A MEXICO ADVENTURE TALE: THE LOST WORLD OF QUINTANA ROO

 

Today’s Cancun radiates luxury, flash, and all things civilized. When I first traveled there in the 1980s, though it wasn’t the sophisticated resort city it is today, it was no backwater. It had a Club Med, a spiffy hotel zone, and in 1989 played host to the Miss Universe pageant. At the time, Cancun, in the state of Quintana Roo, was not well known, but its clear turquoise waters and white sand beaches served as an enticing backdrop to a world-wide audience. Cancun was ready for its close-up.

Back then, you could venture a mere five miles north or south and find yourself traipsing through tangled jungles or walking alone on desolate beaches. Though I considered myself a seasoned Mexico traveler I’d never ventured to the Yucatán Peninsula, and my introduction to its eastern shores came unexpectedly. I found an out-of-print book, The Lost World of Quintana Roo, in a vintage book shop in Moss Landing, California.

Along with a compelling cover, the dust flap intrigued me. “This is the true story of a remarkable adventure. Michel Peissel, a young Frenchman with an international background, was stranded on the coast of Quintana Roo in eastern Yucatán, abandoned by boatmen he had engaged to take him southward.” 

I was hooked.

Peissel's tale was a tall adventure indeed. Sixty years ago he walked the land, and considered Quintana Roo to be "the most savage and wild coast on the American continent."

It was a mere territory, with no laws, no government, no roads— accessible only by sea or on foot.

In 1958 this was how Peissel, then just 21-years old, discovered it. Through a strange set of circum-stances, Peissel’s fate led him on a solo walk through thick mangroves and dense jungles from the northern tip of Quintana Roo to Belize.

MEXICO SABBATICAL

On graduating from Harvard in 1958, Peissel planned a six-month sabbatical in Mexico before entering grad school for a business career. After meeting a well-traveled German writer in Mexico City, he became fascinated with a little known territory on the Yucatán Peninsula, Quintana Roo. Peissel first headed to Merida, then Progreso, where he chartered a boat to Cozumel. From there he planned to sail down the Quintana Roo coast. After arriving in Cozumel he hired two young Maya boys with an 11-foot vessel, bamboo mast and rag sail, to take him to the QRoo mainland.

After a harrowing eight-hour crossing, they arrived at Puha, a coco plantation or cocal, on the mainland. At that time the coast was entirely uninhabited except for Puha, Puerto Morelos, and Tankah. Exhausted, Peissel fell asleep and missed the second half of the journey on the Maya sailboat, which left him with a fateful decision—how to get to Chetumal in a land with no roads and virtually no people. After being abandoned, his only hope to exit the jungle was to travel on foot from cocal to cocal, relying on the assistance of the Maya who lived there for food, water, and direction.

LONG JOURNEY

Wearing only sandals as his boots left with the boat, he began his two hundred mile journey through dense jungle and mangrove swamps. He was chased by chiclero bandits (chickle cutters for gum trees) and encountered Chan Santa Cruz Indians, who until then killed any light-skinned person on sight as the Caste War of Yucatán had ended just twenty years earlier. He partook in religious ceremonies with indigenous Maya and stumbled onto unknown pyramid sites. Peissel became the first person known to walk the coast of Quintana Roo, arriving in Belize forty days later.

RETURN TRIP

It would be three years before Peissel made a return trip and in that time he found many things had changed along the QRoo coast. In 1974 Quintana Roo became a state of Mexico and shortly thereafter the Mexico Tourist Council devised a project for a planned resort community which is now present day Cancun.

Years later Peissel again returned to Quintana Roo. He paddled and sailed his way down the coast on a Maya seagoing dugout canoe. After his early adventure to Quintana Roo, he abandoned his plans to become a banker and went on to write fifteen books and produce twenty documentary films. Because of his journey to Quintana Roo, journeying to other outback destinations like Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan would become his life’s passion. Peissel died in Paris October 7, 2011. At 74, his was an adventurous life well lived.

On a personal note, I was contacted by the author after I wrote a review of the 1963 Lost World publication in 2000 for the Miami Herald. The review reached Peissel in Paris; he located me through email and thanked me for it. He mentioned the book was out of print and if f I knew of a publisher who might want to re-publish, to let him know. I had few publishing contacts, but I was excited to have been contacted by Peissel. I later heard from his brother Bernard who explained he'd read the review and forwarded it to Michel. We remained in contact and it was Bernard who informed me of Michel's passing.  

                                        

But my six degrees of separation with Michel did not stop with the review. I traveled to Paris and one of my stops was Shakespeare & Company. Owning a bookstore in Mexico as an expat drew me to this famous Parisian landmark. By chance I met the owner, George Whitman. Though an ocean apart, we were kindred spirits—expats with bookstores on foreign soil. When I told him about Alma Libre Libros, he asked what part of Mexico it was in.

I said Quintana Roo. And then the conversation got real interesting. "Quintana Roo? Quintana Roo! I walked Quintana Roo when I was young."

"You've been there?"

"Oh yes, in the thirties I traveled through Mexico. My visa ran out and I helped build a bridge between Chetumal and Belize to get my papers in order." 

"Have you read The Lost World of Quintana Roo?" I asked. "By Michel Peissel?" 

"Michel, of course. He'd come into the bookshop when he wa a student at the Sorbonne. We often talked about my travels in Quintana Roo."

So Peissel had piggy-backed onto Whitman's true life adventure. Whitman was his game changer as Peissel was mine. I'd come full circle, from finding an out-of-print book in California that became the heart of my Mexico desire, inspiring me to travel south and settle as an expat in Mexico. To top that off, I accidentally met Whitman in Paris, who connected the dots with Peissel. Aaah, life can be sweet.

Though the book is out of print, it's possible to find copies through various sellers. It's a compelling tale. Climb aboard and be ready for a fascinating armchair adventure. 

For more information on my writing, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. My first book, a travel memoir, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, is available on Amazon as are books one and two of my cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, also on Amazon.

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 Vintage photographs are taken from The Lost World of Quintana Roo.

MY JUNGLE KITTY AKA MIRACLE CAT IN MEXICO

When we moved to Mexico long ago we took our three-month old cat with us—Max, born on the Fourth of July. We got him from San Francisco SPCA on Union Square where they'd set up a tent to unload kittens. A bevy of little charmers peered at us from the cage—Max was the most bodacious of the bunch. Even when a two-alarm SF fire truck went roaring past, he didn't back away while I petted him through the wire. He was the one.

He's been neutered and had his shots. That was his life story, the SPCA authority told us. So what was ours? Well, we explained, we were leaving for Mexico in a few weeks and wanted to take a cat with us. We were cat lovers and trusted the SPCA when looking for a kitty.

GOIN' SOUTH? MAYBE NOT

Not so fast! we were told. How could they be sure we'd provide a good life for the cat south of the border? In Mexico!

Wait a minute, was this really happening? Were we being questioned about our capacity to provide a risk-free life for our new kitty by the San Francisco SPCA? Apparently so. By this time we'd bonded with newly named Max and just thinking about him not in our lives was almost unbearable. Paul, my husband, did some real fast-talking because within the next half hour we were trotting away with Mr. Max.

In looking back over the years, Ms. SPCA may have had a leg to stand on. Max endured some unbelievable ordeals, many man made. Allow me to elaborate. He didn't get his nickname Miracle Cat, aka Milagro Gato in Spanish from our trusted Cancun vet, por nada.

OFF THE GRID

First off, Quintana Roo in those days was unsettled and downright wild as far as critters go. Much of our pueblo, Puerto Morelos, was literally a jungle and our house sat a mile from the town zocalo. Back then we had very few neighbors and the mangroves across the sascab road were full of, well, varmints: gray foxes, crocodiles, boa constrictors, monkeys, and coatimundi. Also, added to the neighborhood combat list—beach dogs and stray cats. Non-neutered cats.

As life rolled along I came to realize Max was probably the lone neutered cat in all of Quinatana Roo. The strays still had their testosterone. I could tell by the midnight cat fights that woke me. I'd jump out of bed, open the screen door, and clap my hands a few times to curtail the fight. That usually worked and Max would haul his battered buns inside the house to sleep off his late night wake-up call, only to once again realize he was indeed a stranger in a strange land.

 

 

OUT AND ABOUT

By this time he was tri-lingual: English, Spanish and Mayan. But somehow his Fourth of July birthday must have given him away. Every stray seemed to know he was gringo through and through. He'd cat around in those early days, and often when we went back to the US for a visit, I'd hear reports on our return from the neighbors—Max was over, or we saw Max in the mangroves. Once we had to go back to the US for a few months and we left him with caretakers. Basically their only job was to feed him. I received a concerned email from a neighbor that said he'd lost all his hair and was as skinny as the pink panther. Obviously something was amiss.

NEIGHBOR ALERT

She administered to him. We'd assumed the simple task of feeding Max was taking place but on our return home, we saw a raggedy cat with no fur from his mid-section to his tail. The caretaker said he wasn't eating. After checking his food supply—now Whiskas—what happened to the bags of pricey Science Diet?—I discovered it was moldy. We dragged him to the vet. Malnutrition had caused the hair loss and the ungas. Ung-what? It was a fungus, the vet explained, and if we applied a topical cream it would go away.

From then on we asked the neighbor to check in on him if we were gone. Although Max was usually an outdoor cat who used a flapper door for easy in and out privileges, for a while he shrank from any open door. We were flummoxed—he loved being outside. A few days later the gardener found a four-foot boa in the front yard. We assumed that was Max's reasoning for avoiding the great outdoors. We marveled at what he must have seen on those dark jungle nights, and how he managed to stay alive.

INSIDE THE WALLS

But there was no way he'd stay inside full time. Not his style. Early on he'd cavort inside and out of our gated property, throwing caution to the wind as he ran across the street. But a few years later he started avoiding going out of the gate as the road, now paved, got busier and busier. He hung back and restricted himself to a life within the high walls of Casa Maya. His nine lives must have come knocking. Over the years we understood why our vet named him Milagro Gato. When he made his first visit to the vet at the tender age of six, he'd earned that nickname. 

"Why milagro gato? Miracle cat?" I'd asked. 

"Oh," replied our savvy vet. "No cat can live in the jungle that long. He's un milagro."

Truer words were never spoken.

Footnote: Max retired at the age of 17 to the central coast of California.

WHY WRITE ABOUT MEXICO?

Back in the 80s I fell in love with Mexico. When I began traveling to Mexico’s Caribbean coast, first stop was Isla Mujeres, an island just twenty minutes by ferry from Cancun.

In 1983 Cancun hadn’t become the tourist hotspot it is today, and getting there from San Francisco took eighteen hours. My husband and I flew Mexicana Air which was a drama in itself. Though the flight was said to have a lone stop— Mexico City—before we reached our Cancun destination, Guadalajara became a port of call along with another airport we stopped at in the dead of night and never learned the name of.  

With so many starts and stops, we lost time and ended up arriving to Cancun so late we nearly missed the last ferry to our little Mexican island. By sheer luck we reached the dock in time to board the empty boat, enjoying the warm Caribbean breeze as we chugged towards our tropical destination.

This was the beginning of my love affair with Mexico, and years later after we’d moved there from California, I opened a bookshop and began writing travel articles for local newspapers and Mexico websites, eventually writing a travel memoir about my life in a foreign land, Where the Sky is Born. 

After finishing another non-fiction, Maya 2012 Revealed, a journalistic overview of the 2012 calendar phenomenon, I began my research for Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival. I’d lived in Mexico and owned a business there long enough to see the creeping dominance of the cartels and their effect on the daily lives of citizens. I'd kept news clippings and written notes in a journal on various incidents I'd heard about.

Obviously it would have been folly to write non-fiction about the country's overlords. I was well aware of the cartels' swift carriage of justice to any Mexican journalist who dared write about their exploits: 119 assassinated and 30 missing since 2000.  My personal heroes—journalists Anabel Hernández and Lydia Cacho—had both undergone their own dramas by daring to be so bold. Hernández was targeted for writing Narcoland, a scathing exposé of government officials cozying up to the Sinaloa cartel. In a raw display of power to detain her, cartel henchmen dressed as federal agents cordoned off an entire Mexico City block, checking for her door to door. Luckily she was not home. 

Lydia Cacho was not so lucky. After reporting on the sexual peccadilloes of Cancun politicos, she was kidnapped, thrown into the trunk of a car, and driven to Puebla where her attackers planned to stage a kangaroo trial to put her in jail indefinitely. Through luck, friends in Cancun discovered where she was being held and secured her release. Afterwards she went back to reporting at Por Esto in Cancun. When asked about the attack she replied, "I don't scare so easy."

For me, I decided to write cartel fiction that pulled stories straight from Mexico papers. Using current news as prompts for stories is an old ploy. If Dostoyevsky could do it, so could I.

My Mexico notebooks were filled with outlandish, unbelievable tales. Since my love of Mexico goes deep, I wanted to expose cartel corruption and mirror the chaos and destruction they've created. By writing fiction, I felt I could reach a larger audience and make readers aware of the social injustice taking place in my adopted homeland. Thus I began my research for Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival. Four years later it was finished. Tulum Takedown came out in March 2020, book two in the Wheels Up trilogy.

I view the trilogy as historical fiction, an insider's close-up of a disastrous situation. As the quotation by Charles Bowden at the beginning of Tulum Takedown states, "Underneath the cartels lies the disintegration of a nation." 

For more writings about Mexico, the Maya and the Yucatán, check my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Subscribe above for my bi-monthly blog posts.

THE OTHER SIDE OF CHICHEN ITZA—WAS IT THE FIRST CANCUN?

Is Chichen Itza one of the Maya’s most revered and renowned pyramid sites or a glorified shrine-museum concocted by slick politicians to reap tourist dollars? It’s no secret that the Mexico National Tourist Corporation (MNTC) designed Cancun with the intention of creating a luxury destination that would pull in coveted currency to fill state and government coffers—and if some spilled over into the private sector, so much the better.

BIRTH OF CANCUN

In 1967 the Mexico government’s aim was to find the best locale for an international tourist resort with the finest beaches, the most beautiful water, and the fewest hurricanes. Another requirement would be proximity to its wealthy northern neighbor, the US, so flight times would be minimal.  A strip of unpopulated sand at the northeast tip of the Yucatán Peninsula fit the bill—Cancun—a destination so easily accessible that at 9 a.m. one could be in New York and by noon, landing at Cancun International, moments away from a white sand beach and a pitcher of margaritas.

And with that very same intent, as early as the 1920s, long before Cancun was even a glimmer in MNTC’s eye, the Mexico government, along with help from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, was priming Chichen Itza to become Mexico’s first full-fledged tourist destination.

Fullbright scholar and former Assistant Professor of Anthopology at University of Washington, Quetzil Castaneda detailed this in his book, In the Museum of Maya Culture: Touring Chichen Itza. Through prolific research, Castaneda's book explains how it all came about.  

TOURIST DESTINATION

Chichen Itza, translated as mouth at the well of the Itzas, had been a tourist destination for over five hundred years when MNTC and the Carnegie Institution hatched their plan. After being twice abandoned by both the Itzas (750 AD) and the Maya (1194 AD) the site became a pilgrimage spot for religious groups in the 1500s because of its sacred cenote. A tourist Mecca for centuries, Chichen Itza was a place the Maya came to pay homage to their gods.

Early explorers Edward H. Thompson and John Lloyd Stephens, artist Frederick Catherwood, along with others fueled the flames of discovery and from their explorations the Yucatec and Hispanic elite, according to Castaneda, began to create a Maya myth or identity—distinctly different from  that of  either Spain or Mexico.  

CITY OF FABLES

In the 1920s, the Mexico government organized excavations under its agency Monumento Prehispanicos, and permitted the Carnegie Institution of Washington, headed in the Yucatán by explorer Sylvanus Morley, to conduct ‘multi-disciplinary’ research in the Yucatán and to excavate and restore what Castaneda calls ‘a city of fables.’ In his book, Castaneda insists the main goal of the Carnegie Institution's Excavations Department was to create a tourist Mecca rather than to restore the site to its original state.

Castaneda believes not only do economic interests (from local to international levels) now compete at the site but different government agencies and levels of state jurisdictions also compete for the slice of Chichen Itza’s tourist pie. Castaneda’s book maintains that the Maya civilization, although very real, has been ‘tweaked’ by competing government agencies to make the ‘reproduction’ of the archeological excavations more desirable to tourists.

In his book he calls Chichen Itza a museum exhibit which represents the Maya through the epochs. The exhibit implies the Maya came from ‘a primitive society or race’ and then rose to a high stature through the creation of the pyramids. But Castaneda argues that the Maya are examined through ‘the eyes of European civilization,’ by which all civilizations are compared and judged. In many ways, Castaneda’s views are similar to those of author Daniel Quinn in his controversial book, Ishmael, which divides the world into two camps:  the takers—modern Western civilization—and the givers— indigenous cultures.  

Quinn’s premise is that  Western man usurps indigenous cultures and these ethnic societies and their “myths” are then lost forever, so that the takers can impose their myth—science—onto the entire world. Quinn equates this with the destruction of all indigenous societies. Castaneda’s book basically concurs with this premise, and in his lament for the Maya, calls what the state and government have done at Chichen Itza a “violation” against Mayan society, and goes so far as to call it on par with rape.

EQUINOX PHENOMENON

Castaneda theorizes the height of the deception takes place every vernal and autumnal equinox (roughly March 20, September 21) since 1974—when Mexico figured out these date were significant to the Maya. According to Castaneda, specific knowledge of the phenomenon dates back to when Morley was excavating the site in 1928, but it was ignored by archeologists, local Maya, and Yucatecos until a thesis was published in Mexico City in 1974 by researcher Luis El Arochi.

 El Arochi, after years of study, noted that at 3 p.m. on these dates, sunlight bathed the main stairway of the pyramid Kukulkan (feathered serpent), creating a serpent-like shadow which crept down the pyramid’s massive stairs. El Arochi called this the “symbolic descent of Kukulkan,” and believed it related to Maya agricultural rituals. 

Once word was out about the equinox display of light and shadow, Chichen Itza’s Kukulkan pyramid became a tourist magnet. Tourist numbers jumped thirty percent that year. A star was born.

In 1921, Yucatan Governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto signed an agreement with Carnegie Institution that gave Sylvanus Morley a renewable ten year permit to conduct scientific study at the ancient Maya city. Among the site projects, studies would be conducted in geology, botany, zoology, climatology agronomy, medicine, physical anthropology, linguistics, history, archeology, ethnography and sociology.

Through these studies the Maya way of life could be dissected. Castaneda insists this allowed the structure of an evolutionary fable that created “ a museum of history” at Chichen Itza.    

"With Maya labor from nearby towns, the jungle was peeled back to reveal the ancient stones of decayed buildings. Chichen Itza was restored as a replica of itself and reconstructed into a life size model of an ancient Maya city.

Y TU, FELIPE

Castaneda even goes so far as to state that Felipe Carrillo Puerto, progressive governor of the Yucatán, permitted Morley and the Carnegie Institution to conduct research to create a class consciousness amongst the Maya and forge an ethnic group identity onto them, which was essential to complete the socialist revolution in the Yucatán for which Carrillo Puerto was striving.

In the Yucatán, however, the plan would serve another purpose as well. It would bolster a long stagnant economy based on the former reign of henequen—an all purpose fiber used for making rope and Panama hats—with something yet unseen—tourist dollars.

This contradictory view of Chichen Itza only heightens the mystery of the Maya. For a culture whose entire past was wiped out in an afternoon bonfire conducted by a fanatical priest in 1539, it makes one wonder anew—who were the Maya?

ISLA AND ME

     

Paul and Me at No Name Restaurant on Isla Mujeres

Waking at Maria's on Isla Mujeres was paradise personified. Nestled in a low comfortable bed in the corner of the rustic stucco room, I stretched and took in the slightly musty smells that accompanied a Mexico vacation. A thick branch of fuchsia-colored bougainvillea spilled across the screened window, leaving way for a clear view of the Caribbean. I heard waves lapping on the shore. Maybe this was perfection personified. Time to greet the day and find out. I crawled out of bed.

A few hours later Paul and I were hopping out of a taxi onto the main malecon of Isla right across from the No Name restaurant. It was 11 a.m. and the streets were quiet except for a few vendors who had set up their wares, mostly fruit and vegetables. Ivory colored jicama with a bright dash of chili pepper was arranged on one cart. Too early for that. Another vendor sold bunches of small ripe bananas tied with rope. Next to the banana vendor, a faded blue cart displayed cups of mangoes sliced like tropical flowers, gorgeous and edible. The owner, sitting on a stool next to her cart, smiled as she peeled more sticky fruit into an art form all its own. I paused.

     "Mango, por favor?"

     "Cinco pesos."

     "Gracias." I said as I dug the coin from my bolsa and handed it over. "Que bonita dia!" What a lovely day.

     "Si, por supuesto," she answered.  "Where are you from?"

     "San Francisco, California."

     "Aaah, California!" she smiled big. "I know someone from California. I was in a movie. The people in the movie, they were from California."

     Her conversation strained the bounds of my newly acquired adult ed Spanish. Slowly I put her words in comprehensive order. The struggle was worth it. We were talking—in Spanish!  Did she say ciné?  Aka movie?

     "Of course!  Against All Odds!  This was that street, the street Jeff Bridges went up to ask if anyone had seen the woman he was searching for on that small island.  This island! And wait a minute!

     "Paul!  I think this woman is the one from Against All Odds!"

     "Yes, yes," she said, now beaming a huge smile my way.  "Jeff Bridges, movie, me!"

     "You're famous!  Famosa!"

      She started laughing and Paul and I broke into laughter, too.  "It's her," he agreed.  "We're right where they filmed the movie."

     Against All Odds, filmed in three Mexico locations--Isla Mujeres, Tulum and Chichen Itza--had been a catalyst for our Mexican sojourn.  We'd never seen water that color of turquoise, nor pyramids of any kind and the sultry movie with Bridges and Rachel Ward had catapulted us across the border.

     After saying our good byes with a few more exclamations on this mujera's fame, we walked to the plaza and the back down to the malecon.  Today we'd decided to go to the mainland.  We boarded the ferry for Cancun.

     Hours later after lunching at an outdoor cafe and shopping at Mercado 23 for silver and trinkets we ventured into the hotel zone to go to dinner on a splurge.  Someone had recommended a hotel-restaurant on the beach with great food and we thought a day and a dinner in Cancun would be fun.  The restaurant had all the amenities all right.  Beachside, low lights, candles. But where was dinner?  Talk about the slow food movement.  This one had crawled to a stop.  After our second request to the waiter about our dinners, we started to panic, slightly.

     "What time is the last ferry?" I asked Paul.

     "At 10."

     "Uh oh.  I'm beginning to wonder if we'll make it."

     "Let me call the waiter over and ask him to bring the check when he brings our dinner, so we can dash out of here."

     At 9:30 p.m. after gulping a delicious fish dinner, with our margarita high slowly fading into oblivion, we bolted out of the restaurant and into the arms of a waiting taxi driver.

     "Puerto Juarez, the dock!"

     As we sped off I caught sight of our waiter at the door, waving good bye.

     The trip to Puerto Juarez was longer than we thought, much longer.

     "We'll never make the ferry," I groaned, now desperately nervous.

     "You're probably right."

     As we pulled up at the dock, madly throwing pesos at the driver, Paul, first out of the cab, spotted what we didn't want to see.  "Oh, no!  It's already left!"

     "Oh, darn!  No.  No.  No!  Now what?" I cried.

     "We'll have to find a hotel here in Puerto Juarez," Paul said.

     I stomped around the dock's parking lot in a huff.  "God, could they have been any slower at the restaurant?  What are we going to do?  This place is a total dive!"

     "It's hotel time.  We've gotta go look for one.  Now."

     That brought me to my senses.  Forget about the warm breeze, the lapping water, the backside of our departing ferry now far in the distance.  It just sunk in; we had to find a hotel in this hood.  Yuck.  These were the early days, and Puerto Juarez hadn't gone through its beautification process yet.  Hardly.  Its most outstanding feature was the steely facade of a military base on the outskirts of town; nothing looked like a tourist mecca here.  Nothing at all.

     I dragged myself back to the pot-holed street and looked both ways.  About a block farther down the road I spotted a sign for a hotel.  As we approached I could tell from the looks of it this was not the Ritz.  Very unappealing.  Very unappealing, indeed.

     "A room," I choked looking at the hotel clerk. "How much per night?"

     "Thirty pesos."

     Oh great, three dollars.  "Can we see it, please?"

     As the clerk led us down a dilapidated, unlit walkway, around a towering banyan tree to a concrete building with a dented door, I knew that paradise wasn't waiting for me inside.  As he turned the key into an ancient lock and the door creaked open, the familiar tantalizing odor of bug spray wafted across the threshold.

     "We'll take it," Paul gagged, giving me the what can we do look as he turned his face away from the smell.  He was right.  In Puerto Juarez it was pretty much lights out by this time of night.

     We followed the clerk back to the office like dead men walking and shelled out thirty pesos.  On retrieving the key I asked if there was a place nearby to get a cold drink.

     "There's a cantina across the street."

     "How late are they open?" I asked.

     "Til midnight but we close the office here at 11 p.m.  If you stay out later, just ring the bell and I'll come let you in.  After you leave I'll close the gate behind you."

     We pushed open the authoritative gate, hearing the click of the lock behind us as we sauntered outside the hotel walls, about two meters high, with the de rigeure broken bottle top finish on top--definitely not a style choice--and wandered into the town's lone cantina.

     We each ordered a Pacifico.  One was all we could take.  It was nearing 11 and we didn't want to miss another deadline, not two in one day, even though we were on Mexican time.  But the thought of staying in that grungy hotel room with eau de DDT wafting about, well, we just couldn't go back too soon to that before we were sleepy enough to pass out.

     Good as his word, gate shut.  Paul was right behind me.  I turned the iron latch--it wasn't 11 yet--and nothing.  What?  I turned the latch again and pushed.  Nothing!

     "Oh, no.  Locked out.  Now we're locked out!"

     "He said to ring him," Paul, ever in control, responded.  Now he was turning and pushing the latch, too.

     "Where's the bell?  Is that it?  Toca, with the arrow pointing to it?  What a weird way to say ring.  Toca means take.  Take the bell?"

     "Just ring it already," Paul said.  Language class was over.

     "Toca, toca, toca," I said each time I pushed it.  "I don't hear anything.  Have we been gone that long?"

     "Try again."

     I pushed til my index finger went numb.  "Now we have a three dollar hotel room and no way to get into it! What are we going to do?"

     "Let me think a minute.  Over there.  At the end of the wall.  See where there's no broken bottles?

     "Yeah, what about it?" I asked, thinking bad thoughts.

     "I think it's time for a reverse jail break."

     "Don't be ridiculous!  You could never climb over that wall!" I said.  Who did he think he was?
Spiderman?

     "Not me, Juanitia," he smiled at me charmingly.  "Tu."

     "Me?" I choked, shocked.

     "But I'm in a skirt."

     "I promise I won't look."

     "Oh, shut up, " I said, realizing he was right.  That was the only way.  All hands on deck. "Okay."

     In the dim light of a lone street lamp we made our attack at the far end of the hotel wall.  Good thing it was dark out, I noted.  I wouldn't want to be caught dead climbing into this dive.

     Paul bent over and laced his palms together providing me a step up so I could then reach the one spot on the wall without broken glass.  I was just at the point of almost heaving myself over when I heard him gasp.  What the heck?

     "Buenos noches."

     Buenos noches?  Who could he be talking to?  In his conversation mode he'd backed away from his helping me over the wall stance and I was dangling unbecomingly about six feet above ground, with my skirt moving up my backside rapidly, not a fashion choice.

     I twisted to the side, no easy feat, and looked down on a Mexico policia.  Police!

     "What are you doing?" he asked.

     Paul:  "Helping her over the wall.  We're locked out, but we have a key, see?" He held up the church key that would open our room inside the gated, walled compound, from which we were firmly locked out.

     "Why not just ring the bell?"

     "Toca el timbre?" I asked.  He gazed up at me.  Could he see up my skirt?  I wondered.

     "Si, toca el timbre."

     "Locked out."

     "I'll try," the policia said.  Toca, toca, toca.  We waited.  All three of us.  Two by land, one by air.

     "They are asleep," he said matter of factly.  "It is late."

      That it was.  "But," he said with what I am sure must have been a smile on his face, "I'll help you."

     "How?" Paul asked.  "Call them?  Do you have their number?" as he scanned the sign for the name of the hotel. Hotel Fizal?  How in the world did they come up with that?

     "No, no.  We both push her."

     So with my bottom now being gently pushed by Paul and a gendarme, my skirt slowly hiking up in an unladylike manner, I made my way up and over Hotel Fizal's two meter wall.  I started to laugh as I touched dirt on the other side.

     "I'm in!" I yelled, feeling like one of the Dirty Dozen.

     As I started to walk down to the gate and let Paul in, I heard him speaking to the policia.  "Mil gracias, and buenos noches to you, too."