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Hiking
Gone Wrong
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My buddy Brinton and
I had a day off and we decided to head to the south part of the island
about 3 miles up from the South Point. We had seen on the map that
there were "the largest and most expanse ruins on Cozumel island"
there. We wanted to hike to them and check them out. The only
problem was that there didn't appear to be any trails to them. That
didn't stop us. We were actually pretty excited about bushwhacking through
the jungle.
So we drove down
there and we found a dirt road into the jungle just about where the ruins
should be, so we took it. We drove in and found a horse ranch.
We talked to a few guys and found out that the ruins were not accessible on
foot, only by horse, and if we wanted to take one, it'd be $40 for us
locals but we'd have to come back tomorrow. We said thank you for the
info and took off. About half way between the ranch and the beach
road, there's a little pull-off. We parked the motos and decided to
explore.
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We pushed through
some bushes and ended up in a big open field.
So we wandered around
the field for a while and Brinton found this beaten down path and we
figured it's the path that the horses take to get to the Mayan Ruins.
That was a good idea for about 30 seconds, and then the
trail ended.
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We tried going to the left and to the right to find the
trail again, thinking it just jumps somewhere, but we ended up just getting
deeper and deeper into the jungle, and there was no sign of any trail
anywhere. So we decided to climb a tree to get a vantage point to
look for the ruins. We found one, and I started to climb it, but our
situation did not improve.
Watch what happened next:
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We walked around for
a little bit and found other trees to climb. I climbed a dead one and he climbed one
about 50 feet away from mine. Both
got us above the tree line, but this is what we saw in all 4 directions:
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No ruins, no trail,
no field, but even more surprisingly, no ocean.
So after hanging out
in the tree for 20 minutes or so, we climbed down. This is kinda
difficult in sandals. After several failed attempts to get down, I found
one that worked really well: I fell out of the tree. It was
only about an 8 foot drop, but it was still enough to make my legs shaky
for the next half hour, and high enough to make a loud "THUD"
when I hit the ground. Brinton yelled over, "Chiki! Are you
ok?" To which I replied, "Yeah, no biggie, just fell outta the
tree." But our conversation was cut short when we heard a horse
whinny. Then a second horse, and two Mexicans yelling to each other.
Remember now, we're
trespassing. I don't really know the laws in Mexico, but for all I
know, they could shoot on sight. Brinton and I were dead silent and
we didn't move. The two guys (in Spanish) were talking to each other:
"Did you see them?" "They couldn't have gone far."
"They were right here." Luckily the jungle is so thick that you
could be within 5 feet of another person and as long as you don't move,
they'll never see you. So we didn't move. For 20 minutes.
I could see the horse's legs... they were about 15 feet away.
Whistling, calling, telling us to come out. We didn't budge.
They finally left, and we stayed quiet for another 10 minutes in case it
was a trick.
Then it got really
scary. Something started coming
right toward me. I could hear it
breaking twigs and I could tell that it was getting closer and closer to
me, but the freakiest thing was that although twigs and branches were
breaking, the jungle wasn’t moving.
I couldn’t see anything even though I could hear it getting so
close. It was like something out of
the X-Files. Finally, this thing
appeared, walked right up to me and stopped. He waited for me to get my camera out,
then kept walking:
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We figured that if the Mexicans didn’t
hear the armadillo, they wouldn’t hear us.
So we got up and decided that we'll never find the ruins and we
should probably focus on getting out of the jungle. We went and found
their horse trail, which led us back toward the field. But when we
got close we heard the horses again, so we quick dove behind a bush to wait
it out:
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If you can’t understand us, here is the
dialog:
Brian: “What are we doing, Brinton?”
Brinton: “The Most Dangerous Game” (it’s
a book)
Brian: “That’s bad.”
Brinton: “We’re being hunted.”
Brian: “Right over there…through the
trees right there… there’s two guys on horses and when we were up on the
trees they saw us and they came after us but we hid in the bushes. And then they left, but now they’re
waiting for us to come into the clearing.”
Brinton: “We’re screwed.”
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After a few minutes, we decided to move
around the field and come in at a different side. This was a great
idea for about 2 minutes. Then the jungle got even thicker than
before, and the vegetation of choice was thorny bushes and Tarzan vines
that cannot be broken by walking through them. So now, instead of one
direction, we looked for any hole, any slight opening to squeeze through,
just so we could go somewhere, but after about 2 hours of this, we were
completely lost and had no idea which direction we were even going.
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We decided that we
were never going to find the field, and we should just go toward the ocean.
We'd climb a tree every once in a while to hear where the ocean was, and
keep heading that direction.
After another hour of
trudging through the jungle, miraculously, we found the field (which is
weird because I swore we were headed toward the ocean). We were
extremely excited to know that we were not going to die in the jungle after
all. We got to the edge of the field, only to find that where we had
come out was a small pond. And as we're staring at this pond,
something in the middle of it goes "PLOP" and sinks
underwater. We could only assume it was a crocodile, since they're
randomly all over the place out there. So we scaled the side of the
jungle around the pond and drop down on dry ground and walk slowly out into
the field. No horses. Sweet, I'm thinking 50% escape
rate. They're probably by our motos.
We got to our motos,
nobody's there: 80% escape rate. We still had to get out of the
complex. We went to put our keys in the ignition, but they didn’t go
in:
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MacGyver used his
wire tweezers and got the twigs out of both our ignitions. Back up to
80%. We kicked the bikes off their kick stands and plop. Flat
tires: 30%.
We decided that we
could still ride on the flat tires, just not as fast. We went down
the dirt road to the entrance and found ourselves locked in the
complex. Our escape rate was dropping fast. I was sure they
were gonna catch us. We managed to get around the gate and out onto
the beach road, pushing our bikes through the bushes using sheer adrenaline
strength. This shot our escape rate
up to 90%, the highest it had been all day. Driving so slow, I was
still thinking they were gonna catch us or call the police at Mescalito's
(the checkpoint you have to pass to get back into the city).
Well we got past
Mescalito's and started heading back into town when Brinton's bike stalls
from almost running out of gas, he guns it again and it starts going again,
but now he's in front (My tire was worse than his, so I'd been in front this
whole time thinking my tire would give at any time). So he gets in
front and floors it to get as far as he can before running out of
gas. My tire gives out and I'm riding on my rim and Brinton's too far
to hear me yell, so I just pull over in the middle of nothing. I
parked my bike on the side and started walking. I figured I could
call a taxi when I got to something I recognized. About this time,
Brinton came back and saw me walking down the street. Confused, he
asked, "Need a ride?" So we drove down a little bit and I
saw the tourist police. I jumped off Brinton's bike, told him I'd
meet him at the gas station and went with the tourist police to get my
bike. (They've got a truck to pick up stupid tourists who break their
motos.) "I really don't know what happened to my tire,
sir. I was just driving along and then all of the sudden, it was
completely flat."
So I rode the moto on the back of the police truck
to the mechanic, happily ever after.
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