A Short Walk In Honor Of Michel Peissel

Michel Peissel is a French explorer who in 1956, long before there was Cancun, long before there were paved roads, long before the Riviera Maya was a tourist destination, long before there was Highway 307 running from Cancun to Chetumal, walked from where Playa del Carmen is now, down the coast of Quintana Roo, all the way to Belize. His purpose was to explore the area and he ended up finding 14 Mayan archeological sites. His adventure is reported in his 1963 book, The Lost World Of Quintana Roo, which is now sadly out of print.

Peissel walked down the beach in front of my house, down the sand of Bahia Soliman, headed south. So today, in his honor, when the sun was finally shining, I pulled on my water sandals, jammed a few pesos in my pocket, and I headed out for the territory, south, down the beach, following Peissel's route. Some of the walking was easy, on sandy beaches with the most gentle waves. It's easy to walk in the water. Midday today the tide was incredibly low. Soft sand can slow down walking, but the beach walk was easy.

At the point, at the end of Bahia Soliman, where the land reaches out to touch the coral reef that runs from Cancun south all the way to Panama, there is rock. The going there is a good deal rougher and a good deal slower. Peissel wasn't well equipped: he had hot clothing, bad shoes, a jacket (don't ask), and no water. He walked it anyway.

On all of these rocks, it's hot. And it's windy. There are a zillion fossils in the rock. There are tiny sea creatures living in tidal holes. And the plants tenaciously hold on to whatever sand or drift wood there is for dear life. There's not a lot of rock. It doesn't go on for very far. Eventually you come near the end of the point and can see the far south side of the bay in Tankah 3.

And then you walk on sandy beach again. Down Tankah 3. Walking in the water past the houses. If you wanted to, you could walk all the way to Punta Allen or Belize. I don't want to.

The destination and turn around of this walk? Casa Cenote, where the beer is cold, and there is shade and service:

And there's a special treat. Not the beer. That's a treat on a hot day, but not that special. Outside Casa Cenote ever so slightly inland is a cenote. A cenote is a pool of fresh water where the limestone of the ground has given way. It could be a deep sinkhole, or as in this case, it could look like a pond. It's the Manatee Cenote. I have no idea why it is named for a Manatee. As far as I can tell, there has never been one in it. Yes, all the furniture from Casa Cenote was deposited in there by Hurricane Wilma, but alas, no manatee. And nobody seems to claim there was.

And then the trek back, north. I choose to follow the road past the mangrove, which right now is full of water, frog choirs, birds, snakes, and flowers. This cuts the time of the trip significantly, but the road is much hotter than the beach. As I walk, I conclude that we should all support our Local Mangrove. How do we do that? Best answer: leave it alone.

A Walk In The Lost World Of Quintana Roo

The Coast of Quintana Roo, between Bahia Soliman and Tankah

In 1958, Michel Peissel, who at age 21 was about to enter Harvard Business School, made a solo journey on foot from what would eventually become Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico, down the Caribbean Coast to Belize, which he described in his book, The Lost World Of Quintana Roo.

Quintana Roo in 1958 was the frontier. There were no roads. There were no railroads. There was no electricity. There was virtually no civil authority from the central government in Mexico City. The ancient sites of the Maya were mostly unexcavated and unmapped. The economy of the area was what it had been for thousands of years: subsistence milpa farming (corn, squash, beans), hunting, fishing and gathering. The outside world had made only two relatively recent, significant encroachments: coconut farms (cocals) to the coast, and in the interior, chicleros harvested chickle for chewing gum.

In 1847 the War of the Castes broke out between the Mexican Central Government and the Mayan people in the Yucatan Peninsula. Eventually, the Mayans surrounded the colonial city of Merida, into which they had driven the Mexican army, and the city was about to fall. To the besieged Mexicans' complete surprise and relief, the Mayans suddenly withdrew. It was time to plant corn, and under the rules of war the Mayans (but, of course, not the Mexicans) followed, planting was far more important than fighting. The Mexican Government responded by splitting the Yucatan into three states (Yucatan, Quintana Roo, and Campeche), and the war officially ground on until 1915 when, in a scene that must have resembled the US departure from Saigon, the Mexican forces gave up and unceremoniously withdrew from Quintana Roo. It was not until 1935 that the Mayans conducted a ceremony in Tulum to acknowledging at long last the central authority of the Mexican Government. It was through this world that Peissel made his journey.

Last week, I went out for a two hour walk on the beach from Bahia Soliman south through Tankah 3. I wanted to try to get a tactile experience of what Peissel's beach walk may have been like. The beach and the headlands and the mangrove are all much the same as described in the book. But, of course, instead of intense vegetation growing right up to the beach, there are now houses and buildings and people. There is also plastic on the beach in a quantity that would not have been possible in 1958.

What emerges from my walk is the contrast between the soft white sand of the beach and the very tough and moonlike surface of the headlands and the piles of dead coral to walk on:


The Headland North of Tankah 3


Mounds Of Coral On The Headland


Coral To Walk On

As I walk, I imagine what Peissel's very long walk must have been like for him. I include the enormous distance he covered and the repetitiousness of headlands and bays. I add to the dense and impenetrable mangroves that grow right up to the beach, huge clouds of mosquitoes. I add to my pictures of the coral strewn headlands intense sun and heat and humidity. I mentally remove my comfortable hiking shoes and impose their 1950's equivalent on my feet. I mentally remove my shorts and t-shirt and add the jacket and pants that Peissel wore. I add an uncomfortable, bulky, old school backpack. I add a desire to find and record ruins that are just inside the mangrove and the frustration of neither speaking Mayan nor being entirely welcomed. I add a fear that stalked Peissel for his entire journey of robbers who unrestrained by civil authority would want and might try to take whatever money or property he might have had. And I hear the hot wind, blowing off the sea, making the coco trees clack.

This turns a beach walk into a great adventure. And it makes Michel Peissel's book, The Lost World of Quintana Roo, a treasure worth reading. It's an essential document before a trip to Quintana Roo.