All by John Lamkin

My Dream House

John Lamkin
Lifestyle, Personal essay

by John Lamkin

Sitting here watching the sunrise on the lagoon—Laguna Bacalar--I recall the time we arrived by canoe at the little cove here and decided that this would be an excellent spot to build a house. It was covered with scrub growth, weeds, some trees, coconut palms and the jungle was trying to reclaim it. Now, looking from the terraza of the house, it looks manicured, with lawns, flowers, intentional landscaping and the jungle held at bay. We had the house built by a Mexican architect friend with the unlikely name, Shiva. It's small, sets back about twenty meters from the water and has views of the Laguna from every room except the large bathroom which has its own indoor garden. It took awhile to manifest after the canoe ride, some looking at other places in Mexico, but it happened. It helped that it was on part of the land we already owned.

It seems there comes a time in a man's life when he has the strong urge to build, maybe something for 'posterity'--to make his mark on the land. I found locations for two other homes in somewhat the same manner as the Laguna house. The first was what they called a 'camp' in Nova Scotia. Back in California, where I came from, it would be called a cabin. I bought the 149 acres sight unseen.

Manatee Hormones

John Lamkin
travel essay

words + photos by John Lamkin

 

Dani has a face that only a mother could love, but he doesn’t have a mother – he’s an orphan. Dani is a manatee, sometimes referred to as a sea cow. I guess if he had a mother she would think he was beautiful. The horny seafarers of earlier times thought manatees were beautiful. When seen in the ocean from a distance, they were mistaken for mermaids or sirens.

 

Dani was found by a couple of boys, four days old with an injured flipper – caught in the mangrove roots. He was left an orphan, unable to leave this annual birthing lagoon with the other manatees. The lagoon lies just off the Caribbean Bay of Chetumal in the south of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The villagers took him to Chetumal to have his wounds attended. Once treated, the state wildlife department decided to return Dani to the lagoon and put him in the care of the village until he recuperated. Well enough to swim, he was released to return to his manatee family, but he didn’t want to go.

The Lost Maya City

John Lamkin
Art and Culture, Historic Travel

words + photos by John Lamkin

Cora Amalia, the president of the municipality, affirmed the stories I’d heard for a while. There was a “lost” Maya city in the nearby jungle that rivals Tikal in Guatemala and has a pyramid larger than the one at Palenque in the state of Campeche.

“When can I go there?" I asked the government tourism officials. “Only when you get permission from INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia),” was the answer, “And you can’t go now because the jungle roads are too muddy. You must wait for the dry season.”

Well, the dry season came. We applied for and got the INAH permit and set off on the adventure – seven of us in Luis’ Suburban.

Our crew consisted of Luis Tellez, professional guide and photographer and his wife Leti, myself and my significant other Susy, two expats that lived locally and had done some research on the city, and don Millon a 90-year-old farmer who had worked in the area as a chiclero, one of the men that harvested the chicle for making chewing gum, and who had visited the ruins in his youth.

We located the turn-off from the paved road that led to a small Maya community of a few traditional thatched huts. We presented our permit to a Maya woman who was the designated caretaker. She read the permit and then herded her family out to be photographed by us.