Michael Powell's Blog, page 91

The Cenote Siete Bocas

Underwater Pictures Were Taking With This Camera

The road leading inland from Puerto Morelos has got jut one thing on its mind: cenotes. Sign after hand-painted sign, exhorting tourists to visit Cenote Las Mojarras! Cenote Boca del Puma! Cenote Verde Lucero! Without prior information, it’d be impossible to know where to stop, so we made sure to get a recommendation. Everyone we talked to seem to agree that Cenote Siete Bocas, or the Seven-Mouth Cenote, is unforgettable.

The cenote is found at t...

The Hats of Bécal

The monument which reigns supreme in the center of Bécal’s main plaza is strange, but leaves little doubt as to the town’s claim to fame. Found about an hour south of Mérida, Bécal is best known for its traditional hats made of jipi.

We made a day trip to Bécal in order to see how the hats are made. The jipi is a type of palm tree from Guatemala. Here in the Yucatán, the weather is much drier and hotter than in the Guatemalan highlands, leaving the jipi fibers too brittle to weave into hats. T...

The Forgotten Ruins of Oxkintok

Okay, so the ancient Maya site of Oxkintok is not “forgotten” in any true sense of the word. It appears on maps and in guidebooks, and there are people waiting at the entrance to collect your fee. But once you’re inside, wandering about ruins half-reclaimed by the jungle, so distant from the next town, Oxkintok feels forgotten. And you get to feel like the intrepid adventurer who discovered it.

We’ve learned that, very often, the place you’re visiting and the experiencing of visiting it are co...

The Plazas of Mérida

Like most great cities, downtown Mérida is not necessarily a cohesive, homogeneous whole, but a collection of disparate neighborhoods. Though they’re beginning to blend together and resemble each other, each still has its own personality and history. And each is centered around a plaza, where neighbors come to meet up, eat, chat or just hang out. These plazas are where the city really lives; here are five of our favorites.

Plaza de Santa Lucia

Just a couple blocks north of the Plaza Grande, San...

The Legend of the Makech

Jürgen and I aren’t the types to spend much time thinking about jewelry. Neither of us owns a single piece, not a ring nor a bracelet, and I very rarely notice the jewelry worn by other people. But when the piece in question is a living beetle crawling around the chest of the person wearing it, it’s a little hard to ignore.

The Makech is one of the strangest fashion items we’ve ever seen. These are large beetles, found only in the Yucatán peninsula, with broad shells that can be decorated with...

The Ruins of Aké

On the way home to Mérida from Izamal, we swung by the small village and archaeological site of Aké. Requiring a long drive off the main highway, it’s a place which feels almost forgotten by the march of time.

The ruins are not the most impressive that we’ve seen during our time in the Yucatán, but they’re found so far off the beaten path, that visiting them is quite fun. The site was completely empty, as I would venture is usually the case, and we had the run of the place. We climbed to the t...

Izamal’s Pre- and Post-Columbian Wonders

Izamal is a small city and you don’t need a lot of time to familiarize yourself with it, but what you will need are sturdy legs. After climbing to the top of the ancient Maya pyramid Kinich Kakmó, and then up the stairs to the Convent of San Antonio de Padua, we had to find a bench and take a break.

Kinich Kakmó is just one of many pyramids which still define the horizon of Izamal, but it’s by far the biggest. This enormous pile of rocks and grass just keeps going up, up, up until you can see...

Izamal – The Yellow City

One of the most important cities in the Yucatán long before the arrival of the Spanish, Izamal is still among its most beautiful. Called the Yellow City for the monochrome color scheme of its buildings, the City of Hills for the ancient pyramids which give form to the land around it, and the City of Three Cultures for its harmonic balance of pre-Colombian, Colonial and Modern influence, Izamal ranks as perhaps the essential day trip from Mérida.

Izamal was one of the first cities to be establi...

The Pink Water and White Salt of Las Coloradas

Las Coloradas, found at the end of a bumpy road about 30 kilometers east of Río Lagartos, has certainly picked an appropriate name for itself. Color is far and away the defining characteristic of this tiny community on the northern Gulf Coast.

Huge piles of salt greet visitors on their way into Las Coloradas, looking for all the world like massive snowbanks… it takes awhile to remember that you’re in Southern Mexico. Ever since the time of the Maya, this area of the Gulf Coast has been known f...

A Creepy Day in Río Lagartos

A small town on the northern tip of the Yucatán peninsula, Río Lagartos is most well-known for the abundant bird life of its lagoon, a protected natural reserve named (confusingly) Ría Lagartos. We spent a day here, though unpleasant weather spoiled any bird-watching plans we might have had. (Which was fine, since we didn’t have any).

After arriving in the evening, we immediately noticed something off in Río Lagartos: an almost complete lack of people. This is a town of around 2000 people, but...