Holbox Explorations: Blat Ha Organic Garden, Luum Ayni, and Nature Hike

Funky Plant Mural on the Beach

Welcome to the Yum Balam Reserve

After two busy weeks, a day off!

Checking out the garden from the roof of Blat Ha

After a short break from our nature and gardening adventures, Danny and I began our morning at Casa Blat Ha.  Blat Ha is an Eco-Bed and Breakfast and organic orchard, which is home to a wide array of medicinal and edible plants.  For the next eight days, we'll be spending some time at Blat Ha and learning from the owner Daniel Trigo, who has an extensive knowledge of plants, horticulture, and history.  He's offered to share his expertise as well as his impressive collection of books with us.

Our first morning at Blat Ha, we meet Cesar and Lisa, who run a sustainable ecology project called Luum Ayni, in Chichimila, Yucatan near Valladolid.  I'll travel back to the area next week to visit this project because I don't think I should miss it!  Cesar adds to my knowledge of local bees: telling me about three species - zacxic, kanzac, and muul.  The muul, Trigona fuluventris, pollinates tiny flowers in the jungle.  While the yield of honey produced by the muul is less than than traditional Mellipona, it is considered an elixir known for its anti-bacterial properties, taken orally as a medicine and put on scars and cuts.  Bees are so important to this region:  the states of Yucatan, Campeche, and Quintana Roo produce over 20,000 tons of honey each year; 15,000 tons of this honey is exported to Europe and the rest of N. America.

Flowering Basil

Busy Bees on the Basil

After reading a bit about native species and Maya agriculture, Danny and I head out to the garden with Daniel to dead head a large patch of basil and harvest a bit, which we package in homemade leaf bags.

Harvesting the Basil

Lovely bags of basil

It has been great walking around the island with Danny, as he is fearless with his camera.  I joke with him that I may need to call his mom with news of an osprey or iguana attack.  In the meantime, I enjoy his quality photos, as I'm sure you will too!  

Hanging out by the sea

Pelican Encounters

Lovely Sea Hawk (Osprey)

Posing for Danny's Photos?

Stay tuned for our day of swimming with the whale sharks, including Danny's underwater videos, and many more adventures.

Solferino: Kayaking Laguna San Ángel

Hostel Inlakech in Solferino

Traveling from Valladolid to Solferino was a bit of an experience. We took one bus to a small town called El Ideal and had to get off at the side of the road to switch to another bus. Lucky for us, we had some musical accompaniment in the form of a man who played guitar and sang and a woman who tried to harmonize with him, with occasional success. The bus driver did not announce our arrival to Solferino – lucky for me, I sat near a kind student who let me know that we were in the town. I got up quickly from the back of the bus, woke up Jenny, who was sitting a few rows in front of me, and we hopped off the bus. Another woman who disembarked with us asked who we’d be staying with and directed us to Beto’s palapa.

Note the tilapia pool in front of the palapa!

Betos' cat, Michi

We began to see some brightly painted signs pointing to his place, Hostel Inlakech, and were impressed to see the three-story palapa made of wood and other natural materials. Check out the facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/hostel.solferino We were greeted by two young ladies, Yvette and Leni, who were working on starting a fire for the stove to make rice. Beto’s property featured a couple of dogs, a cat, and a bunch of chickens and roosters. He also had a large pool filled with tilapia, which Beto later told us he was raising to sell as food to others in the village. Apart from meat and eggs Beto derives from the animals he raises, he also grows a number of plants he uses in food he prepares, including papaya and mango trees.

Dining area, with swing-style seats

After chatting with the girls for a bit, Beto arrived and informed us that none of us would be staying at the palapa itself that night. Instead, we were going to stay in a 25-meter-high tower in the jungle overlooking a lagoon. We prepared and ate some dinner, while explaining the project and purpose of visiting Solferino, and we began to load up the truck with materials for camping. Even though Jenny and I weren’t prepared for a night out in the wild, Beto provided some useful materials – mattress pads, some sheets, and a bit of food for the night and the following morning.

Water meets jungle

Looking up at the tower from one of the lower steps

With the truck packed, we drove for about thirty minutes to the even smaller town of San Ángel, where Beto exchanged some words with an older man. We were a bit unsure of the plan, but he was trying to figure out where we were going, too! The man rode a bicycle down an unpaved road into a forest to show us exactly where he had stored some kayaks. We doused ourselves with bug spray, loaded up the three kayaks and began our journey, seated on the mattress pads. Beto rode with Leni’s dog, Liat; Liat and Yvette rode together; and Jenny and I rode in the third kayak. Liat, a sweet golden retriever with one dreadlock hanging from his neck, decided to jump into the water soon into the ride, which meant Beto had to go back to shore to get the dog back into the boat.

Liat, the water-loving dog

Kayaking back in the morning:  we took turns rowing and resting

The kayak ride across Laguna San Ángel was long – just about an hour – but provided us with a good workout for our upper bodies and a bit of adventure. It was also interesting to see this large lagoon with the moon providing our only light. Beto joked that there were crocodiles in the water, but we only heard a bunch of frogs and insects. Some parts of the lagoon were harder to navigate than others because of a thick, slimy substance (maybe some sort of algae or slime mold) which held up the kayaks and our oars. After some intense labor, we finally arrived to the site of the tower, unpacked the kayaks, and climbed up dozens of stairs to the top of the wooden platform.

A view of the water in early morning light

From that vantage point, we saw the entire moonlit lagoon. We changed into dry clothes and hung the things that had been wet and the ride over. Beto set up a couple of hammocks, and we watched part of a movie (Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet) on my laptop until the battery died. Exhausted, we fell asleep shortly after setting our stuff down and spent the night above the canopy of the surrounding forest. Bugs were not really a problem, thanks to our height and the strong breeze, but shortly before dawn, there was a good amount of dew, which moistened the things we had tried to dry the night before, as well as our sheets and the clothes we slept in.

Lounging in the hammock

Waking up with nature and no coffee :(

Jenny and I woke up before the others as the sun was rising and climbed down the stairs to look at the lagoon and dozens of birds flying around that morning. Apart from the beautiful birds, there were a couple of pretty neat insects nearby, including some large red wasps, spiders, and ants. It was really a pretty magical place, and it was exciting to be among the pioneers of this excursion that Beto is sure to repeat with other groups.

Two of the many yellow birds we saw above the lagoon

A slightly horrifying wasp, about 1.5-2 inches long 

The back of a beautiful spider

The same spider's belly