The Panama Canal

Photo from my copy of Richard Halliburton's Book of Marvels

From amazon.com

In a week, if all goes as we've planned it, we'll be cruising through the Panama Canal with Lindblad/National Geographic Expeditions, and then on to Costa Rica where we hope to see lots of wildlife. Our ship goes through the canal at night, as the big freighters have daytime priority, but I think it's going to be very exciting. Though not as exciting as swimming through the canal, which has been done exactly once, in 1928, by adventurer Richard Halliburton. He paid 36¢ for his toll, and was accompanied by a rowboat.

My longing to travel began when I was around 12 years old, when a neighbor introduced me to the books of Halliburton, a travel writer who had been active from 1920 until his disappearance in the Pacific Ocean in 1939. She loaned me all of them, beginning with the Book of Marvels, a compendium of his adventures. The swim in the Panama Canal was described in the book New Worlds to Conquer, in which I also recall the descriptions of the fortress in Haiti and the story of the rebellion there in the early 19th century.

One of the copies she let me read was even autographed -- years earlier, when she was in high school, she had gone to a book signing at a bookstore near her home (I think she was from Connecticut). She had been an avid fan, and described what a handsome man he had been, saying how she hung around the bookstore all afternoon just looking at him.

Halliburton still appeals to a surprising number of readers, despite or maybe because his books describe a world that's no longer the same, and describe a sort of adventure-seeking that way too many people have attempted to copy. An article in the Guardian just last year called him "the greatest adventurer in history" -- see "Seven League Boots by Richard Halliburton – review" by David Shariatmadari, published February1, 2013. This reviewer writes that according to Halliburton, "Traditional societies, black ones in particular, are 'primitive'. His retelling of the astonishing story of Henri Christophe, King of Haiti, is polluted with racist condescension and stereotype. But curiosity and a love of the unfamiliar also leap from the pages." I didn't have that kind of sophistication when I was reading the books. I just loved the idea of those adventures.

If you can't resist saying to me "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama," I'll answer "Rats live on no evil star."

The Sacred Well

When I was around 11 years old, I loved to read the Book of Marvels by Richard Halliburton, which was written a few years before I was born. I especially remember his description of the "sacred well" and other monuments at Chichen Itza in the Yucatan. I always hoped to go to some of the places that Richard Halliburton visited, and in fact, over the years, I have been to many of them -- even once before to Chichen Itza.

Here is the page of the book that I remember. The tiny figure is Halliburton jumping from the platform into the water far below:

With his early-20th-century romantic view, Halliburton emphasized the drama of the now-disproven idea that virgins were regularly sacrificed by being thrown from the platform. Recent explorations in this well suggest that many bodies and valuable goods went into the well -- but not only virgins, and perhaps not living humans.

Last week we were in Mexico, and we made a day trip to Chichen Itza, and we visited two of the "wells" -- called cenotes in Spanish. These are special geological features of the underground rivers that flow under the limestone surface of the Yucatan. The fragile limestone surface breaks through, and you see down to a large pool of water that seeps from the river into the limestone basin. Roots of plants droop from above down to the water perhaps 150 feet below. Here are two photos of the "sacred well" at Chichen Itza as we saw it.




We also visited another cenote. It's in a beautiful garden setting, and has been artificially set up with a tunnel-like descent and a two-level platform for swimming and diving. In the first photo you can see me in the water. In the second photo, you can get an idea of what it's like from above.


I've been reading a lot more about the Maya and their magnificent cities, and I enjoyed seeing the monuments and touring the area. But the visit to the two cenotes was really special for me.