Things to do in Yucatán State
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La Casa del Cheesecake
This veritable institution offers cheesecakes, whole or by the slice, in an array of funky flavors that may include peach or even Kahlua.
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Diego Núñez Martínez
A licensed guide with formal training as naturalist, he speaks English, Spanish and Italian and is up to date on the area's fauna and flora, including the staggering number of bird species. Diego offers catch-and-release fly-fishing trips for tarpon and snook, and can help with lodgings reservations.
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Restaurante-Bar Isla Contoy
The best tours are given by the licensed guides operating from Restaurante-Bar Isla Contoy at the waterfront. They offer extensive day tours as well as night excursions. Crocodiles are a common nocturnal sight, and from May through September sea turtles are easily spotted.
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Restaurant el Cordobes
This locals’ joint, near Hotel Miralmar, is on the north side of the plaza in a 100-year-old building. Weak ‘American’ coffee is served quickly, with a warm smile, and it’s a perfect place to relax for a bit, sluice down a cerveza (beer) and look out on the main plaza.
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Walking Tours
The city tourist office offers free daily guided Walking Tours of the historic center (sometimes in English), focusing on Plaza Grande. Tours depart at 09:30 from in front of the Palacio Municipal.
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Ismael Navarro
A licensed guide and naturalist worth seeking out for a tour of the local flora and fauna. Besides the flamingo expeditions, Ismael takes four-hour shorebird tours along the mudflats in winter.
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Pane e Vino
This Italian-run joint serves tasty antipasti and salads (with olive oil and balsamic vinegar if you wish), lasagna, fish, meat and a selection of respectable wines by the glass or bottle.
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Restaurant Mary Doly
Near Hotel Miralmar, this is a homey place with good, cheap seafood and meat dishes and breakfasts. The freshly squeezed orange juice is very refreshing.
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Gran Juego de Pelota
The great ball court, the largest and most impressive in Mexico, is only one of the city's eight courts, indicative of the importance the games held here. The court, to the left of the visitors center, is flanked by temples at either end and is bounded by towering parallel walls with stone rings cemented up high.
There is evidence that the ball game may have changed over the years. Some carvings show players with padding on their elbows and knees, and it is thought that they played a soccerlike game with a hard rubber ball, with the use of hands forbidden. Other carvings show players wielding bats; it appears that if a player hit the ball through one of the stone hoops, h…
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El Castillo
As you approach from the visitors center into the site, El Castillo rises before you in all its grandeur. The first temple here was pre-Toltec, built around AD 800, but the present 25m-high structure, built over the old one, has the plumed serpent sculpted along the stairways and Toltec warriors represented in the doorway carvings at the top of the temple. You won't get to see these temple-top carvings as you are not allowed to ascend the pyramid.
The structure is actually a massive Maya calendar formed in stone. Each of El Castillo's nine levels is divided in two by a staircase, making 18 separate terraces that commemorate the 18 20-day months of the Maya vague year. The…
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Cuadrángulo de las Monjas
The 74-room, sprawling Cuadrángulo de las Monjas is directly west of the Casa del Adivino. Archaeologists guess variously that it was a military academy, royal school or palace complex. The long-nosed face of Chac appears everywhere on the façades of the four separate temples that form the quadrangle. The northern temple, grandest of the four, was built first, followed by the southern, then the eastern and then the western.
Several decorative elements on the exuberant façades show signs of Mexican, perhaps Totonac, influence. The feathered-serpent (Quetzalcóatl, or in Maya, Kukulcán) motif along the top of the west temple's façade is one of these. Note also the stylized…
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Ek' Balam
The turnoff for fascinating Ek' Balam is 17km north of Valladolid, from where the archaeological site is a further 6km east. Vegetation still covers much of the area, but excavations and restoration continue to add to the sights, including an interesting ziggurat-like structure near the entrance, as well as a fine arch and a ball court. Most impressive is the gargantuan Acrópolis, whose well-restored base is 160m long and holds a 'gallery,' actually a series of separate chambers. Built atop the base is Ek' Balam's massive main pyramid, reaching a height of 32m and sporting a huge jaguar mouth with 360-degree dentition. Below the mouth are stucco skulls, while above and to…
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Flamingo Tours
The brilliant orange-red flamingos can turn the horizon fiery when they take wing. Depending on your luck, you'll see either hundreds or thousands of them. The best months for viewing them are June to August. The four primary haunts, in increasing distance from town, are Punta Garza, Yoluk, Necopal and Nahochín (all flamingo feeding spots named for nearby mangrove patches).
To see the flamingos, you'll need to rent a boat and driver. You'll see more bird life if you head out at sunrise or around 16:00. Prices vary by boat, group size (maximum six) and destination. Plan on packing something to eat the night before, as most restaurants open long after you'll be on the wate…
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Grupo de las Mil Columnas
This group to the east of El Castillo takes its name from the forest of pillars stretching south and east. The star attraction here is the Templo de los Guerreros (Temple of the Warriors), adorned with stucco and stone-carved animal deities. At the top of its steps is a classic reclining chac-mool figure - you're no longer allowed to ascend to it. Many of the columns in front of the temple are carved with figures of warriors.
Archaeologists working in 1926 discovered a Temple of Chac-Mool lying beneath the Temple of the Warriors. You can walk through the columns on its south side to reach the Columnata Noreste, notable for the 'big-nosed god' masks on its façade. Some hav…
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Edificio de las Monjas
Thought by archaeologists to have been a palace for Maya royalty, the so-called Edificio de las Monjas, with its myriad rooms, resembled a European convent to the conquistadors, hence their name for the building. The building's dimensions are imposing: its base is 60m long, 30m wide and 20m high. The construction is Maya rather than Toltec, although a Toltec sacrificial stone stands in front.
A smaller adjoining building to the east, known as La Iglesia (The Church), is covered almost entirely with carvings. Currently, on the far side at the back there are some passageways that are still open, leading a short way into the labyrinth inside. They are dank, slippery, smell o…
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Gran Pirámide
Though it's adjacent to the Governor's Palace, a sign by the steps of the Gran Pirámide warns 'it is dangerous to go up' from the rear of the palace. Most visitors ignore the sign and take the shortcut from the palace's southwest corner. If you don't feel comfortable doing this, retrace your route to go back down the hillside stairs and then keep turning left following the base of the platform until you reach the pyramid's steps.
The 32m-high pyramid has been restored only on its northern side. Archaeologists theorize that the quadrangle at its summit was largely destroyed in order to construct another pyramid above it. That work, for reasons unknown, was never completed…
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Casa del Adivino
As you climb the slope to the ruins, the Casa del Adivino comes into view. This tall temple (the name translates as 'Magician's House'), 39m high, was built in an unusual oval shape. It gives rather a bad first impression of Uxmal to the visitor, consisting of round stones held rudely together with lots of cement. What you see is a restored version of the temple's fifth incarnation.
Four earlier temples were completely covered in the final rebuilding by the Maya, except for the high doorway on the west side, which remains from the fourth temple. Decorated in elaborate Chenes style (a style that originated further south), the doorway proper forms the mouth of a gigantic Ch…
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El Caracol
Called El Caracol by the Spaniards for its interior spiral staircase, this observatory, to the south of the Ossuary, is one of the most fascinating and important of all Chichén Itzá's buildings (but, alas, you can't enter it). Its circular design resembles some central highlands structures, although, surprisingly, not those of Toltec Tula. In a fusion of architectural styles and religious imagery, there are Maya Chac rain-god masks over four external doors facing the cardinal points.
The windows in the observatory's dome are aligned with the appearance of certain stars at specific dates. From the dome the priests decreed the times for rituals, celebrations, corn-plantin…
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Palacio del Gobernador
The Palacio del Gobernador, with its magnificent façade nearly 100m long, has been called 'the finest structure at Uxmal and the culmination of the Puuc style' by Mayanist Michael D Coe. The buildings have walls filled with rubble, faced with cement and then covered in a thin veneer of limestone squares; the lower part of the façade is plain, the upper part festooned with stylized Chac faces and geometric designs, often latticelike or fretted. Other elements of Puuc style are decorated cornices, rows of half-columns (as in the House of the Turtles) and round columns in doorways (as in the palace at Sayil). Stones forming the corbeled vaults in Puuc style are shaped somewh…
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Catedral de San Ildefonso
On the plaza Grande’s east side, on the site of a former Maya temple, is Mérida’s hulking, severe cathedral, begun in 1561 and completed in 1598. Some of the stone from the Maya temple was used in its construction. The massive crucifix behind the altar is Cristo de la Unidad (Christ of Unity), a symbol of reconciliation between those of Spanish and Maya heritage. To the right over the south door is a painting of Tutul Xiu, cacique (indigenous chief) of the town of Maní paying his respects to his ally Francisco de Montejo at T’ho (de Montejo and Xiu jointly defeated the Cocomes; Xiu converted to Christianity, and his descendants still live in Mérida).
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Hacienda Ochil
Lying about 44km south of Mérida, Hacienda Ochil provides a fascinating, though basic, look at how henequén was grown and processed. From the parking lot follow the ‘truck’ tracks – used by the small wheeled carts to haul material to and from the processing plant – to the right around the parklike, restored portion of the hacienda. You’ll pass workshops where you might see locals fashioning handicrafts for sale and a small henequén museum with exhibits illustrating the cultivating, harvesting and processing of the plant. These include pieces of machinery and photos of hacienda life. Iguanas abound.
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Calcehtok Caves
The Calcehtok caves are said by some to comprise the longest dry-cave system on the Yucatán Peninsula. More than 4km have been explored so far, and two of the caves’ 25 vaults exceed 100m in diameter (one has a 30m-high ‘cupola’). The caves hold abundant and impressive natural formations, human and animal remains and plenty of artifacts, including many haltunes (stone basins carved by the Maya to catch water). Archaeologists have found and removed ceramic arrowheads, quartz hammers and other tools, and you can still see low fortifications built by the Maya who sheltered here during the War of the Castes.
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Casa de Montejo
The Casa de Montejo is on the south side of the Plaza Grande and dates from 1549. It originally housed soldiers but was soon converted into a mansion that served members of the Montejo family until 1970. These days it houses a bank, and you can enter and look around during bank hours. At other times, content yourself with a close look at the facade, where triumphant conquistadors with halberds hold their feet on the necks of generic barbarians (though they’re not Maya, the association is inescapable). Typical of the symbolism in colonial statuary, the vanquished are rendered much smaller than the victors.
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Casa de las Tortugas
To the right at the top of the stairs is the Casa de las Tortugas, which takes its name from the turtles carved on the cornice. The Maya associated turtles with the rain god, Chac. According to Maya myth, when the people suffered from drought so did the turtles, and both prayed to Chac to send rain.
The frieze of short columns, or 'rolled mats,' that runs around the temple below the turtles is characteristic of the Puuc style. On the west side of the building a vault has collapsed, affording a good view of the corbeled arch - remember that the Maya never mastered keystone arch design - that supported it.
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Museo de Arte Sacro
Convento de San Francisco de Asís in Conkal now houses the new Museo de Arte Sacro. This is a small but well-done museum of religious art and artifacts, including 18th- and 19th- century altarpieces and carvings of saints, good historical and archaeological exhibits detailing the foundation (and later restoration) of Yucatán’s monasteries, and contemporary profane and religious artwork. Some of the latter is surprisingly racy. All labeling is in Spanish. Be sure to check out the architecture of the convent itself, including the noria (irrigation system) out back.
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