Zazil Ha

-->

Mid Febrero 2015: I am floating off Isla’s North Beach on a raft by myself when a familiar face goes by on a paddleboard.

“Buenos tardes.”

“Buenos tardes.”

Then he comes back. It is Santiago Rivera, the new owner of our hotel, Na Balam. We start a long conversation. The conversation is so long that we keep dunking ourselves under salty blue seawater to cool off. Mostly he talks. Shocking! I realize that this is a very special moment and I listen intensely. He confirms in 2013 he bought the hotel from his mother, Lily Robles. Formerly he was working as an architect for a small company in NYC.

Sandy and I have been coming to the Island of Women since 1988. “Before Gilbert” means before September 15, 1988, when Hurricane Gilbert smashed into Isla Mujeres. First it hit Jamaica with 125 mph winds. Then it slammed into Isla with winds of 185-200 mph. (Also in 2005, Hurricane Wilma stalled over Isla Mujeres for three days, producing 64 inches of nonstop rain.) Nevertheless, the island was voted one of the Top Ten Beach Destinations by Travel & Leisure magazine in 2012.

I ask Santiago how his family’s hotel came into being. It seems his grandfather, Lily’s dad, purchased the land to build a hotel for Santiago’s mom, to secure her and her two sons financially for the rest of their lives. Lily had recently divorced her artist husband.

“Yah, but how did that all come about?” I asked.

It seems that Abuelo -- I mean Grandpa -- flew with a friend to the Puerto Juarez area for some unknown reason, aboard a prop airplane from Mexico City. They had airplane trouble and landed in what is now Cancun.

Grandfather had a friend, Judge Lima, eight miles away on Isla Mujeres, who boarded them and fed them until their plane was fixed. He must have showed them his hotel, Zazil Ha, where over the wooden bridge El Presidente, then Avalon, then Mia Reef, now stands. El Presidente was deemed unfixable after Gilbert. Some time later, short on cash, Senor Lima offered some of his Playa Norte land to Abuelo.

Santiago introduced me to his mom. She is from Cuernavaca, and was surprised that after traveling Mexico for 48 years I did not know the town. "The Magnificent Seven" was filmed there, outside of Mexico City. She said it starred Yul Brenner and Marlon Brando. I didn’t correct her.

Side bar: One of the few streets on Isla is named Abasola. Mexico City has 82 streets named Abasola. Each one is in a different section. Even taxi drivers get lost in Mexico City.

The Robles familia built Na Balam (house of the jaguar). They started with only twelve rooms. 

Jaguar, Na Balam.

 They soon realized that they needed a restaurant to feed their guests. Lily -- being an artist and yoga person -- mostly built her business on yoga retreats. The locals call it joga. Their restaurant is named Zazil Ha, and eventually the street it is on was named Zazil Ha also. (Zazil in Mayan means clear.) That street was only limestone gravel, even in 1988.

Side bar: Isla Mujeres’s first water line from the main land was installed in 1967.

What happened to Lima’s hotel is not clear, although he also built the nearby Maria del Mar (Cabanas), where we have stayed for twenty years at least. Do you remember all those cement squat houses along Av. Carlos Lazo on your right as you walk to Centro? Those were the casas of Jose Lima’s workers.

I overheard a tourist remark that “Ha” in Maya means “water.” I googled Zazil Ha.

Gonzalo Guerrero, a soldier sailor, was aboard a small Spanish galleon called a caravel in 1511 with twenty other people including two women. They were on their way to Santa Domingo, which is now the Dominican Republic, from Panama, when the boat sank. They drifted for two weeks and finally landed on shore near Tulum, at Chactemal, the current town of Chetumal, on the Belize border. They were captured by the Mayan warlord Nachan Can. Eighteen of them were held in cages and then sacrificed. Guerrero was made a slave. At one point he saved his master from an alligator attack and was set free as a result. Should I continue? You can’t make this stuff up. The street on the Cuba side, parallel to the main street Hidalgo, for some reason is called Calle (Kye-A) Guerrero. In Marshfield, the builders name the streets after their kids. Mexico puts some thought into their street names.

It gets even better. Guerrero eventually marries the chief’s daughter. They have three children. They are thought to be the very first Mestizo children in North America. Hernan Cortes hears of Guerrero’s trouble and offers him a ride back to Spain. Gonzallo is from the town of Palos, Spain, near where Christopher Columbus started his voyages. Gonzalo declines – his face is tattooed and his ears are pierced and he wears his headdress backwards. Okay, I made up the part about the headdress. But the Spanish would find him odd, plus he loves his beautiful familia in the future Mexico.

Later in what is now Honduras, the Maya king Cicumba asks for help against the Spanish in the town of Ticamaya. Guerrero, with twenty war canoes, heads for Honduras to battle his own countrymen.

After the 1536 battle that the Spanish win, there is a odd warrior body found shot by an arquebus (an early shoulder-held rifle). He has a beard and his face is tattooed and his ears are pierced.

Oh! I nearly forgot to mention. His wife’s name was Zazil Ha.

Roberto Francisco Tocino with Ixchel, Maya goddess of Isla Mujeres.