Day 18: Tizimin to Santa Clara

January 16, 2026

Much as we work at top speed to sort through all the bird sightings and then to remember and describe all the stunning events of each day, three things deemed essential eluded yesterday's post. The first was a Green Heron. You don't see a Green Heron every day! In fact, on last year's boat tour, while there was one, the rather weak camera we had failed to get a good picture. So yesterday when we happened to trip over one in a roadside puddle, we pulled out the big camera and got the shot. But it did not get posted. So:

He caught a little fish while we were watching!

Another thing that happened was that shortly after we left Rio Legartos, we got hit by a tropical downpour. There was absolutely no shelter out where we were on the San Felipe road, but we had thought to bring raincoats. In the tropics or not, a rain like that can bring hypothermia if you don't have protection.

And finally, a Striped Mud Turtle put itself in the road for me to find. I didn't want to bug it, or I would have flipped it for a more flamboyant photo. But I did move it off the road. During the move it sealed itself even more tightly inside its shell. It had me thinking that had it been me, I would have come out to see what the hell was going on, and with that could have had my head bitten off. This guy had the better idea.

Striped Mud Turtle. Although our ID guru, Bill Shaneyfelt, is calling this a Yucatan Box Turtle.

Ok, so we are up to date with the critical news of yesterday. That's good, because today started very soon thereafter - at 4:30 a.m. At least that is when Dodie got up to get the ball rolling. I followed a half hour later. This may seem pretty early, but by the time we actually rolled down the street at 6:00, the tortillerias were in full flight, people were boarding buses to (somewhere) and the light was beginning to come. And by 6:30 you could read your newspaper (if they had newspapers here).

Why all this get up and go on our part? In a word, Buctzotz. As we mentioned before, we felt that Buctzotz, already 70 km distant, would have nothing for us, and that we would have to go 100 km, to our booked hotel in Dzidzantun.

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We started out pretty strongly, with the temperature below 15 (true!) and the sun at our backs. These are good conditions for Dodie, and she was bowling along without turning on the assist. She did that because she felt she would need the battery power later, when more tired. I however had the reverse idea: I would pay the piper later, if forced, but for now I was cruisin'.

Tizimin is cattle country, as we have mentioned. And yes, here are some of those cattle:

But the road to Buctzotz also turned out to be birding country. We didn't quite expect it, but we saw 19 species, with 4 new for the year, and 3 lifers in there! One tree was basically stuffed with bright Orioles, but also a Woodpecker, Boat Billed Flycatcher, and others. Dodie had to drag me away, because, remember, Dzidantun.

We even grabbed a famous Tropical Mockingbird, with the little camera:

The road to Buctzotz was great, smooth and with a wide shoulder. Every five minutes a scary big truck might thunder by, but it was fine.

There were literally no towns or other distractions along the way - just ranchos. At one there appeared to be trees in an orderly plantation - something like Europe:

It was a long and boring ride to Buctzotz. I distracted myself by calling to mind the names of friends and colleagues from the distant past. In some cases, though I could see their faces in my mind's eye (a function Dodie lacks), I could not retrieve their names immediately. But in a little while they popped into my head. All save one. That one was driving me crazy for an hour or two. I had known him so well, yeah, in 1980. There is only one thing to do in these cases - stop trying to remember. (Or in this case, since the guy was fairly famous, stop, pull out the phone and ask AI.) I decided to put it out of my mind, and sure enough it came to me in about an hour. Laurie refers to this as putting a summer student on a problem. They may be slow, but eventually they will come back with the answer.

We may be slow, but eventually we came to Buctzotz. Their faded entrance sign seemed to me emblematic of the nothingness I expected to find in the town:

But you know what? You can't believe everything you read on the internet, even if it is in a Grampies blog. From that point forward, Buctzotz presented as exactly what we are accustomed to in similar towns, plus a little more.

They have city hall. Note the clock - it had taken us 6 hours to get here.

They have old timer farmers on the park bench.

The have chocolate covered Donald Duck ice cream on a stick.

Lots of taxis. 10 pesos will take you anywhere in town.

and even a dental clinic, on the square! (Don't quite need it now).

We sat at a shady bench and ate our manchego cheese and peanut butter on Bimbo "Integrale" bread sandwiches. After a morning in the pack, the cheese was melted - sort of a natural grilled cheese sandwich.

A man came over to chat, and we told about where we were from and what we were doing. He said he appreciated the chance to practice English.

After a while I realized that this was the man driving the coco ice cream trike. Naturally I moved us over to the trike, so we could buy some ice cream. We intended to buy just one cone to split, as usual, but the price was so cheap that the coins Dodie gave the man produced one cone each. The man said that he produced the ice cream himself, and I think he said that he had learned this from his father. While standing beside the motorcycle powered trike, I had the chance to observe and ask about its construction. I showed the man that I knew this was a conversion from a Mercurio pedal trike, and I got to ask about the conversion of the steering and the addition of wider front tires. This went over well with the proud owner, and he fired up the motorcycle part to show how smoothly it ran. He said I could try riding it, but motorcycles are not my thing, even when disguised as ice cream trikes.

After a lot of handshakes and good wishes, the man rode away, dinging his triangle shaped ice cream trike bell. I thought about this proud and gentle person, who would never be rich in pesos, but who was already rich in many other ways.

This experience in the park, remarkably, was not the only one. Another man had a similar chat with us (but sadly, no ice cream involved). And a third man as well. With this one, I noticed that almost all his front teeth were capped with a silvery metal. Since teeth are on my mind a bit these days, I asked about this capping. I blithered on about gold vs other metals for dental work, and I am sure this went well over his head. But he put up with it so gently. Can you imagine just going down to the park and having some weird yellow clothed foreigner analysing the inside of your mouth?

Two home made ice creams for very cheap. The quality was same as Italian gelato.

We arrived at the famous, evil Tapia Hotel.

I went in and spoke to the nice girl at the desk. Yes, Tapia is a real hotel. And we can Whatsapp for a reservation, no problem. The customary price is 400 pesos (very cheap!). Further, I had a look at their cubby holes for TV and A/C controllers. It revealed that they have 18 rooms (quite a big hotel) and that at this moment there were lots of vacancies.

But the clever Grampies had already booked at the 1500 peso "Santa Clara" hotel in Dzidantun, 30 kms more, so better hit the road!

The road, anyway, looked like this - good cycling, when not too tired.

Lots of garbage is found all around Yucatan villages. But when I ducked into the shrubbery for the call of nature, I came upon a large pile of the shells shown below. It seems to be a channeled whelk, a large, meat-eating sea snail which is itself edible, although Bill Shaneyfelt id's it as a Caribbean crown conch. . They might have made a lot of ceviche.

Before we get into the final, almost awful, chapter of today's story, let's look at a few of super birds that we had already spotted:

We encountered some burning by the roadside. It's a standard practice to control the brush. But it also uncovers all the glass bottles and junk thrown by the people. It's a culture that just doesn't work with us.

Entering Dzidantun, we passed by a hacienda that Dodie had considered booking from home, but she passed because of the high cost, compared to the already costly Santa Clara, in downtown.

Dzidantun did one of those rare moves by putting up a super bike path by the road. Of course it didn't last long.

And in this case there was oncoming horse traffic, though the horse conceded the right of way.

Booking.com had placed the Santa Clara in the middle of Dzidantun. We rolled toward the given location, during which time Dodie's assist gave up. We discovered that when the battery is down to 20%, the system shuts down. Thanks for telling us now! Dodie cycled on for a bit, but at 100 km or so now, she was too beat for it, and pushed the last two blocks to the location.

But, what location? At the indicated coordinates there was not a darn thing that looked like a hotel. This put us into the usual life skills routine. We checked Google maps for signs of any hotel nearby. We checked the Booking.com "directions", which insisted we had arrived. We went into a nearby grocery to ask, and we asked likely passers by on the street. Then we phoned the given number for the property - and the number didn't work!

Some of the people we talked to felt that the "Santa Clara" hotel ought to be in Santa Clara, a village on the coast, twenty km north. But we were not about to go there, especially with Dodie now reduced to pushing her two ton bike. Instead we resolved to backtrack about 3 km to that hacienda and pay their price, whatever it might be, while gearing up to really blast Booking.

The 3 km took energy out of Dodie that she did not have, and while she pedaled part way, she had to push on in to the hacienda:

The people at the hacienda were very kind, but they declared that they had no vacancies. They spent some time seeing if they could dig up a vacancy, but in the end said no. It's not that they were swarmed with people, just that they had no rooms in acceptable condition. One option was for us to convince them that our standards could be very low, especially with darkness now coming on.

At this point I did find a phone number that would work for the Santa Clara. We got the Hacienda manager to phone for us, and we learned that indeed the darn place was out at the coast, 20 km away. There was not enough time and not enough strength or battery for us to get there! But a plan was hatched. The Santa Clara would send a truck for the bikes, and the hotel owner would drive out to pick us up in her car!

We were concerned that the bikes not get tossed around in the truck.

The drive to the coast felt very long, and it seemed the car, though fully capable of doing it, did not do it trivially. The road was really dark, and would have been "murder" had we tried it, with limited duration headlights, not to mention no battery power or strength.

At the hotel, which from what we could see in the dark has all ground level buildings and a nice pool, the hotel owner and her 15 year old daughter, who spoke really excellent English learned at school, helped us carry our stuff from the car, while the very careful truck man unloaded the bikes.

So the Grampies, who tried to avoid trouble in what turned out to be fine Buctzotz, dodged what could have been a bad scene in Dzidantun, ended up 20 kms further along our path than planned, in Santa Clara.

I am looking forward to hitting the sack now at 11 pm, about 18 hours after our day began. They have a restaurant here on site, and it opens in 9 hours. I'll be resting up for that!

Today's ride: 104 km (65 miles)
Total: 633 km (393 miles)

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Karen PoretWhat a story! At least you are in the right same place name of Santa Clara University! Sleep well and no tooth problems!
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1 week ago

Jennifer MargisonKudos to you both and glad you arrived safely. . We have had that experience in France - when we did not book ahead at all. All 3 hotels in a town closed for various reasons so we had to go on to another town - a 100 km ride in all for us, not really what we want to do. Your bird viewing is amazing!
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1 week ago

Bill ShaneyfeltMade me mentally tired just reading it! What an adventure!
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1 week ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Bill ShaneyfeltWe're still tired the next day, but another restorative sleep and we'll be ready to plunge ahead tomorrow.
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1 week ago

Keith ClassenWell that was quite the day and glad it all worked out in the end. Every tour for us has a one or two days that are etched in our memory bank. And I think this one is likely to be firmly etched in yours. I am surprised you had the energy to post.
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1 week ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Keith ClassenSteve remains very committed to posting the blog every day, partly because he wants it current, and partly because otherwise he feels he will forget what happened. It seems unlikely he would have forgotten what happened today though. Dodie, the delicate flower that she is, did crawl into bed and was sleeping soundly long before Steve finished and posted the blog.
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1 week ago