Things to do
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Izamal
Yellow paint covers almost every wall in this town, ochre with white trim, unbroken for street after street. Franciscans built the convent of San Antonio de Padua on a levelled Maya pyramid in the fifteen sixties; its arcaded atrium is vast enough to hold a crowd of thousands. Kinich Kakmó, a stepped pyramid a few streets north, can still be climbed free of charge.
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Celestún
Flamingos gather in thousands on the estuary behind this Gulf-coast fishing village, in greatest number through the winter months. Boats leave from the bridge on the approach road and from the beach, running out to the feeding flats, then into mangrove tunnels and a freshwater spring. Book the first departure: wind rises by midday and the birds scatter. Roughly two hours west of Mérida.
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Cenotes de Cuzamá
Narrow-gauge tracks laid to haul henequen still carry horse-drawn flatcars, and the ride is half the outing: an hour of jolting between sisal fields to three flooded caverns. Wooden ladders drop through holes in the limestone to water lit blue from above. Swimming is the point, so bring a towel. Departures run from Chunkanán, southeast of Mérida.
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Dzibilchaltún
North of the ring road, a long white causeway runs to the small Temple of the Seven Dolls, whose doorway frames the sunrise at the equinoxes. Cenote Xlacah sits beside the main plaza, with a roofless Spanish chapel standing in the ruins. INAH lists the cenote as closed to swimming and the Museo del Pueblo Maya as shut, so confirm the current status before going.
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Gran Museo del Mundo Maya
A white lattice shell, meant to suggest the ceiba tree sacred to Maya cosmology, holds the Maya collections of Yucatán state in the northern suburbs. Stelae, jade burial masks and a reclining chacmool figure sit alongside rooms on the meteorite that struck this coast. Labels run in Spanish, English and Maya. Projections play on the façade after dark, and the building stays cool when the city does not.
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Hacienda Temozón
Once among the largest henequen estates in Yucatán, this hacienda near Abalá now runs as a hotel inside its restored casa principal, chapel and processing buildings. A long pool stretches below the main house, and a spa sits in the grounds. The village lies on the road south from Mérida toward Uxmal, about forty minutes from the city.
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Hacienda Xcanatún
An eighteenth-century henequen estate on the northern edge of the city, restored as a hotel around its main house, machine rooms and gardens. Suites sit in the old buildings, with high ceilings, tiled floors and private terraces, and there is a spa and a restaurant on the grounds. The Progreso highway and Dzibilchaltún are close by.
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Kabah
Several hundred stone masks of the rain god Chaac cover the whole west façade of the Codz Poop palace, their hooked noses stacked from ground to roof. Across the highway a lone free-standing arch marks the start of the old raised road to Uxmal. Highway 261 runs straight through the site, twenty minutes south of Uxmal, so it pairs with it in one day by car.
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Mayapán
A smaller copy of the Chichén Itzá pyramid stands at the heart of this walled city, the last Maya capital of the peninsula. Painted stucco murals survive in the Temple of the Painted Niches, under palm-thatch shelters. Forty minutes southeast of Mérida by car, near the village of Telchaquillo, and usually close to empty.
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Mercado Lucas de Gálvez
Four blocks southeast of Plaza Grande, the city's main market fills a sprawling concrete hall and the streets around it with fruit, chiles, hammocks and huaraches. Inside, rows of counters serve cochinita pibil tacos and panuchos from breakfast until early afternoon. Stalls deal in cash. The food counters start closing after lunch, so plan a morning visit.
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Paseo de Montejo
Henequen money built this boulevard in the last years of the nineteenth century, on the model of a Parisian avenue: a double row of laurels, mansions with wrought iron and marble imported whole. Palacio Cantón holds the state anthropology museum, and the carved Monumento a la Patria closes the northern end. Sunday mornings the lanes go to cyclists.
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Plaza Grande
Stone quarried from the Maya city of T'hó went into the cathedral on the east side, finished in the fifteen nineties. Casa de Montejo faces the square from the south, its carved conquistadors treading on severed heads. Murals by Castro Pacheco fill the upper gallery of the Palacio de Gobierno to the north. Laurels, white S-shaped confidente seats and shoeshine stands hold the square through the afternoon.
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Progreso
Half an hour north on a straight highway, Mérida's port town lines the Gulf with a long malecón, white sand and shallow green water. The pier runs out several kilometres to the deep-water terminal. Buses leave from the AutoProgreso terminal in central Mérida through the day. Weekends and the Easter and summer holidays fill the beach with families from the city.
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Uxmal
Puuc architecture at its most elaborate: friezes of stone lattice, masks of the rain god Chaac and serpent mouldings across the Nunnery Quadrangle and the Governor's Palace. The oval-sided Pyramid of the Magician dominates the entrance. With no cenote nearby, the city stored rain in bottle-shaped cisterns. An hour south of Mérida on the Puuc route, and far quieter than Chichén Itzá.
