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.