From Campeche I drove south via a hilly curvaceous road to a Gulf Coast town named Champoton that's supposedly renowned for its fresh seafood cocktails served in beachside palapas along the road. I thought about stopping but it was still early for lunch so continued on another 50 miles south via a very straight road through banana and sugarcane plantations to Escarcega, a down-and-out truck stop type of a town at the intersection of north-south and east-west roads which connect the Yucatan Peninsula with the rest of Mexico. Lo and behold, what was there on a corner of the intersection in such a godforsaken little place? Burger King. I decided I needed something American as a break from Mexican food after I had the squirts, or "liquid bum" and Brits and Aussies say, earlier in the morning, apparently from the big salad I ate the night before. You try to be healthy and eat some vegetables on vacation and that’s what you get!

Escarcega is the most distant point from Cancun on my Yucatan journey . I turned eastward on the good road that goes through what was probably not too long ago relatively virgin forest and a real frontier country. I say relatively virgin since it was likely much cut and cultivated during Mayan times but returned to thick forest. Mexico doesn’t have too much forest land to begin with but is said to have had one of the highest rates of deforestation. The road across southern Yucatan is now mostly through farm and ranch country, the remaining forest only in reserves or far from roads. And the villages in this area are pretty scruffy too and are strung out along the road, nothing like the historic towns with big old churches and haciendas from several centuries ago that you see in northern Yucatan.

My primary reason for venturing this way other than for doing a loop rather than backtracking is the Calakmul archaeological site near the Guatemalan border, but there are many other Mayan sites in this part of the Yucatan not too distant from the main highway that were part of the Rio Bec archaeological region with common cultural and architectural characteristics .

I decided to stop at Balamku since it was too late in the day to make it all the way to Calakmul. Balamku is only about two miles off the main east-west road through southern Yucatan but wasn’t discovered until 1990. Wow! As I pulled into the completely empty parking lot, a little boy directed me exactly where to park as parking lot attendants at a busy county fair might do and then offered me his services as a guide. I asked what his fee was. He said 50 pesos (about $2.50). Sure! I figured I’d get to practice my Spanish with someone I wouldn’t feel to self-conscious speaking with, since I sort of talk baby Spanish anyway. Valentin said he was 11 but looked about 8 to me, but what do I know about what kids look like at different ages? Valentin’s Spanish was clear, but he spoke softly and mumbled a bit. As I suspected, he said he learned Spanish mostly in school and spoke Mayan at home.

So Valentin guided me around the site where I was the only visitor . Balamku has a few relatively small pyramid temples and numerous jaguar motifs, its name actually meaning Jaguar Temple. Valentin guided me into one of those temples where one of the best-preserved Mayan friezes was found, a wall perhaps 50 feet long with anthropomorphic jaguars, snakes, crocodiles, and other scary figures.

What Valentin was most useful for, though, was spotting birds and wildlife. He seemed to see them immediately, including some pretty blue birds whose name I couldn’t make sense of, a carpintero (woodpecker), and several tucancillos (small sized toucans). And then as we approached the ticket office as I was leaving he spotted a snake slithering through the leaves beside the trail. I didn’t see its head or tail, just a thick piece of its middle as it moved quickly away, but I thought it might have been a boa constrictor. Valentin said, though, that it was a “cascobel” and was “venemosa”. He mentioned something about its cola (tail), and I realized it was a rattlesnake . Cool!

There’s almost no accommodation around the entrance to Calakmul. My guidebook lists a hotel which sounds expensive and a place with some cabanas in the nearest village. I decided to go for the latter since the cost was only about $15/night despite hearing an unpleasant story about them from some German travelers I met eight days earlier. Apparently they stayed at the same place and somehow their belongings were stolen during the night while they were sleeping. They nonetheless said how nice the place was and how pleasant the owners were, maybe the tethered pig and all the chickens and turkeys running around added to the appeal. I decided to take a chance despite the guest registry indicating I was the first guest there in five days. After dinner where I was the only customer at the next door “restaurant” operated out of someone’s house, I made sure my door was locked and the screens all secure. As an added precaution, I put all my valuables in my daypack and put it under the sheet with me with the mosquito net over us all. I think I slept with one eye open, but all was fine. I awoke to a cool breezy morning the thermometer on my rental car registered as 19*C (about 66*F).