This girl is 5 years old. She speaks Yucatek Maya, the Mayan language. From what I could tell, she did not even speak Spanish. Many of the Maya in Yucatan speak only Yukatek Maya. This girl was clearly curious about the "Gringos" exploring a cave on her family's land. She stayed with us and posed for this photo quite unabashedly. In this area of the Yucatan, these people were essentially slaves or indentured servants as recently as 80 to 100 years ago. It is the one place we encountered caution and reservation. I suspected some people in this region were hostile, but there was nothing overt. This is in stark contrast to every other area of Yucatan where people were openly friendly.
