180 degrees from Cancún

When I arrived in Cancún a few years ago, I was greeted by a sea of touts who put on the hard sell, visitors in Bermuda shorts and flip-flops, and resorts and restaurants where noise was the norm -- all part of a rock-solid tourist infrastructure.

When my husband, Paul, and I came to Bacalar and environs a few months ago, we found shops that closed for siesta, an eco-resort that focused on Maya architecture and cuisine and historic spots that left us feeling almost as though we were the first visitors.

In this secluded part of the Yucatán, we had struck travel gold.

Our good fortune was partly due to accessibility: Bacalar is on the southeastern part of the Yucatán peninsula in the state of Quintana Roo. It’s about four hours from Cancún and half an hour from the Belize border, so it’s off the tourist radar.

But as we strolled through the old Spanish San Felipe fort, learning about the Maya and the European pirates who raided the area in the 18th century, and looked out over Laguna Bacalar, the limpid lagoon of seven colors, we had to wonder how long before our secret was discovered.

We sighed.

A 10-minute, $4 taxi ride took us to Rancho Encantado (Enchanted Ranch), an eco-resort built two decades ago, long before green travel became a cause célèbre.

Visiting Rancho Encantado is like stepping into a movie set, except this is the real deal. It’s home to orchids, orchards (some damaged by Hurricane Dean in August) and more than 150 species of whistling, chirping, trilling tropical birds. Its 12 private casitas have thatched palm roofs and Maya murals. For $250 a night, we had the primo luxury casita; three healthful gourmet meals prepared by a Maya chef; his-and-hers hammocks 5 feet from the glass casita doors; the pristine and deliciously swimmable Bacalar lagoon 10 feet beyond the hammocks; an unobstructed view of the jicama-colored moon; and access to Ramon Childers and Suzanna Starr, the owners, and Susy’s significant other, John.

They were key in helping us explore the area, which is filled with Maya ruins that are as exquisite as their better-known counterparts.

We chose Dzibanché for the first of several major archaeological sites we visited. To our amazement and delight, we were the only tourists there.

Dzibanché was a great center during the classical Maya period (classified as about 200 to 800). It was so extensive that it had 22 plazas; only three have been excavated so far.

We climbed Building 6, a temple in the Teotihuacán style, a stone base with a pyramid on top. Archaeologists think that priests from Teotihuacán, near Mexico City, 1,100 miles away, traveled from that powerful city to perform rituals at Dzibanché.

The nearby ruins of Kohunlich were comparatively crazy with tourists; there were four besides us.

One of the highlights of this city, occupied from the 6th to the 12th or 13th century, then abandoned, is the Temple of the Masks.

As we climbed the steep steps of the 1,500-year-old building, we were flanked by stone masks, about 6 feet tall, that adorned the facade. They had large, open lips, huge disc-like eyes and protruding tongues. In the afternoon, the sun shines on the faces and illuminates them, underscoring the power and divinity of the characters they represent.

PLYING THE LAGOON

The following day, Susy and John arranged for us to board a 27-foot catamaran for a trip on Bacalar Lagoon. We breezed by aqua-hued cenotes (sink holes), mangrove swamps, water lilies, old Spanish cannons, the Pirates’ Mouth (a channel used during the time of the pirates), small clumps of savanna grass that looked like Don King’s hair and vast expanses of sensual, gentle green-blue waters.

Ramon Aguayo, the oceanologist, boat owner and captain, uses the energies of nature as he sails -- the sun, the ocean, the wind.

“I do judo with the wind,” he says.

He beckoned us into the water, so we lowered ourselves into the lagoon. “Under your feet is silt,” he said. “It’s very fine calcium carbonate. You can rub it on your faces and bodies.”

We did. We turned ghostly pale. It was an inexpensive, self-administered spa treatment.

Early one morning, we drove for two hours to the neighboring state of Campeche, where we visited a town called 20 de Noviembre -- the 20th of November, for the date in 1971 when it was founded.

The little-known Maya village is an ejido, a form of community land management promoted by the Mexican government for campesinos and indigenous people. Each ejidatario, or member of the community, farms his own land, about 100 acres, and uses the produce for consumption or selling.

The principal activities in this town, whose residents speak Mayan, are farming, beekeeping, extracting chicle (or gum) from trees. They raise pigs, chickens and turkeys in their backyards, and a few of the animals meander through the streets.

The village only recently decided to welcome visitors, so we were among the first. In a thatched hut, we were served a breakfast of fruit, breads and brazo de reina (or, the queen’s arm). It was made from the spinach-like chaya leaf and eggs, wrapped in banana leaf and slathered in hot sauce. The poor queen was now only a torso, because I ate both of her arms, licking my lips.

On a tour of the village, we entered thatched houses where families slept in one room and wove nylon into multicolored hammocks (selling for $20 to $50) on looms in an adjacent room.

It takes two weeks to make a hammock. An elderly woman handed me her shuttle and invited me to help; it was so complex, I gave up after five minutes.

Women were milling corn (which would be used to make tortillas, tamales and empanadas), embroidering, whipping blocks of chocolate into a hot chocolate drink. Again, I was invited to join in, and I fared slightly better as a whipper than as a weaver.

We had heard we could sample good regional fare at Chicanná Ecovillage, which was built in the middle of the jungle, about 20 minutes away. We savored such specialties as lime and banana-cream soups; stuffed pepper with fish; and pork pocchuc, grilled pork with cheese, beans and caramelized onions.

The other diners recommended that we check into the Ecovillage and visit two of the region’s most impressive Maya ruins, which are within driving (five minutes) or walking distance (20 minutes) of the resort. We took their advice and were glad of it.

Becan, which means “moat” or “serpent’s pathway” in Mayan, flourished from 600 to 900, when as many as 60,000 people lived here. It is known for the 2-kilometer-long moat that surrounds the site. One of the most distinctive aspects of this place is a covered stone passageway, more than 200 feet long. It was like a street leading from the palaces and houses of the residential area to the ritual area with its pyramids and ball courts.

TUNNEL VISIONS

Walking through the tunnel, we saw rectangular niches carved into the walls that were used to place offerings of food, flowers and sacrifices of animals and humans, the humans thought to have been made from corn and blood. When victims, usually slaves and prisoners of war, were killed, their blood was offered back to the gods as food. In the Maya cosmology, the tunnel was also considered an entrance to the underworld.

Although passageways were common in ancient Maya cities, I had never walked through one. I could hear breathing, and it was either my traveling companions or a few souls who weren’t settled in the afterlife.

As it turned out, it wasn’t off-base to think spooky thoughts at Becan. Building No. 9 is made up of nine dark rooms. Nine is the number of death in Maya culture, and the underworld has nine levels through which a Maya passes when he or she dies.

The 170-foot-tall pyramid at Becan also centers on death. The Maya buried nobility in houses and tombs, and their tools and domestic objects were interred with them. Their kings were highly esteemed, in part because in wartime they fought alongside the people.

Recently, an exquisite, red-hued stucco mask was found at Becan and is now preserved under glass. It represents a king who ruled between 200 and 300. His brilliant jade eyes, crocodile-like hands and powerful, self-confident demeanor maintain an aura of power.

The nearby ruin of Chicanná (the two sites together cover an area of about 14 square miles) also bewitched me. We entered the temple called Structure II through the gaping mouth of a jaguar; symbolically, we were entering the underworld.

Only high priests, kings and queens had access to the interior chambers. The king was equated with the sun, and every evening, when the sun disappeared, he entered the jaguar, which represented night. The next day, he would be reborn again as the sun.

Back at the casita, as the sun disappeared over the lagoon and the night became dark and still, I felt as though I too had been reborn in full, glorious possession of the secrets of the Yucatán.