Moving on to the rest of our Mexico adventure! If you're still here, you deserve a cookie ;)
Our third full day was our adventure/tour day. We booked a tour to go to a hacienda, Uxmal, and a cenote all in one day. It was a smaller tour with 5 other people on it with us. Our tour day started at Hacienda Yaxcopoil. On the land the hacienda was on, they harvested henequen, a plant that was used to make sisal. It made the landowners very rich, but they paid the workers very little, if at all. The entire village around the hacienda was completely dependent on the henequen plantation. In the 1950's, as the use of plastic and nylon became more prominent, there was no longer a high need for henequen. Around that time, many of the hacienda owners abandoned their property and left. Hacienda Yaxcopoil is unique in that is it so well preserved, as many are in a state of ruin. You can also walk through the machine house where the henequen was shredded to render the fiber from the plant. There, a gentleman demonstrated how several fibers were rolled together to create small ropes for hammocks, etc. His grandfather had been brought as a slave to the plantation and he worked there until the 1980's. It was very interesting to learn the history of henequen and it's impact on the local people.
After visiting the hacienda we were off to Uxmal. Uxmal is an ancient Mayan city. Chichen Itza is another popular ancient Mayan city, but I had read that Uxmal was just as good and not nearly as crowded. Since I have never been to Chichen Itza I can't compare the two but Uxmal was truly incredible. It was much larger than I anticipated with several buildings on site. We had a tour guide walk us through which was very informative. It was HOT at this point in the day so we did our best to stay in the shade when we could. If I was only visiting Uxmal, I probably would have done it earlier in the day to avoid the heat.
After Uxmal, we stopped for lunch and continued on to Cenote Peba. Cenotes can either be completely open or covered and Peba was covered, so it was like a cave. We walked down some stairs to enter it. The water was clear and beautiful and not too cold. It felt magical! Every once in a while you could hear some bats, so if you have a fear of those you might not enjoy it, but this was a highlight of our trip for me! We swam around for about an hour and then changed and headed out. There were changing rooms and bathrooms available as well as some food. Our tour guide said she used to visit this cenote when she was younger and it was literally just a whole in the ground. But with the increase in tourism, they've added more amenities to it. Like I said, I really enjoyed it and would love to visit more cenotes in the future!
The next day was our beach day at Puerto Progreso. There is an Autoprogreso bus that goes from Merida to Progreso where a bus leaves every 30 minutes. It's about a 40 minute bus ride, depending on traffic. It was very easy to buy a ticket at the station and I think it only cost us about $4 total for both of us round trip. The bus very nice and clean. Once we got to Progreso, the beach was only about 3-4 blocks from the bus station. We walked to the beach and found a couple of lounge chairs connected to a restaurant and ordered some drinks. We went to Crabster for lunch, which was delicious but expensive compared to all the other restaurants we had eaten at. Progreso is a large cruise ship port, so it felt a lot more commercialized and we found the prices reflected that. After lunch, we spent the day relaxing on the beach and playing frisbee. We got dinner at Eladio's Bar where Ben ordered octopus that he really enjoyed. But once again, it was more expensive than the restaurants we ate at in Merida. After that we hopped back on the bus for the easy trip back to Merida.
Our last full day we initially left open. We thought about going to Celestun to see the flamingos, but we visited the bus station and found it very overwhelming. So instead we decided to spend the day around Merida. We went to Casa Montejo to tour the home of the original conquistadors of the region. It is actually a bank now, but they also keep some of the rooms as a museum and art gallery. The dining room was crazy and so over the top! I had never seen anything like that before. It was free to get in and worth a visit for that alone.
For lunch we went to Taqueria La Lupita. This was in a part of the city we hadn't been to and was a bit of a trek but 100% worth it! This restaurant was featured on Taco Chronicles on Netflix and I can see why. I swear these were the best tacos I'd ever had. It felt very local, as I'm pretty sure we were the only tourists there. And it was one of the cheapest places we ate, so 10/10 highly recommend. We relaxed back at our hotel that afternoon. We started off the night by visiting Dzalbay Cantina. This is a really cool jazz bar that had a cool, historic vibe. We went there not long after it opened so there wasn't any live music, but I'm sure it would be a great time when there is! We stopped by Mercado 60 for dinner. This is a large outdoor courtyard with lots of different vendors selling different types of food. We got some empanadas that were amazing and some tasty drinks. There was local food but also burgers and pizza as well. We thought it would be a really fun to place to go with a larger group of people! We also stopped back at my favorite cantina, Pipiripau so I could taste their delicious drinks one last time! I made sure to order a large this time ;)
This brings us to our last day! Our flight didn't leave until the afternoon so we had the morning to visit a couple more places. First we went to the police station, because they allow you to visit the balcony for wonderful views of Plaza Grande. Then we stopped by a art museum that was showing Matisse. For lunch, we wanted to visit Wayan'e, which was another highly recommended taco spot. This was a llloooonnnnggg walk in the heat, but once again totally worth it! Ben said this was his favorite of the entire trip. However, while we were eating we were notified that our flight from Dallas to Cedar Rapids was cancelled and they were rebooking us for the next day. We were trying to figure that out when they brought the check and we were informed they only took cash (we had just used up our last pesos). So Ben left to find an ATM, and it took him awhile but he eventually did. Then we headed out for the long walk back to our hotel, all the while on the phone with the airline company to figure out what our options were. We didn't want to stay another night in Merida, because we were pretty sure our room at our hotel was already booked so we'd have to leave and find another. We ended up leaving that afternoon, and though we had some hang ups getting back to Iowa, we still made it home safe and sound.
I truly, truly loved our time in Merida and highly recommend it! We hope to take the kids back there someday and explore more of the places around the Yucatan that we didn't get to see this time around!
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