Being the adventures of the Intrepids aboard the good ship WOW, a 45’ carbon fibre custom built racing catamaran making its way around the world from Thailand. This phase of the voyage begins in Rio Dulche in Guatemala, sailing north through the reefs of Belize and up the Mexican coast to Cancun before heading south to the Bay Islands of Honduras, Providencia in Colombia, Bocas del Toro and the San Blas Islands of Panama and on to Cartagena on the Colombian mainland.
After meandering up the coast of Mexico, calling in at various atolls, bays and islands, we make landfall at Puerto Morelos, some 30 miles south of Cancun. Puerto Morelos is an overgrown fishing village, now surrounded by resort hotels like the two attached to our marina, and whose facilities we can enjoy, especially the warm showers. We try out the waterslide which is too fast for us geriatrics and hop on the loaned bicycles to ride into the village for dinner and margaritas. Puerto Morelos with its secure marina, swimming pools, bars and restaurants seems a good place to hang out so we hire a car and decide to do some Yucatán exploring for a few days whilst waiting for our new crew member to join in Cancun.
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| Pyramid of Kukulcan, Chichen Itza |
After a day exploring Puerto Morelos, a Noosa-like fishing village with a touristy vibe, vegan
restaurants, kombucha and wind chimes stalls at the local market, we take the opportunity to gain our land legs and head inland to explore the Yucatan peninsula, which turns out to be much larger than it appears on our charts. Chichen Itza is the much touted must-see destination, a ruined Mayan city which reached its heyday around 1200 AD and more recently was voted one of the new 7 wonders of the world. To get there before the tour buses start to arrive, we make an early start before dawn, with Cpt Dave getting us all up at 5am. It’s a long drive along deserted freeways through the endless, featureless Yucatan scrub and we arrive just after it should've opened at 8 o'clock to find the place deserted and only one other car in the vast car park. Only after a while does it dawn on us that we have crossed a time zone and it’s really only 7am. The ruins, when they open, are quite spectacular with pyramids, observatories and temples, but are a bit overrun by tourists and vendors, the latter claiming, quite logically, that as Mayans it’s their city and hence they have the right to sell their souvenirs within its walls.
We spend a few hours exploring and imbibing the history of the Mayan culture and civilisation, the decline of which it turns out wasn’t due largely to the invading Spaniards but rather to their own success and excess, a bit like the Romans or perhaps they just ran out of virgins to sacrifice. They played a ceremonial game, an early version of basketball, which involved throwing a 5kg leather bound medicine ball through a hoop mounted vertically projecting from the side wall of the court about 2 m from the ground. The 5-man teams weren’t allowed to use their hands and the ball was too heavy to kick so they had to bounce it off their hips, forearms or foreheads. The captain of the winning team had the ultimate honour at the end of match after receiving the adulation of the crowds, of being sacrificed in front of the assembled royalty. Apparently there was no shortage of aspirants and definitely a tradition we should reinstate after the AFL final.
But by now it’s time for second breakfast, a hobbit concept which has become ingrained as our voyage progresses, and we head to a nearby pousada for enchiladas and quesadillas before continuing westwards to Izamal. However, first we have to find a cenote. Cenotes are water-filled sink holes or collapsed caverns which occur all over the Yucatan, as it’s a limestone plateau with all its rivers underground. We find our first in a little village where the local women have turned it into a source of revenue by installing a ticket booth and rickety wooden staircase down the inside wall of the hole and charging a small entry fee to swim. The cenote is roughly circular, about 50m in diameter with the water some 30m below the surface. It’s shaded by enormous fig trees whose roots cascade down the walls to just reach the water, which is cool, blue, crystal clear and unfathomably deep. After a quick swim and a jungle leap from a rope suspended from the trees above its time to get back on the road in search of Izamal.
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| Yokdzonot cenote |
Izamal is a complete surprise, a small Spanish style town in which every building is clad in yellow stucco, with an enormous Mayan pyramid and a vast franciscan monastery with the largest atrium after St Peters in Rome, built on the site of a Mayan acropolis. Then after ice-creams and photos of donkeys in straw hats it’s back aboard Rocinante and on the road to Merida.
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| Convent of San Antonio of Padua, Izamal |
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| Hotel in Merida |
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| Mezcal induction, Merida |
Merida is the Yucatan state capital, a vibrant city with a long Mayan and colonial heritage. Google takes us through some run down areas to arrive at our boutique hotel in a gentrifying area with lots of cafes, bars and restaurants close to the city centre. We find a splendid Mexican restaurant on a small square where we are introduced, gently, to the delights of mescal. Unlike tequila, it’s for savouring, and best consumed with a pinch of worm salt and crunchy grasshoppers. The food is delicious, the Mexican wine is quite palatable and the service excellent but after our graduation from the mescal class we don't remember much more about it.
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| Breakfast in Merida |
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| Uxmal Pyramid of the Magician |
The following day,after a welcome sleep our first for several weeks in a real bed which isn't moving, breakfast is in a sunny courtyard with bougainvillea and hibiscus full of humming birds. Chatting to the proprietor, we learn that tonight is Carnaval night in Merida, so we decide to stay on. First though we go to Uxmal, a world heritage ruined Mayan city about 80 km south. It’s far more impressive than the more famous Chichen Izmal which, being closer to Cancun gets many more visitors.
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| Governor's Palace, Uxmal |
It has a vast array of pyramids, temples, ‘nunneries’ and ramparts to clamber over as well as masses of iguanas of all shapes and sizes, but mostly big. Then it's time for lunch so we head for Hacienda Ochil, a 19th pile built on the fortunes of its henequen plantation, the agave plant from which sisal is made. At its heyday Yucatan was the epicentre of sisal production with Merida boasting more millionaires per capita than any other city in the world. Many of the city’s fading once opulent mansion and its grand boulevards were built from the wealth of the henequen plantations at a time when demand for sisal for ropes and sacks was at is peak. Of course it’s now given way to the even more expensive spectra and dyneema rope which holds our boat together.
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| Henequen from which sisal is made |
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| Hacienda Ochil |
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| Carnaval Merida |
After a languid lunch on an open terrace surrounded by pools resembling a mughal garden we make it back to Xmatkuil on the outskirts of Merida in time for the last night of Carnaval. The crowds are gathering, many in traditional Yucatan costume as we find a place along the parade route. Unfortunately it’s right opposite the local FM radio station’s stand with its blaring speakers. Their two compares talk non stop at full volume on a platform opposite us, pausing every 5 minutes to read their sponsors’ promos from their iphones and working the crowd into a frenzy with each float or dance troupe that passes. In between corporate america fast food and beer trucks there are folk dance groups and all manner of performances of varying degrees of professionalism. Many are representatives from various towns and villages across the Yucatan, each with their distinctive costume and dance routines including one group of Indians in fantastic jaguar and eagle costumes.
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| It's Carnaval time, Merida |
The following day we explore the centre of Merida, with its fortress like cathedrals and elaborately carved mansions around the main square, and via another hacienda and another cenote which we have to ourselves, we arrive back in Puerto Morelos to find the boat safe and sound in our absence.
Heading back out to sea the following day we find the port is closed because of the wind, but as hardy sailors we struggle northwards through rolling swells and crashing waves, making slow progress against the wind to Isla Mujeres just north of Cancun. Cancun, like Dubai has developed as a major tourist destination in the last 20 years, with wall to wall hotels stretching kilometres down the coast, vast shopping centres and even El Coco Bongo the worlds biggest nightclub. Frank Sinatra performs nightly, we were too early for Elvis but managed to avoid Herb Alpert and the Buena Vista Social Club. Isla Mujeres, 15 minutes away by ferry is far more relaxed and we spend a pleasant few days anchored in the lagoon, exploring the seaside town, which like Manly is 10 miles away and a million miles from care. Ceviche, tacos and guacamole have become the staple diet, washed down with ample mojitos, margaritas and mezcal as our water-maker is still not working properly.
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| anchored in the lagoon, Isla Mujeres |
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| Windward side, Isla Mujeres |
Boatswain Jane, aka Intrepid 2 is piped aboard in Isla Mujeres, and quickly has the boat and its crew looking shipshape and bristol fashion, with even the motley pirates trimming their beards and polishing their wooden legs. But it’s not all beer and skittles or even margaritas and mezcal on our Caribbean cocktail cruise. After a relaxing 10 days meandering up the Qintana Roo and Yucatan coasts, and sampling the delights of the Island of Women, Isla Mujeres it's time to head south on a long 300nm passage to Honduras.
This turns out to be an exhausting 40 hour beat into 25 knot head winds and a strong northerly current as we head from Isla Mujeres in Mexico to the island of Utila off the coast of Honduras. Watches are introduced and the Intrepids do 9pm to 1 am the first night and midnight to 4am the second. There’s only a small waxing moon but ample starlight with the darkness relieved by the occasional passing cruise liner, lit up like a small city. Although we sit in the cockpit and let Marvin, our autohelm, do all the work we are all too frequently inundated by waves crashing over the bow, sending cascades of spray into the cockpit. Waking up at dawn to find Utila dead ahead with the sun catching the spectacular mountainous Honduran coast behind where peaks rise to 8000’ into the morning sky. Utila’s another bloody tropical island, with swaying palm trees, crystal clear aqua water, endless deserted white sandy beaches, golden sunsets with the evening breeze redolent of roasting jerk chicken and ganga and the sounds of Bob Marley drifting across the bay from the dive schools and palapa roof bars.
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| Arriving in Utila, Honduras |
So here we are, in yet another reputed murder capital of the world, placidly at anchor in a beautiful lagoon watching the sun rise and sipping Honduran lattes on the deck of a vegan cafe.
Being the adventures of the Intrepids aboard the good ship WOW, a 45’ carbon fibre custom built racing catamaran making its way around the world from Thailand. This phase of the voyage begins in Rio Dulche in Guatemala, sailing north through the reefs of Belize and up the Mexican coast to Cancun before heading south to the Bay Islands of Honduras, Providencia in Colombia, Bocas del Toro and the San Blas Islands of Panama and on to Cartagena on the Colombian mainland.
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