Nochoc Mul pyramid, Coba

Coba

About 40km inland from Tulum is the Mayan city of Coba. Now a series of stone pyramids and nobles' houses dotted around the jungle (only a tiny fraction of them uncovered), Coba was for centuries one of the most important Mayan sites in the Yucatán, controlling not only vast swathes of farmland and water but also the trade routes to the ports on the Caribbean coast. It flourished around 600-800 and at its peak would have had 50,000 inhabitants.

Agustin, Simba, Benjamin and Aesa

Coba is a big tourist attraction here, not least because, unlike at Chichén Itzá, further north, you can still walk up to the top of the biggest (uncovered) pyramid, Nochoc Mul. We went early in the morning with an Argentinian friend who has become the unofficial champion of the Mayan people who live in the area. Agustin is a ceramicist and an anthropologist, who moved here seven or eight years ago with the hope of studying Mayan pottery. But, although he visited hundreds of villages in the region, he found that almost no one knew how to make pottery in the Mayan way. 

A Mayan plate from 600-800. She is apparently grinding cocoa

He set up a school near Coba which now teaches Mayan music and theatre as well as pottery and has become an activist for the local Mayans, earning money by guiding people round the site and helping locals make money from craft rather than from chopping trees down to make charcoal.

Coba is a lovely site to visit. You rent bikes and cycle through the trees to see its great square, the pyramid, various steles with inscriptions (including one of the ones that allegedly - ie didn't - predict the end of the world last December) and two ball courts where the Mayans played their famous game. 

Two teams faced each other in a narrow paved area between stone walls that slope upwards at about 30°. They start by bouncing a heavy (3-4kg) solid-rubber ball on to a skull embedded in the centre of the floor. Like one of those balls we had as kids, only about a thousand times bigger, this then bounces everywhere and the teams volley it back and forth, hitting it with their hips or elbows (it's too heavy to kick or punch without breaking bones). The captains of each team spend most of their time up on the sloping walls waiting to be passed the ball for a chance to shoot it through a stone ring at the top. The first goal wins, but it's not easy. Game sometimes went on for three days. 

In a video game you would have to strike this skull with your sword to open a hidden portal

The ball game was ritualistic, perhaps to do with overcoming death, and in some MesoAmerican cultures the winner was sacrificed. The Mayans were less warlike (and a lot shorter) than the Aztecs (one reason they were defeated so quickly by the Spanish) and didn't take to human sacrifice, but the winning captain had to cut himself and drop blood on to the floor. As Agustin was telling us this, I banged my toe (I was wearing flip-flops and do this about once a day) and reopened a cut in a rather spectacular way, so I guess I had a chance too of conquering death, though if I had been around in Mayan times I would definitely be the guy who brought the oranges out at half-time.

Pain...

... and relief

The site is also interesting for its flora, a phrase I never thought I would have the occasion to type. One tree exudes a sticky black sap that is corrosive and burns the skin. Near to it grows another whose flaky bark is the antidote. You have to soak it water and lie in the bath for six hours before the pain goes. In Mayan tradition these trees were originally two warrior brothers, Tizic and Kinich, one who drew his strength from hatred, the other from kindness. They fell in love with the beautiful Nicte-Ha (lots of cenotes are called XXXX-Ha, so I am guessing there's something watery going on here) and fought a duel over her, eventually dying in each other's arms. In the afterlife they begged for the chance to return to earth to see their beloved again and were turned into the two trees Chechen (poison) and Chacha (antidote), which is why they are always found together (and, I am guessing, near water). The Chacha also has a more prosaic name. Because of its peeling bark it is known by the locals as "the tourist tree".

As we left the site we came across a group of kids, dressed up and playing Mayan music. To Agustin's surprise they were his students fundraising for the school. We stayed to watch for a bit and it was then that I realised what a hero he is to the Mayan community who live there. Agustin is in his early 30s and came to learn pottery. He makes great pottery, but in that small part of the Yucatán he has also transformed the lives - and the environment - and 1,500 people. It was a nice lesson in travel: you may not end up doing what you intended to do, but what you do end up doing may well be even more significant.

It's my last morning on the balcony and this has been a great adventure. I came as an experiment, with three aims: to learn to be a divemaster and overcome my fears of being underwater; to see if I could keep up my London work from abroad; and to avoid the English winter and come back when it was spring. The first two have more than worked out. I have been challenged and, I hope, transformed by my time in the sea and the cenotes, and, very-early-morning Skype calls aside, it turned out to be fine to write for Wired from here. Along the way I have had some great conversations, seen fascinating things and have met some amazing people, different from me and inspiring. As for the third aim, well... I'm on my way home now, and that's nice.

Two divers and, in the middle, a great instructor

Winding down
It's six in the morning and I'm back out on my balcony watching the sun come up over the town. In three days I'll be coming home, and obviously I have bittersweet feelings. It will be great to see everyone again, but my plan was for the trees to be in bud by the time I got back, baby moorhens to be paddling around Highgate Ponds and everyone breathing in that fresh, spring air that cleans the city. Apparently, that's not going to be the case, and I won't pretend that it hasn't been lovely to be 5,092 miles away from the snow. 

My friends Benjamin and Simba are here at the moment, having come from London and Rio/Sao Paulo*/San Francisco/Goa/wherever respectively to hang out and do some diving. [*New laptop frustration continued: even though I can type ñ with one finger on my Spanish keyboard, and ¬ with two, whatever it is, I can't find any way of typing the letter "a" with a tilde over the top of it, as in Sao Paulo. It's probably incredibly easy, but bear in mind that my keyboard also has a button that says 

                                                         Imp Pant
                                                          Pet Sis

that I haven't dared press yet. We're a long way from Cupertino, Dorothy.] Ben, although he won't know it until he reads this, became my first ever real customer as a divemaster on Wednesday, when I took him out in the sea all by myself for a refresher dive. Luckily (a) he is a very good diver and happy to pootle along and (b) the sea was pretty and calm that day. I was aiming to take him to the little garden of plants, fish and lobsters, that Tullio and I found when we were "making" the famous "map" but my navigation skills are still rudimentary so, despite having a compass, I couldn't find it anywhere. I had given up and was taking us on a broad arc through the water that would land us on the beach in front of Papaya Playa when suddenly we were in middle of it, surrounded by lovely, undulating plants and brightly coloured playful fish (though no lobsters that I could see). It was like a Disney finale to the dive. Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow - which is a very good read, by the way - gives a lot of evidence to show the huge role luck has in almost everything we do. (He is particularly scathing about fund managers and their claims to skill.) When the garden appeared in front of me (about 200 metres and 180 degrees on the compass away from where I thought it was) I couldn't have agreed more.

Simba is an accomplished diver but did his certification when we were all at university and they still had those rubber suits with brass helmets. So he took the opportunity to do take his PADI Open Water certificate with Tullio. I will leave him, if he sees this, to comment himself on Tullio's teaching but I was really proud to have introduced them and it was great to see one of my oldest friends and one of my newest getting on so well and working together. At the start of all of this, I wrote about how Tullio and I were developing more of a mentor-like relationship than simply teacher-student. It has been that and much more. I will miss him and I have been changed and energised by his teaching, friendship and company. Tullio is not someone to pass up a party. But he is also serious, empathic and thoughtful, and a loyal friend - a fine man it has been an unexpected pleasure to meet. I hope we see each other again many times.

Today we are renting a car and driving to the Mayan ruins at Coba, then to Valladolid for lunch and then taking SImba to the airport. The toot-toot man who sells bread from his tricycle is just passing, so I'll run downstairs, by a bun and cycle up to Hertz. Pics from the roadtrip later.

My bike: weighs a ton, could withstand a nuclear attack and has a very handy basket

Some things I pass on my bike ride to "work"

Home

Tullio (not every morning)

View from the office

Success

At 5pm today I finally drew a map of the reef off our beach. It was not the best piece of cartography the world has ever seen but it showed that I could use a compass. And, so, I am now officially a divemaster. Tomorrow we go out to celebrate. It's been a fascinating thing to do, often tough but always enjoyable. Nicely pleased.

My map is of under the blue bit

Now I can relax a while. Simba and Ben are coming next week to do some diving and we may go on some day trips. I'd like to see Valladolid before I leave Mexico and, also, Bacalar, which is further down the coast from here and apparently stunning. Will make a nice couple of outings if we can tear ourselves away from the beach.

Frida Kahlo in Mexico City

I could live in Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul. Well I couldn't, because it's a museum, but the moment I stepped in off the street I knew it was going to be the sort of house I love. The place is painted in my favourite kind of colours (blue, obviously, electric and vivid, but also rusty terracottas and deep greens) and it has that sort of inside-outside layout - little buildings and rooms around a tropical garden - that really works in hot climates.

I also like Frida Kahlo - herself and her paintings - and, to be honest, this was why I went to Mexico City, to see where she and Diego Rivera had all those dinners, fights, reconciliations, friends, parties and times of intense creativity. I suspect they were often unpleasant to be around but I think they were also incredibly loyal to their friends - especially Trotsky, who, under constant threat of assassination by Stalin's agents, must have been hard work to have as a guest - and I would have loved to have been part of their world.

An ex-voto from Kahlo's collection. This man fell from
 his horse, which had been frightened by a snake. But, as the caption says,
he was up and about 60 days later

Inside, the house is chock-full of paintings and objects that Kahlo made or collected during her life. There's a nice randomness about what goes next to what and I really liked the pre-Colombian ceramics throughout the place and her collection of ex-votos, pieces of "peasant" art that are way more sincere and "art"like than some of the stuff we celebrate today in London. 

The kitchen

Upstairs in the "night bedroom" is her collection of dolls (childlike) and butterflies (a little freaky). Next door is the "day bedroom" and the bed on which she spent most of her waking hours. (The place is, apparently, pretty much as she left it when she died in 1954. She was 47, which shocked me. I need to get on with things.)

Self-portrait

Off one courtyard was a temporary exhibition of some of her dresses, organised by Vogue (you can take the boy out of Condé Nast...). Dresses on mannequins in cabinets don't really do it for me, but I'm glad I gave it a try. Kahlo had polio at the age of six, which left one of her legs shorter than the other, and was in a very bad traffic accident at 18, which resulted in multiple fractures, especially in her spine, pelvis and right leg. As a result, she spent most of her life in pain and was unable, though she was pregnant a number of times, to have children. In the cabinets were dresses, skirts and plaster corsets that she had to wear to support what she called her "broken" body. They are all beautifully decorated (by her) but cleverly decorated too - the long skirts, plainer than the tops she wore, drawing your eye up and away from her disabilities.

When I was studying (well, "studying") English at university, we were snooty about knowing anything about the author of a work of art - the "text" was all. But I think we were denying ourselves something there. To be in the house of a painter whose history, marriage, injuries and pain can be seen in so many of her works was a very special experience.