Ek Balam and Rio Lagortas

We woke up early excited our about out trip to the first ruin site - Ek Balam. The weather was still a bit wet, but again we agreed a bit of wind and rain never hurt anyone. It was only a 20 minute drive from Valladolid, and we arrived to an almost empty car park and what looked like a pack of dingos. A small boy approached us as we got out of the car and muttered something about looking after our car, but we waved him off and headed to the entrance of the ruin site.

Ek Balam Acropolis

The main pyramid (the Acropolis) is 32 meters high and the lack of health and safety in Mexico allows you to climb to the top, if your not crippled by the fear of falling off it. I watched from the bottom step and Richard made his way up to the top with the camera so I could see what I was missing. He did later confess that he was a bit dubious when it started to pour down as he was making his way down and had to negiotate the tiny slippery steps. The acquired technique for a safe decent is to walk diagonally across the steps, and not a crab like crawl on your backside as I later tried out.

Ek Balam

Pleased to have ticked off our first ruin, we headed back to the car with the plan to drive an hour up the road to the coastal town of Rio Lagortas. It was only when the car wouldn't start that we remembered the little boy on the way in and were convinced we were caught in the middle of a Mexican tourist scam, the situation not aided by being surrounded by wild dogs. Our preconceived notion that everyone in Mexico was out to scam us was soon corrected when a couple of taxi drivers helped us to get the car started.

The weather had improved remarkably and it was now a lovely sunny afternoon. Concerned that the car might conk out at any time we hurried off to Rio Lagortas. Being warned by the guidebooks that we would be bombarded by men offering us flamingo boat tours as soon as we arrived in the town, we agreed that we should be firm and just politely say 'no gracias'. It therefore came as a surprise when Richard stopped at the first man that waved at us and ten minutes later we were in a speed boat heading towards a crocodile filled lagoon.

Thumbs up from the boat trip driver

Flamingoes at Rio Lagortas

The trip was actually well worth while. It lasted about two hours and we saw hundreds of flamingoes, all different shades of pink. On the way back, our driver pulled over to a little clay shore and assuring us there were no 'crocodilios', helped us out of the boat and started digging in the clay for our 'spa'. We received a few confused looks from the passing fishermen arriving back to the port covered head to toe in dried white clay.

Clay 'spa'

The drive back to Valladolid was interrupted by a loud pop. On discovering the source of the pop we were pleased it wasn't a problem with the car but very upset that we had inadvertantly run over a turtle crossing the road.