Chetumal and the road to Ticul

We spent the afternoon and night in a nice little motel in Chetumal, which is not a tourist place at all. Did some shopping and resting, and headed for Ticul in the morning. Ticul is a very interesting completely non-tourist colonial town below Merida. It is mostly Maya, and has more tricycletas than cars. I will be posting pictures when I get home, I guess, as I haven´t found a card reader. On the way there we ate from the roadside -- at the "topes", which are nasty speed bumps that are placed before and during all small villages, there are usually maya people selling some sort of foodstuff. We passed on the cooked animal parts that were held up for our inspection in one village -- each villager seemed to have cooked a different part of the unidentified creature. However, we had tamales wrapped in banana leaves (very tasty) at one tope, and small apple bananas at another (one dollar for about 4 pounds) for desert. A little later on we stopped in another larger village to get some bread (pan9 at the panaderia. I went into what appeared to be a tiny store, no pan in sight. I asked the woman if she had any fresh pan and she said she did. I wanted to see what kinds she had, as those of you who are familiar with mexican pan know there are many delicious types. She hesitated for a minute, then got her little girl to watch the store and took me through her house, down through the bodega (warehouse) and finally down into the bakery, where there were trays of fresh pan and most amazingly, a huge wood fired masonry oven. It must have been 15 feet or more in diameter, with a big fire going in it, in a partially underground hut-type of structure. The pan was the best we´ve had, and I´m still in shock from seeing this huge, primitive oven, being used in hundred degree heat, to bake all types of breads and cakes. I wish I had my camera in my pocket when I went into that store, maybe i´ll be able to find a photo on the internet somewhere.
We got to Ticul in good time and checked into a hotel we had seen there before, very comfortable and right across from the cathedral church.