News on the Passport

We arrived in Bacalar knowing it was going to be an intense first 5 days of volunteering. The Hostel we were helping at was turning into a Hotel with rooms starting at 60 US $ per night. Its first guests, a group of 11 Mexicans and 2 couples, were arriving on the 1^st of November. There was 5 days to get it ready and the place looked like a building site. It had no hot water, internet, windows or doors on some rooms, electricity, adequate bug prevention (i.e. walls) and no where for us to stay once the guests arrived. Let’s just say that it would have been possible to finish it in time in another country, but not in Mexico and definitely not in Bacalar. I have learned the way of life in Bacalar – Despacito, Tranquilo -basically really slow and relaxed. They use a word a lot, ‘ahorita’, which translates as ‘in a bit’, but the person saying it means ‘in 2 hours’ and it actually happens in 4 hours or maybe the next day, or maybe never.

There was a group of about 30 people working here to get it ready, and the one’s  I got a chance to ‘chat’ too were all really nice. That seems to be the general consensus of Mexicans. They are really happy, friendly people. All bar 4 of them spoke in Spanish with as much grasp of the English language as I do for the Spanish language. I now know the Spanish names for lots of tools and general stuff you use around a construction site but due to the lack of internet, I haven’t been able to progress my Spanish too much. Don’t get me wrong though, being immersed in a Spanish speaking area means I am picking things up, its just hard to know if what I am learning is correct and the mistakes and weird looks from locals are growing.

We were meant to be working 5 hours a day but within the first four days we had already worked almost 30 hours. We understood this was likely to happen, and wanted to help to get the hotel ready, but the intensity of the work and the hot and humid weather made it a thoroughly unenjoyable experience. We weren’t getting time to ourselves to enjoy the lake, the kayaks or the catamaran that were available to us. Even the dock on the lake wasn’t enough to supress the feeling we had. I eventually had words with Caro, the lady in charge, and we got our day off plus an extra one for the work we had done. She was a really nice girl who was having her own conflicts with the owner of the hotel. He was making her work pretty much from 7am to 3am most days. She was the same as us, a traveller, and like many others, she had come to Bacalar and never left. Everyone seemed to be on their way to Patagonia but had failed to leave Bacalar, some of them for 20 years plus!

We wanted to go out in a kayak to see the Lake Bacalar from a different perspective. This was Alex’s first time in a kayak and for some reason we thought it would be a good idea to head out as the sun was setting. Needless to say, my little torch did very little to guide us under the starry night sky and with it getting late, we opted to stop at a dock where we could see someone on the related building and ask where we were. We had managed to paddle about 2km past our dock, which was lucky because at first, through a misunderstanding, we thought it was 4km past our dock. We ended up being offered a lift home by a kind man, once he had finished his shower, with the kayak strapped to the roof of his car. When we got back to where we were volunteering, the sight of us coming home by road was enough to lift the mood of the remaining workers. Although my Spanish speaking is still poor, my understanding is clear enough to realise that, the next day, the guys working here were enjoying the story of our adventure from the previous night.

The experience improved once the guest arrived but we felt it was still time to move on to somewhere new. We got on very well with all the people there, especially Caro, and found it quite hard to tell her that we were leaving a little early. The place wasn’t quite ready to receive volunteers yet, but once it is, it would be a great place to go. That’s if Caro was still there. The next day, she quit and had her bags packed before we had ours packed. I feel slightly bad as it was the late night conversations with Alex and I that helped her make her decision. I think the decision she made was for the best as her time was being exploited and she wasn’t having much fun by herself. We ended up leaving before Caro in the end as the owner wanted her to tell him everything about every program used to run the business. She is probably still there now.

We arrived the next day in Mahahual, a Caribbean beach with a smaller town than Bacalar. The name might be familiar to those of you who have done a Caribbean cruise in the past. Mahahual is very similar to Bacalar with its slow way of life and relaxed attitude. It’s a place where not much happens, but when the cruise ship is in town, everything changes. The streets are lined with vendors selling anything you might need, prices change from Pesos to Dollars (and inflate a little bit too), bars start playing loud banging tunes and people are lining the street trying to drag you to their beach/bar/restaurant/stall or whatever they have to exchange for your dollars. Once the ship leaves port, it returns to the quiet, tranquil place it was before. We stayed in a cabaňa that was slightly over our budget but the cheapest accommodation we could find. It was very well located being the closest you could get to staying on the beach, without actually staying on the beach itself. The cabaňa was just a shed with a bed, with a narrow pathway next to the bed. It had a deck out front that looked onto the beach which was nice enough to sit on until the mosquitos started being a pest again.

We stayed in our little beach hut for 3 nights and spent 2 days on the beach, doing not a lot at all. It was nice and relaxing and a good recovery from the 5 days work we have done in the last 2 months. But as beautiful as the beach was, we need to move on. We decided to take the 2^nd choice of volunteering, the Eco-touristic Mayan Centre. It meant getting a bus back to Bacalar, waiting 3 hours, and then getting another bus towards Chunhuhub. The 2^nd bus driver was pretty clear that he didn’t want to drop us 10km short of Chunhuhub, not because he feared for our safety in the middle of no where, but because he was just being difficult. Eventually he got off his high horse and dropped us right outside where we were staying.

We were greeted at reception by Margerita, one of the senior ‘staff/family at the place, and she showed us to where we would be staying. The cabaňa had 2 rooms and a bathroom, with 3 double beds and 3 hammocks. We would be sharing with fellow volunteers who were here at K’iichpam Ka’ax, a mayan name I think translates as Selva Bonita, which translates as beautiful jungle. We waited around for a few hours by ourselves for Damian, the owner, to turn up and tell us what is going to be happening. When he did finally turn up, he started to chainsaw up a load of wood and kept us waiting longer. Eventually we sat down with Damian and Margerita and had what felt like an Interview, solely in Spanish. I didn’t know what was going on and no-one here spoke English.

We should be here for a fortnight minimum, so I will fill you in with the details once we have left. The Internet here is pretty bad and uploading a photo is impossible. Hopefully at the next place there will be enough internet to add some more pics.

Oh yeah, the news on the passport. Apparently they have cancelled my request for a new passport and my request to cancel my old passport. I think this means I can travel on with the passport in my possession, without the risk of being extorted or jailed, every time I cross a border. So good news!!