The great Yucatán escape

By Ty Sawyer

updated 12:54 p.m. ET July 7, 2008

I’m in the middle of a jungle, dangling off a sheer cliff. From deep within the green below, the spectral calls of howler monkeys fill the air. As I’m hanging over the treetop canopy, I’ve got quite a view. A toucan lands nearby, then quickly flits off. A baby boa sleeps in the branches of a tree. Somewhere in the expanse of endless green spreading out before me, a jaguar rouses itself from its daytime languor, growls a yawn and prepares for a midday hunt. But for now, I need to get — safely — to the bottom of this cliff.

It makes me think — if I were in the water, I could have slowly finned over the edge of this precipice and hovered in the blue over the wall, like a bird facing the wind, then eased down at my leisure. But that will come later. Right now, the primary thing saving me from the law of gravity is my gloved hand, which slowly feeds the rope through my rappelling rig. And if that gets ahead of me, my life will be in the hands of two 16-year-olds, Javier and Denis, who wait at either end of the line.

Technically, no tengo ni idea; I haven’t the slightest idea where in the Yucatán I am, not being privy to a map. This morning, I just got in the four-wheel-drive at the Hotel Marlon in the town of Chetumal with Ernesto from Aventuras Dive Center and my buddy Jeff. And then off we went, watching the landscape change from town, to village, to pasture, to thick jungle.

Now, as my feet touch the jungle floor, I can see that my cell phone still works. It reads “BTL,” an indicator from a Belizean rather than Mexican cell-phone service. So, I congratulate myself on knowing that I’m pretty close to Belize. But that’s it. Belize is south of the Yucatán Peninsula, but it’s under the thick, jungle canopy — I don’t even know which way is south. Without Ernesto, I’m just another gringo lost in the rainforest.

We’ve come to this far edge of civilization to camp, to experience the darkest of darks, to see every estrella known to man, and to tromp through a forest expansive and primal enough to hide jaguars — and for that matter, entire civilizations.

This green place holds the ancient structures of the Maya that previously ruled this corner of the world. The rappelling, though, is a nice payoff at the end of the trail. We hike up and drop down several times before twilight begs us to return to camp.

Once back at our base camp, a little tired and even scraped a bit (in a good, we’ve-had-an-adventure way), we gather around the campfire as Ernesto grills a gourmet jungle dinner and slaps a cold cerveza into our hands. The fish on the grill has been wrapped in the leaves of the Acuyo tree. The leaves smell and taste of anise. As night falls, the jungle comes alive with sound — the flapping of wings as bats pirouette through the sky, frogs calling out for mates and the chirping of a thousand cicadas, ebbing and flowing like waves on a shore. Casting a light into the dark folds of the forest around us, we make out the eye-shine from countless nocturnal critters. Our legs and eyes heavy from trekking, we all wander back to our tents and sleep as deeply as any of us have in years.

It’s only fitting that our adventure up the Yucatán coast — through Costa Maya to Cozumel and the Riviera Maya to Isla Mujeres and the nonstop action of Cancún — begins right in the unchanged heart of this legendary peninsula. Because only in a world where time remains controlled by nature can you begin to feel the true pulse of a place; in an undisturbed sleep, you can hear the whispers of its story. We’re starting at the beginning of time in Mexico and taking a journey to the present.

A trail of turtles
From the jungle, we wind through sugar-cane fields and the sleepiest of villages up the coast to the 24-hour playground of Playa del Carmen. Here, mariachis roam the streets and beaches, wrapping their music around anyone who will stop to listen. After the jungle, these streets seem on fire with movement — a movement, though, that somehow rides atop an atmosphere still firmly entrenched in mañana. Street vendors, nightclubs, hotels and restaurants keep alive a swirl of activity, color and aroma like that of salsa and tequila, as well as the progress of a river of sunburned travelers advancing along this town’s famous Avenida Cinco. We walk past all of this, dressed in our wetsuits, all the way to la playa — the beach.

Amos Nachoum / Sport Diver Schoolmasters on San Francisco Reef, Cozumel

We’ve come from PADI Gold Palm Resort Yucatek Divers about three blocks from the water’s edge. When we get there, a dive boat backs up and we wade out to board. The sound of the mariachis follows us like a comet’s tail, or a musical aroma, lightly touching our ears with its energetic tones. It mixes with the soft Caribbean breeze and the laughter of people on the beach as we push off. It’s as if Playa del Carmen is unwilling to let us leave its arms.

Not far down the coast, we back-roll into the arms of a gentle current. We drift as we descend to the seafloor at about 60 feet. We’re here at Tortugas dive site, named for the sea turtles that linger here — and they await, unafraid. Small hawksbills, they look up at us with a languor, an affected savoir-faire. We drift from one to the next, each one relaxed around us, not the slightest bit agitated by our presence. We approach and they move toward us, too.

Slide show   A Mermaid’s Playground Presented by Sport Diver Magazine. more photos

As we drift along, I can still hear the music of Playa del Carmen in my head. I can still hear the street vendors, as if their spirits have joined the dive to make sure we see all the turtles. It’s not necessary. All along the drift, we connect the distance — like dots as it were — one or two turtles at a time, as if they’ve lined up along our intended path so that we’re able to interact leisurely with each. These turtles have definitely embraced the relaxed mañana attitude of Mexico’s eastern edge. There are places in the world where just seeing a sea turtle makes a dive memorable. Not here — they are everywhere, and I never grow weary of spending time in the ocean gazing into the time-wizened eyes of an old turtle and trying to imagine what it has seen in this vast blue plain we hardly know.

When we finally ascend, the boat captain shows us a photo, with a date and time stamp from 15 minutes earlier. The spotted pattern on the back of the massive fish is unmistakable: a whale shark. It apparently hung out at the surface for 10 minutes hoping for attention, but we’d not been able to tear our gaze from the turtles. We all make a vow to look up every once in a while from now on.

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