Today, living in Mexico's Yucatan, they travel mostly by bike

This article by John Lundy appeared on the front page of  Duluth News Tribune, today, June 4, 2010.
 

Back in 1972, folks hung the nickname “Noah” on John Grimsrud.

It was a bit off the mark. John and Jane Grimsrud, both Superior natives, were building a 46-foot boat in the backyard of their Billings Park home. But they weren’t expecting a flood, and they didn’t plan to carry livestock.

Like the biblical sailor, though, the Grimsruds attracted skeptics, scoffers and the just plain curious.

It might have had something to do with the fact that they were using cement to build the boat. And that they planned to live on it.

“People couldn’t believe anybody’d be crazy enough to build a 46-foot boat and then have plans to go off and live aboard,” John Grimsrud said in a telephone interview from Mexico’s Yucatan, where the Grimsruds live today. “Two ladies came by in a car one day and wanted to report us to somebody because they thought we must be absolutely nuts to be going to live on a boat.”

John Williams, who lived next door and still lives in the same house on Wyoming Avenue, didn’t think the Grimsruds were crazy.

“No,” Williams said on Thursday. “A lot of people did, but I knew the guy. The man was very clever.”

His daughter, Julie Williams Le Bard, remembers the boat growing in the backyard between their houses. “That was the biggest thing in my childhood,” she said. “We talk about this all the time.”

It took three years for the Grimsruds, with help from the Williamses and others, to build the boat. They learned about building with cement — they’re called ferro-cement boats, or ferroboats — in a boating magazine.

“It is quite reasonable to build, but it’s very labor-intensive to build these things,” Grimsrud said. “We built everything. We … made all of our own fittings and we put the hull together ourselves.”

The Grimsruds called their boat the Dursmirg — Grimsrud spelled backwards. While they were building the boat, the Grimsruds also took classes from the Duluth Power Squadron to learn the ins and outs of boating.

Suffice it to say, there was interest when the Grimsruds launched their boat on June 22, 1972, from the Superior Shipyard. Barney Barstow, who was part owner of the shipyard, urged the Grimsruds to launch their 20-ton boat in a place that wouldn’t make it a navigational hazard when it sank.

“Over 2,000 people showed up to witness the sinking,” Grimsrud said. “And a lot of people were disappointed, I think (that it didn’t sink), because the wagering was pretty heavy.”

Not only did the boat float, but John and Jane Grimsrud lived on it for the next 15 years, traveling across the Great Lakes, to New York City and to the Florida Keys. They’ve written about their adventures at length. Their “Travels of Dursmirg” runs to four volumes, with the first two volumes available at Amazon.com.

John and Jane were 32 and 28, respectively, when they began their voyage. John Grimsrud was in the wholesale grocery business, and they were debt-free by the time he was 28, he said. Every spare dollar went either into the boat or into the bank. Once they launched, there wasn’t much overhead, he said. They never considered turning back, although one time during a bad storm on Lake Superior they returned to port.

The Grimsruds continue to travel today, but now they do it by bicycle. They have a website devoted to bicycling the Yucatan. “Now I am 69 and Jane 65 and still dreaming,” Grimsrud said.

And what of the Dursmirg? They sold it to a London stock broker who in turn sold it to a Canadian veterinarian. The Grimsruds don’t know where it is now.

All three books are now available on Amazon.
Travels of Dursmirg, Volume 1 
Travels of Dursmirg, Volume 2, Summers at Daufuskie
Travels of Dursmirg V-3, Volume 3, Down in the Florida Keys

CALKINI, BECAL, HALACHÓ, CHUC HOLOCH AND NUNKINI BY BIKE AND BUS

CALKINI, BECAL, HALACHÓ, CHUC HOLOCH AND NUNKINI BY BIKE AND BUS

Calkini is located seventy-five kilometers southwest of Mérida on the old Spanish highway known as the Camino Real half way to the capital city of Campeche. Calkini’s only claim to fame is that it has been a half-way point for nearly five hundred years.
Prior to the Spanish conquistadors arrival here in 1549 little Calkini was a major hub of the Canul Maya with an enormous temple at its center. The Canul Maya emigrated from nearby Mayapan to the north in 1441 after that city was abandoned because of a civil war.
These Canul Maya were believed to have originated in the Peten jungle of Guatemala and were mercenaries for one of the ruling families of Mayapan, the Cocom’s who were one of the last hold-outs against the Spanish conquistadors.
Though the Spanish overran and plundered Calkini and seven adjacent Mayan towns making it their second largest Yucatan city by 1588 they were never successful in overpowering neighboring Uxmal.(1)
To this day Uxmal, just thirty kilometers to the east of Calkini submerged in a dense jungle interspersed with Mayan milpa farms has no signs of the conquistadors ever having successfully intruding there.
This is a very interesting and unique bicycling area that is definitely out of the tourist loop.
In order to best enjoy and get a good prospective of this matchless area I recommend that you travel to Calkini by second class bus that will take you on a two and a half hour scenic tour through the small off the main road Mayan villages along the way.
Catch this bus to Calkini at Mérida’s TAME terminal located on Calle 69 between 68 and 70. We nearly always return home on the rapid direct bus that makes it back to Mérida in about one hour. (Note; one consideration is the fact that the second class buses have no toilet facilities onboard.)
In the central plaza of Calkini across from the bus terminal Mayan ladies sell their home gown fruit.
Calkini is a clean quiet town with nearly no motor vehicles and only two traffic lights. In the above photo you can see the neatly kept central plaza and the city municipal building perched upon the base of an ancient Mayan temple that also is the base for the adjacent huge church complex.
Immaculate Calkini’s lack of street trash is amazing especially after leaving Mérida.
This new horse cart, the same as those used for centuries has just returned from the jungle with a load of firewood, leña delivered to a bakery, panaderia in downtown Calkini
The lady manager of the government sponsored “ISSSTE” store of Calkini makes a fashion statement. These stores are usually located in areas where privately owned stores don’t adequately meet the local needs. This store happens to be built into the side of a Mayan pyramid directly in the city center.
Here on a typical side street of Calkini you can see in the background the public school artfully painted with cartoon characters and the patio that Jane is standing on is composed of facing stones harvested from an ancient Mayan temple. Note the lack of motor vehicles and the amount of street traffic.
In our quest for a bicycle route the 24 kilometers from Calkini through the jungle to the Mayan ruins of Uxmal (2) we encountered this lovely lady. Doña Ana who has lived on Calle 23, the route to Uxmal all her life and is the caretaker of a small chapel on that same street a half kilometer from her home.
The conversation gets animated with Doña Ana as she expounds about the wild jungle.
Doña Ana explains to Jane that a guide will be required for transiting the jungle/milpa trail to Uxmal and her brother might be available. Another word of caution was not to travel in the out-back with only two unarmed persons because it is too dangerous. A machete for snakes and a mountain bike with fat puncture resistant tires and extra tubes are recommended also because of all of the thorny vegetation that most certainly will cause flat tires.
Bread and sweet rolls make the rounds of the city streets in the afternoon at coffee time.

This is the Calkini government building that is built upon the city center Mayan pyramid that it shares with the Church complex and the ISSSTE store. The building is constructed from materials taken from the pyramid and like the rest of the city is neatly kept.
The reason you don’t see any tourists is because there are none.
Our hotel Milo, one of four in Calkini is clean airy and bicycle friendly
Calkini abounds with photo opportunities unchanged since colonial times.

The Calkini church was begun in the 16th century and added onto in the 17th and 18th centuries. Read about the fascinating history in the recommended book Mayan Missions.
Jane and I can ride our bikes off the street and directly into our room and Hotel Milo.
Our first stop on our 40 kilometer Calkini area bike trip is in the little town of Becal that is distinguished for Panama hats make from a tender young palm leaf known as Jipi. Other interesting novelties like the miniature trinkets that include minute Panama hats of Jipi used as earrings are sold here. Twenty-five years ago Jane purchased a set of those little Panama hat earrings that she has loved all these years and now came back to renew them. Only young eyes can perform the intricate work of weaving these miniature items.
The ladies that weave these Jipi items do their work down in damp caves beneath the city where their materials will not dry out while they are being worked on and they invite visitors, so come and take a look.
This is one of several shops selling Panama hats and other Jipi trinkets in Becal.
Little Becal is tourist free and has no stop lights which has a great appeal to Jane and I as we do our five town bicycle loop tour.
Bicycle traffic out numbers all other here and this biker had to stop me to tell of his twenty years living in New York City where he left because he claimed it was no longer safe.
Jane and I found the hidden Becal municipal market a couple of blocks off the main street and had our taco breakfast there. It was just ho-hum but we got fed and for a town that doesn’t cater to tourists it was nice to find a selection of eateries.
Gold leaf and ornate painting adorn the Becal church also built from material reclaimed from a Mayan temple.
The central plaza, zocolo of Becal proudly displays their claim to fame, Panama hats.
Crossing the border back into Yucatan on our five city loop trip the departing sign says; “Campeche the hidden treasure of Mexico, we await your return.”
The border guards between Campeche and Yucatan have real fire-power but turn out to be jovial and friendly, to us bikers anyway.
Our next stop is quiet little Halachó with no stop lights where they are having a street-fair that takes over the downtown. There are few motor vehicles in town
Little Halachó has an exquisitely appointed and meticulously kept church called “Santiago Matamoros” which means literally; St. James the Moor slayer. I have to give it to the Spanish for being up-front when it comes to their xenophobic hate-mongering. They carried on a nearly 700 year war ultimately driving the Moors out of the Iberian Peninsula and still keep the battle fervor hot.
Here you can see Santiago Matamoros, St. James the Moor slayer triumphantly in action as he treads beneath his gallant white steed a dead or dying Moor.
Polished to perfection the Santiago Matamoros church does not put on an ostentatious show to attract tourists.
Read the fascinating history of these ancient churches in the book; Mayan Missions.
The central plaza and government building of Halachó viewed from the old church.
This old man boasted that his father had come to Yucatan to put down the revolution back in the 1910’s from the state of Gurerrero on the Pacific and stayed here in Halachó.
From Halachó our bike tour took us still further off the beaten path to an even smaller Chuc Holoch, a strictly Mayan town of very friendly and inquisitive people who seldom see foreigners.
This gathering featured homemade local foods for sale in this small zocolo park. You will notice the two distinctively different dresses of the ladies. The traditional huipil, a white smock type dress richly adorned with hand embroidery covering a protruding lace trimmed slip is warn by the mestizas, Mayan ladies. The other ladies, known as Katrina’s ware traditional western style clothing and are considered citified.
Jane and I quickly became the main attraction here with our big screen digital cameras that instantly captured these lovely ladies in their innocent seldom visited village. It is hard to find these isolated little gems of naive child-like people uncorrupted by big city.
This stop at a molino or tortilla shop know as a tortillaria in Chuc Holoch was almost worth the value of the whole trip because of the exquisite fresh hot tortillas toasted to perfection that were as good as they ever get.
Jane and I have our ears tuned to the distinctive sound of the burner that fires these automated tortilla bakers and instinctively purchase a quarter kilo to immediately eat lightly sprinkled with salt and rolled. Out in the countryside like this it is common to get corn tortillas that are made from locally produced corn from a real Mayan milpa.
This is a genuine treasure of Yucatan.
In the cities you more than likely will get maseca tortillas made from pre-ground corn flour of unknown origins and age. I call them, tortilla de cartón or cardboard tortillas.
Still out of the tourist loop we stop at quaint, quiet and clean little town of Nunkini.
Prominently displayed in the center of the Zocolo Park of Nunkini is this exceptional work of art depicting a strikingly beautiful Mayan woman proudly holding their staff-of-life, corn.
The busiest intersection of Nunkini has a sleeping dog in the street and tri-cycle taxis waiting for customers under the shade of a giant cieba tree.
Nunkini like most towns in this part of the world have their street venders selling home grown fruit and often home cooked local items such as pork or chicken tacos or tamales wrapped in banana leaves known as vaporcitos.
If you have a peso or two you will always find something interesting and delicious to eat here.
Gliding back onto Calkini we complete our 40 kilometer five town outing and before the bikes are put away for the evening we had covered 50 lovely and quiet kilometers. Check out the amount of traffic on the city streets.
It is well worth the effort to find these isolated out-of-the-way places that make bicycle touring truly a joyous event.
Our hotel Milo was so quiet that we can hardly believe that we are still in Mexico, let alone the Yucatan.
In the morning we boarded the direct ATS bus back to Mérida and were there in about one hour.
After two nights and three action packed days it seemed like we had been gone for three weeks.
This end of the world has more interesting adventuresome places to explore than you will be able to see in an active lifetime…so what are you waiting for?

1 MAYAN MISSIONS by Richard and Rosalind Perry
2 Check Google Earth to view the paved road from Calkini to Xnolan and the dense jungle from there to Uxmal. Only a trail covers the last 12 kilometers and is unmarked.

John M. Grimsrud Feb. 2009

AKÉ. YUCATÁN , A BIKE RIDE TO THE MAYAN RUINS OF AKÉ

THE MAYAN RUINS OF AKÉ, YUCATÁN
Aké; this is a small tranquil and quiet village located just 32 kilometers east of Mérida that makes a lovely bike/bus/taxi day trip where you will be treated to a rare commodity in this day and time.
Believe it or not at Aké there are absolutely no tour buses, trinket vending peddlers, hammock hawkers or glitzy accommodations. This is the main attraction for those that want to experience a small slice of vintage Yucatan off the beaten tourist path.
I will tell this story of Aké with captioned photos but first here is a brief Aké description of the place as seen back in the early 1840’s by the noted author John L. Stephens;
Pages 303 to 308 from volume 2 of Incidents of Travel in Yucatan by John L. Stephens:
Aké
The next morning we started for Merida, with the intention of diverging for a last time to visit the ruins of Aké. The road was one of the best in the country, made for carriages, but rough, stony, and uninteresting. At Cacalchen, five leagues distant, we stopped to dine and procure a guide to Aké. In the afternoon we proceeded, taking with us only our hammocks, and leaving Dimas to go on direct with our luggage to Merida. Turning off immediately from the main road, we entered the woods, and following a narrow path, a little before dark we reached the hacienda of Aké, and for the last time were among the towering and colossal memorials of an aboriginal city. The hacienda was the property of the Conde Peon, and contrary to our expectancies, it was small, neglected, in a ruinous condition, and extremely destitute of all kinds of supplies. We could not procure even eggs, literally nothing but tortillas. The major domo was away, the principal building locked up, and the only shelter we could obtain was a miserable little hut, full of fleas, which no sweeping could clear out. We had considered all our rough work over, but again, and within day’s journey of Merida, we were in bad straights. By great ingenuity, and giving them the shortest possible tie, Albino contrived to swing our hammocks and having no other resource, early in the evening we fell into them. At about ten o’clock we heard the tramp of a horse, and the major domo arrived. Surprised to find such unexpected visitors, but glad to see them, he unlocked the hacienda, and we walking out in our winding sheets, we took possession; our hammocks followed, and we were hung up anew. In the morning he provided us with breakfast, after which, accompanied by him and all the Indians of the hacienda, being only six, we went around the ruins. Plate LII represents a great mound towering in full sight from the door of the hacienda, and called El Palacio, or the Palace. The ascent is on the south side, by an immense staircase, one hundred and thirty seven feet wide, forming an approach of rude grandeur, perhaps equal to any that ever existed in the country. Each step is four feet five inches long, and one foot five inches in height. The platform on the top is two hundred and twenty-five feet in length, and fifty in breath. On the great platform stand thirty-six shafts of columns, in three parallel rows of twelve, about ten feet apart from north to south, and fifteen feet from east to west. They are from fourteen to sixteen feet in height, four feet on each side, and are composed of separate stones, from one to two feet in thickness. But few have fallen, though some have lost their upper layer of stones. There are no remains of any structure or of a roof. If there ever was one, it must have been wood, which would seem most incongruous and inappropriate for such a solid structure of stones. The whole mound was so overgrown that we could not ascertain the juxtaposition of the pillars till the growth was cleared away, when we made our whole, but with little or no enlargement of our knowledge as to its uses and purposes. It was a new and extraordinary feature, entirely different from any we had ever seen, and at the very end of our journey, when we supposed ourselves familiar with the character of American ruins, threw over them a new air of mystery.Plate LII
In the same vicinity are other mounds of colossal dimensions, one of which is also called the Palace, but of different construction and without pillars. On another, at the end of the ruined staircase, is an opening under the top of a doorway, nearly filled up, crawling through which, by means of the crotch of a tree I descended into a dark chamber fifteen feet long and ten wide, of rude construction, and of which some of the stones in the wall measured seven feet in length. This is called Akabna, casa obscura or dark house. Near this is a senote, with the remains of steps leading down to water, which supplied the ancient city. The ruins cover a great extent, but all were overgrown, and in a condition too ruinous to be presented in a dawning. They were ruder and more massive than all the others we had seen, bore the stamp of an older era, and more than any others, in fact, for the first time in the country, suggested the idea of Cyclopean remains; but ever here we have a gleam of historic light, faint, it is true, but, in my mind, sufficient to dispel all unsettled and wavering notions. In the account of the march of Don Francisco Montejo from the coast, presented in the early part of these pages, it is mentioned that the Spanish reached a town called Aké, at which they found themselves confronted by a great multitude of armed Indians. A desperate battle ensued, which lasted two days, and in which the Spanish were victorious, but gained no easy triumph. There is no other mention of Aké, and in this there is no allusion whatever to the buildings, but from its geographical position, and the direction of the line of march of the Spanish army from the coast, I have little doubt that their Aké was the place now known by the same name, and occupied by the ruins last presented. It is, indeed, strange that no mention is made of the buildings, but regard must be had to the circumstances of danger and death which surrounded the Spaniards, and which were doubtless always uppermost in the minds of the soldiers who formed that disastrous expedition. At all events, it is not more strange than want of any description of great buildings of Chichen, and we have the strongest possible proof that no current inference is to be drawn from the silence of the Spaniards, for in the comparatively minute account of the conquest of Mexico, we find that the Spanish army marched under the very shadow of great pyramids of Otumba, and yet not the slightest mention whatever is made of their existence.

Aké was the last ruined Mayan city that John L. Stephens explored and so aptly described on his second and last extensive journey to Central America and Yucatan.
***
These are the ruins of Aké as seen in 2007, 167 years after the visit of John L. Stephens and 467 years after the Spanish fought the two day war at this very spot with the Indigenous Mayan who built these enduring structures.
A restoration crew of 20 diligent workers under the skilled direction of archaeologist Roberto Rosado is reclaiming this Mayan ruin after centuries of degradation at the hands of nature and Spanish intruders who viewed these monumental structures as merely a stone quarry.
Jane, with the long shadows of the early Yucatán morning moist with uncontaminated dew still sparkling on the closely cropped grass, savors the fragrant aromas of fresh wild flower scented air at the ruins of Aké.
The ruins of Aké are a striking anomaly amongst the entire collection of Mayan ruins of Mexico and Central America inconsistent with the scale and proportions found elsewhere. Pictured behind Jane are the colossal steps build for giants. Even if these enormous steps were intended as bleacher seats they would only be suitable for a people of gigantic proportions which cast much inquisitive thought provoking speculation upon this unique archaeological site.
Another interesting feature of the ruins of Aké is the network of straight as die Mayan roads known as “sacbe” or white ways because they were originally paved with white stucco. The sacbe tied the ancient empire or the Mayan civilization together. Though now mostly overgrown by rank jungle vegetation the Mayan sacbe road from Aké to the adjacent ruins of Izamal some twenty-five kilometers is still viably existent and only lacks the clearing to make it usable again. This road originated at Mérida, formerly known as Ti’ho and ran all the way to the Caribbean coast a distance of nearly three hundred kilometers. Over the years Jane and I have encountered numerous sacbe Mayan roads and actually driven on them.
In the above photo you will see our little 20 inch folding bicycles that we arrived on. We bicycled from our home in Mérida to the city center where we boarded a colectivo taxi and rode to the town of Tixkokob, famous for their hammocks, where we disembarked with our marvelous little folding bicycles. We always manage to draw a crowd when we fold or unfold our bicycles because they are so very small when folded and in twelve seconds they are transformed. These are not toys, but very functional go fast machines that effortlessly sizzle down the road at between 20 and 25 kilometers per hour…and we just love them because for one thing they make this type of excursion possible.
This is the henequen mill of Aké in1988 when our Lupita was eleven year old.
This is the same henequen mill of Aké in 2007 little changed and still operating. Owned by the Solis family that has kept upgrades and improvements to a bare-bones minimum. This facility continues to turn out their end product of sisal fiber used primarily for bailing twine and other rope products where biodegradability is a consideration.
Originally this facility was powered by a gigantic ancient diesel engine with two cylinders. The engine blew up and sent an employee through the roof skyrocketing his corpse all the way to the adjacent Mayan pyramid where it came to its earthly landing. A cross was erected at that spot to commemorate his suborbital flight.
Twenty years ago that cross was still standing on the pyramid but the two cylinder diesel engine was reduced to one cylinder and ingeniously still sputtering along at about sixty unsteady revolutions per minute. A leather flat belt of enormous proportions conveyed the power from the engine up to a second story shaft that transmitted via other smaller pulleys to a myriad of flying flailing mechanical contrivances that somehow took the green sharp pointed agaves leaves and converted them to sisal fiber.
The old diesel engine finally sputtered its last sputter and now the antiquated rusty and worn old machinery is powered by electric motors.
One thing that has not changed since the beginning of operations here more than a century ago is this system of tiny railway tracks and horse drawn gondolas that quietly and efficiently transport the materials around the hacienda.
This is the boss of this no frills henequen processing establishment sitting atop a pile of the finished and dried sisal fiber ready to be sent out for processing.
At the entrance to the village of Aké Jane stops to chat with the tricycle taxi driver.
Every day in Mexico is a real adventure and this three wheeled rolling platform that started life as a two wheel motorcycle is an inspiration and tribute to inventiveness where government regulations haven’t stifled creativity.
This lovely day wasn’t over with our tour of Aké and we actually were back at our home in Merida for lunch having bicycled forty beautiful kilometers in some of the most interesting country to be found anywhere on earth and the best part of it all is that it was right in our very own back yard!

Transportation:
Taxi Mérida to Tixkokob, Yucatan
Calle 54a between Calles 65 and 67
Departs every 30 minutes starting at 5:30 am.
Cost: 10 pesos

More photos:
John Grimsrud and INAH archaeologist Roberto Rosado
Jane and John Grimsrud ready to bike back to Tixkokob after a wonderful morning visiting Aké