Mexico - Winter 23/24

Trip List Calendar

2023-12-22 : Homún
Today we took a colectivo out to Homún, which is the site of many Cenotes. There’s one big complex called Santa Barbara which is on the outskirts of town but we decided we wanted to see the town and do some of the Cenotes outside of Santa Barbara.

The colectivo stopped at Santa Barbara and a few people hopped out. As soon as they did, a bunch of men jumped in immediately trying to guide them to the Cenotes. When we got off the colectivo down in town, the same thing happened. These guys are relentless and really pushy. I started calling them piranhas because that’s what it feels like - you’re some kind of morsel that’s been dropped into their water and they go into a feeding frenzy. In any case, we escaped the piranhas unscathed and had our little tour. But every time we got near the one side of the town square… piranha feeding frenzy!!

Our first stop was Santa Maria Cave & Cenote. It is on some personal property and managed by the family who owns the property. When we showed up a young fella who speaks very little English came out and took us down into the cave. Unfortunately we were not able to go all the way to the Cenote but the cave tour, brief as it was, was super cool.

Next we walked back towards the Santa Barbara Cenotes (oops) where we visited both Tza Ujun Kat Cenote and Pool Uinic cenote. There were three Cenotes all managed together (but not part of Santa Barbara) and we visited two of those.

We then had a nice (but too big) lunch and the meandered back to piranha land to catch the colectivo. To our delight, one was pulling up just as the piranhas were getting all worked up.


2023-12-23 : Modern art and Pok ta Pok in Merida
Today our main goal was to stock up on some groceries in case it’s hard for us to find stores and restaurants that are open for the next couple of days. Once that was achieved we thought we would try to go out to Dzibilchultín but that didn’t work out. It’s a tough place to get to without a car or a private tour and the busses just didn’t work out so we’ll try again tomorrow.

After giving up on Dzibilchultín, we visited a couple of museums here in Mérida. We went back to Museo de la ciudad de Mérida to see the stuff we missed when I was sick the other day, then we went to the modern art museum in the Ateneo Penínsular, which is attached to the Catedral de San Ildefonso by a really cool… ummmm… hallway. We have to admit, most of the modern art had us scratching our heads.
Last week we missed the Pok ta Pok show because I was sick. We got to see it tonight and it was great.

Pok ta Pok is a Mesoamerican ball game where they use a solid rubber ball and use their hips to volley it and score by putting the ball through a ring.

After the game demonstration they set their ball on fire and tossed it around for a bit. If I had to guess I would think that is not authentic - setting it on fire was probably done for dramatic effect??

Historically, a Pok ta Pok game could take two days before even one goal was made, and after the game, they would sacrifice the captain of the losing team. Yikes. You’d better be serious about your Pok ta Pok!!

See a video taken in Mérida (not my video): https://youtu.be/_cWebjBtUIw


2023-12-24 : Progreso
Today we were going to try again to go to Dzibilchultín but when we were waiting for a bus that didn’t seem to want to arrive we started thinking that with it being Sunday and Christmas Eve it might not be so smart to go to a small site that we didn’t know whether it would be open or not. So we opted to head to Progreso, the resort town north of Mérida, which we had tentatively planned for Tuesday. There is so much traffic going back and forth between Mérida and Progreso that there is a dedicated bus line and dedicated terminal with busses leaving every 15 minutes.

Progreso was a great excursion for today. The town was busy and touristy and… kinda awful, really. Just not our bag. But we had a look around, had a wade in the ocean, had an expensive lackluster lunch (but with good beer) and an easy round trip on the dedicated Mérida-Progreso bus.

A point of interest at Progreso is the Muelle de Pescadores Progreso which is (or was?) the world’s longest pier - it’s 6.5km long. Wowie. I was disappointed that both the Reserva Natural "La Ria" and the Meteor Museum were closed.
This evening we took a walk around town to see the Christmas decorations. Mérida is really a beautiful city.


2023-12-25 : Merida Barrios Mágicos
Barrios Mágicos are neighborhoods in Mexican cities which have rich patrimonial value and tourist potential, characterized by their singularity, identity, authenticity, traditions, architecture, history, gastronomy, and vibrant cultural scenes.

There are three Barrios Mágicos in Merida at this time - La Ermita, San Sebastián and Xcalachén. These neighborhoods are next to one another, but are about a 2.5km walk from where we’re staying, so we have to walk quite a ways just to start our walk. We ended up walking about 25% of the Barrios Mágicos today and hopefully we’ll make it out to do a lot more before we leave.
This evening we walked over to look at the place we didn’t stay. It was quite a ways west of where we are and would have been a significant hike from the Historico Centro. I’m really glad that we are where we are. The place we didn’t stay was canceled last minute because the host sold the property.


2023-12-26 : Merida - More Barrios Mágicos and More Homún Cenotes
Today we had planned another attempt on Dzibilchultín but with a forecasted high of 31 I thought that would be dangerous for heat-sensitive me, so again we needed to go with another alternate plan. We decided to get an early start, walk some of the Barrios Magico then go back to Homún and do some Cenotes.

We decided to visit the Santa Barbara cenotes, which we had eschewed before because of how commercialized they are. We decided to give them a shot today because we know how the colectivos to Homún work, and we know there’s food available there.

Well commercialized doesn’t even begin to describe them. Every tourist in the world was there. If you like going to Cenotes for any kind of peace or tranquility, Santa Barbara is NOT the place for you.

We had a nice time anyway, walking the odd road down to the Cenotes (with small train tracks, but no trains… only minivans, horse-drawn carts, and bicycles), experiencing the Cenotes themselves amid the din and hubbub of the tourist-ful Cenotes, and had lunch at the on-site restaurant. When we first got there there was really loud music blasting in the echoey restaurant, but, a miracle power outage took care of that for us.

Heading back to Mérida, we thought we could get a colectivo right at Santa Barbara, but the lady at the counter said no, you have to go to the center of town to get one. Well, we knew that wasn’t entirely accurate because we knew the colectivos stopped on the highway near the driveway, but we didn’t know if they would have any available seats, either heading into Homún, or heading back to Mérida. We walked back to the highway debating our options - try to get a colectivo heading to Homún, try to get one on its way back to Mérida, walk into town to get one at the official stop, or try to find a motorcycle taxi to take us into town. Well, the colectivo god smiled on us today. Just as we were reaching the highway, a colectivo heading to Mérida was passing by. I waved at him and he stopped - he had just enough room to cram two more bodies in. Yay!!


2023-12-27 : Merida - Parque de Los Américas
Today is mostly a prep day as we move on tomorrow to San Miguel de Allende. I am looking forward to the milder temperatures on the central plateau. Right now they’re having daily highs in the low 20s. Sounds ideal to me.

Along with our prep activities we got in a walk over to Parque de Los Américas. I must say it is really great. My favorite park, by far, in Mérida.


2023-12-28 : Travel Merida to San Miguel de Allende
Today we moved from Mérida to San Miguel de Allende.

Our best option for making the move was to fly to Leon and then make our way from there. If we’d taken the bus it would have taken over 30 hours. Ummmm. Nope. Thanks.

Our flight with Viva Aerobus was moved from 11:00am to 5:20pm. We were going to take a taxi the rest of the way but yesterday I discovered Bahio Go - a company that runs shuttles to and from San Miguel de Allende. They are great. Our driver was waiting for us when we arrived and whisked us, plus several more folks, off to San Miguel. It is a large expat community so apparently there is enough traffic coming and going to warrant a shuttle service which is a 90-minute drive from the Leon airport.

Note that we’re wearing sweaters in the last photo. It’s much (much) cooler in San Miguel de Allende than it was on the Yucatán


2023-12-29 : San Miguel de Allende
We got in late last night and crashed. It was chilly last night, and chilly this morning - 7C when we got up! It felt pretty cold compared to the Yucatán. I’m looking forward to not having to hide so much from the heat.

San Miguel de Allende is even more beautiful than I remembered and it looks different from though eyes that will be here for several days, as opposed to 2022 when we were only here for a few hours trying to take it all in.

We have a really great little AirBnB apartment with a rooftop patio and a resident cat or two which always makes me so happy when we visit Mexico because it lets me feel like I have a cat for a little while.
After breakfast we ran some errands including taking in a load of laundry and walking to the bus depot to do some recon for the next step in our journey - moving to Querétaro next Wednesday.

After the bus depot we returned to our AirBnB via a circuitous walk through the interesting San Antonio neighborhood. Then we had our first rooftop beers and did some planning for our remaining days in SMA.
This was our first real evening in SMA. We didn’t get in last night until about 10:30, so that didn’t count. The city is insanely busy with tourists and this evening was no different. We went to the main square, which is ground zero for tourist activity. It was chaotic but not beyond my boundaries so it was all good. I’m truly happy for the cooler temperatures.


2023-12-30 : El Charco del Ingenio
Our host, Maria, has a son-in-law, Javier, who drives Uber. This morning we had him drive us out to El Charco del Ingenio, a botanical garden on the edge of town, that focuses on preservation of local flora, especially cacti. It is on an important historical site that has ruins of a hacienda and a mill.

We then walked back to our place and stopped in at Mercado Ignacio Ramírez. We do enjoy the Mercados.


2023-12-31 : NYE in San Miguel de Allende
When we were walking in town the other day I noticed a restaurant had a ‘breakfast buffet’ sign outside. I tagged it in Maps.Me without making note of the name.

Today we went past for breakfast. They were late opening so we had a coffee in the foyer coffee shop (something you wouldn’t find in Canada). Finally they opened and Brent chose us a table to sit at. He thought he recognized the restaurant and we figured we had visited it in 2022 with Elissa. Well, yeah we did… and we sat in the same chairs at the same table. Check the photo from 2022 (holding beers) for comparison. The restaurant is La Pamplonada and the breakfast was amazing - well worth the wait (they opened 90-minutes late). They also had the special spiced coffee that we had at Simon’s hole in the wall lunch spot in Querétaro in 2022.
Today we did a walk around three interesting neighborhoods (Guadalupe, Independencia and San Rafael) and Mercado San Juan de Dios.

The Mercado was unique in a number of ways but two that stuck out for me were (1) the random shrines everywhere and (2) the itty bitty arcade in it. I was an arcade junkie when I was a teenager. I would have loved the itty bitty arcade.

Brent and I decided that if we stay in SMA again we’ll try to get a place in Barrio Guadalupe. It is beautiful and interesting, with lots of amenities, and it’s close… but not TOO close to the e main square.
Our AirBnB is very close to the main square, and we have a great rooftop patio, so we figured that would be the best place to watch the New Years fireworks.

We took a late siesta and got up at 10:30. The view from our rooftop is essentially 360•, which is good because it seemed that every neighborhood in the city was setting off fireworks and we could see almost all of them.


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