On the road again. Well, actually, it's time for a potty break and for more photos.
With lunch done, we left the Dzilam de Bravo area and headed inland to get to our destination of Rio Lagartos. After checking out the road atlas, we settled on taking a shorter route down a secondary road. The idea was to check out the road for about two kilometres to see if it was good enough for travel.
It began as a newly paved narrow road and stayed that way for about fifteen kilometres before changing into a narrower and rougher road filled with potholes. As we drove along, we saw many flowering trees such as this one. There were also a number of other different flowering trees, one orange-red and another variety of yellow and smaller blossoms.
A typical home in Yalsihon.
We stopped on occasion to take photos and eventually reached a little village called Yalsihon.
As you can see from the photo, the houses in Yalsihon were very basic, not much more than twigs and straw. They are functional homes. A few of the homes were quite pretty obviously a thing of pride for the homeowners. Most were basic, not pretty at all as they wore the dull look of lived-in poverty. As we walked around taking photos, the children watched us shyly with interest. I don’t imagine that they get many strangers stopping in their village. It was time to drive on. The next stop was Panaba.
The church on the eastern side of the town square of Panaba.
As with any town we have passed through, we arrived at the town square or plaza where we saw the main town church as well as the town’s administrative offices.
A statue in Panaba in praise of breast-feeding mothers.
In the centre of the plaza was a statue celebrating mothers, nursing mothers. The statue is quite recent and likely is just one of the means by which the community is trying to return to traditional values in the flood of new ideas and products from the affluent western world.
Panaba is a cowboy town, a town surrounded by many large "rancheros".
Walking around the town, it became obvious to us that this was a cowboy town. Most men were wearing cowboy hats, a few were riding horses and we saw saddles resting in the backs of a few halfton trucks. If it hadn’t of been for the architecture, we could have been in any town in Alberta or western Saskatchewan.
It was time to head out of town in order to get to Rio Lagartos early enough to get our hotel rooms and arrange for the next day’s adventures. The sign at one end of the square let us know which way to go.
The road to Rio Lagartos led through ranchero country passed small herds of cattle, passed irrigated fields that seemed to be mostly rock and passed small crops that we found out were for fodder. The drive was not too long and before we knew it, we arrived at our next stop. And the rest is another story for another day.