The Yucatan Peninsula
Aside from a 5 minute
visit to Tijuana (about 4 minutes too long, if you ask me), I’d never been to
Mexico before, so MFA good buddy Melinda Armistead and I decided to join the Smithsonian Journeys
“Value-Priced” (and the price was, indeed, a great value) Yucatan Peninsula
Highlights tour. Using centrally located Merida as a base, we spent a week
exploring much of what the Yucatan has to offer. The tour group was a large one
– 45 people -- but Tour Manager Barry did a fabulous job of keeping everyone on
time and on the move. Guide Carlos was both charming and knowledgeable (not to
mention opinionated), our bus large and comfortable, and driver Eduardo a true
master.
Needless to say, the
Mayan ruins were the highlight of the tour. Many of the sites we visited are
large and sprawling -- teeming with pyramids, observatories, ball courts,
palaces, and temples. Often, the placement of the buildings was chosen with an
eye to the heavens, and the intricate decorative and architectural schemes
selected for their astronomical or calendrical significance. The decorations
were carved onto the walls of the buildings and were most likely originally
brightly painted. Geometric and animal motifs (particularly snakes and jaguars)
abound, as do scenes in relief of warriors, priests, ball games, and
sacrifices.
Our very first stop
was Ek Balam, a relatively recently excavated site, with a pyramid you can still
climb. About ¾ of the way up is the entrance to a tomb chamber you can study up
close – surrounded by carved hybrid beasts, the door to the chamber is through
the gaping mouth of a gigantic jaguar.
Uxmal is a huge site,
with several elaborately decorated complexes such as the Nunnery, the Governors
Palace, and the Dovecote. I managed to get separated from the group while there,
so explored a lot on my own and ended up doing some unanticipated research for
my book, A Phobic’s Guide to World Travel. Overcoming my fear of heights, I
crept up the narrow stairways that led to the small platform at the base of the
Governor’s Palace. After a careful examination of the façade of the palace, I
was more than ready to return to terra firma when I noticed a small crowd
gathered on the only way down – watching a kid play with the humongous tarantula
he had found.
Nearby Kabah is a much
smaller site. There, the façade of The Temple of the Masks is entirely covered
with faces of the god Chaak. On the lowest level, his down-turned noses form
steps into chambers in the temple. Kabah is also known for the grand arch that
marks the Kabah end of an 18 km long raised causeway (sacbe) that connected it
to Uxmal.
Perhaps the best known
of the Yucatan Mayan cities is Chichen Itza, and its fame is well deserved.
Everything about it is enormous. There are numerous temples and pyramids, one
with large columned halls at the base and a chacmool (sacrificial altar in the
shape of a reclining human with bent knees) on top. Around a huge central
courtyard, one platform is completely covered with reliefs of human skulls,
another with eagles and jaguars consuming what appear to be human hearts. The
football field sized ball court has detailed reliefs showing the uniformed
ballplayers and the aftermath of the game – opinion is divided as to whether it
is the loser or the winner shown being beheaded. El Caracol, an unusual round
building in the older part of the site, was probably an observatory. A short
sacbe leads out of the city to what is called The Well of Sacrifice, a cenote
(sinkhole) surrounded by legends fueled by the several sets of human bones found
in it.
We spent one day in
Celestun, a wild-life sanctuary that is home to one of the world’s three
flamingo populations. These birds, so ungainly on land, are incredibly graceful
in flight. En masse, they form a vivid pink blanket on the lagoon. Another
excursion was to the Hacienda Sotuta Peon, a working sisal plantation. We
watched the whole process of turning agave into rope, both by hand and by the
machinery available in the early 1900’s. On the grounds is large cenote,
accessible by a stairway that leads past large stalactites down to an inviting
turquoise pool.
I was totally charmed
by the various colonial cities we visited – Uman, Valladolid (where our hotel
was the exquisite Quinta
Regia) and especially Izamal, officially designated a “magical town” by the
government of Mexico. The buildings in Izamal are all painted a vibrant golden
yellow ochre, which showed beautifully against the brilliant blue of the sky the
day we were there. This combination was particularly striking in the arched
colonnade of the convent courtyard. The church is home to Our Lady of Izamal, as
well as to the statue’s wardrobe on view in a small museum. Melinda and I took a
horse-drawn calesa for a tour of the town, which has the mounded ruins of
several Mayan pyramids as well as its fair share of the thatched huts ubiquitous
throughout the Yucatan that still serve as home to many of the Mayans.
Colorful Merida, known
for its music and excellent restaurants, was a perfect headquarters for the
tour. Our hotel, El
Castellano, was large, comfortable and well-located. Every night there is a
free musical performance in one square or another, ranging from traditional
Yucatan dances to big band.
The oldest cathedral in
North America is here, with a magnificent altarscreen and, in a side chapel, a
full-size replica of the Last Supper. Every wall in the public spaces of The
Governor’s Palace is decorated with large powerful paintings depicting the
history of the Yucatan by talented native son Fernando Castro Pacheco. The
Anthropological Museum, housed in an incongruous neo-Rococo mansion, displays
the most important Mayan artifacts from the area – everything from pottery to
ballgame hoops and jaguar thrones. There is also the MACAY, a museum of modern
art featuring local artists and a rotating outdoor sculpture exhibit.
We were fortunate
enough to be in the Yucatan for several days of Carnivale, so we watched a
variety of parades reminiscent of Mardi Gras in New Orleans and dance
performances. Even without Carnivale, the Yucatan has a festive air. The Mayan
women dress in immaculate white dresses with colorfully embroidered yokes,
sleeves and hems while the men actually wear the Panama hats that so many
vendors try to sell to tourists.
Variants of most of
what we consider Mexican food (starring tortillas in one form or another) were
available, but we were unfamiliar with much of the local cuisine. Sour orange
juice marinades, lots of lime juice, pumpkin seed sauces, and dishes wrapped in
banana leaves distinguish Yucatan cooking. Combinations of spices are as
distinctive to each dish as they are in Indian cooking. I made it my mission to
try every one of the dishes listed on the hand-out sheet of local specialties –
most were delicious. And then there’s the chocolate…
Mimi Santini-Ritt 2009