A Travel into the Past: Yucatan!
If you are venturing out on vacation, Yucatan is one of the better places to explore. Sand, sun, history, and culture all await you. Since there are so many different and interesting things to view while you are there, it is best to prepare ahead and know what you really need to check out. That way you’ll be able to stick to a little bit of a timetable and you won’t feel like you have really passed over on something whenever you get back home.
Recently–titillated by reports of glamorous little hotels opening in restored Yucatecan haciendas. Not only you would seek out the hidden Yucatán, but you would do it in style. You’ll find forts, churches, bastions, and all kinds of ancient buildings to observe. Mérida is an easy shot: a 90-minute hop from Miami. With its low-rise colonial buildings and wrought-iron balconies, the city looks a bit like New Orleans. The resemblance is no accident, since the fiercely independent Yucatecans historically had closer ties with France than with Mexico City. The French influence touches everything from architecture to food–I find some of the best beignets this side of Paris in Mérida’s bakeries
But the city’s most impressive monuments are, expectedly, Spanish. The 1549 Montejo mansion, for example, has an extraordinary sculpted façade of sword-wielding conquistadors surrounded by bursts of children’s heads; now a bank, the mansion is considered one of the New World’s most important works in the flamboyant 16th-century style known as Plateresque. On the other hand, Mérida’s main church, the Catedral de San Ildefonso, with its eggshell-white interior of simple columns and coffered ceilings, is so austere that it could have been designed by Christopher Wren.
Mérida, I quickly discover, is a delightfully uncomplicated, safe city, with palmy plazas, secret courtyards, vibrant markets. I walk everywhere, except when I hop one of the many horse-drawn carriages–used by locals and tourists alike–to ride along the Paseo de Montejo through the city’s grandest neighborhood. Shaded by tamarind and tropical oak trees and divided by a landscaped boulevard, the Paseo is an architectural sampler of Beaux-Arts palaces, mosquelike mansions, and exotic châteaux. Some of the buildings appear to be abandoned and are in various states of disrepair; others have been restored as headquarters for banks and businesses.
The highlight is the beautiful Neoclassical Palacio Cantón, now home to the Regional Museum of Anthropology, a fine place for appreciating the richness and sophistication of Mayan culture. I marvel at delicate jade figurines, whimsical pottery, and pastel frescoes–all muted blues and pale peaches–that remind me of those of Minoan Greece. I wind up my afternoon with a pleasant meal of chicken tamales, thick french fries, and cold Montejo beer, just a block from the museum on the terrace of the Hotel Montejo Palace.
A short walk are Aké’s Mayan ruins, standing on an acropolis above a beautifully manicured lawn. Some of the structures may date as far back as 700 b.c. Rising from the main building are 48 four-foot-thick columns made of stacked stone slabs. As I climb the steep staircase, it strikes me that the Maya, a famously short people, seemed to design stairs for giants. From the top, you can see pyramids and other hulking mounds that have yet to be excavated. Above me, a glorious blue Yucatecan sky is filled with swirly cotton clouds that appear close enough to touch, and I only regret that I didn’t bring a picnic.
Lunch in the garden of any restaurant, in the nearby town of Izamal, turns out to be the next best thing. I graze on taco chips with bean and pumpkin-seed dip, spicy local chorizo, and excellent poc-chuc, a Yucatecan specialty of sliced pork marinated in sour orange juice and served with pickled onions and cilantro-tomato salsa. But the real treat is the town of Izamal itself. One of the most beautiful of Mexico’s smaller colonial cities, besides cobbled streets lined by yellow houses with elegant arches and doorways, Izamal has a spectacular 16th-century Franciscan convent, built on the base of an enormous Mayan pyramid. (The pyramid was razed “in the name of Spain and the True Church” by the notorious Friar Diego de Landa–the overzealous Franciscan who did his best to wipe out the history of the Maya by burning virtually all of their codexes.
You can’t pass up visiting Uxmal, a sprawling Mayan ceremonial center that flourished in the fifth and sixth centuries. One of Mexico’s “big three” restored Mayan sites, Uxmal gets fewer tourists than Chichén Itzá and Tulum because of its relatively remote location, a good 250 miles from the crowds of Cancún.
A triumph of architecture and landscaping, Uxmal has the look of a well-planned city, with each of its major building complexes set on a different level. Great green lawns and clusters of trees separate these neighborhoods, easier to appreciate is the massive Governor’s Palace. Six hundred feet long and crowned with an enormous frieze that looks like some surreal mansard roof, it is considered one of the best examples of Mayan architecture anywhere. Uxmal is only one of many Mayan sites along the Puuc Route. Fifteen miles farther, the fat-columned, flat-roofed temple at Kabah reminds me of the Minoan palace at Knossos, on Crete.
It doesn’t matter what sorts of stuff you like to do, you can do them in one of many wonderful cities of Yucatan.
Can I reference part of this on my website if I post a link back to this site?
Can I reference part of this on my site if I include a backlink to this site?
I have wanted to post something like this on my blog and this has given me an idea. Thanks.
When I open up your RSS feed it seems to be a whole lot of trash, is the issue on my end?
When are you gonna post something new?
TY for the great post! I would never have found this otherwise!
I have been meaning to post something like this on my website and this gave me an idea. Thanks.
Straight to the point and well written, thanks much for the post
Do you care if I post some of this on my website if I post a backlink to this site?
I’m having a tiny problem I cannot get my reader to pickup your feed, I’m using google reader fyi.
I’m having a weird issue I can’t get my reader to pickup your rss feed, I’m using google reader fyi.
Tyvm for the helpful info! I wouldn’t have discovered this by myself!
Thank you for the useful information! I wouldn’t have gotten this by myself!
TY for blogging this, it was very informative and helped very much
Hey there. I would like to let you know that if I view this page on my ipod touch the page looks very weird. It’s very skewed. I know this is a simple fix. Other than that great article! I’ve bookmarked this.
Just what I was after…. thanks.
Enjoyed looking through this, very good stuff, appreciate it.
It is truely nice post, but I do not see everything completely clear, especially for someone not involved in that topic. Anyway very interesting to me.
This is a lesson of something what is really useful of reading.
I’m very impressed with your article and couldn’t agree with your more….However having suffered from INFO I have empathy with any one coming online today.
I like this post, enjoyed this one thanks for posting .
Never knew this, regards for letting me know.
Could anybody confirm that?
Thanks a lot for any especially obvious and practical post. I am absolutely a violator of a lot of these rules. I regularly notice myself personally conflicted when composing a weblog article because I see me personally composing greater than citizens choose to learn, but I believe that I should do the subject matter justice by completely covering it. I feel that by following some of these principles I stop up cutting out imperative facets towards the discussion. I guess you could have to notice a stability.
I was reading something else about this on another site. Interesting. Your perspective on it is diametric contradicted to what I read before.
Good Stuff,I look forward to looking at more of your posts.
Other sites don’t hold a “candle” to this one
Great information and i look forward to reading more
Amazing post. I have unwrapped for myself precisely how flexible WP is, as a hosting political program for your web site . you literally have everything you ask to release a website at your fingertips, through WordPress. thanks.
I think it is a truely smart point of view. I most often meet people who rather say what they suppose others want to hear. Good and well written! I will come back to your site for sure!
Nice and very interesting post. Your opinion is more or less the same as main. Thanks!
Thanks very much for your interesting text. I have been looking for such information for a very long time. Not all your content is completely clear to me, even though it is definitely interesting and worth reading.
I wonder if this is all possible, see for yourself.
Good an very informative post. I will come back to your blog regullary. One thing: I do not exactly know what do you mean in the second paragraph. Could you please exmplain your opinion?
Found your blog in the Bing directory, very nice job, thanks. Even though tiny and complex details can be gathered, screen printing is preferably suitable for bold and graphic designs.
Good an very informative post. I will come back to your blog regullary. One thing: I do not exactly know what do you mean in the second paragraph. Could you please exmplain your opinion?
I was on Twitter looking when I found a link to this blog, happy I stopped by – Cheers
Do not know how high the sky is until one climbs up the tops of plenties , and do not know how thick the ground is until one comes to the deep river. There is just one succeeder — to be able to expend your sprightliness in your own way.
I was on Twitter when I found a link to this blog, glad I stopped by!!!
woh I enjoy your posts , bookmarked ! .
Thanks for writing this article. Though it doesn’t seem to me the way I actually think about it.
I was on Twitter, when I found a link to this blog, glad I stopped by!!!
Some cool stuff you got there
I can’t comment on it no more, other guys here got all my lines :p
What a great resource!
this was a very entertaining read. i enjoyed it very much!
Found your blog in the Bing. Very nice job, thanks.
very interesting information! .
I really like the style of the website. I had a peek at your source code, hope you don’t mind, to check what theme you are using. Is it it a no cost theme or do I have to purchase it?
Interesting and very real true. Bookmarked.
Do not know how high the sky is until one climbs up the tops of deals , and do not know how thick the solid ground is until one comes to the deep river. There is simply one success — to be able to spend your liveliness in your ain way.
I was on Twitter when I found a link to this blog, happy I stopped by – Cheers