The following article, written in 2002 by Jeanine Lee Kitchel, former owner of Alma Libre Libros in Puerto Morelos, details how she became interested in travel to Quintana Roo.

Full Circle "The Lost World of Quintana Roo"

By: Jeanine Kitchel

MEXICO -- I first ventured to this region in the early 1980s, long before Cancun had earned a reputation as a must-see tourist resort and the region had been dubbed the Riviera Maya.

How did I "discover" Mexico's Quintana Roo?

While living near San Francisco, my home for 20 years, I happened onto a book at a garage sale titled "The Lost World of Quintana Roo"' by Frenchman Michel Peissel. Although the book was (and is) long out of print, the adventure it told of the author, then a 21-year old Harvard business graduate, who walked from northern Quintana Roo near Puerto Morelos to Belize in 1958 fascinated me and triggered a trip to the Mexican Yucatan.

Before this I had always traveled to Mexico's west coast, but the Mayan pyramids and culture had always been a siren's song, and finding Peissel's book seemed like fate awaiting action.

In 1999 I wrote a book review for Planeta.com on "The Lost World of Quintana Roo" and even though long out of print, the review generated a great deal of interest. Little did I know that within a few years' time I would stumble onto another piece of this Mayan puzzle when I opened a bookshop in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, Alma Libre Libros. Puerto Morelos is in the heart of Quintana Roo, which Peissel called "the most savage and wild coast of Central America."

One evening while at the bookstore a woman entered and immediately announced, "This store is like Shakespeare & Co. in Paris!"

Although I was becoming accustomed to favorable comments about the bookstore, her remark was an exaggeration. I'd read Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast" about his salad days in Paris in the 20s when he frequented Shakespeare & Co. and was lent money by the owner so he could survive, and to compare our little shop, Alma Libre Libros in the Yucatan, in a Mexican town with barely a paved road to one in the tout du monde city of Paris, a writer's and artist's playground and muse center, well, who was fooling who?

I politely thanked her and mentally, again, put on my list of things to do -- See Paris sometime before I die, and visit Shakespeare & Co. when there. However, being a Third World traveler my entire life, I did not know when I'd fit in Paris.

The customer continued that when she'd been in Paris, if she wanted to have that feeling of being home, she'd wander into Shakespeare & Co. and chat up an American while sorting through the countless volumes of English language books on hand. In this way our stores were similar. Yanks were always wandering in for information or just to speak in native tongue for a few minutes.

ACROSS THE POND

Well, this spring I came to Paris. Our hotel, The Esmeralda (named after Victor Hugo's tragic heroine), looked out at the Notre Dame Cathedral and sitting just around the corner was Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore. I didn't even have to look up the address in a guidebook. Paul and I wandered in and entered an arena filled with floor-to-ceiling books -- a reader's dream. New, used, hardback, softback, antiquarian and rare, every kind of book imaginable was crammed into shelves and corners. Stacks of books abounded everywhere.

At center stage sat an older gentleman dressed in a time-worn business suit. He gazed out at Notre Dame in a semi-stare, even though around him alot was happening. I knew that feeling, bookstore madness, the daze I always felt mid-day at the shop.

When a customer spoke and removed him from his reverie with a question, however, he sat up and was instantly on.

"Can I get a discount for this book?" she asked. "Four Euro seems terribly high.

I looked at Paul, my partner, and watched him tense as we heard this common litany of the budget traveler. Even though the shop we were in belonged not to us but to someone else, we knew what was going through the owner's head. People never seemed to realize what it cost with shipping and customs to get an English language book through a foreign system and into a customer's hands for under $5 US, plus still pay rent and electricity.

"Four Euro,"the response.

At this point, Paul introduced himself, "We have a bookstore in Mexico, the Yucatan. It's the largest English language bookstore from Mexico City to Central America, and we hear that all the time. I guess people have no clue what it takes to get books shipped into a foreign country.

"Mexico?" the apparent owner of the bookshop replied. "What part of Mexico?"

"Quintana Roo," I answered. "Puerto Morelos, a little fishing village."

"Quintana Roo! I walked through the jungles of Quintana Roo when I was young. I planned to spend seven years walking around the world on foot and managed to get through Mexico and Latin America. I helped build the bridge between Belize and Mexico, at the border town, Chetumal!

"I know the bridge," I said. "I was detained there once by immigration. And I wrote a book review a few years ago by a Frenchman named Michel Peissel who walked from northern Quintana Roo to Belize in 1958. Maybe you know the book."

"I'm familiar with the book. I know Michel Peissel" answered the bookstore owner, who I found out was George Whitman, proprietor of the shop for over 50 years, on Paris' Left Bank, facing Notre Dame Cathedral. "He came into the store and I told him I had read his book of travels in Quintana Roo and had hoped to someday meet him. He told me we had already met when he was a student years earlier. He said he frequented the store and the books he read here inspired him to become an explorer. He has now published 18 books.

"Aaah, Quintana Roo. When I was there I stayed with an indian in his palapa, then went onto Campeche. There were no roads in Campeche at the time. Not one."

"Was that right after the Caste War? It ended around 1940"

"I guess so," said Whitman. "Listen, do you have a place to stay?"

"We're at The Esmeralda right around the corner."

"Because I always have space for writers and journeyers, people who are on their way somewhere."

KILOMETER ZERO

Whitman, a native of Massachusetts, will be 90 in December, and has made a career of supplying books to the masses and has created a gathering spot for writers and poets in Paris; a place where they can exchange ideas. He has been declared by the French Ministry of Culture to be "a historic monument of Paris" and Henry Miller called Whitman's three floor bookstore "a wonderland of books," for that is what it is.

Apparently George Whitman discovered Quintana Roo's "lost world" long before Michel Peissel and, in fact, may have inspired Peissel to put on hold his Harvard business degree for a year while he trapsed the jungles of Mexico's Yucatan. Without Whitman's influence, would Peissel have even ventured to Mexico's Quintana Roo?

Whitman's personal motto for the store is "Kilometer Zero -- Where the streets of the world meet avenues of the mind." He has created this space to preserve a place for those who love to read, write and create. The store harks back to earlier times, when the Hemingways and Kerouacs of the world stalked the world's cultural vortexes, absorbing all they could to ignite and inspire them. In this handful of cities they could find kindred spirits which added to their creative juices. Whitman himself is from a different era -- pre internet -- an era when creative minds would chat in person, not from behind screens and keyboards.

Coming to Paris, discovering for myself Shakespeare & Co, one of the world's most reknowned bookstores and the largest English language bookstore on the European continent, and to meet owner George Whitman was synchronicity at its finest.

FOOTNOTE

Shortly after writing my review of The Lost World of Quintana Roo I received an email from author Michel Peissel thanking me for writing it. I showed a copy of this letter to Whitman who was delighted to see a reference to an old friend. If you are interested in helping George Whitman preserve Shakespeare & Co. as the world landmark it has become and to help him put "pennies in his wishing well" so that the bookstore can continue on always as it is now, write to him at Shakespeare & Co., 37 Rue de la Bucherie, 75005, Paris , France, where over the door you will read, "Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeanine Lee Kitchel lives in Puerto Morelos. Her recent travel memoir, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, is available at local bookstores or at Amazon.com.

You can e-mail Jeanine at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .

First published on http://www.planeta.com/

Jeanine is a frequent contributor to Planeta with her Tales from the Yucatan series.

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