Quiet Yucatan

I have often been asked where to find quiet places in Yucatan.

I always find this question amusing: “You have got to be kidding. Have you ever been to Yucatan before?”

I love Yucatan, but after forty plus years here quiet is something that has nearly eluded us. The locals love their lifestyle, and if you have a good positive attitude you will too.

At times it seems to me that the Yucatecan mentality holds two things sacred above all else: smoke and noise. Their ultimate success in life is an ear-splitting motorcycle emitting a cloud of impenetrable smoke. Do they possess a genetic predisposition to racket and an aversion to silence?

Vehicles rattle, clatter, squeak, and incessantly honk their horns while mufflers seem to be a superfluous annoyance.

Petite vehicles marauding city streets sporting enormous megaphones powered by mammoth amplifiers relentlessly blast deafening clatter that will vibrate the fillings out of your teeth.

Ear-splitting fireworks are incessantly detonated for festivals or business promotions, day and night. Dogs desperately try to cover their ears and escape.

In most places in the world this sonic trash would be prohibited…not so here; the government happens to be the major delinquent.

If ultra high decibel racket drives you to distraction beware of the salon de fiestas, also known as party palaces. I swear these all night establishments are capable of shaking you out of bed even from several blocks away.  Many times they magically materialize in hotel lobbies around midnight.

You may locate an upscale restaurant to enjoy a special occasion in tranquility. The waiters are sure to turn on a giant screen TV even if you are the only clients. A Mariachi band is liable to trumpet their way through and an industrial strength blender will be revved up that cannot be screamed above. Coffee grinders are sure to pick up when noise generating is slack. 

One day I went to the neighborhood grocery “tienda” and had to scream in the owner’s ear. A large bank of mighty speakers left from a previous night’s fiesta was terrorizing the neighborhood. I asked if they had requested the volume to be turned down. The owner replied yes and was told he was too nervous and if he listened to the music he would like it. The next retort was “if you don’t like it, you don’t have to listen.”

Looking for tranquility we have stayed in a typical Mayan hut down a dirt road located far out in the jungle and with no electrical service. Before the first glimmer of dawn crowing rosters broke the relative silence. They were joined by squealing pigs, barking dogs, trucks honking and screaming with bullhorns selling bottled gas and coconuts. We didn’t know if we should laugh or scream.

If you can hear dogs barking it is considered quiet.

We travel with 33 db foam ear plugs. Dampen them, roll tightly, and press into your ears. Allow them to expand slowly and their effectiveness is increased.

We happen to live in a relatively quiet neighborhood with a canopy jungle ecologically friendly home where we can actually hear birds singing in our fruit filled trees and crickets chirping.

This is the real Yucatan. Arm yourself with a positive attitude, be happy and if you don’t like the noise, don’t listen!

 Visit our home.

Mayapan

Mayan temple ruins near Mérida - seldom visited - quiet Yucatan.

Mérida escape trip; Tekax and a jungle get-away to an undisclosed location

Our first stop on our get-away excursion trip was to visit friends in colonial Tekax, Yucatan.
Long time friends, Carmen and Carlos are being presented a 2013 edition of our Yucatán’s Magic: Mérida Side Trips travel book where they and Tekax are featured. Carmen is now the mayor of Tekax and her husband Carlos, a life-time resident is a hotel and restaurant owner.
Our books, Yucatán’s Magic: Mérida Side Trips and Yucatan for Travelers: Valladolid to Tulum are now in the top five of Mexico travel books. 

May and June are normally the hottest times of the year here in northwestern Yucatan with daily temperatures of a scorching 40ºC, more then 100ºF.
But, this year all bets on the weather are off.
Some say the fact that the Gulf Stream has slowed by 30% trapping the earth’s heat in the tropics is the reason we had no winter or spring.
One night last winter, our coldest, it got down to 14ºC or 58ºF and every day it was over 20ºC or 70ºF.
Our gain was surely someone else’s loss. Northern latitudes like Europe saw a cool winter and spring.
Mérida in northwestern Yucatan has been generally tinder dry with no rain from November through May…not this year.
Rain driven by tropical waves normally begin the first week of June and coincide with hurricane season…not this year.
In second week of May Yucatan magically was transformed, as leafy green vegetation ablaze with flowers seemingly appeared over night with unseasonable rain.
Leaving Mérida in May and June when daily temperatures reach 40ºC or 104ºF makes me feel better, but, for Jane it is imperative because of heat-stress and her
asthma.
 
Cool, quiet country roads and fresh air made our Mérida get-away perfect.

As I write this back here in Mérida this lovely July day the fickle weather is treating us right.  We are enjoying low early morning temperatures of 21ºC or 71ºF and our daily highs have been in the low 30ºC range  punctuated by refreshing afternoon thunder showers. If it stayed like this we would never leave.
Summertime in Mérida is positively delightful in our self-ventilating eco-house. We haven’t needed to use a fan in our eco-house since our return because the thermal-siphon air flow keeps us comfortable without using any electric.
We invite y’all to tour it by clicking HERE.

KINDLE; I don’t like my Kindle…I love it!!!

The only thing that I lament is the fact is that it and its associated technology weren’t around 60 years ago when I was growing up.

It has me reading four books a week.

Kindle has become the best friend of all my gadgets.

It has lightened my globetrotting load and opened the door to unlimited reading material worldwide with wireless and 3G connectivity.

User friendly features like search capability, integral dictionary, thousands of free downloads, simple information copy and storage, immediate font and image size change are but a few of Kindle’s effortless to employ qualities.

My wife and I have become a happy and satisfied two Kindle family.

Yucatan’s Magic – Mérida Side Trips: Treasures of Mayab and Yucatan for Travelers Sidetrips: Valladolid to Tulum are available in digital editions: Kindle, NOOK, and from the iBookstore.

Izamal, Yucatan

As tourist end destinations go, Izamal is one of Yucatan’s finest examples of colonial era architecture and well worth your time to explore and get to know.
Izamal, known as the yellow city because most of its buildings are painted yellow, is a lovely colonial town that contains gigantic Mayan temples throughout. Climb to the top of the tallest; the view is spectacular.  
Explore the magnificent 1500s church. Tour guides are available at the church and monastery entrance.

 
Take a carriage ride or tricycle taxi city tour, visit the municipal market, and sample the local foods that range from fine dining to a cocina económica where you can get stuffed on local specialties at bargain prices. Souvenir shops abound and real authentic Mexican folk art is here.
Izamal was put on the modern map by a visit from Pope John Paul II in August of 1993.  Bishop Fray Diego de Landa put it on the ancient map in the 1500s.

 

Statue of Bishop Diego de Landa in Izamal.








 



Izamal has a rich Mayan and conquistador history. Huge temple pyramids are still prominently part of the town. A 16th century Franciscan monastery is situated atop the base of one of them. The statue in the photo above of Bishop Diego de Landa faces the monastery he directed to be built. In July 1562, Friar Diego de Landa held an auto de fe Inquisitional ceremony in Maní, burning a number of Maya books and 5000 idols, saying that they were "works of the devil."
The colossal amount of stone harvested from the ancient Mayan temples that stood here to build this city center is simply mind boggling considering that several enormous pyramids still remain standing to this day. We recommend Izamal as a must-see place. Bring your camera, read-up ahead of time, and by all means take a guided carriage ride.
Take your time and spend two or three unhurried days here. It is just too good to hurry through.
Bus and taxi connections on to Mérida and Valladolid are frequent. The bus terminal is located in the downtown area.
Accommodations are numerous. Check Lonely Planet or Moon guide or ask locally.
John L. Stephens in his book Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, gives this reflection on his 1840 visit to Izamal:
The eye turned involuntarily to immense mounds rising grandly above the tops of the houses, from which the whole city had been built, without seeming to diminish their colossal proportions, proclaiming the power of those who reared them, and destined, apparently, to stand, when the feebler structures of their more civilized conquerors shall have crumbled into dust.
Read more about this one-of-a-kind colonial city with its huge Mayan temples in the books, Yucatán’s Magic, Mérida Side Trips and Yucatan for Travelers - Side Trips: Valladolid to  Tulum.

Yucatan for Travelers - Side Trips: Valladolid to Tulum

Yucatan for Travelers - Side Trips: Valladolid to Tulum, is an idea book designed to make every minute of your tropical experience interesting, rewarding and full of unique pleasures. Visit the unpublicized gems of Mayan temple towns and quaint colonial villages. Travel back roads leading to the best beaches of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.
For the armchair traveler and people that have been to Yucatan before and think that they have seen and done everything, Yucatan for Travelers - Side Trips: Valladolid to Tulum will open the door to special places not presented in tours or guided excursions.

Photos from the front cover of Yucatan for Travelers - Side Trips:  Valladolid to Tulum.
Top left: El Cuyo sunrise over the Gulf of Mexico. Top right: Mayan beauty of Yucatan dressed festively. Bottom left: Mysterious church of Tihosuco wedding with a Dutch/Mexican connection.  Bottom right: Mexico’s best Caribbean beach at Tulum. 

Photos from the back cover:
Top left: Uayma church near Valladolid.  Top right: carnival colors. Middle left: Rio Lagartos – bird watching country.  Middle right: John and Jane at a Caribbean cenote. Bottom left: John with the smiling faces along the Caste War route.  Bottom right: pelicans at San Felipe lagoon in northern Yucatan.  
Yucatan for Travelers flows like a novel and is a smooth reading book that will not bog you down with verbal detritus. It is a fun and enlightening traveling companion.
Yucatan for Travelers - Side Trips: Valladolid to Tulum, published 2013, is the second book in a series. Yucatan’s Magic - Mérida Side Trips, the first in this series, has had worldwide distribution, five star ratings, and is available in paperback and digital editions.

Tulum Photos

Photos of our recent Tulum trip + our Mexican daughter, Grisel and her 3 sweet kids.

40 Days in Tulum

We just completed 40 days in Tulum.
We left Mérida to escape the record high temperatures and smoky air contamination, and found what we were looking for.
What we like about Tulum; fresh clean air, world class swimming beaches, food that is an eating extravaganza, friendly easy going people, fun things to do, an interesting variety of side trips and big city public transportation in a small town. As my wife Jane says, "Tulum is a lovely place to visit, but a hard place to leave". We are not going home until we feel like it and we don’t feel like it!
Note; A breath of fresh air; The dry draught stricken season on the Yucatán peninsula that lasts from the end of November until the first of June is broken by the arrival of the hurricane time of year. Welcome rain replenishes water reserves, extinguishes agricultural fires, cools and cleans the air and germinates dormant seeds sending Yucatán into a glorious explosion of vibrant flowering greenery…the balance of nature is restored. 

PLAYA Del CARMEN, A SIDE TRIP FROM TULUM

Twenty-five years ago the sleepy little fishing village of Playa del Carmen had but one claim to fame. It was the ferry landing for Cozumel, 19 km. away in the Caribbean.
Today Playa has become a significant tourist destination with all varieties of accommodations ranging from five-star all inclusive to budget. A first time visitor may easily think that they are on Spain’s Costa del Sol.

By bus or colectivo taxi from Tulum, it is a forty-five minute ride on a four-lane highway with overpasses and access roads. No matter how you arrive you will arrive in the city center where all the action is.
The arch is the gateway to the Caribbean Sea where the ferry departs every hour.
Playa’s waterfront is lined with people friendly parks and tourist packed walking streets.

Warm crystal clear tropical waters and fresh clean trade winds are found here year-round. 

Seagrape trees offer heavenly shade along the beachfront parks.

Fresh locally produced papaya, mango and watermelon are sliced into juicy treats by Mayan ladies beautifully clothed in their colorfully adorned hand stitched huipil dresses.

Even off-season tourists crowd the downtown walking streets everywhere. Hawkers eagerly attempt to sell dive trips, jungle safaris, archeological excursions, Panama hats, jewelry, and more tourist impulse items than you could possibly stuff in your luggage.
Restaurants offer up all classes of food from fine dining to the neighborhood cocina economica where you can get stuffed on authentic Mexican food at bargain prices. 

Knickknacks are priced to sell and are a bargain compared to Cancun.
When you have had enough of this slice of paradise leaving town in any direction is easy. Colectivo taxis are great for short halls but the ADO bus terminal located downtown has frequent departures to all parts of Mexico and will even take you directly to the Cancun International Airport.

Playa is great but if you would like a hint of how beautiful it was twenty-five years ago, you will have to go to Tulum.

 Playa del Carmen 1961, left, Pablo Bush Romero, Luis González