Hi – HELLO EVERYONE!
Before we start our adventure, you might like to know a little bit about me and how I came to write this story...My name is Landis and I was born in Canada but I am growing up on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, in a land where long ago the Mayans lived and ruled and way before the Europeans and North Americans got here.
Over a thousand years ago the Mayans called it this incredibly long name - 'Ulumil lilly cuzzy wuzzy' or something like that, but the Spanish changed it to the ‘Yucatan’ when they got here, good thing because the other name was way too long and I can’t imagine the airports announcing that ‘We are boarding at Gate 5 all tourei going to Ulumil lilly cuzy wuzzy’….
Tourei (my short-form scientific name for more than one tourist) like to visit here because the Yucatan is full of history, jungles, ruins, tropical animals, alternative health spas, orchids, jungles, beaches, islands, cenotes, dolphins, monkeys, jungles, did I mention jungles?
We moved here when I was just a year old. My mum makes documentaries which basically means she has a lot of camera equipment and stuff and makes a lot of huffing and puffing and arm movements at her new mac and editing program. She even has a small video camera in her purse (‘in case something really exciting happens right in front of me’, she says) She makes documentaries about the Mayan way of life. (…she also follows me around EVERYWHERE with a camera, it drives me kind of crazy… but don’t tell her I said so…)
My mum says I am very sociable, and that means I like to be with people and talk. She said when I was a year and a half old I ran up to a little girl on ‘Avenida Primera’, that’s ‘First Avenue’, and threw my arms around her. That’s when my mum decided it was time to bring me to a ‘guarderia’ that’s nursery school, where I think I must have been shocked the first day because I didn’t understand one word anyone was saying!
I didn’t know that they were all speaking spanish! It was really weird... but my mum said that after two weeks the teacher told her that I finally didn’t have that funny look on my face most of the time and seemed to understood what they were saying to me… but it took another three months for me to actually say something back to them!
I remember my mum was very happy the first day I spoke spanish, because she said that was my first day I was bilingual… that means speaking two languages… so that was when I began speaking english and spanish !
My dad’s old job in Canada wanted him back so he went back to live, but he comes every 6 weeks to visit… so my mum and I have a pretty good life living in the land of the Maya.
My mum’s spanish isn’t very good; she says that she started learning spanish when she was too old, and it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks, she says - but it was so easy for me I can’t even understand her problem ! … She brings me to see her accountant so I can translate, because she said the spanish gets too fast and too technical!
When she was little she read all the Nancy Drew books and she even organized the Nancy Drew Mystery Club with her friends. She loved all the adventures Nancy and her friends Bess and George got into...
When she finished all the books she founded the 'Casey Grace Detective Agency' and she even made her own home made business cards (every one!) and she solved a couple of mysteries like ‘The Mystery Of Finding My Sisters Stolen Bike’, and ‘The Mystery Of The Runaway Sister’, stuff like that.
Now everything is a mystery to her … stuff like, ‘The Secret Of What Is that Policeman Saying To Me, Landis?’ and ‘The Quest To Pay The Electricity Bill After Hours’… stuff like that…
Before she was a Videographer she worked in television and she was so happy to get a job as the Art Director on the Nancy Drew Detective Series, only two years before I arrived on the scene, or should I say, the set!
We have fun here on the weekends – even though where we live on googlemaps it just looks like alotta green; a long white line; and then alotta blue; we find a lot to do, and this place is full of mystery - I have a lot more exciting ones than my mother has!
There are no rivers here in the Yucatan because we are all just sitting on a limestone shelf almost as big as Lake Ontario, and it is really just like a really hard sponge that the water runs through. All the water that rains here since the beginning of time has hit the limestone and made bigger and bigger puddle indents until they finally made tunnels underground taking the rain water out to the Caribbean!
So really, all our rivers are underground! When they form big huge puddles either above the ground or under it, they are called cenotes and they are really cool to swim in, and I mean REALLY cool!, like sometimes FREEZING which feels really good on a super hot day!
We have our favourite cenote to swim and snorkel in, and the braver people can jump from the cliffs or the even braver ones jump from the tree branches into the water from way, up high. Mum says the water feels magical and she feels refreshed for days after a good swim in a cenote. She says it is full of life-force-energy.
There are all kinds of fish in cenotes, mainly of the catfish kind, but in the cenotes without light there are even fish with no eyes! They seem to know when we are there, because they can’t see the flashlights and I have never bumped into one, I am SOOO glad!
We go on a lot of jungle hikes, too. My mum said my first story I told over and over happened when we went to AkTunChen when I was a year and a half old.
It is a huge cenote system that you can walk through, because some parts are dry! The caves are filled with stalagmites and stalactites.
Mum and dad heard there were a lot of spider monkeys living semi-wild there that the tourei could interact with. They thought I could have a memorable experience with the monkeys, and boy, were they right on THAT one!
We entered the jungle from the parking lot and dad asked a lady where the monkeys were. She pointed straight ahead, and you should watch out, some of them are a little… like wild still…
'Okay thank you', saidmy dad and we cautiously proceeded, my father leading the way through the unknown wilds of the jungle.
We saw the monkeys and my dad approached this one monkey quietly sitting on a lady’s hip just like I was sitting on my mum’s hip but unlike him, I was sucking on my bottle.
Remembering the lady’s warning my dad slowly approached the gathering to investigate the monkey’s reception to more people when all of a sudden it exploded off the ladies hip and flew towards my dad, who was very surprised when it landed on his chest – BUT – that wasn’t the end of it – what happened next I really remember vividly!
As it was in the air flying towards my dad it looked over and saw me and my bottle sitting on my mums hip, so midair it decided that my dad wasn’t going to be a landing pad after all, but a springboard!
After it barely touched my father’s alarmed chest it springboarded into the air, but I guess it decided it couldn’t clear the distance to us even flailing its arms like a helicopter so it decided another springboard was necessary so it landed in front of us for a split second and then exploded upwards.
I think this is when my actual memory-brain-cells kicked in, because I remember everything very exactly from this moment on. I think up until that moment I was still in that almost-2 year old blurry life-daze… I saw this huge, spider-y black thing-y monkey – thing-y, coming flying through the air at me and my mum…. It seems to have planned beforehand where all its long tentacle-y like limbs and tail were going to land because it touched down perfectly in the same position as I was but on my mother’s other hip!
In one split-second-slow-motion movement it must have assessed my age times strength divided by surprise factor and determined that it had a pretty good chance of grabbing the bottle out of my hand and taking off into the jungle, which it did all in pretty well one fluid motion!
My mum tells me my empty-but-still cupped hand stayed cupped for what seemed like a very long time as she told meshe watched my face register first the time warp factor, then the surprise, shock, a glimmer of grief, then finally landing on one big wail that had everyone, from tourei to tourei guides alike chasing that darn monkey all over the place.
The other monkeys must have enjoyed the game a lot because there was a lot of cheering and chattering going on from monkeys on trees, tourei’s heads, and boards with rock samples wired to them as “Mighty Mouse” sped with great dexterity and alarming speed up and down and around the terrariums of snakes displayed near the entrance.
Mum said she’s sure he was doing it for the sport of it, because he could have easily taken off up a tree and into the jungle to be a big hit with the wild lady monkeys deep inland and then never to be seen again…
But no, this guy was more of a sportsman at heart, so he circumnavigated the immediate zone, maybe secretly enjoying the wailing coming from the victim… but soon either his zest must have run out for the game or he moved a notch up the evolutionary ladder and a sense of guilt overcame him because he took off up a tree and from the sanctity of its branches he checked out his spoils and then threw the bottle down.
So a really nice tourist brought me back my bottle which of course with the way I was feeling needed to be sucked especially hard, but unfortunately my mother wouldn’t let me enjoy its security and I continued my wailing until a clean bottle could be given to me… bwaaaah….
Mum said that was the first day I started to talk - a LOT, because for weeks and weeks everyone we met everywhere – in school of course, her friends, strangers in the grocery store, gas station attendants - all got my second by second rendition of what transpired that fateful, monkey day….
I do of course remember imparting this, my first tale, with a great eloquent measure, walking in the footsteps of the great literary painters of our time, exercising the use of embellished yet significant adverbs and adjectives indulging only occasionally in a taste of exaggerated hyperbole, but when my mother tells the story I told it goes more like this:
“ Monkey… bottle…(gibberish only a baby and mother can understand)
…MoN kEy…BOT tle…(gibberish only a baby and mother can understand)
...mOn KeY…BoTtLe…(gibberish only a baby and mother can understand)
…MoN-KEY…BoT-TLE!!!!”
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| XToLoC Cenote |
She said my first storytelling was a huge success, really, because I achieved the first rule of telling a story – get the POINT across!!! And she also says it’s okay to resort to the occasional arm waving to emphasize your story (which I do – a LOT!) She calls it the 'Charades Method of Storytelling'… if by the looks on your audience’s faces they are registering nothing and you begin to suspect that something coming out of your mouth doesn’t make sense, start waving your arms and speaking with an accent to divert their attention until you get your thoughts straight again!
She said it was funny to watch the unfolding of my literary palette, as the gibberish slowly got replaced by real live words… now I don’t stop, she says!
She bought me this computer so I can think, organize and write, think organize and write…
I love to tell stories and I like to solve mysteries like Nancy and my mum… So - here is my second story I have, about a mystery I solved in a Mayan town called Ek Balam and I promise it won’t go anything like this -
“ Ek Balam… Jaguar…. TREASURE…
(gibberish only a baby and mother can understand)…
Ek Balam…. SECRET… TREASURE…!!!
I PINKY PROMISE
Signed
Landis
