William Lawson
And there was the cenote…
And there was the cenote…
William Lawson
Ni Chac - A Yucatan Bourdain Moment
Ni Chac - A Yucatan Bourdain Moment
William Lawson
Hacienda Chochoh, a Dog, and some Flowers

Doggies, hacienda and flowers

Hacienda Chochoh, a Dog, and some Flowers
Destinations
William Lawson
Wild Lunch at Codornejo - Akil, Yucatan

…wild lunch in Akil Yucatan…

Wild Lunch at Codornejo - Akil, Yucatan
William Lawson
Los Chocantes Caves - Revisited
Los Chocantes Caves - Revisited

maya

Calakmul, Campeche

One of the greatest Mayan ruins sites on the peninsula, Calakmul is also a jungle paradise where you can see many local animals; including - if you are very lucky - the elusive jaguar. If you are looking for a "lost city in the jungle" this is definitely it.

The trip I recently did was Merida - Campeche - Champoton (lunch by the sea) - Escarcega - Xpujil where we overnighted in a small but decent enough hotel. The next day was spent at Calakmul and we returned to Xpujil for the evening. On the third day, onwards to Chetumal where I left my guests to take their flight back to San Miguel de Allende via Mexico City. The drive back from Chetumal to Merida takes about 5 hours if not making any stops. 

For a future trip I would spend more time in the area, as there are many other ruins sites to visit. Perhaps 5 days total leaving from and returning to Merida, making stops here and there during the driving portions of the trip.

Magical Mystery Tour 3 - Sacred Mayan Moments - Xocen

Yesterday, another Magical Mystery Tour, but this one was less mysterious as I had a destination in mind that I was going to follow through with and I was joined by two lovely ladies: one was my lovely wife and the other our comadre (a comadre is the godmother of your child) both Yucatecans and both excited to see a little of the Yucatecan countryside. 

First stop, tamales. These tamales can be found in Libre Union and were just coming out of the ground, literally. Note in the photos, the large pib or pit where the baking takes place. The rocks were still scaldingly hot enough for someone to walk barefoot across 

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While making a mess of the car eating the tamal (tip: get the tomato salsa - it's the best and extra spicy) we turned off the Valladolid highway and headed towards Uayma via San Francisco El Grande and Tinum. That's the tajonal (yellow flowers) filled road in the photo above.

If you haven't been to Uayma and have only seen the church in photos, it should be on your Yucatan to-do list. Here is a taste to whet your appetite:

Finally, we arrived at Valladolid and the original plan of eating smoked pork tacos at Temozon was shelved due to time constraints as we just spent too much time at the beautiful Uayma church. So we made a quick stop at the Coqui Coqui boutique for some fragrance sampling and a little shopping before heading to our destination for the afternoon, Xocen.

Xocen, aka the center of the world as it is known there, is a small Mayan community with a feel that is hard to describe but not anything I have felt in the Yucatan before, and if you know me, you know I am a cynical old cuss and hard to impress. Xocen impressed me in its "Mayan-ness" and of course I am not the first one to write about it or wax poetic. It was the Yucatan Today magazine that brought it to my attention just a few days ago!

We were going to to witness the Sacred Mayan Moments presentation, which is an outdoor theater production that highlights important moments in Mayan village life, and after driving around the small village and asking, we were able to find the venue. I will not go on and on about how colorful, beautiful or moving this production is - since it could take paragraphs and I would lose my reputation as a hard-hearted Teutonic cynic and reveal my inner mushy self - and will leave you instead with some of the hundreds of photos I took. Admittedly, there are a LOT of photos.

If you are at all interested in or feel an affinity with, the Mayans, the Yucatan and this land, you MUST see this. I cannot recommend it highly enough. More info below the photos.

Yucatan Today article here. Video of the presentation here.

We will run a tour out to Xocen on Sundays so everyone can see this, or go on your own, but GO. Presentations are on Sundays only and the last presentation is March 8th 2015. 

Please let me know if you are interested and I will send further info as I will be putting something together today for each Sunday. Cost will depend on the number of participants so get your group of amigos together and spend a magical day in the heart of the Mayan culture.

Mayan ruins, flamingos AND cenotes in one day!

Often I am asked if I can arrange a tour to the three cenotes of Chunkanan/Cuzama, and while the cenotes are still there, the fantastic little tour is not. You can read about that original tour by clicking here. 

Short-sighted squabbling by villagers with no long-term vision of the benefits that this attraction was bringing to their communities, combined with a complete lack of any intervention by any competent authority has led to the demise of the tour, although it is still being advertised and promoted in many magazines, websites and brochures. At no point was the final user - the visitor - taken into account. He or she has to find out about this through websites like TripAdvisor or by actually arriving at the site only to find that some of the cenotes are having "maintenance" done and the tour is completely different from what is advertised. I could go on about this for hours, but don't want to bore you completely to death.

Luckily, there are hundred if not thousands of cenotes in the Yucatan, of every imaginable shape and size; open to the sky, hidden in caves with just a tree root to scamper down from the jungle surface into the refreshing water below.

Homun is in the heart of cenote country and right next to the the aforementioned villages of Chunkanan and Cuzama, and have their own cenote attractions - and this past weekend I took some visitors out to see a few of them.

Picking them up at the beach where they were staying, they mentioned they wanted to see flamingos so we took the Xcambo - Baca - Merida road and were able to see quite a few, in small clusters,  just beside the highway. Their coloring was pink with white still visible, indicating these were juvenile flamingos as their feathers don't turn completely pink until they become adults.

After stopping at the Xcambo ruins for photos and a quick walk through (free admission) and some flamingo photos, we continued on through Baca and visited its large church in the middle of town. Baca was an important city back in the day and while it is somewhat deteriorated since the henequen industry crashed, you can still see evidence of it's relative wealth in the colonial era and turn of the century buildings along the main street.

After Baca, a straight shot out to Homun, where we hired a local guide - a 12 year old who swore she was 16 named Barbie - who rode with us to all the cenotes and made the introductions at each one. It is not necessary to hire someone local to visit the cenotes if you know where they are, but why not spread the wealth and help folks in Homun out a little? For $200 pesos you have a chatty local guide who knows everything about everyone in the town (just ask) and you are helping an entire family. Barbie has been doing this since she was 8 years old, and while for us North Americans it is a bit disconcerting to think that you are sending your 8 year old daughter to ride around with strangers to caves, it seems to not raise an eyebrow here. I think if an evil-doer ever tried anything, the villagers would see to it that he had a particularly nasty end.

Santa Rosa Hacienda, Maxcanu, Granada and Oxkintok

With no one at home and a free afternoon, I decided to take an exploratory trip to the Oxkintok ruins which I had previously only caught a glimpse of on my way to some secret caves in the area with local guide Victor. 

However, on the road to Maxcanu where I would be turning off towards Oxkintok I saw signs for the Santa Rosa hacienda, one of the Starwood properties here in the Yucatan and decided that I would like to check it out instead and pehaps hit the ruins afterwards. 

What I found was an absolutely gorgeous property, not unusual for the Starwood hotels, along with really friendly and welcoming service and perfect afternoon light for some photographs. The lunch, served for the only visitor in the hacienda - yours truly - was delicious and served in a professional and courteous manner that the Temozon hacienda can only dream of.  

With a delicious lunch in me, I continued on to Oxkintok, via Maxcanu and a curious town called Granada, a name I had never heard of in the Yucatan so of course I had to check it out. Not much there, except another grand hacienda, unrestored and full of villagers watching a baseball game in what used to be the main corral of the building.  

The road from Santa Rosa to Maxcanu. Granada? Really?

The bright blue church (facade) in Granada, Yucatan.

A quick drive through Maxcanu where the Sunday afternoon drinking activity was fully in session with groups of drunken men on many street corners. Maxcanu deserves a more detailed photographic study, but the clouds were moving in and I had precious little time to get to the ruins before a) they closed and b) the rain started, so I quickly continued on to Oxkintok.

The drive to Oxkintok from Maxcanu takes about 10 minutes if you take the old highway that goes right through the ruins. It is a pot-holed, unpaved mess in most parts and will take out a tire if you are not careful, and those holes are hard to see with all the rain. I arrived at the ruins in time to spend about 20 minutes before they closed, and after 5 minutes, the skies opened up and a torrential downpour had me soaked to the skin in just a few seconds. The photos are not great but you can get an idea of what is there - which is probably bigger than some of the other, more popular sites around such as Chichen and Uxmal. The place is HUGE.