Into the Underworld

Under the tangle of the jungle, under the dirt and grass and rock, underfoot in the Yucatan is an entire cavernous network of subterranean pools called cenotes. I’d never heard of a cenote before I began planning a ten day trip to the Yucatan. When I’d asked her what I should do, my friend R told me I should visit the Mayan ruins of Tulum and Chichen Itza, visit some cenotes, and definitely see the city of Valladolid. When I asked what a cenote was, she showed me some pictures online. Being in a strange period of trip-planning ennui, I might have said, “Oh. Cool.” And then gone back up to my room to put off planning until the last minute which is not like me at all.

The days go by.

The ennui lingers.

Then finally, to my relief, as my trip looms imminently, I begin to get excited. I also, not like me at all, decide to not over plan, but rather take the trip as it comes. Play it by ear.

Under planned, willing to see what adventures unravel as I go, I fly into Cancun where my friend A picks me up from the airport and drives me to her home in Playa del Carmen.

The day after I arrive, A, who has lived in Mexico for the last 8 or ten years, and whom I’m meeting for the first time in person after a ten-year online friendship, takes me and her kids on a day-trip excursion to the ruins of Cobá. We wander around the ruins, observe trees, mushrooms, bugs, and dirt, swat at mosquitoes, take pictures, climb the steep pyramid, gaze at the jungle from that great height, get ourselves back down the steep pyramid (I’m not embarrassed to say I went down on the seat of my pants), and walk back toward the parking lot.  

As we make our way through the jungle (the paths we take are well tended and we do not need machetes), A tells me about the geology of the area. 

She tells me that the Yucatan is basically a bed of limestone which time and water and other geological factors have eaten away and shaped. The cenotes are swimming holes or sinkholes within this eroded stone. [I find out later that this type of geomorphic feature is called a karst fenster. Karst is a limestone (or other porous stone) area that becomes water eroded to form caves or other cool things like caves. Fenster is the German word for “window.” The Mayans were said to have considered the cenotes as entrances into the underworld. The cenotes were their fenster, their window downwards.] She says the cenotes were considered sacred by the Mayan culture. Maybe for the fact that the water from the cenotes was the only perennial water source in the area. From her, or later from someone else, I can’t remember, I learn that there are over 6000 cenotes in the Yucatan. Someone tells me there are 10,000.

“Basically,” A says, “the Yucatan is like swiss cheese.” I envision it. The open spaces are the cenotes. The cheese parts are the still solid limestone bed. Yes, but how solid? I wonder this as we walk, suddenly careful of how hard I step. Which is silly. Or is it?

After we leave Cobá, A drives us to the nearest cenote which is actually a place that hosts a trio of cenotes called Cenotes Ejido Coba. Each of the three comes with its own entry fee (or pay to visit two, pay to visit all three). Out of the three options, we choose Tamcach-Ha because it has two jumping platforms. The children want to jump.

Partly because in my playing the trip by ear, I’d lapsed from my usual method of Always Be Prepared For Everything At All Times and partly because I’d forgotten to ask what I’d need for the day, I’ve not brought my swimsuit along. It’s in my bag, unhelpfully, at A’s house. The Yucatan sun beats down like a hammer. I’ve always been quite a proficient sweater and today is no exception. A swim would be really refreshing.

Right or wrong, I decide to see if I can get away with cenote-ing in my skivvies. I have brought along a tank top I can wear over my bra. I don’t think I’ll permanently damage the children’s wellbeing by exposing them to my “swimwear.” It’s modest-ish. Fingers crossed, I’ll be able to add swimming in a cenote to the places I’ve swum in my underwear. Crater Lake in Oregon being another location that gets that “honor”. Which, now that I think of it, was another instance when my swimsuit preparedness let me down. That time my friend and I had left our suits in the car’s trunk, a mile up a rather steep pathway. Let that and this be a lesson to me that I learn from.

Anyway.

As a way to protect the cenote water as much as possible, swimmers must shower before entering. Obediently, we all rinse off and then head to the cenote entrance, showing our entry tickets to the people waiting there at the top. No one tells me my attire is unacceptable. Even so, I do my best to not draw attention to myself.

This cenote’s opening is a wooden staircase that winds its way down in a spiral into the underworld. Down and down. And down a little further. Quite a bit more than a window. Stalactites hang from the ceiling. Bats flutter from one side of the cavern to the other. The walls are green and the water is a blue that startles and invites. Dark fish school around.

Down and inside, the children become reluctant to jump right in. Dripping from my shower, already somewhat cooled off from the heat, I’m the first one into the water by way of another wooden staircase on one side of the pool. The water’s temperature doesn’t quite take my breath away, not quite, but it’s close. Definitely refreshing.

Eventually, one of the boys comes in and swims around me.

“Are you going to jump?” he asks as he heads back up the stairs and over to the jumping platforms.

“Are you going to jump?” the other children ask, already on the staircase.

“I probably am,” I say, coming out of the water and making my way to the first platform. I mean, in for a penny, in for a pound, right? Or, when given the choice to sit it out or dance… Swim, right? Jump, right? Okay, here we go. There are two platforms for jumping. One is ten meters high (32 feet) and the other is five meters high (16 feet). We stand at the edge of the 5 meter platform, three of the four children and I. 

Gazing down. Stepping up as close to the edge as we dare. The wood beneath my bare feet is damp, is slick. I put a hand to the railing. One of the boys readies himself in front of us all, but can’t quite bring himself to jump for it. A has already said she doesn’t plan to jump and the youngest boy, at five, isn’t going to either. Oh great. I’m going to have to lead by example, aren’t I?

Coming front and center, I stand at the edge and look down. Sixteen feet feels really far. Even though it’s into water, even though the water is extremely deep, even though it’s really not that high…. my whole body resists jumping. Just do it, I think. You’re the example.

Oh god of the Yucantan underworld.

For a minute, for two? I stand there battling all my survival instincts. Once, twice, three times, I almost go for it. But don’t. Some example. Realizing I’ll never be ready, that I just have to take the leap, I override my physical form and step out into the void.

Falling. Falling. Sixteen feet is not all that far. Sixteen feet is a lifetime of time and empty space.

Feet first, I hit the water with a splash. I’m plunged into that deep, cold blue water. I swim upwards back to the air. Well done. Good job. There’s that then.

“Come on in,” I call up to the children. “You can do it! One, two, three, and jump!” I have the right to say that now.

One of the boys steps up to the edge. “Stay there,” he tells me. “But come closer.” I swim to the distance he specifies and eventually, after cajoling, after encouragement, after many false attempts, he jumps. Eventually, the other two jump as well.

Proud of our bravery, we feel no need to try the 10 meter platform. I can live with myself without that. Definitely.

We swim. The bats fly overhead. The fish swim circles around us. We’ve had the place to ourselves up to this point, but soon a group arrives. From the safety of the water, I watch them battle with their own jumping fears and cheer them on when they also step out into adventure, into the void.

Soon though, my friends and I have all had our fill. We share two towels between the lot of us and head back up to the open air. Back up to the world we know better than this one.

That’s a cenote, I think. That’s why R said I should go. Where else have I swum with bats flying above me? When else have I swum in an underground cavern?

On the way home, we stop for ice cream in Tulum. Content and filled to the brim with the thrill of adventure, I settle in for the drive back to the house. Who else gets to have a summer day at the end of November?

From Playa del Carmen, after saying goodbye to A and her family, I travel on alone to the ruins of Tulum and then on to Valladolid. There, with new friends from the hostel where I’m staying, I visit a total of eight more cenotes. 

Each unique, each amazing, each with its own special thing. Bulging stalactites like strange stone creatures, fish that nibble on my feet if I leave them still too long, tree roots reaching through stone and ground for the water like long ropes, bats flitting, birds flying, some of the cenotes open to the sky, some closed off but for a tiny hole here or there, but for the entrance in.

“How cool would it be,” I mention to one of my new friends, “to visit them all? To go from cenote to cenote and record the differences, to show each one as unique and amazing?” He makes some noncommittal answer. 

But it would be cool. I’m thinking like a travel show. Some big thing, a whole strange and distinctive quest. For someone. What an adventure. I mean, there are even cenotes that connect, that can be scuba-dived into, from one to the other. How interesting would that be? Or how terrifying?

Full of my own questions, I fall into silence walking alongside my new friend. I’ve got nine cenotes under my belt. How long would it take to visit 6000? How long would it take to visit 10,000? 

How many cenotes are still undiscovered? How many cenotes are there actually? Has anyone ever taken an x-ray of the Yucatan’s underbelly? Does it really look like swiss cheese? What other wonders does the jungle hide?

I guess if I ever have the chance to go back, I can find those things out for myself.

  

Giving Room to Death

Death.

So often, we give no room to death. Instead, we try and prolong life as long as possible sometimes at the expense of quality of life. We cling to stories of immortality – the holy grail, vampires, a fountain of eternal life, Botox. We devour stories of murdered people being avenged as if that creates legacy, as if that will, in a way, bring them back to life. In day-to-day life, in movies, in games, in conversations it’s evident that we’re both repelled and fascinated by death. Especially when it’s not our own. None of this is intrinsically wrong.

These things come to my mind, though, when Halloween and then Dia de Los Muertos roll around.

This year, at that time, I’m staying in central Mexico some miles north of Mexico City and the family I’m with is shivering with excitement for Halloween. Once, the youngest girl says, “If we give each other presents on Halloween we won’t even need to celebrate Christmas!”  

Knitted bats, spiders, ghosts, and Draculas, made by one of the teachers from the children’s school, hang from the birthday tree downstairs and keep me company upstairs in my study. Hand painted wine corks become spiders and toothy vampires under the children’s artistic fingers. Pumpkins, grouped together at the end of a side table, add their splash of autumnal coloring to the dining room.   

As the season ripens, the children plan out and refine their costume ideas. Material and masks are put together to create an astronaut, Willy Wonka, a werewolf, Sunny Baudelaire from A Series of Unfortunate Events, a zombie, and The Mad Hatter.

On the day of the first event for the ghoulish season, a school party, the children are in costume hours before the starting time. I don’t dress up, but I go along.

As the vendors are setting up food, drink, and handmade items such as knitted creatures and wooden cutting boards, as the tables begin to fill with people, as the Halloween playlist blasts music into the open air through a portable speaker, and as many of the partygoers show up dressed as the skeletal and recognizable Catrinas and Catrines with their fancy, formal dress and elaborate face paint, one of my friend’s friends (now my new friend), takes me in hand to tell me about the Day of the Dead.

The Day of the Dead is a two-day celebration that falls on November 1^st and 2^nd and which happens to coincide with All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day from the Catholic Calendar. This because of the strong Catholic influence on the Mexican culture pressed down upon it during the Spanish colonial era.

Halloween, coming just before these dates on October 31^st is actually a celebration on the Eve of All Hallow’s Day (also known as All Saints’ Day) and was once a time when people came together to pray for protection from evil (and probably to party a little bit too). Sometimes, maybe even often, these long-ago people would dress as evil spirits or saints to show the battle between the forces of heaven and of hell. Our modern Halloween evolved out of that tradition.

As alluded to above, when the Spanish galloped into Mexico with their religion in hand, the autumnal traditions of Europe and North America collided and melded together. However true that might be, Dia de Los Muertos is not a Mexican version of Halloween.

My new friend explains that Dia de Los Muertos is a tradition that dates back far into the culture of the pre-Hispanic people (such as the Aztecs or Mayans) who celebrated the dead rather than mourning them. For them, the Day of the Dead was a time for welcoming spirits back to the land of the living—even if only for one night. It was a way to keep the dead a part of the community even after they’d left their physical forms behind. Maybe it was also a way to share any excess of perishable food from the last of the harvests.

After laying down the holiday basics, my friend takes me to the other end of the school campus and inside a building to where the school’s Day of the Dead ofrenda (altar) sits in marigold glory. Marigolds guide the dead back to the land of the living with their bright color and wafting scent.

She explains that the food and drinks left on the ofrendas are usually the favorite food and drinks of the people whose pictures sit at the top of the altar.

She points out the decorations, including the cut-out, intricate designs on tissue paper (similar to my mind to the paper snowflakes I made as a child) with images of skulls and Catrinas and angels and crosses and hummingbirds that are hung together to create a colorful banner.

She explains that many altars are seven levels high. “Seven had special significance for the pre-Hispanic cultures but the Catholic Church tied it in to the seven deadly sins.”

We’re speaking in Spanish, at least I’m listening in Spanish and doing my best to ask my questions in Spanish, so I wonder, maybe aloud, if the seven levels also have anything to do with levels like purgatory. Is there more to the afterlife than heaven, hell, and purgatory? Does Abraham’s Bosom count as a fourth level? What are the remaining three then?

No matter what their origin was, the Catholic influence is evident in both Halloween and Day of the Dead.

What strikes me as different between Halloween and Dia de Los Muertos is that for me Halloween has always symbolized the frightening, the terrifying, the disgusting, and the RIP end in a cemetery whereas Dia de Los Muertos, as I see it here with my own eyes, is full of color, the sharing of life with those who have passed, and an emphasis on getting together with family to celebrate life even if the celebration is held inside the walls of a cemetery. Death is not to be feared then, but to be celebrated. 

At the school party it’s almost as if two ancient cultures have collided to form this new hybrid Halloween-Day of the Dead holiday. In this blending, the Celtic tradition to ward off ghosts is joined by the pre-Hispanic tradition of welcoming the spirits home again. What exactly this collision creates, I don’t know. What exactly it means to welcome and repel, I don’t know. But I’m glad the children enjoy the magic of both holidays and the immortality of being any creature they can imagine and costume themselves as.

Maybe, too, in the end, Dia de Los Muertos is still, is also the human attempt to touch immortality, to bring the dead back for one day more. To bring memory back to life. To ensure that those who have gone on are dead but not forgotten.

There’s nothing wrong with that either.