Chetumal

After arriving in Chetumal for my next mission I wandered around for a bit looking for an internet cafe. Along the way, I noticed that Adolf Hitelr, before shooting himself in a bunker, apparently started his own brand of jeans.

After quite a bit of walking with a heavy pack, I finally found the internet cafe and the email that my contact, Mauro, had sent that included his phone number. I texted him and he directed me to the nearby Museum of Maya Culture, where he would meet me in a couple of hours.

The museum was quite worth the "foreigner" price of $49.50 pesos (that's about $5 of our dollars). Although most of the artifacts were replicas, the ambiance, arrangement, and labeling more than compensated.

The center piece was a totem like, stylized model of a ceiba tree, which I learned was central to the Ancient Maya worldview. With its roots in a cenote like, cavernous underworld, its bulging trunk representing our world, and its branches reaching toward the stars, the Ceiba tree was not only a metaphor but a representation of the three worlds.

Mauro arrived on time, bit it was too soon for me to finish the museum. Either way, it definitely beat waiting in an internet cafe!

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