Sheldon Brown's Yucatan Photos

Champagne-bottle Hinge

This is a glorious example of third-world technology at its best. The Coba site is in the deep jungle, far from hardware stores. An ingenious local artizan was able to fashion a quite serviceable hinge for a heavy gate, using a discarded champagne bottle from the nearby Club Med hotel for the load-bearing lower hinge. The bottle has been buried in the ground upside down, and the sharpened vertical post of the gate rotates nicely in the punt.