Looks like Hurricane Beta has blown out over Nicaragua. It rained here in Chetumal today but we even missed that being out of the immediate area visiting 3 different Mayan ruins. Unfortunately, I forgot my flash drive at the hotel so no new pictures tonight. I took a lot more today but the most moving thing was coming upon a poor guaqueque (waa-kay-kay) being killed by a small fox. I butted in, scared the fox who tried unsuccessfully to drag the crying guaqueque away with her, and made a mess of the whole thing. Then, while photographing the event, started the guaqueque crying again. Bad scene. The fact is I am on both sides of the struggle. The fox needed the food, maybe even for her family, and the guaqueque want to live. I don´t know how it turned out. We went back later to check up on things but there nothing. Not even one drop of blood. Life is hard. Everyone is food for someone but I want to feed everybody soy and tofu and call it good ...sigh
Tomorrow, depending on the weather, we will either visit more Mayan sites or hang around town. If we stay in Chetumal we´ll meet our new friend Dan at the internet cafe
in the afternoon then go hang out on the beach with him. Dan is one of those bigger than life people you sometimes meet on the road. He´s got great stories. He said when he was a young man he was going to play for the Chicago Cubs but then got drafted and fought in Vietnam. Later, among other things, he became a journalist and sailed across the Atlantic solo. He also claimed to have golfed with President Gerald Ford, interviewed Subcomandante Marcos several times. He lost his voice to cancer about five years ago and can´t talk above a whisper. We had lunch with him yesterday. Even without a voice he whispered, gestured and scribbled stories for several hours, waving one or another of his various knives from time to time for emphasis. One of the great things about Mexico is that you can have these kind of animated converstations and nobody objects. The waiters just went about their business. The only thing they worried about was that Dan had left the windows down in his vehicle and there was some expensive looking equipment in the front seat. They ended up guarding it for him because he wasn´t concerned about it being stolen. All this would be impossilbe in the paranoid US.---------------------
Bruce Hodder of SUFFOLK PUNCH wrote a nice review of this current series on our travels in Mexico. I´m always grateful for a good word. Thanks Bruce!
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