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The Umbrella
By Jeanine L. Kitchel
© 2003 J.L. Kitchel All Rights Reserved
(While traveling to the Yucatan Peninsula on vacation in 1985, the author and her husband meet an adventurous contractor who offers to sell them a beachfront lot in Playa del Carmen. After accepting his offer, a series of bizarre events-including the Mexico government's seizure of the land by eminent domain, the contractor's financial crisis, and a class-5 hurricane- nearly shatter their plans. But they sidestep disaster and cling to their Mexican dream. In the following chapter, they meet the contractor on a sideroad deep in the heart of the Yucatan rainforest).Highway 307 on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula stretched like an asphalt ribbon before us. The Maya named this place Sian Ka'an, or "where the sky is born." It was untouched, this open, desolate wilderness, except for the narrow strip of pavement beneath us.
Standing there at the crossroads on the highway, more like a swath cut from the low scrub jungle than the major thoroughfare for the state of Quintana Roo, I wondered if the bus would ever come.
The year was 1985. We were sixty miles from the sparkling new resort city Cancun. It seemed unfathomable that just an hour's drive on virgin highway separated us from the traffic and noise of a city, and then, as if by sleight of hand, we were transported into a world of sky, clouds, jungle. We were in the heart of the Yucatan, land of the ancient Maya and their pyramids.
We had embarked on an extended vacation, escaping our city jobs for a few weeks to relax in the Mexican Caribbean. Another four hours south and we could be in Belize, but we had other plans that day.
After spending the night in a rustic hotel at the Tulum pyramids we planned to explore the Gulf Coast and to visit the undeveloped island Holbox near Progreso. Someone had told us to catch the bus at the crossroads, where we now waited. The bus route would jog past the pyramids at Coba and then head north through the heart of Maya land.
In a lackadaisical way, I supposed we were searching for something in this flat, wild territory that just forty years ago had been called the most savage coast in Central America. We had no idea in a few years' time we would be buying property and building a house in this foreign land. But at the moment, we were deep in the Yucatan jungle, on a sideroad to seemingly nowhere.
Paul, my husband, had traipsed ahead of me, carrying the bulk of our belongings on his able shoulders. Nearly six feet, he looked much younger than his forty-three years. I noticed the morning dampness had caused his sun-bleached hair to curl slightly at the ends. My own hair, light brown and shoulder-length, was well on the way to a bad hair day.
Rain was coming. Unbearable humidity and not yet 9 a.m., but this was typical weather for the neo-tropical rainforests of southern Mexico. Moments later, when the skies opened delivering a heavy downpour, we moved beneath the branches of a Ceiba - the Maya tree of life-for shelter. Steam began to rise slowly from the asphalt, hovering about ankle height. Still no bus.
Then rounding the corner careened a small rusty Honda.
Read the complete article . . .
Jeanine's articles The Umbrella is a Chapter from Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya by Jeanine Lee Kitchel.
Available from Amazon.com or direct from the publisher,
Enchanted Island Press ($15.00, 230 pages) 690 East Kuiaha Road, Haiku,
Hawaii (415) 882 - 1155 or
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