ECOLOGICAL LIVING AT IT’S PRICELESS BEST

Twenty years ago my wife Jane and I designed and built a sanctuary home with an environmentally friendly canopy jungle garden.

The payback of living in harmony with nature is more than just economical.  Our electrical bill averages less than $100.00 pesos or $10.00 USD a month and we enjoy a salubriously lovely ambiance year round.

In winter solar heats our home and Jacuzzi water. In summer thermo siphon keeps our home cool and well water refreshes us several times a day in our Jacuzzi where we luxuriate with coffee and audio books enjoying our splendid jungle garden view.

We invite you to take a narrated tour of our eco- friendly-home and jungle garden by clicking this link;

 http://www.bicycleyucatan.com/ecolivingyucatan.html
 Another view with captioned photos;
http://www.bicycleyucatan.com/ecologyconcepthouse.html

Flowers of our garden, in Mérida, Yucatán

Visit naturalist Jim Conrad's nature web site: http://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan

IZAMAL, YUCATÁN, TO KANTUNIL WITH VISITS TO CUAUHTÉMOC, SUDZAL AND XANABA BY BIKE AND BUS 2011

One of the all time best one-day Yucatán get-away excursions we have found.
This is an easy and pleasurable trip if you take advantage of a tail-wind and cold front. We are down-wing sailors. (With a northerly wind start from Izamal. Contrarily with a southerly wind begin your trip from the other end at Kantunil.)
To maximize the pleasure of this adventure we recommend taking the Centro bus that departs at 6:45 AM from their terminal on Calle 65 two blocks east of the main market, adjacent to and east of the Casa de Pueblo.
There are faster ways to get to Izamal but this quiet back road route, though slow, is a pleasant look at Yucatán that most tourist miss.
Our bus route took us east first to Tixkokob, famous for hammock makers, while the early morning shoppers were still packing the quaint colonial streets.
Being a local bus we were steadily acquiring more and more passengers heading to the remote villages that lay ahead. As we passed our next town of Cacalchén the road narrowed perceptibly and each of the upcoming towns in turn grew smaller and smaller heading to Bokobá.  Tekantó, Tixcochó, Teya,  and Tepekán, were all typical quiet quaint Mayan villages where many of the homes were palapa thatched huts commingled with the remnants of colonial era haciendas.  At rural Tepekán we made our final turn and headed into Izamal on a road as straight as a die and we knew that this roadway had to be a remnant of an ancient Maya sacbe road built countless centuries before.

As tourist end destinations go Izamal is one of Yucatán’s finest and well worth a day or two of your time to explore and get to know.      READ MORE

©2011 John M. Grimsrud

Click on map to enlarge.

Faces of Carnival - Mérida, Yucatán - 2011

To view the rest of John's Carnival photos, click here.