Batting a Thousand – Yucatan, Mexico

Batting a Thousand
Yucatan, Mexico

I gazed at the labyrinth wishing I had brought my flashlight. I mean I didn’t come all this way not to go inside, not to see what the real mystery was. I hadn’t endured the horrible bus ride, the breastfeeding and the heat just to take my token picture. I wanted to go inside. The Tzat Tun Tzat. It even sounded mysterious. Was it a prison? A little Alcatraz in the middle of the Yucatan? Why hadn’t I brought a flashlight?

A trollish little man with sparkling teeth and an oddly pleasing smile appeared out of nowhere and approached me cautiously. “Quieres entrar? Traigo torcha,” he muttered in broken Spanish.

“Yes, I want to go in.” Are you kidding me? The little man had a flashlight to boot.

I looked Asterio up and down. He had probably taken hundreds of portly gringos into the labyrinth in his day. “How much?” I knew better than to expect it wouldn’t cost me.

“Nada,” he laughed, sounding a bit like Igor jingling the keys. He scampered to the foreboding door and urged me to follow him. The sweat that only a fat guy exudes in the tropics dripped down my nose. Wasn’t this exactly what I wanted?

“What the heck,” I reasoned, “You only live once.”

Hoping to lighten the mood, I asked my cohort if he’d ever seen any aluxes, or goblins, in the area. “Only at night,” he replied with a nonchalance that seemed a little unsettling.

Asterio entered and I followed right on his heels. At first the windows and doorways that perforated the Labyrinth lit the way. I could kind of tell where we were going, but we got deeper and deeper into the Labyrinth, and I got disoriented. Asterio seemed to go faster and faster. I heard him up ahead of me and I could see the flicker of his flashlight. Was it running out of batteries? The passageways seemed smaller. I could feel my hair brushing against the smooth limestone. I heard other noises. The wind? I couldn’t tell. We were too deep inside to tell.

I heard something. I couldn’t see anything. I felt that I should do something. What? I was paralyzed as something hit me in the head. I screamed and tried to rid myself of it. It moved. It moved? Oh, great, something was attacking me. My arms flailed about, my feet stomped feverishly, and my head shook uncontrollably as I flicked and convulsed against the unseen enemy. My scream echoed throughout the mysterious chamber.

Asterio giggled sheepishly and I heard him turn slowly and flash his light at my feet. “Murcielago,” he said matter-of-factly.

Guided tour of Oxkintok’s famous Tzat Tun Tzat – $10 (paid as a tip).
Getting hit in the head by a live bat – priceless.

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