when we left we could tip him if we wanted to. We gathered all our personal belongings and headed for the ruins. After a brief hassle at the ticket counter, we started exploring.

It was hot. We were deeper into jungle-type territory than we had yet been. The humidity was stifling and there was no breeze amidst all the trees. As if that weren’t discouraging enough, the ruins turned out to largely consist of either indistinguishable piles of rocks or buildings that had been reconstructed with modern materials and freshly thatched roofs, ruining the “ruin” feel that I was going for.

We quickly became more interested in the large and multitudinous lizards we encountered, assuming them to be iguanas. After about twenty minutes of photographing reptiles we returned to our Tracker and left, failing to tip the parking lot attendant.

We spent the rest of the afternoon just driving around town, becoming more and more disenchanted by the trashy, “touristy” cast the town had acquired, seemingly devoid of the ancestral pride and rich traditions touted in the brochures. We drove back to the hotel.

[1] I use the term “lobby” loosely, as it was really just a building with a vaulted thatch roof littered with ceiling fans and doors at each end that remained open throughout the day, effectively making it more of a covered walkway than a proper lobby ².

[2] Yes, that was one sentence. Move along, now.

 

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