WHY A MEXICAN LADY SLAPPED ME ! ! !

Yes, I was just sitting there, listening to the sermon in Spanish in the Cruz de Cristo Lutheran Church in Mahahual and the lady next to me slapped me on the arm. That was a surprise.

Out of concern for me, she had just killed a TABANO on me.  Those critters are NOT to be ignored and common courtesy here is to help each other by keeping them from biting someone next to you, if you can.

They are of at least three colors:  yellow (I find most common), green and black)

 

The sting/itch usually lasts about 15 minutes and for me, after that it doesn't bother me much.  For others, they get a big welt and it lasts for days. The Tabanos come out of the mangroves.  If there is a strong breeze from the ocean, we hardly encounter them.  But the worst is about five o'clock in the afternoon, especially if little wind is blowing or the it comes from the west, out of the mangroves.  You plan your outside parties at noon or early afternoon.


In English, they are referred to as the Tabanid Fly, one of many members of the Horse Fly family.
This photo from Wikipedia shows the biting mouth well.

TRAVELING TO COMPECHE

 

 

Campeche is a state in the Yucatán Peninsula, and also a city in Campeche.  The city is located on the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Jim and I have just returned from visiting in the state of Campeche for a week.   One of the highlights was seeing the jade mask of Jaguar Claw which had been transferred from a pyramid in Calakmul to the San Miguel Fortress Museum of Mayan Culture. Along with a mask from Palenque, this one was one I had long wanted to see.

 

 

 

 

 As we were driving south from Campeche we were allowed us into the dock of one of the largest fleet of shrimp boats in the Yucatán, located in the town of Lerma. We were met by 6 guards at the entrance to the dock. We explained that Jim had been a commercial fisherman in Washington and were very interested in viewing their boats, etc. We signed some papers, left our driver's license and were told to wear the visiting badges. We were warned not to take photos of the Navy Patrol boats also moored there, and finally we were allowed entry.

Only one boat appeared to be new and most were well used and loaded heavily with fishing equipment, nets, freezers, diesel cannisters etc. for their trips out in the Gulf for up to 8 weeks.

 

Fisherman mending nets.

 

Only one boat had just come in...no shrimp, but a load of Balá, or Raya Blanca...a kind of ray.

 

 

 

Farther down the coast at Champotón, we saw many, many fishing boats but they were much smaller.  See the white nets?

 

 

 

BET YOU'VE NEVER SEEN THESE BEFORE!!

Part of the fun of travel are new adventures and finding things you've never seen before. Being in the Yucatán allows for lots of those. Here are two examples.

Here's the first.  What are those four white things below?  I had never seen them before.   They are future animals. Make a guess? (That's my pen there to give you an idea of how small they are.)

 

These are the eggs of the Common House Gecko of the Yucatán.  Their gestation period is 60 to 120 days, far longer than I had guessed.  Last year I had a bad time sleeping due to what I had thought were crickets.  I was temporarily sleeping in my anti-gravity chair in the kitchen at night because of my recovering hip.  The sound was really loud and shocking...over and over again with pauses in between. 

Krrrk krrrk krrrk krrrk krrrk krrrk!

 

Now I learned it is the male mating call and the owners of the house where we were staying decided to totally eradicate them after they arrived.  We haven't had any problems this year with the noise although I have found 2 in the bathroom. I don't know if the following is true about the Common House Gecko but this is true for some geckos:   Sex is determined by temperature. This means that you can determine the sex of hatchlings by incubating at a specific temperature. Incubating at 85 degrees Fahrenheit will give a good balance of male to female hatchlings. Incubating at around 82 degrees Fahrenheit will give you mostly females and upping the incubation temperature to 88 degrees Fahrenheit will give you mostly males. It is thought that the temperature determined sex is only within the first 21 days of incubation, after this period of time the sex of the hatchling is locked in.

 

Hm...I wonder if that could ever apply to humans?

 

Common House Gecko of the Yucatán

Ok, here's the second.

 

 

 

 

Well, you probably guessed this one.  It's the head and neck of a chicken I bought.  I found it totally amazing in  how did they EVER skin the HEAD so well.  I have never tried to do this and totally appreciate their ability to extract the windpipe, etc, so neatly.

 

Jim is leaving tomorrow for awhile to work with some other men in the neighborhood.  They will be fixing the jungle dirt road, holes, rocks, etc. a few kilometers away from us.  Many have already repaired the road near their own property.  Also, the rains have lessened and the roads are becoming more passable again.

 

We planted 6 small Royal Palms on our property last week, saw the Super Bowl with friends in Mahahual bar and restaurant El Padrino.  I especially enjoyed Renée Fleming, the fine soprano who sang the National Anthem, and also Bruno Mars.  Manning just seemed to be always studying his plays with the papers in hand. Way to go SEAHAWKS !!!!!

 

 

Floods Are Changing Animal Behavior Here

I went out walking between rain storms yesterday and feel like I finally have arrived back..  It just isn't the same without getting "tabano" bites...mangrove grown yellowish flies BITE and leave welts. No mosquitoes, though. Too much rain I guess. But I now have 4 "tabano: bites. Yes, I've "arrived."


Jim just left with two other men to go to the Rio Indio cut off with shovels, a McLeod tool, crow bar etc.  They plan to make culverts and drain some water on the road so cars can pass.  (It has rained inches since we've been here.) Pedro living down that road to the left as you turn right to Rio Indio has water up 15 " in his house, and many caimans were swimming around the house, got his cat and his 20 chickens drowned, too. He left temporarily for Mahahual.  The local government doesn't seem to have much money for road maintence out here.   Men along the road just get together and do some individual projects. A concept dating back to much earlier times in the U.S.

Caiman,  a Caiman crocodilus. Colloquially known as the spectacled caiman, after the bony ridges that encircle its eyes. Caimans belong to the same family as the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis); they're more distantly related to crocodiles, which belong to a separate family under the order Crocodylia.


The spectacled caiman is found throughout Central and South America, while the American alligator is confined to the southeastern portion of the United States. Crocodiles tend to have V-shaped noses, while those of caimans and alligators are more rounded and resemble U's. The other most noticeable difference is size, as male caimans rarely exceed 7 feet in length; alligators, by contrast, regularly grow to double that size.

 Snakes, , too are coming out of the mangroves which have the tannic acid water (brown) overflowing onto the road.  Even raccoons, usually nocturnal , are coming around the houses during the day for food. A park ranger next door saw a TAYRA.  I had never heard of it before. (check out the tail)




 A Rare white Tayra.
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Along the roads the garzas (white egrets) are FISHING in the road, and lots of people have seen caiman along the road.  Last week some Mexicans were also fishing in the road, but what I saw were just ones fishing in the gullies at the side of the road.

Well, remember this photo from the last post?

It was just a come-on to get you back to read another post.  We have rented for 6 years now from the same local, small rental car company just outside the airport at Cancun.  They know us pretty well so I ask for "deals."  We were able to rent a larger car for the same low negociated price and thought, why not.  At the very least, we should have less trouble with getting robbed, because they certainly won't think we are tourists. And yes, we did take lots of pictures of it before we left the rental office...:)

We're Back to the Yucatan Amid Road Flooding and Storms

Hurrah!! We're back in the Yucatan, 21 km north of Mahahual, on the Caribbean, one hour of driving north from Belize.

Yesterday my husband Jim and I rented a car in Cancun, went to Costco and each began piling food into two separate carts with two separate lists. Hurry, hurry. Then off to Mega (huge grocery store to the west of Costco) and once again piling food and supplies into two separate carts. I do the vegetables, fruit, cereals, etc. and Jim does the new juicer, tequila, rum, coffee, cream etc.

We finished at 12:45 PM and started south on Highway 307, with food in the front seat to eat along the way. No time to stop for lunch. A quick stop for gas and again in Limones for a 70 lb. Bag of sweet oranges and off again. We had now driven four hours south of Cancun, and 51 km yet to go to Mahahual. We arrived to our cutoff at 4:45 PM. Not dark yet, not bad.

Why the rush? We simply had to get to our rental house before nightfall. We had been warned of extreme flooding on the dirt roads. We had a choice of two roads and friends along each road had warned us to go the other road. We had to choose one so...it was the Rio Indio road.

Now a stroke of luck.   See the red truck?

 It just appeared ahead of us so Jim could watch to see how deep the truck wheels were sinking and decided we could get through the first huge “pond,” then the next and then the next, sometimes choosing a different side of the road. At least the mud wasn't that slimy, sticky kind. The truck turned to the right at Rio Indio and we had to go to the left.

Well, that's ok, we thought. The worst was behind us. Not so.

Huge “ponds” continued. Sometimes we drove left, some we went right. Then there were those”ponds" that extended completely across the road.

 No decision there. But oops....the road changed from mud to drifted wet sand...you know the kind that tires like to relax in, all the time not revealing the depth of water on top the sand. Darkness was approaching, getting a bit harder to see. Then the tropical rain pour storm hit. Really, really hard to see. Windshield wipers were only a little help.

And then like a beautiful yellow apparition, we arrived to Casa Amarilla, our home for the next month, But Chaac was not so easily appeased. 

 We sat outside Casa Amarilla in the car for 15 minutes waiting for the heavy rainstorm to abate. To go outside the car would have been like swimming in the Caribbean which was just 75 feet east of us.

We have decided to just stay “put” the next several days, but what a delightful place to be partially marooned in.

Oh...look at this below.....but that's another story.