Thursday, February 11, 2010

South of San Pedro




South of the town the houses stop pretty quickly, and only the occasional grouping of beach side condos or a house dot the landscape. Mainly it's an empty road bordered by water on both sides - to the east is the open sea, and to the left is a mangrove forest with alleys of water winding in and out of it.


If you look at the first picture you will notice the half finished concrete wall running alongside the road - these are all over the place, and I suppose they are in place to provide boundaries for lots - but they also have a secondary (probably unintentional) function. The alternating cinder blocks are hollow, and therefor create a maze of holes and tunnels, which the local Iguana population has decided is their version of a modern apartment building, and so they have taken up residence - in force.
Iguanas are everywhere in this part of the island - the are constantly popping out of the holes in the fence or running around either in the trees or on the ground beside the road.
They are not so easy to get a picture of though, the juveniles are more likely to sit still when you get a little close, but the larger adults (the biggest I saw was about 3 feet) are very wary of people and will literally disappear in the blink of an eye down into the holes in the wall.
Why are they wary? Well apparently the locals have a tendency to eat them - they say the Iguana tail tastes just like chicken, really you can't tell the difference. But that's not entirely true, because I eat chicken, I don't eat Iguana. That's the difference.
Out in the far end south of the island is where San Pedro's dump is located - it's not a very nice place, so I won't go into details about it. It's a dump.
A few more miles and you come to the end of the road where there is a little barbecue pit/bar and nothing else at all.
It's a nice ride, and the day I did it was perfect - not too hot (around 30, but cloudy) and with a nice breeze. So, now I have seen both ends of the island and gone the the farthest southern point of the Yucatan Peninsula.

1 comment:

  1. That iguana looks huge! He looks like more than 3 feet. I think it's cool that they have their own little condos!
    :)

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