Mexican jungle adventures awaited Milford explorer

MILFORD — Hacking through jungles with a machete. Walking wild tropical coastlines. Surviving on coconuts and water wherever she could find it.
Call this jungle-hopping adventurer “Indiana Jane.”
When Wendy Morrill of Milford went with her parents and a group of 50- and 60-somethings to an all-inclusive resort near Cancun, in the tropical Mexican state of Quintana Roo, in September 2005, she was not really enthused. As an active woman more interested in adventure, the idea of a weeklong poolside vacation did not particularly excite her.
She preferred adventure. At least she’d be there during the height of the hurricane season, so perhaps she’d find some excitement. She did not; no hurricanes beat up on Mexico that week.
The one bonus: She would be there with her father, Richard Bailey, a lifelong traveler with endless tales about exploring remote locations around the world.
“I always wanted to go to a Third World country or a foreign country and explore with him,” Morrill said.
A few days before the end of the trip, Morrill, her father, her sister, and her brother-in-law ventured out for a couple of hours to walk the isolated world beyond the resort.
“We started to explore the beaches and the coastline, and we found a lot of run-down hotels that had been taken over by reptiles,” she recalled.
It was as if a plague had hit and everyone had fled, leaving their bags and toys and clothing behind. It intrigued her, and she found herself obsessed with the colors and architecture of this ghost town. Everything about Mexico was enticing her.
“That kind of grabbed me,” she said.
Back at the resort, it seemed like the brief walk was the only excitement Morrill would have on the trip. But on the last full day of their visit, her father, suggested that they take a taxi 20 miles south, cut through the jungle, and hike back to the resort along the remote beaches.
The pair brought day packs for the trip. When the taxi driver realized he was not picking them up later, and that they were walking the Quintana Roo coastline back towards Cancun, he was stunned. “He thought we were crazy — like, ‘You can’t do that; nobody does that,’” she recalled.
While there were occasional hotels and resorts, in between was wild jungle to the left and the ocean to the right — the adventure Morrill had sought. While fording a deep stream with her pack held over her head, she was hanging on to a moored boat, and a local boy came running, thinking she was trying to steal it. The language barrier made it impossible to communicate otherwise.
The wildlife ranged from giant moths to hungry pelicans to a pack of snarling dogs. Morrill and Bailey had to flee into the ocean to swim away from them.
From angry natives to angry dogs, it was nearly nine hours of sand and coral, limestone and ocean, rock and jungle — a grueling, 108-degree workout with limited drinking water. But Morrill ached for more, and regretted not having done more of it during her vacation. Moved to tears on the bus that was about to take her to the airport to head home to Maine, she knew she would return.
That was September. The following May, she and her father did return. This time, they took a taxi north 20 miles and hiked south to the resort. By then, Morrill craved more than just a simple day hike.
Through 2006 and early 2007, she brushed up on her mostly forgotten high-school Spanish and read everything she could find to learn about Mexico. That’s how she stumbled across the book “The Lost World of Quintana Roo” by Michel Peissel.
At age 21 in 1958, Peissel walked 200 miles down the coast to Belize, discovering 14 unrecorded Mayan archaeological sites along the way. Quintana Roo was different then, although not by much. There were no hotels or resorts to break up the remote beaches and wild jungles. Unknown to most save for the Mayans who lived in the area, Peissel had life-threatening adventures.
“There were no people, just criminals that were escaping prison,” Morrill said. “There were chicle camps or squatters, and that’s it. No other facilities, no hotels, no tourists — just all savage, barren jungle.”
Nearly 50 years later, Morrill was enthralled by Peissel’s accounts.
Knowing that nobody had since done such a hike, and knowing that the Quintana Roo coastline was just as wild today, she knew she wanted to follow in his footsteps.
“I realized that the whole way to Belize is beach, so you can totally walk the whole way to Central America,” she said.
It would culminate in a five-year journey of 600 miles.
Next week: Morrill and her father return every year for the next five years to complete their hike — and then some.