Under the Fan in the Yucatan: In closing . . .

Well, seeing as how we’ve been back in “the true north strong and free” for ten days already I guess it’s time to wrap up this harangue.

Merida.  How do I sum up such a rich experience in a few words?  We both highly recommend it as a destination for as little as a week (although you will be hard pressed to see even the basics in seven days) to as long as a retirement home especially for singles and people who want lots to do in a safe peaceful environment.  My first impression was correct – Merida is like “Cuba with stuff”.  It boasts the best of both Mexico and Cuba.  The people are proud but friendly, music and the arts are everywhere and supported by everyone including the government.  The culture is distinct as the architecture which provides hours of fascination and/or photo taking.  The health care and education are excellent.  And there is very little crime.

Must sees/dos:

1.      El Centro – the historic centre of the city

2.      Plaza Grande and the buildings that are adjacent – the centre of the centre

3.      Paseo de Montejo  and the museums and shops sprinkled amongst the many banks that line the avenue

4.      Monumento à la Patria at the north end of the downtown section of Montejo

5.      Haceinda Sotuta de Peon

6.      Hacienda Yaxcopoil

7.      Uxmal, Mayan ruins

8.      Chaya Maya, best place for Yucatecan food

9.      Manglares de Dzinitún ecotour at Celestun when the flamingos are around

10.   The Cuzama  three cenote tour if you like to swim

11.   The free concerts offered in various outdoor locales downtown

12.   The myriad art galleries, museums, shops

Shopping requires its own paragraph.  Souvenir shopping can be very good in Merida.  While the talavera pottery, blankets, leather, etc. many of us know and love from the northwestern Mexico is in short supply here, the Yucatan has its own appealing goods especially clothing.  The guayaberra shirts and the huipil dresses and blouses are beautiful and very affordable as are embroidered households goods.  As well anything that can be made from henequen fibre is, like baskets, coasters, placemats, etc. and at very reasonable cost.  Surprisingly, the best place to buy high quality Yucatan arts and crafts at reasonable prices is at the shops in the museums and boutique hotels like Casa San Angel.  Pottery (as opposed to talavera ceramics) and high quality crafts from all parts of Mexico are also available in Merida.

As far as everyday shopping, trips to Walmart were required for only a few items – gin for Neil’s daily G&T (rum and vodka are available everywhere), butter (from Denmark or New Zealand.  We don’t like Mexican butter.  Must be what they feed the cattle.  Corn maybe.), some baked goods (we northerners take our wonderful high-quality wheat so for granted.)  Electronics are not readily available or inexpensive Mexico.

If you are pressed for time, less than adventurous or just plain lazy like us, the best way to cover a lot of ground painlessly is to hire a driver and guide.  We highly recommend Lawson’s Original Yucatan Excursions.  No worries about renting a car, insurance, getting lost, parking, etc. and a bilingual ex-pat Canadian guide in addition to the bilingual driver if you choose.  Not cheap but worth every penny.

The best way to find out what is happening in Merida is to check out the” Yucatan Today” and “Yucatan Living” websites.  The former also publishes a monthly magazine that is available free of charge and is a MUST for every English-speaking household in the city.

While Merida is a wonderful vacation destination it is not without its drawbacks.  Mostly little things but it’s the little things that drive us nuts in daily living.  This is Mexico and sadly littering is a Mexican way of life.  Remember back forty, fifty years ago when the government first started educating us to not be  “litter bugs”?  Mexico skipped all that.  They had bigger problems then but now litter is one of the bigger problems, especially with regard to tourism, but they are completely oblivious to it.  They have absolutely no idea that this keeps people from coming back to their otherwise beautiful country.

The heat!  Okay, a week or two of plus 35 temperatures with high humidity can be a novelty.  Two months was too long for this well-upholstered northerner.  One gets tired of constantly being soaking wet with perspiration from the slightest exertion.  This February was quite a bit warmer than usual for the time of year there but I sure wouldn’t want to experience Merida in May which is the usual hottest month.

Yucatecan cuisine, like Cuban, is not one of the world’s great eating experiences.  They have a few specialties which are okay to try and yummy to Yucatecans but which I tired of very quickly.  If I NEVER see a corn tortilla again it will be too soon.  Fortunately, their cuisine is quite distinct from the western/northern Mexican and Texmex food we all know and love so I may be able to look sideways at a flour tortilla again someday.  The cuisine is quite bland but always served with a tiny dish of habanera pepper sauce which is ungodly hot.  Very tricky.  On the plus side, Neil and I both lost six pounds while we were there which we attribute to all the walking and sweating albeit other than fruit and the occasional sorbet there was not much in the way of desserts.

So in addition to the litter, the heat and the food, what were the worst aspects of the trip to Merida?

1.       Carnaval – preceding Ash Wednesday may be an interesting spectacle in some Caribbean locales but in Merida it is a week of snarled traffic, confusion and mega litter.  The centre of the city is taken over by grandstands to accommodate viewing of parade that is essential the same every single day and dozens of beer, food and trinket tents.  No one I talked to likes Carnaval and it would be best moved outside the city for those who do.
2.       Collectivos are vans that transport up to twelve people very inexpensively to and from the city as well as in outlying areas. They are one way to get around if you do not have a car but I tired of the long waits, the noise and the crowding very quickly.  Plus I sensed some resentment on the part of the locals having to share their only mode of transport with us gringos who have other options.
3.       La Pigua is a highly rated seafood restaurant in both Merida and Campeche.  We dined at the latter and were very disappointed.  The service was poor, the decor/atmosphere was nonexistent and the food was poor, i.e. excessively salty and/or overcooked.  And expensive!
4.       Also in Campeche the Miramar restaurant across the street from our hotel was just plain horrible.  Over priced skimpy portions of poor food and worse service.
5.       Campeche overall was a bit of a disappointment.  It was the first seaport in the Yucatan but had such a bad time with pirates that the powers that were scouted inland and founded Merida.  It is now a World Heritage site which has meant considerable restoration of its beautiful colonial buildings.  (Merida could greatly benefit from that designation as well.)  The vestiges of the huge wall that once fortified the city are also interesting but there is really not much else to see and I found it very disappointing to see how much land between the old wall and the ocean has been “reclaimed” from the sea.  It completely detracts from imagining the old city as it once was despite the fancy new malacon (seawalk).  The best thing about Campeche other than the buildings and wall is a small Gelateria.  Best gelato I have ever had!
6.       The motorboat tours to see the flamingos at Celestun.  The water was too shallow for the boats to get close enough this year but that didn’t prevent them from trying.  Too noisey and inefficient for good bird viewing.  Highly recommend the Manglares de Dzinitún ecotour instead where you are poled in by canoe.
7.       Port city of Progreso about twenty miles north of Merida and the nearby fishing villages boast beautiful white sand beaches on the Gulf of Mexico.  During the winter months they are very quiet and accommodation is very affordable however you really need a vehicle to see the area with any degree of convenience.  We used collectivos but a car would have made the experience more enjoyable.
8.    The noise.  Urban Mexico is noisy and the high ceilings and concrete walled houses with no insulation situated right on the street do nothing to abate the problem.

As you can see the pros far outweigh the cons.  Merida and the whole Yucatan is a wonderful destination for people who want to experience a distinct culture in a safe and affordable environment.  

Under the Fan in the Yucatan: Seeing the sights

In addition to the colonial beauty of Merida, the two major attractions of Yucatan state are the Mayan ruins and the haciendas.

The Mayans were the indigenous people of this whole area of Mesoamerica from the Yucatan south to Guatemala for over three thousand years.  Mayan ruins and artifacts are everywhere like arrowheads, hammers and buffalo rubbing stones in Saskatchewan.  Because the civilization was very long lived, it was not static and evolved over time.  Not all the famous ruined cities were at their peak at the same time.  e.g. Uxmal declined before Chitchen Itza rose in prominence and Mayapan was the last great city state before the Spanish happened along to make the Mayan's lives Hell.

Ruins are pretty subjective even amongst scholars.  While Chitzen Itza is probably the most well-known it is overrun with tourists and in a dry open inhospitable area as I recall.  Tulum is beautiful set against the Caribbean as it is but otherwise is not terribly significant I understand.  [Tangent: Tulum was the only major Mayan city built near the ocean.  Why?  All over the world, people have been building cities on the sea of millenia.  Did they have some premonition that their conquerors would arrive by sea?  Fat lot of good it did them being inland anyway.  Interesting factoid:  The Mayan could hear and smell the Spanish conquistadores coming long before they saw them.  Tangent 2:  Body odor is not an issue with these folks which is especially fortuitous in a packed little collectivo with no a/c with this heat.  Which is probably more than can be said for the visiting gringos.]

I found Uxmal to be a more aesthetically appealing place than CI.  It is spread over a large area and much more green and "jungley" than Chitzen Itza. Some of the vistas are amazing.  The buildings have a very attractive quilt-like design.  Apparently Uxmal is more Mayan than Chitzen Itza which is Mayan-Toltec I believe.  There are numerous other ruins large and small in the Merida area but Uxmal and a visit to the Anthropology Museum were enough for us.  The museum is housed in the sumptuous Canton Palace on Paseo de Montejo with the top floor devoted to displays related to the building of the house and the Canton Family. 

If there is anything more confusing than Mexican history it is Mayan mythology/religion.  Try to keep all those gods straight at your peril.  Except Chaac, the rain god, who seems to be everybody's favorite.

The Haciendas are more recent history and were much more relevant to me and what I see what one sees around them here in Merida.  After the stinky Spanish finally subjected the poor Mayans (it took them two generations), they divided up the Yucatan into vast parcels of land amongst the conquistadores, cronies, flunkies and whoever else was deemed a worthy son of Spain.  The haciendas were originally operated as feudal style cattle ranches.  However, in the mid-nineteenth century those ingrate Mayans started acting up and revolting against their patrons (prounounced pay TRRROOOON). This was known at the Caste Wars which went on for years and never came to any real conclusion.  Things were getting too hot for the patrons in the south and west so they moved more into the interior of the Yucatan which was not quite as hospitable for farming. 

This is where the henequen agave comes in or as the writer for Lonely Planet calls it "one spikey sonofabitch of a plant".  The Mayan have used the henequen fibre for millenia to make twine, hammocks, baskets, sandals, you name it.  It took the Europeans THREE HUNDRED YEARS (duh!) to twig to the idea that maybe they could use it to make rope for the gazillion ships that plied the world's waterways.  The haciendas started planting the millions of acres of henequen agave that was soon known as "Green Gold".  The plants needed little water or fertilizer and the same Mayan slave labor planted, harvested and processed this new crop.

The countryside outside of Merida is dotted with the remnants of thousands of haciendas, a few restored as private homes or hotels but most in ruin. Beautiful arched gates, usually Moorish style, and smoke stacks for the long-silent steam engines are the sign of a former hacienda.  Often they are still surrounded by a small town where descendants of the hacienda workers still live.

We visited the only “working” hacienda in the Yucatan which is now called Sotuta de Peon.  It was one of several haciendas owned by the wealthy Peon family.  (Note ironic name – peon means peasant in Spanish).  The hacienda was purchased from the Peons in 1985 by a Mexican-born German who spent over twenty years (and a lot of cash) restoring the hacienda to working condition (albeit very limited).  The house, which was always just the country home of the patron who would have had his main residence in the city, is beautifully restored and furnished as well.  The tour includes demonstrations in the steps of cultivating, harvesting and processing henequen fibre.  Visitors travel out to the fields through acres of henequen agave and visit a Mayan workers “home” hosted by a delightful octogenarian former field worker.  The tour also includes a swim in a lovely cenote.  ("See No tay".  Underground pool) and lunch.

The other must-see hacienda in the area is Hacienda Yaxcopoil also south of Merida. It was a huge holding of 22,000 acres in its day.  The grounds are still beautiful and the house is still furnished in decayed splendor and the machine buildings are still accessible. This hacienda has without a doubt the most gorgeous “machine shop” I have ever seen with stone carvings of the four seasons above the doorways. Here also former hacienda employees are now tour guides of the ruins. Large haciendas like Yaxcopoil had their own store, hospital and school and some of these are still in use by villagers there.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, the glory days of "Green Gold" in the Yucatan ended with the land reforms of the 1930s when the large haciendas were divided up with no one being allowed to own more than 300 acres of land (a far cry from Yaxcopoil's once 22,000) and the  invention of nylon during the second world war.  Today Brazil, Tanzania and Kenya supply the market for henequen which is enjoying a bit of a come back because of the demand for natural fibres.  The Yucatan's role is now only as the historical setting for interesting industry that made a few people fabulously wealthy.

Under the Fan in the Yucatan: Life's a Beach!

We came upon the opportunity via our casa owner to spend a week at the beach.  Merida is about 35 kilometres from the north coast of the Yucatan on the Gulf of Mexico and the port city of Progreso which boasts the world's longest pier at 6.5 kilometres.  The tremendously long pier is necessitating by the shallow water in that area.  Progreso took over as the Yucatan's main port from Sisal in the mid-twentieth century.  Note:  our binder twine in days of yore was called "sisal" because the shipments were stamped with the name of the port.  The actual stuff is called henequen. (Take it easy the "h" of course.)

Mucho Canadians winter and live in Progreso and on the coast east and west of there.  Hard to believe -- a place other than Canada (and Cuba) where Canadians outnumber the Americans!  We are staying in the small fishing village of Chuburna west of Progreso.  Merida is a big city, Progreso is a small city, then you go through Chelem which is a town and on to Chuburana which is a village.

The place seems pretty much abandoned this time of year.  Many open air restaurants and tiny confectionaries plus a couple of cold beer joints.  There is also the requisite church and town plaza.  The side streets are the same lovely white sand as the beach which is cool.  The combination of megatonnes of limestone and crushed shells has produced beautiful sand.  In addition to the lack of services is a surfeit of dogs.  The number of dogs roaming the streets in Mexico is inversely proportional to the size of the town.  No donkeys or roosters though but LOTS of fish.

It is a wonderful coastline for shelling (collecting shells is a noun in this part of the world) and watching brown pelicans fish. Unlike white pelicans which apparently swim in a circle and then close in on a school of fish, brown pelicans skim over the water alone or in small groups and when they spy a fish they rise up a bit and then plummet straight down beak first like a missile to spear the fish.  They look for all the world like “lawn darts” (from days of yore before they were deemed , like so many activities and equipment, far too dangerous).  Watching the pelicans fish provides hours of entertainment as does observing the “boys in the hood”, aka perros, aka dogs frolic in the surf.

When we first arrived in Chuburna you could shoot a cannon off in any direction and not do much harm but the week of Carnaval has begun.  Carnaval is the days preceding Ash Wednesday when good Catholics let their hair down before the somber season of Lent which precedes Easter.  Apparently children are out of school this week and many other workers get at least some days off.  The city of Merida precedes Ash Wednesday with a week of daily/nightly parades.  The main streets turn into cantinas and the locals do their best to stay up all night and make as much noise as possible.  Business and property owners fence their gardens to prevent trampling and littering.  Here in Chuburna it all started Saturday with locals coming out to “the cabin”, many participating in an open air church service in the plaza in the evening and then playing music all night.  Earplugs are a must.  Sunday morning the families are frolicking and/or sobering up in the surf.  Apparently this culminates on Tuesday night or Mardi Gras with one last whoop up and then it’s off to mass Wednesday morning for the annual smear of ashes on the forehead and Lent begins.

While many expat Canadians and Americans own here or rent this time of year, many of the little concrete casas on the beach are owned by families from Merida and environs who use them over the major holidays and the months of summer when the kids are out of school and the temperatures in Merida soar.  It can be as much as ten degrees warmer in Merida than here on the coast and the ocean breeze can be so refreshing even if leaving one as salty as a potato chip.

The many little open air restaurants in town serve fish and nothing but fish so help me God.  Very good, fresh fish.  When you sit down and order a beer you are served an array of appetizer including at least two types of “ceviche” or chopped pickled fish with onions, tomatoes and cilantro.  This is accompanied by yesterday’s tortillas, deep fried which we call nachos, usually a small refried beans and the requisite bowl of homemade salsa.  There is always the “ of the day” which is so fresh it’s usually gasping it’s last in the kitchen and they are proud to take you back and give your choice of victims.  The favored method of preparation is to gut the fish and then dump it head, fins and all into a barrel of hot fat (a Mexican deep fryer).  The result is liberally sprinkled with coarse salt and is delicious.  I had a particularly succulent grouper one day and Neil’s was a name that didn’t stick. Many dishes are served with pickled purple onions. Papas de la Francesa (french fries) are definitely more expensive than the fish per kilo.

Shrimp cocktail is a fish bowl beverage glass or old-fashioned sundae glass full of shrimp in a bland tomato sauce.  Next time I'm bringing horseradish!  Here we have the shrimp, home we have the saunce -- need to get the two together.  And then there is the crab!  La Terracitta in Chelem serves a big plate of pre-cracked crab for only 160 pesos (about $12) that is delicious!  One doesn't even need to feel guilty because it is served with lime wedges only.

Sand, solitude, fish and beer -- the Yucatan beach!

Under the Fan in the Yucatan: "Kulcher" -- Gab and God (Language and Religion)

At one time all Mexicans aspired to be Spanish but not anymore.  Today's Yucatecans seem to take a great deal of pride in their Mayan heritage.  Many Yucatecan schools are now bilingual teaching both Mayan and Spanish.  We attended a special performance in Plaza Grande to mark the end of the annual month long celebration of Mayan culture and the Spanish MC's remarks were translated into Mayan and vice versa.  The world's fascination with all things Mayan has probably reinforced this ethnic pride.  I don't think they resent their dark complexions, however they still seem to prefer the more Spanish Caucasian features in their advertising and I'm sure the men in particular would like to be taller but the tiny Mayan stature must be a dominant gene.

[Which leads me to my popular tangent -- just how tall were the ancient Maya?  Mighty short if you go by many of their descendants.  In the sixteenth century when Spain first started riding roughshod over the Yucatecan residents, endeavoring to save their immortal souls as well as enslave and rob them, a Bishop Landa did his level best to eliminate everything pertaining to the Mayan belief system including burning all their written records, etc.  However, after he had managed to get rid of most everything he could find he had a change of heart, received a blow to the head or something and decided to record everything he knew about Mayan society and beliefs.  His account, An Account of the Things of Yucatan,  is available in most Yucatecan bookstores in a various languages.  Almost everything we know about the ancient Maya has been learned from his record.  Which leads me to my point -- he describes the Mayan men as "tall" and well built.  Was this a mistranslation?  Have they shrunk in the past five hundred years?  Were the Spanish even shorter?  Most perplexing!  Maybe the Bishop was burning more than feathers and artifacts.]

Back to language.  While modern Yucatecans appear to be very proud of their Mayan roots there are two things from Spain that they obviously treasure -- the Spanish language and the Roman Catholic faith. Merida, unlike the resort cities on the coasts, is a very unilingual town and the further one gets from downtown or "El Centro" the more unilingual it becomes.  When we venture up north to some of the big shopping malls, the clerks look obviously surprised when you speak to them in English.  You might as well try Martian.  Gringos don't surprise them but non-Spanish speaking ones do.  It is common to be at a place like the MELL (Merida English Language Library) talking to some lady from a place like Flin Flon and then she'll turn away and lay into perfect sounding Spanish to someone else.  If you live here, you speak Spanish. Period.  Locals love to teach ignorant gringos how to say a few words correctly.  We have been tutored by taxi drivers, store clerks, waiters, and even our "mene mene" man.

[Tangent two:  Many downtown blocks in Merida have an elderly man who earns a few pesos by helping you park your car ("mene mene" means "come on, come on" when someone is backing up), washing your car, helping you with your groceries, keeping your parking space if you're running out to the store for a minute and whatever else he can do for you.  They usually don't live on "their block" but it is definitely their territory and they put in full time hours.  Most carry a red rag and sit on a cinder block, pail or whatever they can find.   I have heard it said that this and the elderly ladies begging downtown tells you quite a bit about the Mexican old age pension plan.  Our "mene mene" is named Manuel.  (Many people never learn their man's name.) He is quite a character and loves to exchange pleasantries with us and teach us a little Spanish.]

Spanish seems to lend itself to oratory and Yucatecans seem to have turned it in to an art form.  Merida is famous for its weekly outdoor concerts, e.g. every Saturday night is a concert in our neighbourhood of Santa Ana, Thursday night is Santa Lucia and so on.  Every concert, public event, you name it has a Master of Ceremonies and can these guys talk!!!  They go on and on and on!  Rolling their "r's" and repeating the same words over and over.  Maybe it's worse because we don't know what he's saying 90 percent of the time but we have concluded that the language lends itself to verbosity like none other!  Filibustering is a way of life!  Give a Yucatecan a microphone at your peril!

The great long aristocratic Spanish names should have been a clue.  The lovely city of Santa Fe, New Mexico is actually "La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís".  And any Spanish aristocrat worth his salt always had at least five or six names.  Good ol' Hernan Cortez was born "Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro" and even a poor peasant like Pancho Villa was named "José Doroteo Arango Arámbula" by his parents.  Meridanos use all three plus names on their business cards.  Perhpas modern Merida is also somewhat like Cape Breton, Nova Scotia where there are so many people with the same two names you need to use a third or fourth just to clarify matters, e.g. John Angus MacIsaac and John Donald MacIsaac, Jorje Navarro Molina and Jorje Elonzo Molina?  Maybe but I think it is more a Spanish pride of ancestry thing which (unlike most of Europe) is often inclusive of the maternal heritage as well.

I purchased a Penguin Pocket Spanish Dictionary two years ago when we were in Santa Fe and it is proving to be very inadequate.  Seems only every second word we need isn't in there partly because what we really seem to want most of the time is food words and cooking terms.  I should have bought the Complete Eaters English-Spanish Dictionary or something.  We have had many a discussion over just what something is on the menu although often the waiters are very helpful.  Neil resorts quickly to pantomime and has acted out many a phrase to the bewilderment and occasional amusement of Yucatecan store employees and aforementioned wait staff.

Every neighbourhood or barrio has its old, beautiful and LARGE Catholic church adjacent the neighbourhood square or plaza.  Often these churches are within sight of each other!  Maybe ten blocks apart max.  And the sound of the various bells, especially on a Sunday, is quite magical.  Every single taxi, bus and collectivo driver of the dozens we have encountered (with the exception of two) has had a rosary hanging from his review mirror.  Many homes have small shrines by the front door and many Meridanos even cross themselves when they walk past a church.  All large homes and haciendas have a private chapel and I found it quite enchanting and amusing to see the statue of St. Geronimo in the tiny chapel of the Hacienda Yaxcopoil. He was sporting a tiny Panama Hat just like any other dapper Yucatecan.  (Our guide was not amused that I was amused.)

Pope John Paul II (or Juan Paulo Dos) visited the Yucatan in 1993.  The magnificent Merida Catedral de San Ildefonso proudly displays very large photos of him in prayer there and a nearby town, Izamal, where he conducted a special mass for indigenous people, still trades on that fame twenty years later.  Yucatecans (and perhaps all Mexicans?) like to have a mass for all special occasions including the Quinceanera or 15th birthday/debut parties for girls that are such a big part of the culture here.  Like all cathedrals there are various saint's shrines around the perimeter.  The Virgin of Guadalupe is a popular spot as is a special chapel where a crucifix that has survived two fires (Christ of the Blisters) is displayed.   I have also found it intriguing to watch the tiny Chiapan women street vendors passing through the cathedral wipe their faces on the robes of a black velvet clad Virgin at the entance.  She obviously has special resonance with them.

These folks are no religous light-weights and it is evident in their high regard for family and community, their generosity to the less fortunate and their hospitality.  They walk the talk.

While over 80 percent of Yucatecans are Roman Catholics there is also apparently a good number of Seventh Day Adventists and evangelical Protestants.  There is also a sprinkling of Mennonites that have migrated to Mexico from the north. (According to Wikipedia there are 90,0000 Mennonites in Mexico.)  They can often be spotted in WalMart (and on Sunday????).  There dress is more conservative and extreme than the Manitoba variety and their language sounds truly bizarre - a mixture of German and Spanish I presume.  Am leben de Mexico!

Under the Fan in the Yucatan: Shopping

Under the fan in the Yucatan: Fashion

Older Yucatecans dress quite conservatively.  The women usually wear the traditional huipil (wee-peel) which is a loose cotton dress with short or cap sleeveless with profuse colorful embroidery around the top and bottom.  They are traditionally white but are now available in black and some other colors which look better on gringas.  Outdoors, huipils are usually worn with a narrow shawl/scarf which seems to have minimal function.  When an older Senora gets dressed up she adds a half-slip with a wide lace edge which peeks out from under the huipil by as much as a foot.  Dressier huipils have two wide rows of embroidery around the bottom and the top often has a large sailor-style collar covered with embroidery.  These dresses can be quite heavy because the embroidery adds a lot of weight.

Mexican men always wear pants (with the possible exception of going to the beach) and shirts (usually short-sleeved).  A popular Yucatecan souvenir is the "guayaberra" (g-why-a-bear-a) which is a short-sleeved dress shirt made of cotton or linen and worn hanging loose.  They feature two or four pockets and sections of tiny pleats down the front and back as well as embroidery and buttons in the same color as the shirt.  They take the place of suits in this hot climate and Mexican men usually wear white ones although fair skinned gringos often look better in off-white and other pastel colors.  Apparently these shirts were made in Cuba until the revolution when Yucatecans had to start making their own.  They are for sale EVERYWHERE in myriad colors and a huge range of prices.

Younger folk are also by and large a modest lot.  They don't show a lot of skin but they sure like their clothes tight.  And the official uniform of all Meridanas under fifty is jeans, very stretchy jeans.  They must be hot!  Ninety percent of Yucatecan women are overweight but the reverse is true of the men.  (I guess Mother Nature knows who will be taking care of the ninos in case of famine and it won't be those skinny little guys.)  Latina women are indeed built like J Lo, i.e. wide curvy bums and relatively flat chested.  Colorful padded bras are for sale on every street corner downtown like flipflops.  (In fact, from my own experience, it is a challenge to find one that isn't padded even in department stores.)  Meridanos don't show a lot of skin but they don't let a little thing like overflowing rolls and curves get in the way of wearing skin-tight tops with their skin-tight jeans.

Shoes!  Young Meridanas are crazy about shoes which may be why there appears to be about 10,000 pairs available for every man, woman and child in the city.  And they like them HIGH!  Only the elderly, children and touristas wear sensible shoes.  Six inch heels are relatively common.  And these are people who walk a lot!  The Mayan blood produces some very short people and it's not uncommon to see women barely more than four feet tall so the killer shoes are probably partly due to a yearning for height.

However, another major factor in Yucatecan fashion is sexiness.  The grotesquely baggy jeans never caught on here because they just don't look sexy and young latinos definitely want to look sexy.  While they don't wear them as tight as the girls, they do wear them about the same as northerners did in the 60s and 70s.
Yucatecans are always well groomed.  The vast majority of women and girls wear their hair long and usually done up.  The vast majority of men and boys wear their hair short and freshly trimmed.  It seems that all the women here, even the poorest, have gel nails!  Natural nails here are akin to leaving your hair grey.  I'm sure they think us gringas are total slobs.

The uniform of most construction workers is rolled up jeans and flipflops or no shoes at all.  They also seldom wear hats and have no work gloves.  Skin is cheap and many of these labourers earn as little as $10 per day.

The younger the person the more northern the clothing.  Children are precious and well cared for by all appearances.  They tend to be dressed in the standard department store options but little ninas are often dolled up like their mothers and occasionally sport a huipil style blouse.

While the Panama hat is a very popular tourist souvenir, most urban Yucatecans don't wear hats and if they do it's a ball cap.  Farm workers tend to wear henequen hats but with a wider brim.  By the way, ALL hats are "sombreros" which is the Spanish word for just about anything worn on your head with a brim.

Under the Fan in the Yucatan: Food and Drink

One of the first considerations when visiting a new place is the food.  We got off the bus starving to death and headed for the closest eatery which turned out to be a "Chili's".  For shame!  But in our defense we hadn't eaten in ten hours by then.  We have never patronized a Chili's at home but this food was excellent, although as they say, hunger is the best spice or something like that.

Yucatecan cuisine is quite bland on its own however many things are served with a tiny side dish of runny green salsa.  Beware!  This stuff can remove paint and melt steel!  The sauce is made from the Habanero pepper which look like tiny squishy pumpkins. But don't let its benign appearance deceive you! An American pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville came up with a way of measuring the capsaicin (the chemical that produces the hot heat) in peppers. The ubiquitous jalapenos rate between 3,500 to 8,000 Scoville units but habaneros weigh in about 100,000 to 350,000.  Hot stuff!  Drinking water or beer only spreads it around and unlike with Indian food, yogurt doesn't help.  I have heard that chocolate will help quench the fire.  Must try.

And speaking of chocolate, Yucatecans have been cultivating it for as long as three-thousand years but never combined if with sugar let alone milk.  They used it as a beverage like coffee and the cocao beans were fermented and concocted into a frothy bitter drink.  It took many, many years for northern Eurupeans to make it into candy.  Mexicans also use chocolate in  "mole" (moe-lay), a thick dark brown sauce with about eighty ingredients, none of them sweet.

The Yucatecans were the first culture to domesticate the turkey which the early European visitors here found disgusting.  (They found EVERYTHING that was different from home disgusting.)  Turkey plus pork and chicken are the main meats of the Yucatecan diet.  One of the local especialities is "Sopa de Lima" which is a turkey soup with lime and tortilla strips.

Did I say "tortillas"?  Folks here subsist on tortillas like we do on bread.  And they like them VERY fresh.  There is a bicycle vendor who passes by our casa every morning and the locals poke their heads out to hail him over.  Even Walmart has their resident tortilla makers and some restaurants and markets have them sitting in the window making them the traditional way.  Tortillas are made from "maize" pronounced "mice"  (Tortillas are made from Mice?  Yes, they are!) Which is corn that is not as sweet as ours.  The maize is soaked in lime to make the grain more digestible for the human body.  This is then ground into "masa" which is then made into tortillas with nothing else added.  Wheat flour or "harana" tortillas are probably a European adaptation.

This is Mexico and they love their beans too.  Some grocery stores at home have two kinds at the most but here there are dozens.  Cheap, tasty, low-fat protein and an essential ingredient in many a Yucatecan dish.  Black beans are used for a rather unnerving jet black sauce.

Another Yucatecan favorite is ground toasted pumpkin seeds eaten much like hummus.  Hmmm.  Turkeys, pumpkins -- this place is like a perpetual Thanksgiving.
 
You would not want to be a lime here!  Limes are an ingredient in most Yucatecan or Mayan dishes and essential for Corona and gin drinkers like us.  There are no lemons!  Just limons and limas, both green, which after much investigation I have concluded are just two types of limes.
 
Everyone here buys their produce and most of their meat from the neighborhood markets.  For dairy, processed foods and household cleaners, etc.  they head to the local store which in this neighbourhood is the ISSTEY, a Yucatecan version of the Co-op.  There is also the aformentioned Walmart for gringo needs like gin, Pepsi and such and there is even a Costco further up the road for those inclined.

Meridanas are a chubby lot but the men tend more to the lean side.  The chubbiness I attribuate partly to the snacks available for sale every few feet downtown.  Mostly healthy stuff though, e.g. peeled oranges and grapefruit, mangos on a stick but lots of other sticky concoctions too.  Food and drink is everywhere!

There is plenty of beer in Merida although Corona seems only of interest to turistos like moi.  Unlike much of Mexico, tolerably good wine is available, which is mostly imported from Chile, Argentina and California.

Coffee here is fantastic!  Just a couple of blocks from our casa is a little shop that roasts sacks of Mexican grown coffee beans (and grinds them if you choose) right before your eyes.  And the finished product is fantastic!  So good that Neil has even quit putting cream in his morning brew!!!

And of course, there is the aforementioned juice which is also available everywhere in various concoctions.  My favorite is Jugo Verde or green juice which is a combination of orange, pineapple, celery and parsley.  There is another green one that is just pineapple and chaya, also called "tree spinach".

Of course, we have been here only a little over two weeks so I'm sure there is much more to be tasted and we will make the sacrifice just for you!