Category: Mexico

We drove south from Merida on the Convent road that leads towards Uxmal Arch. site. As the name says – there are several small towns with convents by that road, the history of bringing a “better” religion to Maya people.

Lucky enough we stopped at a right time in one of the towns -there was a Maya weeding going to start:

The middle aged ladies are wearing Maya national dresses, which they wore at all times and everywhere we saw them. Those dresses are very elaborately embroidered, different decors on each of it , therefore they are pretty expensive from what we saw in their stores and more so having in mind their life standards. But – the ladies look always very white and clean and pressed – are they not busy enough ? that was my question…Also – they don’t have to think much or fuss about what to wear for a wedding :-).

For me the outsider the wedding looked very sad…No smiles, no joy, no happiness on the bride’s or flower girls faces. Maybe they are not used to show their emotions, or maybe their suppression of many years is manifesting on those serious faces…

The priest was also pretty fast and non emotional in reading his words.

The churches on that way were not very impressive. but..they told the story of how Catholic missionaries came, took away their pyramids and built their churches on the sites from the stones of the pyramids. Here one can see the glyphs on the open stones on this wall. At least they didn’t cover them…If there was a reason to bring Mayas on the right path to spiritual joy – that very much failed. They are now not so much into their old gods, neither to the new ones and didn’t look very happy…

This convent garden seems to being restored. So we walked to take pictures. A man ran towards us shouting “privado!”, like in Felini’s movie . So we left. Would be nice to know – what is it going to be there, but we don’t speak Spanish…On the other hand – a secret is sometimes more romantic that a plain truth. The thing that we noticed in Yucatan – they like painting, repainting their walls and facades. The makes their towns rather colorful and prety for us, travelers.

This is not a doll town or dog town, but a cemetery!

And lastly – the sad part – they have no landfills, evidently, so they dump their trash by the main road at the end of each town…creating a gathering place fro skinny and aloof dogs and some big birds:

 

 

After a very long break, for which I am very sorry, I want to continue describing our Yucatan trip so that it won’t hang in the air unfinished. To never leave thing unfinished! Why such a long break between blogs – the answer is spring and summer in our very hot Utah. There was so much work in our garden and house, we had pretty many very nice guests, with whom I spend sometimes long hours of talking, so it goes…And now the hottest time of the summer started, guests temporarily disappeared and so I can devote for remembering the trip, describing it and giving some good advices!

So we drove to Merida – the biggest city in Yucatan, not counting Cancun. which to me is more like a conglomerate of hotels, but not an authentic Mexican city. it was raining hard and the streets in the center are very narrow, one way. so we had to make several rounds until we found the Nomadas Hostel. As I mentioned – it is in the very center of town:

 

The pictures show the inner gardens or inner yards of the hostel. From the outside all the buildings are connected in one wall, so typical to Mexico, and life begins once you enter through the main doors:

Here we had our breakfast, here guests would sit and talk and exchange info about places of interest.

It is so strange that once you enter a house – different areas open deeper and deeper into the block, like this hostel had even a swimming pool and a nice park when you would never suspect that there can be such things…

There are plenty of hammocks here and there and they are popular. But to me they seemed a little too humid – have in mind they stay there during their frequent rains and don’t always dry out, so the smell…

We stayed there for 3 nights and had a very good time. There were salsa dance lessons every evening in front of a huge mirror. We walked in the city center:

The cathedral is built from ancient Maya pyramid stones…

checked the museums:

This sculpture was used for human sacrifices…

And we found a university on our way:

then ate in nicely decorated restaurants:

The latter scenes depicting those sacrifices…

And left Merida with good feelings and this little lizard on our bed:

 

 

 

Next town on our way – Uayma. We got to know about it from polish couple we met at the Hostel. That is one of the main reasons I like hostels – you meet people while having breakfast, they are usually very open to interactions and sharing their impressions. We would have missed this very different and impressive Uayma cathedral:

And I can say for sure – as many more churches we saw – none of them had anything like those flower…Interesting how some artist came to a very original decor, having in my that there was no internet way then…

Here is the town itself – heading towards our car. We wanted to have the Maya lady in her national dress standing by the entrance to municipal market:

And the roads looked like this, like a tunnel through an endless yellow blooming meadow:

In a couple of hours or so we reached the next destination -Izamal – a town in yellow color! I would say that Izamal means Amber, but as if it is named after Amaryllis, the flower, which I have never seen in yellow…why not Daffodil?

As we entered through this gate – all the buildings were the same color:

No problem to park the car, lots of “estrangeros” driven in horse carriages, a little tourist town which has a main point – the Cathedral:

The Cathedral, The Anthony Convent as it is called, is not as big or impressive. But the front yard, as I call, is the second after Vatican’s St Peter’s Basilica’s yard by its size:

Pope Paul II visited this town in his times and held a mass in this yard, so that Mexicans built him a monument. Here is the entrance to the Cathedral with “the dance of shades”:

The cross Maya people adjusted to their own taste – draped with their national floral embroidery:

A cloister inside – not yellow?!:

And the decorated gates:

The Cathedral with its yard is beautifully situated on a hill in a place where ancient Maya pyramid stood – as we noticed it was a common practice for the catholic missionaries to disassemble pyramids and build churches using the same stones. Here are some more nicely decorated houses:

Books say that there are still some Maya ruins intact in the town, but had no time to look for them. were heading to Merida!

Initially we planned our trip in Yucatan like a circle – starting from Cancun to Valladolid: 2 nights, then Merida: 2 nights, then Campeche –2 nights, then Xpujil: 2 nights and a night in Bacalar and in Tulum on our way back to Cancun. We planned to see not only the cities, but also the archeological sites closest to them. Xpujil was to be a base camp for investigating the very tropical jungle and the sites as Calacmul, Becan, Balamku, Kohunlich and others. But…we figured out that it was unrealistic and inefficient to skim through so many nice and interesting places on our way and not to have time to enjoy them. Also – the roads are not so good there. I mean not all the roads are good enough, the way we are used to and the way we plan. 100 km in Yucatan are not the same as 100 km in Lithuania, let alone the USA. There are so many little villages on the road and that means very slow speed, lots of “vibrators” and speed bumps “tapes” , that you are literally crawling. A bicyclist is faster than you in a car. And we were warned – do not speed!

While searching on the internet for places to sleep- some cities got us enticed to several ones and we wanted to experience them so that we know. So against my strong belief not to overuse the resources of nature, we slept in two places in Valladolid, different for each night…One was hotel La Aurora, as I described before, a very good one, almost in the center of the city, except that the rooms facing the yard are much more quiet that the street side. But nobody spoke English there, though it is not a big deal. The other night was at Hostel ‘La Candelaria” – in Candelaria square, a block from La Aurora. The Hostel in not only in a perfect location – they had a tent-church set up in front of a real church in that square and the masses and singing of all town enthusiasts lasted till 12am :-). But also – the staff speaks good English, they are very friendly and informative about places to go and see. I can’t express more gratitude for them! They told about the cenotes, they told about the best restaurants. And the decor there was so pleasant! As it is typical in Mexican hostels we visited – there was a jungle garden, colorful little shacks, and “sceleton art” (they call it De Arte Popular – the Day of the Dead themed) pictures and paintings. Here is what we saw once we parked our car on the street and headed towards the hostel:

Without being ashamed – I love this picture! looks like some Tibetan flags but they are Mexican-Catholic flags…All the cultures have connections deep inside and sometimes they show up those connections outside…

Here is the hostel:

behind the blue door was our room. The experience there would have been really nice, except two things. They had to fix the water tank in the evening and until it filled up by the morning -there was no water, no toilets…And it is not so good for quiet night seekers like we are. Besides the noises from the square and my big efforts to finally fall asleep our neighbors came drunk and the American “she” was chatting in her high pitched voice by our door until they both fell asleep there, on that balcony path…Yak…But, the morning was beautiful and it offered more nice pictures:

Every hostel usually has a dog, a cat. This one tiny creature is called Bob.

The time before Mardi Gras in Mexico is a time of festivals. Here is the Town Fair in Valladolid:

We saw such cows in the fields, and now we saw them in the Fair. Friends who travel to India said that this breed is brought to Mexico from India. Looked very exotic to me, except that it is painful to see them on such short ropes…

Valladolid Cathedral at night and the Burrito Andrei ate at a very artsy-fartsy restaurant Conato on Calle 40:

It is a pity I didn’t take any picture of its interior…It had several copies of Frida Cahlo paintings, some other interesting decors, worth visiting. And the food was good!

While most of the streets in Valladolid intersect at the right angle, Calzada Los Frailes is an exception. It can be called Diagonal, like in St. George we have one, but far from the looks I saw here:

Boy, I loved this street. This is what I expected to see in Mexico and here it was. In a way – it was a dream come true! The Diagonal leads to Ex Convento San Bernardino:

Two Maya ladies chatting by the entrance…

As it is clear from the name of it – the monastery or convent is not operating any more, but there is still life inside:

Here is the square in front of the Ex-Convent with blooming trees:

And here is Valladolid’s cemetery on the way from the town towards Merida. First I was stunned when we entered it:

Like a town of doll houses. I can’t understand how bodies are buried there, so little space for each tomb, except for the newer part of the cemetery and rich family chapels on the sides…

As you can notice – most of the tombs are decorated with tiles. They are very much into tiles in all their structures, I bet they are producing them there and with a peek into one of the tile stores I was amazed at the variety you can get.

Lots of graves have a symbol of an open book – not a finished life story?..

(still much more)

To me -this was it. This was the most beautiful and pleasant and impressive cenote of all we saw on the trip. But that doesn’t mean it is the most beautiful, for we all have our preferences. It is on the way from Valladlid to Chichen Itza, only 7 km from V. There are two cenotes at that site – with a large parking lot and “a building” in the middle. They like having those inadequate big buildings, which are always in contrast with the rest of the people living around, and leads to a thought that they are heavily sponsored by the government. At least people get jobs while building them and now sitting and selling tickets. Well, there are actually 3 buildings. The biggest one is for selling tickets! The others are on each side of the road – fro crafts people to sell their goodies. Each cenote costs 54 pesos to enter. but you must be attentive and be prepared which of the two you want to visit this time – they have different ticket sellers sitting side by side. And if you buy a ticket to Dzitnut, it woun’t be valid to Samula and vice verse. Strange. Luckily. though rushiing as always , we somehow managed to get to Dzitnup this time and left Samula for the next. Here how the surrounding area looks:

You wouldn’t have a suspicion that there is something underneath, but this hole is kind of giving a hint:

It is fenced so that there would be no victims of curiosity or absentmindedness:

And those big trees are feeding from the waters of cenote. Here is the entrance:

And here is the “beauty”:

Stalaktites and the roots of those trees are hanging like curtains, the water is transparent and of perfect coolness or warmth, ropes are stretched for the fun or safety of the swimmers and the main point – there was nobody swimming when we came and it was so quiet, the colors lights changing every some minutes:

Light comes also from that hole in the surface among trees, it is seen in the picture from below.

It brings you to a feeling of Bliss! Your body is embraced by the most loving hands of nature and your mind is in a meditative state, what else can you wish for…

But we still traveled more, continue to follow us…

I guess hardly anyone heard of such a town, but it is on the way back from Chichen Itza to Valladolid. We noticed a street from the main highway going deeper into some Maya pueblo and decided to drive into it and walk around. Here is the main square:

As all town squares it has a Municipal building and a Church:

It also has a cenote. but a fenced one, without stairs, not developed:

And several fenced streets:

Some houses are very poor and shabby, some are not bad at all, all intermixed , not like in the US divided into very distinguished rich areas and poor areas:

Notice the nice metal works on the windows. In those pueblos two things amazed me most – #1:their passion for colors and diligence in painting their fences, houses, poles, trees, whatever:

Notice here under the palm tree – even the lines between stones in the wall are painted green…

And #2: they are never short of concrete…This will better be illustrated in the following blogs, so continue with me on this amazing trip!

The whole Yucatan Peninsula is dotted with Maya archeological sites, most of which have still surviving pyramids. Mayan culture flourished several centuries B.C. and till about 12-13th centuries A.D. They still managed to show a strong resistance when Spaniards came to conquer them in the 17th c. Their architecture, arts, math, astronomical knowledge and the hieroglyphs they left on their structures are outstanding. More about their culture look here.

We got up earlier than usual and rushed to Chichen-Itza, the most advertised, considered the biggest pyramid complex or archeological site as they call it correctly in Yucatan. It was 1 h. drive from Valladolid, with all the villages on our way which means lots of “vibrators” and speed bumps, called “topez” in Spanish, on the road. And that translates to a very slow speed on their roads. Only some highways, of which the one we came to Valladolid, are pleasant and easy to drive. To tell the truth I was very excited to see Chichen-Itza, it sounds in everyone’s mouth when they come from Cancun, it is considered one of the seven wonders of the world, UNESCO World Heritage site, I heard about special feelings or energies over there and the ticket is the most expensive of all the pyramids we visited. So that gave us hope that it will be really impressive. Here it is, the Queen, the main pyramid of the site, the main Energy provider:

So it looks all right. Very well lined South-North-West-East, very nice proportions for the eye, it has exactly the number of steps as there are days in a year and so on. But, as you can see – it is almost the same as looking at it in a picture – you can get close to it , neither you can climb it…needless to say – I was disappointed. By coming at 9 am we escaped the big crowds brought to here by buses from Cancun, that is right, that was good. But we didn’t escape the big crafts market made from the whole site, so eventually I couldn’t see the ruins there any more, for the craftsmen took my attention completely. They lined with their goods all the paths except for one, and stood there like soldiers in sweltering heat. Some were more insisting than the others, but all had so many elaborate and colorful carvings, that I was mesmerized…

So I would try to walk towards some ruins and lift my head, but again it will go down towards the immense variety of forms and things that were lined by the paths:

How could I resist all that. No way. You will see how I ended up. While you could touch any of those beautiful crafts. you couldn’t come even close to any of the ruins there. Only iguanas had a special permit:

Here is the main pyramid from the back, not so well restored as its front side, I completely understand why those big crowds of gringos are no longer permitted top climb it…

And as I saw in books – those pyramids were initially white with usually dark red edges and colorful reliefs, no more…

They were very well decorated, so the craftsmen were using the patterns from their decors in their carved panels, A very good place to try to sell them. I say to try – for except for me, I didn’t see anyone buying them. Lets hope I don’t notice everything that is going on. So this structure on top is a pedestal for funerals.

This very elaborate one – for dead bodies, too. But whether they were sacrificed or enemies or just community members, I forgot. Too much about death in those sites. Only the god decorating the walls in the Rain God Chaak. To us the air seemed humid there. But still water is a problem for it rains only at certain seasons and then in winter there may be no rain for a very long stretch of time. At least they had the special God to pray for it.

This structure above was their Observatory. But, as all the other structures – is forbidden to enter, is fenced. So only from far away…

Those inviting stairs…But no way, fenced.

An old Maya path made of limestone, as all paths, almost white, and no sellers – the only path without them.

Holes opening to one of the two cenotes of the site – this one was fro throwing dead bodies…

And this cenote was Sagrada – sacred. Meaning they were throwing only some little statues and trinkets into it, no bodies, and drinking its water. Those trinkets are exposed in Merida Museum of Antropology.

This is a typical Mayan arch – instead of making roofs they made such arches, peculiar.

The city’s market place, a surprise to see columns.

Reliefs at the Ball Court where they played some game that later developed into real football that Americans are calling Socker.

An altar for sacrifices…a very sad place for I saw in some paintings and read that they were sacrificing virgins and live people in very cruel manners i don’t even want to mention. But now Maya people seem so soft…and are so tiny:

That I couldn’t stop buying from them all those crafts and ended up with 3 big carved boards and 4 masks and a drum…As I said to my parents on Skype – brought a lot of wood from there:

First of all I have to say about the geologic specifics of Yucatan peninsula. It has no rivers…Zero. It is made mainly of white limestone and dolostone and some underground rivers are serving as its fresh water supply. In fact the best part is that there are many sink holes, some completely under ground, some with their dome broken and therefore facing the skies, and the ones close to the sea – completely like little lakes – they are all called cenotes and they are all fresh water with the temperature the most comfortable for human body on a hot tropical day.

So there we headed from the car rental place in search for cenotes and Mayan pyramids. One note – if you start driving to Valladolid from Cancun airport, not the city center, be aware that they will direct you on the road that is toll road and has no exits whatsoever till you reach Valladolid 2 hours later. The road is good, no question about it, almost no cars, just occasional Mexicans on their bikes gathering wood. The cost is $20 USA even. In case you have enough time to drive much slower and and stop at many “lying policemen” in their little towns and villages, you have to take the road from Puerto Morelos or from the center of Cancun.

Valladolid is small, you enter it and very soon you are in the center. their streets are narrow, so they are one way and they number their streets in a peculiar way, find out when you go there. THis is our hotel, La Aurora, named after the first manufacture built in Mexico right by the hotel:

As all the inland towns we saw there – the colonial architecture is their feature. Brightly painted walls, not much seen from outside, but you get into the buildings and see inner gardens, or stairs , other structures or even parks there:

As I mentioned earlier, they are masters in making tiles and installing them. If you notice, the decor on the flower pots in the lobby matche the sinks and floors in guest rooms:

WE walked around, saw the space in Candellaria square prepared for evening mass in front of the church:

And went directly to Cenote Zaci, which is right in town:

And, of course, we went to swim. It was incredible! To cool off after being sweaty and tired in the tropical winter of Yucatan, but that wasn’t all. The water was so soft and embracing, that it felt like bliss, or heaven or whatever one believes in. No wonder cenotes were sacred places for Maya people and still are. They all have an altar or a place of worship before immersing. This cenote has it straight above in a little niche.

The tree roots were hanging over our heads and some small stalactites.

Some street views while we walked too look for a restaurant to eat. Not so many choices to tell the truth:

Once of a sudden we found a big gate , entered a big establishment with stairs. with inner gardens, with terraces of tables a souvenir store and even a chapel:

So that evening we ate there, but I don’t remember the name of the restaurant…Just the address – on the corner of 44th and 41 streets:

Not many people eating…just a lot of masks on the walls, it was impressive. Though not very tasty.

Tomorrow – to the first pyramid!