Santa Elena, Yucatan - John L. Stephens

In the early 1840s the explorer John L. Stephens used Santa Elena, then known as Nohcacab, as a base from which he and his companions explored the Puuc region. In his book, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Stephens recorded accounts of the people of Nohcacab and their culture, and his associate Frederick Catherwood made drawings of the village and the region.

In 1840 John L. Stephens said of  Nohcacab’s location:

“The whole of this region is retired and comparatively unknown. The village is without the line of all the present main roads; it does not lie on the way to any place of general resort, and is not worth stopping at on its own account.”

Stephens visit to Nohcacab was before the age of steam power, the prolonged Caste War, the Mexican Revolutionary War, and the two World Wars. Yucatan was like an island, isolated and only accessible by sail from the outside world.

An excerpt from  Incidents in Travel in Yucatan by John L. Stephens:

I was an hour crossing the sierra, [from Uxmal] and on the other side my first view of the great plain took in the church of Nohcacab, standing like a colossus in the wilderness, the only token to indicate the presence of man…"

View of the Santa Elena church, 2013 

 

At the front of the church, a long flight of stairs leads to the entrance, a stairway no doubt used since ancient times when the Maya worshiped their own gods at a temple that stood here.

Santa Elena has kept this small corner of town virtually unchanged over all these years. Stephens and Catherwood resided in the building on the east side of the church during their visit. Their apartment is now a museum that is worth a visit.  The museum contains some mummified human remains, which some people speculate may be children of German colonists who settled here.

Returning from Uxmal to Santa Elena on our bicycles, a view of the distant church of Santa Elena perched above the central plaza came into view just as John L. Stephens described in Incidents of Travel in Yucatan John L. Stephens described his first view of the church of Nocacab:

“ I was an hour crossing the sierra, and on the other side my first view of the great plain took in the church of Nohcacab (Santa Elena), standing like a colossus in the wilderness, the only token to indicate the presence of man. Descending the plain, I saw nothing but trees, until, when close upon the village, the great church again rose before me, towering above the houses, and the only object visible.

We found Stephen’s description of this place amazingly accurate, and the only noticeable change since 1840 when it was written was the fact that now there is a new paved and smooth road from Uxmal directly to Santa Elena.”

1840 engraving by Frederick Catherwood of the north side of the church. 

This is the  apartment where the Stephens’ group took up residence.

Stephens wrote about the church and apartment:

 “The casa real is the public building in every village… to contain apartments for travelers. In the village of Nohcacab, however, the arrival of strangers was so rare an occurrence that no apartment was assigned…given to us was the principal room of the, [church] building, used for the great occasions of the village...

The walls were whitewashed, and at one end was an eagle holding in his beak a coiled serpent, tearing it also with his claws. Under this were some indescribable figures, and a sword, gun, and cannon, altogether warlike emblems for the peaceful village which had never heard the sound of hostile trumpet.

On the wall hung …a "notice to the public" in Spanish and the Maya language, that his Excellency the Governor of the State had allowed to this village the establishment of a school that, being endowed by the public funds, it should not cost a medio real to any one.

It was addressed to vecinos, or white people, indigenos, or Indians, and other classes, meaning Mestizoes.”

This is a present day view of the Santa Elena – Nohcacab - church and the apartment of John L. Stephens’s exploration group in 1840.
 It now contains a unique museum of mummified past residents, and other historical curiosities.

Stephens gave this description of the apartment where he stayed:

“Death was all around us. Anciently this country was so healthy that Torquemada says, "Men die of pure old age, for there are none of those infirmities that exist in other lands; and if there are slight infirmities, the heat destroys them, and so there is no need of a physician there;" but the times are much better for physicians now, and Doctor Cabot, if he had been able to attend to it, might have entered into an extensive gratuitous practice. Adjoining the front of the church, and connecting with the convent, was a great charnel-house, along the wall of which was a row of skulls. At the top of a pillar forming the abutment of the wall of the staircase was a large vase piled full, and the cross was surmounted with them. Within the enclosure was a promiscuous assemblage of skulls and bones several feet deep. Along the wall, hanging by cords, were the bones and skulls of individuals in boxes and baskets, or tied up in cloths, with names written upon them, and, as at Ticul, there were the fragments of dresses, while some of the skulls had still adhering to them the long black hair of women.”

Today Nohcacab, Santa Elena, is still off the main roads although it now has frequent bus and colectivo taxi service. It is a perfect place to headquarter for excursions into the Puuc region with the Mayan ruins of Uxmal, one of the most beautiful of all Mayan archaeological sites, close at hand.

To find out why we love this interesting place away from tour buses and trinket shops read the book:

Yucatán’s Magic: Mérida Side Trips: Treasures of Mayab, available in paperback and digital editions worldwide.

Today Santa Elena has good accommodations and a diversity of eating establishments. Yucatan is blessed with abundant quiet paved roads connecting the area’s Mayan temples, stately haciendas, and colonial villages…what are you waiting for?

Peto to Mérida, Yucatan, Aboard One of the World’s Last Narrow Gauge Railroads

When we first visited the Yucatan in the early 1980s passenger trains were still one of the most important forms of transportation. The narrow gauge railroad joined the outlying towns and villages of Yucatan to Mérida. Other passenger trains, though not narrow gauge, joined Mérida with Campeche and Mexico City.

Lilo Linke visited Mérida in 1947 and described her adventures in her book Magic Yucatan.  Lilo made the trip on the narrow gauge rail from Mérida to Peto.  Lilo says of her visit to Peto:

The little train rattled along between henequen plantations and fields of Indian corn. Soon we were covered by the dust that blew in through the open windows. That jungles could be anywhere near was difficult to imagine. Wherever we stopped, fruit was offered for sale. In the afternoon we came to the end of the line, a village called Peto. A single long street led from the station to the market-square and the church.

We were forced to stay at a hotel. In fact we had the choice between two, and Señor Mendoza selected the one run by a toothless Chinese. It was rapidly getting dark—as always in the tropics about six o'clock—but I could make out in the fading light that the sheets on the tumbledown bed were extremely soiled.

I remembered how once in Turkey in similar circumstances the hotel-keeper had remarked that only four other people had so far used them. But the Chinaman raised no objection when I asked him to change them. Perhaps the lack of teeth made arguing difficult for him. He whipped off the offending sheets, and to my horror I saw three fat bugs scuttling for shelter. Unperturbed, he shuffled out of the room, to return with a single sheet that was as indistinguishable from the first as one Chinaman from another. With a deadpan face he smoothed it over the mattress.

I rushed off to Señor Mendoza's room. He looked at me over the rim of his spectacles when I explained my trouble. "I warned you,” he said. "Now listen: no luxury, all right; no comfort, all right; but no bugs either. I just can't stand them." He uttered a gentle sigh and scratched his head. "The other hotel is worse," he said. "It couldn't be," I replied firmly. "I told him to give you the best room in the house. You even got a wash-basin, he told me. Still, I'll buy you a hammock. What else do you need?"

Henequen hammocks are a Yucatan specialty, one of the few products manufactured locally. We got one for next to nothing in a shop piled with goods in which another Chinese sat behind a hurricane lamp. We also bought a straw hat, disinfectant soap, a spoon, and some toilet paper. The roll had been waiting for a customer a long time.”

This photo from the 1980s is of our departure from Mérida on the narrow gauge train.

Jane and I made the very same trip as Lilo Linke, and we, coincidentally, stayed in the very same hotel as author Lilo Linke…not for everybody!

Over the years, whenever we had out of town visitors we always made sure that they got the opportunity to experience the train excursion that was a mirror image of the previous century.

On our first trip to Peto, the conductor came to Jane and I and said; “I have worked on this train for over 20 years, and you two are the first foreigners that have ever ridden it to the end of the line.”

Experience Peto, Yucatan,  today and read  more of our adventures to the places that tourists miss most in our book

Yucatán’s Magic, Mérida Side Trips; Treasures of Mayab, available in paper and digital editions worldwide.