If truth be known, a bit of a dull Christmas. We had chosen to go to ground for three nights in Merida until it was all over. The costal options were so gross, full of charter tourists, cruise line passengers and $1000 a night rooms. Therefore, we are stalling our arrival at the coast resorts until early Jan, as then prices will have fallen and the tourists gone home, leaving us travellers to ourselves. So that’s why we decided to Christmas here and also because its quite trophy as who the hell comes to Merida for Xmas!! It’s a very Mexican city of ¾ million people, cultural capital of Yucatan State. It has the usual Mexican city layout, north south even number streets, east - west odd numbers. Low storey house, squares, churches, neighbourhoods etc. Very familiar to us now. It has a reputation as being sexy and cosmopolitan, but to be honest – we struggled to find it amongst the hammock sellers. We know it was Xmas, and things are quite, but it was mostly local tourists and nothing metropolitan about it all.
We had splurged on the hotel (Luz de Yucatan) which is cute and we are paying $70 a night as opposed to our more usual $20, so the showers are good! It’s a mix of 16th century Spanish colonial and modern, with a small pool, lush courtyards and the largest palm and banana trees ever. But despite giving us unlimited rum and tequila it was also very quiet – although supposedly full.
We whiled away the three days doing very little. The central square was always busy with markets and food sellers. They closed the main street off at 9 and opened it to pop up bars and salsa. It was here that we had turkey on Xmas, we sat on a balcony overlooking the street -they originated here in Mexico, as did the poinsettia which we’ve seen everywhere.
After turkey, we hung around till midnight mass, only to find that there wasn’t one! We went to mass on Xmas day instead. The cathedral is the oldest on the American continent, and had a great big Christ on a cross and a fab Peter being rude to Mary– see photo.
On Boxing day we decided to go to the seaside to ease the boredom. We took a local bus to Progreso on the Gulf of Mexico (so we have now crossed – by minibus – the American continent from east to west) some 35kms from Merida – think Southend with white sand! But we did get fish and chips and prawns. Lots of souvenir stalls, candy floss and the biggest pier ever – at 7kms long. We didn’t walk it. The sand looked very Caribbean, but as usual the weather was actually more Southend than Mexico – see the photo of Gill wrapped up against the cold wind! But wind does have its benefits, we met up with the two kiwis we had met and spent a couple of hours flying a kite they had with them. Ant was very good and luckily just managed to not decapitate local beach strollers as he occasionally crashed his kite to the sand. It was after this we found the beach restaurant full of local Meridano’s on the weekend (it was Saturday) full of waiters dressed as blue Santa’s! On arrival back in Merida we bowed to pressure and bought a hammock each – but not from the street traders. We went to a lovely old fashioned clothes and hammock shop. It’s interesting – hammocks are not just for tourists as we thought. They really are used for sleeping on the hot nights – we haven’t had a hot night yet but are sure they happen some times! We went for a hammock “individual “ each as we decided the doubles and king sizes were a little on the large side.
So we had spent Xmas in Merida, really disappointed by the level of sophistication promised in the guide books but not delivered. On our last evening we walk to a square a few blocks north where there was a local show and market thinking we could find decent food- but yet again it was stalls of empanadas, taco’s and other unintelligible Mexican fare. We meet up yet again with the Kiwis – just shows how few tourists there are around – we keep seeing people we have met before which is nice. We were musing on just what we could eat when they told us to walk north a few yards on Paseo de Montejo, where there were some nice restaurants. We had been searching for these, had not found them so were a little sceptical. But lo and behold a whole new Merida opened up – stylish bars, pavement cafes, boutique hotels……. It turned out that this street was designed to rival Paris’ Champs Elysee, when Merida had more millionaires than any city in the world. It was once rich on the sisal trade. We found the new hotel Rosas y Xocolate – perfect! We were amazed and delighted to have decent wine, good service and fab food, followed by a drink on the roof terrace overlooking the stylish promenaders below! We even got a Brussels sprout with our perfectly grilled steaks. Moral of the story – if the guide books say it is a stylish city make the effort and look for it first night – don’t wait till the last!
