The first fresh morning of our trip, at eight a.m., after four days of arrangements, seventeen bikers departed. We checked in and out with the sag wagon (“the office”) after depositing our gear with them at their campsite near Merida airport. Our duffel included pop tent, air mattress and a blanket each, tin Sierra Club cups, two red enamel plates, spoon, fork each and personal items (many Wash ’N Dri packets); plus two quarts of rum we’d purchased the night before.
    I carried my daily gear in one red pannier at the back of my seat: water bottle, maps, package of square-sheets toilet paper, cosmetics, journal, tire repair kit, knife and rain gear. Jim carried two panniers, the extra hanging from his cross bar with tools and medicine kits. We wore bike shorts and shoes, long-sleeved shirts, dark glasses, and a visor cap. I wore these same clothes every day with clean underwear I’d rinsed out the night before in a warm rain pool.
    Eagerly I climbed on my steed, as natural to me now and as familiar, welcomed and yearned for, as the limbs of a lover.
    My leather seat was wide, soft, spring supported, tractor like, my handlebars, conventional widespread. I sat upright, viewing the entire scene, Queen Elizabeth parading on a smart, show horse.
    The ride was glorious! More than I’d anticipated. The early morning smelled of tilled earth, moist and warm, perfumed from blossoms in gardens along the roadside. The biking was easy! I was floating, flying, past truck gardens, peasants working, sandaled natives walking to town alongside loaded burros, or riding rusty rackety, improvised velocipedes.
    At Muna, 35 miles along, we turned southeast, skirting lush, green mountains (bypassing the south road to Uxmal), into a rural, agrarian countryside with irrigation ditches and fat, grazing, mocha-colored cattle grazing in the road and beside it. Great, plumed vultures continually cleaned carrion from the road; tiny yellow and white sulphur butterflies floated around us and our path, thick as
fluttering confetti.
    We stopped for the ole Sierra Club lunch: make-your-own tuna sandwiches, cheese, peanut butter, sardines, pickles, fruit, and Halizoned/salted/orange Kool-Aid. Forty miles out I was still refreshed, untired, unchafed, unbored and elated at my stamina.
    We rode through tiny village after tiny village, each with its characteristic central town zocalo, yellow and red blooming cannas, concrete benches with peeling blue paint set with picture tiles – and always dominating, the church.
    The faster riders in the lead, drew the natives out to watch. Old men, young men, women with bare-bottomed babies by the hand, small boys, shy little girls and older, with pure Mayan faces and clean, white embroidered huipiles. They lined the roads or stood in the doorways of their huts, watching silently with surprise, smiles, nods or giggles, kindly, and bashful. What an oddity we must have been.
    I returned smiles and nods with smiles, nods and waves. When a gathering of school kids laughed at me and shouted a greeting I made a friendly, funny face, then crossed my eyes. They roared with laughter. I never heard wise-cracking or put-downs, nor malice or hostility in their reactions.
    I laughed aloud at the incredibility of my actually being on such an improbable adventure, in such an improbable place, with such improbable transportation, at such an improbable age and era. What must the modest, retiring native women (and men!) think of this gray-haired, red-shirted female, in navy blue shorts and tennies, gaily speeding through their settlement on a bicycle? They couldn’t know I was John Wayne riding into all those little western towns on my trail horse, in all those romantic western movies of my youth.
    Jim, way ahead of me, had sprinted for miles, relishing the push, daydreaming along alone when an unfamiliar noise close behind him didn’t fade or stop. His bike wasn’t rattling, but the noise persisted. Slowly he turned to see just behind him on his left, a young, smiling Mayan boy, twelve or fourteen years old, on his squeaky two wheeler, eagerly, energetically, sprinting with him. Wordlessly they raced each other ten miles into Picu.

    It’s one thing to bike fifty miles any one day and just a few the next. It’s the day after day pedaling, pace-setting, putdown-pickup, pack and push on that seasons the muscles, mind and heart for touring.
    The first day more than fulfilled its promise, but the second day I flagged, gritted my teeth, willed my legs to move and worried myself to unworthiness, collapsing in pain that night on my air mattress. My back and arms ached from the unalterable, upright position on my bike, my crotch smarted from fifty miles of chafing and my spirit wilted; my shin still bled from a collision with an indecisive bitch at a parade early in the day.
    I hadn’t slept the night before, high from excitement, but also kept awake by drums and music, firecrackers, trumpets, mooing cows and baaing sheep, all celebrating Columbus Day, October 12, (1971) which had begun at midnight!
    That second morning, we had left our plantation campground by seven a.m., arriving soon after at Tekax, where the entire town gathered along the main road in celebration of Columbus Day. The local Mayans, brightly dressed, carrying religious banners and streamers, marched toward us to the accompaniment of an oompah brass band.
    The earthen road with two ruts for wheels was narrow with small huts and houses close to the road edge. As we approached, the paraders moved slightly to their right, we moved slightly to our right, but a nursing dog-mother couldn’t decide if she belonged in their parade, our parade, or by the side of the road watching.
    As I came rolling along, gauging my clearances as I threaded between paraders and spectators along the roadside, this dog decided to cross my path. To avoid her I turned into a grassy ditch, hitting a rock, skinning a knee and scraping my shin, bumping my groin on the handlebar post. It was my first and last accident of the trip.

    The fourth day out dawned one degree cooler after the previous day’s dust settling shower. The morning ride was particularly long, monotonous and unvaried. I put my head down and made my legs pedal like a machine. The vegetation grew four feet high right to the paved macadam. At lunch we lingered more than two hours, talking, laughing, drinking beer in the breezy café at Felipe Carillo Puerto.
    We moseyed around the town exploring the ancient Mayan Cathedral, sampling chicle from bricks to be sent to Wrigleys’ Gum Factory, sending wires home, postponing the last half of this day’s leg northeast, into and through the uninhabited dense jungle of the state of Quintana Roo. How musical the name.
    Finally, having put it off as long as we dared, five of us, trailing the rest, left town. The pavement soon ended and became a broken sidewalk, then a dirt path, then unbelievably, a five hundred yard wide highway swath, slashed and bulldozed sixty miles straight northeast to the Caribbean, through thick, giant, jungle, Ramon tree trunks, vines, undergrowth and swamp.
    The roadbed was heavily layered with gravel and rock, quarried here and there throughout the peninsula. (By the end of the trip we’d camped or swum in almost every one of those limestone quarries.) The roadway was not uniform 3/4" or 1 1/2" gravel, but a mixture of both, plus bigger chunks of smooth and sharp boulders and stones...as far as we could see.
    It was bumpy, slow and treacherous. We rode our bicycles but dared not take our eyes from the ground as we pedaled. Joann had the first flat. We all stopped to commiserate and help. It was getting ting later and later in the day. I was getting anxious.
    Two miles out, I was bulling along alone, trailing, when the only dump truck in the world, with a handsome Yucatecan driver, stopped and called to me in Spanish, “Do you want a ride?”
    “Thanks,” I called, “but my friends are with me too, biking – and more ahead en campo.”
    Then Finch rode up to join me. The driver said to us, “You are crazy to come along here. There is no place to camp. Would you like to ride in my truck?”
    Finch had better Spanish than I. He didn‘t hesitate, nor did I. We threw our bikes into the back and climbed in. Ahead, we stopped for Jim, John and Joann. I sensed they would like to climb on but it wouldn’t be kosher not to bike. So Finch and I rode til we reached the group preparing to set up camp at another quarry.
    Jesus Martinez repeated his message, and invited us all to camp at his nearby Ranch!
    Our leader shook his head, “No, thank you.”
    Seventeen weary bikers stood speechless and incredulous, dying to accept. Why would anyone turn down such an offer?
    Again the invitation, reminding and cautioning us (from experience) of the dangers of the jungle at night. (We’d heard about this: the tigres....)
    Again our leader refused.
    We stood dumbfounded. There was no apparent reason to refuse and he gave no explanation. So everyone began questioning and protesting.
    Above this noise, Martinez spoke the magic word, “Agua”.
    That decided it. The leader was overruled – his objections drowned out. Bikers and baggage moved on.

    Two and one half miles more down this impossible road, in a wide, jungle clearing, we were welcomed to the hacienda Rancho Yumtzil by a beautiful Mayan señora, eight wide-eyed smiling children, eight dogs, six turkeys, ducks, geese, chickens, roosters, pigs and a pony or two, all fussing at us with friendly curiosity.
    A lake reflected the pink-orchid setting sun. Flowers bloomed in rusting tin can pots. Herbs scented the late afternoon air and a neat, well-kept vegetable garden flourished nearby.
    The señora gave over her spotless, mud floor “kitchen” and oil cook fires were lighted – torches too – all around the spread. Our host built an enormous, roaring log fire in the center of the compound before the sun went down: a welcome for us, a deterrent to night visitors.
    As Jim and I set up our tent, we looked around for John and  Joann; they were nowhere on the compound. Martinez took his truck in search and found them two miles beyond the entrance to
his hacienda. The flat tire had kept them behind, unaware of changed camping plans.
    When they’d thanked Martinez and taken their bikes off his truck, Joann looked at me, flushed and fuming. Under her breath she said, “Where’s that rum we brought with us?”
    We set up our colorful tents everywhere in the clearing and strung wet laundry from tree to tree. Some swam, but Jim, John, Joann and I sat down for the first rum and Coca-Cola of the trip. Before tonight, we’d not had the time, energy, or interest in a “cocktail hour”. Nor did we have energy for many such “hours”.
    Again we cooked after dark, but in the open, thatched roof setting, with smoking torch lights, in this tropical paradise, the effect was more like elegant dining.
    During the night, with the humans bedded down, the family’s animals took over the compound, scrambling around, chorusing intermittently, either wakened by exotic jungle noises or just rehearsing their choral parts. Three or four times the eight dogs scurried around, reconnoitering, rousing the six turkeys which then busy-bodied among the sleepers, gabbling in trills. Ducks answered in sleepy quacks, chickens ruffled and murmured, and the roosters soloed repeatedly before sunrise.
    Enclosed and protected in our green, canvas igloo, I woke many times, turned over on my cushioned mattress chuckling at the night music. In spite of interrupted sleep, I was refreshed and less tense the next morning than yet before. And a good thing too....

     We left Rancho Yumtzil later than usual the next morning, hating to part from this haven and these precious, hospitable people. We dreaded facing the forty-two mile rocky road to Tulum.
    It was our hardest physical day. There were no oases, no villages, no pavement, no curves or side paths, no people – not  even the occasional machete-wielding crews clearing jungle growth. Just chuck holes, sharp rocks, pebbles and sand, flat tires and heat. The only breezes were those we made ourselves, moving.
    We saw only that which lay beneath us, mainly the road of course, and tarantulas, snakes, vultures picking and pulling at dead remains, small scurrying lizards, and thick blossoming wild white morning glories creeping along binding the road’s rocky edges. At rest stops, we drank Halizoned/salted/orange Kool-Aid from our water bottles as directed, looking up into giant umbrella treetops with streamers of pink orchids.
    We guttsed that day’s miles to paved road and cold beer at Tulum Pueblo with still four kilometer’s ride to The Ruin. After one beer in the shade, socializing with the small pigs running among us, I didn’t care if I ever saw my green steed again. In misery and pain, I forced myself to mount again, chafed raw, jarred, and seat bone bruised. My body and mind were numb.
    Grinding along, suddenly, I smelled the sea – salt sea air like my Pacific Coast childhood. I sucked in a second wind, and the next moment, there was the pink shack, “park obelisk”, at the entrance to Tulum.
    The sun was dropping fast turning everything red-gold. Outside the wall I leaned my bicycle against the ancient stones set irregularly on one another. I bent my head and stepped through the narrow, low, corbelled arch made for people much smaller than my 5'5".
    Inside the courtyard, I straightened. On the lush green hill rise, not visible before from outside the wall, Tulum Castillo, The Castle, blazed, each stone illuminated, dazzling in the setting sun.
    Jim, halfway up the hill ahead of me, waved, beckoned and called. I kept trudging up the hill, awed, hypnotized – oblivious to everything except reaching The Castle steps. At  the top I caught my breath: beyond the Castle stretched an endless turquoise, blue-blue sea with gently rolling, foamy waves washing over far out reefs. Palm trees and thick vines spread over the cliffs covering rock and rubble, green-bordering the white sand beach north and south forever.
    I stood there, shaking my head in disbelief. The surf pounded and shushed. My throat filled. Tears gushed down my dusty cheeks. The anticipation, mystery, and solitude overwhelmed me. I still catch my breath when I remember it.