Ancient cities and cultures fascinate me. Exactly why I chose to write stories about Atlantis. Trekking through a jungle on the Yucatan peninsula is the closest I've come to discovering a lost civilization.
At the Mayan city of Uxmal (pronounced “Osh-mal”), trails lead through stone archways seemingly off into the wild unknown. But upon closer inspection one can see the city's original bounds extended well beyond what archaeologists have cleared thus far.
From the top of a partially cleared pyramid, I caught a glimpse of another overgrown structure peeking out just above the jungle canopy. My imagination ran wild. What other secrets did the jungle hold? What mysteries about the Mayans' elusive past could be solved at last?
The very platform I stood on was only partially reclaimed from the insatiable verge. If viewed from any of the other three sides, my pyramid, gigantic though it was, would have seemed to the casual passerby like an ordinary hillside along the trail.
I decided to climb back down and investigate, as our tour guide had left our group to their own devices for the remaining two hours of the excursion. Dizzy and trembling, I took the descent at turtle speed. It was a looooonng way down! Fear gripped me, yet gnawing curiosity kept my feet inching down each steep step. (My husband's gentle coaxing helped, too.)
When we reached the blessed ground at the bottom, we set off on our adventure. Dirt trails snaked through the underbrush, revealing wonder after wonder: doorways that at first looked like caves, iguanas scurrying across crumbling stone walls, and panels covered in hieroglyphs and vines, to name a few.
Each time we stumbled upon something new, another winding path beckoned us to venture deeper into the wild. We felt torn between the lure of finding more ruins and the fear of finding ourselves lost—or worse, left behind by our tour bus.
The afternoon wore on, and all too soon, we had to return to rejoin our group.
To our relief, Senior Mario (our tourguide) hadn't left us yet, but was instead busy learning to make tortillas the real way from the proprietors of a nearby restaurant. We had just enough time for a to go order.
While we waited, Senior Mario motioned me over. “You want to see how real tortillas are made?”
He led me outside to the back, where a lady with a warm smile sat on the ground shaping the cornmeal dough. At her side, tortillas browned over an open fire.
“Hola,” she said kindly.
“Go ahead,” Mario urged, “Take a picture.”
I watched in awe as she formed a perfect tortilla and slapped it on the griddle.
“The entire process is done by hand,” Mario explained proudly, “From grinding the corn to cooking. She does this every day, just as our ancestors did.”
I thanked her (in Spanish, of course), and we returned to the dining room. We put our lunch into carryout boxes and raced back to the bus. Those tortillas crunched gloriously with every bite.
During the trip back to the port town of Progreso, my eyes narrowed at each hillside we passed, and I wondered if perhaps more lay beneath the brush, if those mounds were indeed the work of humans, and later swallowed up by nature.
Our ship sailed away for New Orleans, and it felt to me as though I had strayed out of a dream. Maybe it was all simply too amazing to be real? Someday, we both resolved, we would return to finish exploring Uxmal. This is the stuff books are made of.
