It’s a brutal 37 degrees centigrade in Santa Lucía park, so little wonder that the shoe shine man and his neighbour are taking a well earned siesta.
We could do with an afternoon nap ourselves and are wishing we had paid more attention to the location of our small hotel when we booked it, as the twenty block walk to and from the central plaza is exhausting and taking a taxi, while not the high risk activity it is in some other Mexican cities (or indeed in our old hometown of Buenos Aires, where shakedowns were a common occurrence), is ill advised according to our hosts.
For a city that’s so full of colour, Mérida’s nickname is an odd one, especially these days when so many of its grand former sparkling white limestone facaded buildings are now painted in a riot of mint greens, yellows, reds, pinks and oranges. Our hotel with its soaring twenty foot ceilings, deep verandahs, serene inner courtyard and tropical gardens is no exception. So perhaps the rumoured darker origins of this moniker, that the Spanish conquistadors who built the walled city of Mérida in the mid 16th century on and out of the ruins of the ancient Mayan town of Ti'ho sought to ban the Yucatán’s indigenous people from living here, are true after all.
After centuries under threat, it’s heartening to see that Mayan culture is making something of a resurgence peninsular wide and it’s the old colonial fortunes from the industrialisation of sisal from agave (henequen) for a pre-plastics world hungry for rope and twine that are crumbling into the dust. Mérida is surrounded by the dilapidated former plantation estates which cultivated and processed this ‘green gold’ and while a handful are eking out second lives as luxury hotels, such as the Hacienda Temozón where we ate lunch in a grand but completely deserted dining room, most are picturesquely mouldering away or clinging on to cottage industry levels of production employing the rusting relics of yesteryear.
Back in the city we explore the mansion-lined Paseo de Montejo, Mérida’s grandest boulevard, built in the boom years of the 1890s as the French neo-classical townhouses of the Yucatán’s Agave autocrats. These proto-palaces have weathered the passage of time better than their country cousins and today have been reborn as banks, corporate headquarters, museums and fine dining establishments, but we are far more interested in exploring the sprawling Mercado Lucas De Galvéz, which first opened as a tiny tin-roofed hut in 1884 and today is a vast treasure trove of Yucátecan produce, street food and agua fresca (fruit juice) stalls.
Easter is Espelón season and these black-eyed pea like beans are a key ingredient in the masa (dough) of fat, tasty tamales ‘La Reina’. We also graze on huayas, limes exclusive to the Yucatán region that are eaten with a sprinkling of chili powder, marquesitas (taco-like) sweet crepes and try a refreshing Tepache (pineapple beer). Emerging from the bustle we find yet more crowds in their Easter finery buzzing around the cathedral, which is simply bursting at the seams with worshippers, so beat a sweaty twenty block retreat.
Easter week coincides with the spring equinox this year but we wisely pass on a pre-dawn start to be there for the fabled sunrise at the Temple of the Seven Dolls, so designed and constructed that it shines precisely through the windows at the front and rear of the temple structure, nor for that matter did we join Sky TV and more massed crowds for the sunset at the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at Chichén Itzá where the corner of the pyramid casts a shadow in the shape of a plumed serpent. Instead we have the atmospheric ruins at Uxmal to ourselves, where from atop the Great Pyramid the mounds of scores of unexcavated structures peek out above the jungle foliage for as far as the eye can see.
Venturing further afield the next day we eat superb tacos (including or daughter’s favourite ‘lengua’ (beef tongue) at a ‘loncheria’ on Valladolid’s main square before visiting the partially excavated Mayan city of Ek’Balam, which at its height in the 8th century had a population of 20,000 people, second only to Chichen Itzá’s in this region. Once again the site is deserted, so we are able to climb the steps of the main pyramid ‘El Trono’, which houses the almost intact tomb of its most notable ruler Ukit Kan Leʼk Tokʼ, which we enter through a distinctly eerie monster mouth shaped stone doorway. After this, Chichen Itzá’s ever-present crowds are strangely comforting, and instead of intimidating, its own monster mouth seems almost to be grinning like one of Maurice Sendak’s creatures in ‘Where the wild things are’.
Seeking relief from the oppressive heat (last night it was still 30 degrees when we had a late dinner on one of the balconies of the lovely ‘La Belle Epoque’ restaurant near the main square), we decide it is high time to explore some of the Yucatán’s legendary cool and dark places, both wet and dry- its ‘grutas’ (caves) and ‘cenotes’ (underground rivers, lakes and sinkholes). The entire peninsular is riddled with these geological wonders and there are said to be over 10,000 cenotes, many of which are clustered around the massive 110 mile rim of the Chicxulub crater, formed by the meteorite which caused the mass extinction of non-avian dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. The Maya have always relied on cenotes for their water supplies, but a few of them also have sacred significance as portals to the afterlife. There’s a ‘lost world’ element to these places, literally as they have their own ecosystems of plants and creatures that have adapted to life in semi or complete darkness, but also in their liminality, as they do indeed feel uncannily like the porous threshold to some other world. They also allow visitors to experience Mayan culture at first hand and we enjoyed a traditional Mayan pit barbecued Cochinita Pibil at a restaurant (really a lean to with a few ramshackle tables and chairs next to the pit itself), close to the Grutas de Calcehtok which are said to be the peninsular’s most extensive cave system and remain in large part unexplored.
Cochinita Pibil (Pork baked in Banana leaves): Serves Six to Eight
In the Mayan language, a ‘pibe’ is a stone-lined underground pit where this dish is traditionally smoked, but you can make the same dish at home in a baking tin.
4 lbs of Pork butt/shoulder, cut into 2-inch pieces
3ozs Achiote paste
Half cup lime juice
1 cup freshly squeezed orange Juice
2 tsp salt
2 large banana leaves
2 tbsp olive oil
Achiote paste:
1 tbsp Annato seeds
Half tsp ground cumin
Quarter tsp dried oregano
8 black peppercorns
Half tsp ground allspice
1 whole clove
Quarter tsp ground chili
Half tsp salt
2 cloves garlic
3 tbsp sour orange juice or 2 tsp orange juice and 1tsp white vinegar
To make the Achiote paste, grind the first 8 ingredients together in a coffee grinder. Smash the garlic into a paste in a mortar and pestle; add the spice mixture and orange juice, forming a paste. Store in a glass jar with a lid in the fridge until ready to use.
Place the pork in a dish with the Achiote paste that has been dissolved in the juices, sprinkle with the salt. Combine all the ingredients together; making sure that the pork is well coated. Cover and leave to marinate for at least 3 hours, or preferably overnight. Pre-heat an oven to 325 F/160 C . Leave the cover on and bake for 4 hours, test for doneness by using two forks to pull the meat apart, ( it should do so easily).
Garnish with red onions, freshly squeezed lime juice and a pinch of salt and serve in soft tortillas.
As for swimming in cenotes, our daughter loved Dzitnap with its stalactites, bats, the black goggle-eyed fish that gently nibbled her toes and the single shaft of sunlight that dramatically illuminated the otherwise stygian depths of its sinkhole, but Cuzama where we were loaded on rusty, dilapidated rail buggies formerly used to transport henequen, which were pulled by tragically emaciated horses, was a fly-blown horror.
Heading back to Mérida, as we have most afternoons through the depths of the Mayan countryside, we pass through fields of uncut agave happily harvested these days for tequila and mezcal, small towns and villages each with its own vibrant produce market and place of worship full of people with ready smiles, who still may not have much but have reclaimed their cultural patrimony.
It’s a joyous sign amidst the memento mori of their former masters.
Such range to your travels, always; and history, culture, people, and a sense of the passage of time.
What a visual feast . Happy Easter to you in advance . Btw Bangalore is 35* C today