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

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.

A little bit of Merida, a little bit of Yaxcopoil

Susan and her husband were back in town with their parents and they wanted to see one of the Yucatan's many haciendas. The original idea was to go to Sotuta de Peon but since the House and Garden tour they were on finished too late to make that happen, I thought it better that we visit the Yaxcopoil hacienda. 

I caught up with them at the last house of the House and Garden tour, run by the pioneer Yucatan magazine, Yucatan Today.  It was a beautiful old home, and unlike many of the older homes in Merida, is still lived in by its' owner. Have a look:

With the tour behind us, we drove to the nearby hacienda Yaxcopoil, but of course, as always happens on one of our tours, there was a diversion. A detour, a small stop, a side road; these are the things that make the trip memorable and today was no exception. Everyone was hungry and wanted to eat before visiting the hacienda where Doña Nica most likely was no longer making panuchos under the tree on her makeshift griddle over a fire, and so a quick ride around the block in Uman yielded the La Margarita restaurant, on the main square, serving home cooked meals. The menu? Bistek con papas and espelon con puerco, a version of frijol con puerco (pork and beans) that is very special as the espelon is the tender, new version of the black bean and gives the dish a particularly delicious consistency.

Energy restored, we continued on to Yaxcopoil and enjoyed this immensely photogenic hacienda in the warm glow of afternoon light, before returning to Merida for a well deserved nap.

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Magical Mystery Tour #2

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This is the photographic chronicle of my second Magical Mystery Tour outing, as described in the last installment here.   

On this occasion, as I had some garage sale items to deliver to the beach, I thought it would be interesting to take a drive I never had made before - the road from Chuburná to Merida, via the back road through Sierra Papacal and the hacienda Suytunchen. 

It was a beautiful, sunny day and the tour started, as usual, with a detour to see the fishing boat "refuge" or harbor in Chuburná. A stop along the beach also provided a glimpse at the major work underway to reclaim the eroding sandiness there.

Once you leave the beach area, you are driving on a raised one and a half lane, pot-holed road that cuts across the mangroves. You will see egrets, ducks, cormorants a pelican or two and on this occasion I saw a couple of small groups of flamingos. Not being equipped with a super birders zoom lens, I could only take photos from the road and at a distance. 

At the end of what seems like an interminable road where the vegetation changes from marshy mangrove to scrubby underbrush, you suddenly find yourself on a wide, brand new stretch of highway, and a sign announcing the CICY. I always wondered where the CICY was, having heard they had another property. Well here it is, out in the middle of nowhere with a security guard and gate - to prevent intruding zombies from attacking, I suppose. 

This wide, well marked highway is like an oasis in a mirage, as it appears after the long drive along the pocked road from the beach and then disappears when you enter the town of Sierra Papacal. Please, someone explain to me the logic of building a perfect, modern highway - that is only 1 kilometer long and abutted by crappy roads to get there in the first place?

The balché tree is in bloom however, and growing right there by the mystery highway so I was able to get some good photos of the flowers.

Sierra Papacal was next, but there was nothing in the tiny village that caught my eye, even with a circus in town, except a sign for a turnoff to Suytunchen, which sounded interesting so I went there instead. It turns out Suytunchen is another hacienda, this one raised cattle up until recently, when it became a venue to be rented for social events. The daily rate is around $25,000 MXP for the location; you provide everything else. As you can see, it is small, but has some great photo op potential. The afternoon light warms up the bright colors painted over those melancholy, silent walls, that have watched the telenovela of life play out in front of them.

With the light fading fast, this was the last stop of the Magical Mystery Tour #2 - a slightly shorter version than the first, but nevertheless, a worthwhile trip.

From Suytunchen, a sign indicated the road to Merida and I was on the Progreso-Merida highway in minutes and home.

 Stay tuned for the next Magical Mystery Tour!

Magical Mystery Tour #1

One of my favorite things to do is simply get out of the house and drive somewhere new, to see whatever it is there is to see. Occasionally it will be someplace I have heard about, other times perhaps a highway I haven't driven before; the idea is to get to know all the wonderful things that there are here in the Yucatan to experience and take photos. Lots of photos. 

On this first of what I will call the Magical Mystery Tours (the destination is a mystery until I am on the road), I decided to go to the Mayan site of Oxkintok, a site I had only seen in passing and was interested in visiting more calmly and with a guide. I know Victor, who has taken me and guests to a nearby sacred cave, is the official guide on site and so I thought I would drop in and have him give me the royal tour of this site, which, to me at least, looks to be even larger than Chichen Itza or Uxmal, but is in a complete state of neglect. Not even a proper paved road graces the forlorn entrance to this magnificent site. 

However, and as luck would have it, there was a diversion. Signs on the Maxcanú highway to the area indicated that the Hacienda Santa Rosa, one of Roberto Hernandez' Starwood luxury hotels, was in the area, so the itinerary changed and the hacienda became the new destination. I have seen Temozon, San Jose and others but this one I had not yet visited. 

And so, my first stop that day after about an hours drive, was at the Santa Rosa Hacienda where I visited the town, had lunch at the hacienda restaurant and took many photos of the beautifully landscaped grounds and colorful buildings. 

After a delicious lunch of perfectly cooked spaghetti in a chaya pesto sauce, I decided it was time to make my way to Oxkintok before the site closed at 5 PM. It was getting a little late, but the afternoon light was so perfect and I was admiring the scenery along the side of the road when a road sign appeared that read "Granada". Granada? In the Yucatan? This I had to see. So I turned off the road and went to see the town, which was the tiniest of towns surrounding a dilapidated hacienda being used as a baseball diamond by what seemed an inordinate number of people given the size of the town. I snapped a quick shot of the pretty church and continues on to Maxcanú and then Oxkintok. 

Of course, once in Maxcanú, with a sunny foreground and a sinister black background threatening a rain storm, I had to take another photo or three. 

Finally, with 20 minutes to spare and under a light drizzle, I arrived at Oxkintok. By the time I got out of the car and had the caretakers permission to quickly spend 15 minutes on the site before they locked the gates for the day, a veritable downpour had begun and I was only able to snap a few photos before tucking the camera inside my shirt. I returned to my car, completely soaked and thankful that the rains in the Yucatan are never chilly.

If you would be interested in coming along on a Magical Mystery Tour, let me know. There is no cost for this other than the cost of a tank of gas which you and the other participants will share, but you won't know where you are going - just that you may be able to see something completely new and take some great photos - because these tours are about places I want to explore and you are invited to explore them with me. And if there are more than 3, you all pitch in for the van and the gas. That's it.

 The day may be a bust, or it may be a completely unique adventure. That's why it's called a Magical Mystery Tour. Stay tuned for tour number two.  

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.