merida – Meandering Marbles

Mérida Carnaval

Here’s my last update from my time in the Yucatan. At the end of my stay, my travel plans got pretty convoluted. I decided I wanted to experience Carnaval in Mexico, which led to some backtracking and long bus rides. As a kid, I grew up going to Mardi Gras with my family in Mississippi and Louisiana, but I’ve never seen the festivities outside the United States. There are two big celebrations in the Yucatan, one in Mérida and one in Cozumel. The Mérida festivities are held in an entirely separate part of town in fairgrounds they call the Ciudad Carnaval. I went with Lily, another student from the Spanish school I was attending. We met up in the center of town and hopped on the free women-only shuttle that took us directly there. It’s basically set up like a giant fair with rides for kids, typical street food like churros and elotes, and different stages with performers. The big highlights of Carnaval are the parades and the concerts, but we had some time to kill before they started so we explored the mostly-empty rides.

giant bouncy obstacle course (they let us go through even though we were grown), me and Lily in front of the crazy worm roller coaster, view from the top of the ferris wheel

Finally, it was parade time! The parade went around the outside of this entire “city” and there were bleachers set up for everyone to sit and watch. We, again, scored some seats in the women-only sections which were filled with women and kids. The parade was everything I hoped it would be, with ridiculous costumes, massive floats, and people having a great time.

dancers, special performers, giant floats

The dancers were full of energy and dressed up in brightly colored costumes. Some groups were completely in sync and others were just feeling the vibe.

various dance groups and their costumes

The floats were mostly sponsored by a few different large corporations.

different floats in the parade

One major difference is that not nearly as much swag is thrown to spectators. At Mardi Gras in New Orleans, I came home with bags of beads and toys. Here I managed to catch a few cookies, a couple sets of beads, and a souvenir cup.

frozen strawberries and cream treat, my swag from the parade, headless man costume

The other huge difference is that Carnaval in Mérida holds huge concerts. We didn’t stay for the entire concert, but Matute plays old hits from the 80’s that everyone in the crowd (except us) seemed to know. It was getting pretty late, so we hopped on our free shuttle bus back to the city. Mérida is one of the safest cities in all of North America, which meant we walked back to our hotels without any issues even though it was well past midnight.

Kayaking in Sisal

On one of my last weekends in Mérida, another Spanish student Lucy and I made our way out to Sisal for a kayaking experience. Our guide seated us in the front of his moto-taxi and added a trailer with 2 kayaks in the back and off we went on a long bumpy ride to La Carbonera. The water is very low in the winter months, but we still managed to see a few flamingos hanging out. We kayaked through lots and lots of mangroves and eventually came to an ojo de agua, a natural spring. The water in the ojo is freshwater, bubbling up from an underground source. Back on the main lagoon, the water is brackish because it mixes with saltwater from the ocean. When the rainy season comes, the water gets higher and a lot more flamingos come to feed. On the way back to Sisal, we stopped and went for a swim in the ocean at a beautiful pristine beach.

flamingos, me and Lucy in our kayak next to mangroves, view from swimming in the ojo de agua

I stayed in Mérida for three weeks, taking Spanish classes and wandering around the city. The colonial influence is strong here and old money still has a deep hold on the community. In Mexican slang, the word fresa (literally strawberry), refers to spoiled, young people with a lot of privilege and parts of this city definitely have fresa vibes. At one time, the Yucatan was the one of the richest states and Mérida was one of the richest cities in Mexico thanks to the henequen industry, which, of course, I’d never heard of until I got here. Henequen is made from a type of agave (different species than the one used to make tequila), that was twisted into ropes, cords and fabric. People made a lot of money from the plant and their ruthless exploitation of workers. There’s actually a sizeable Korean population in Mérida because of this industry. Originally, a bunch of Koreans signed on to work 5-year contracts on henequen plantations, but earned almost nothing, were frequently beaten, and often didn’t even make enough money to return home. So they stayed and their descendants still live here.

Architecture

Because of the old money in this city, there’s a lot of European style architecture in the rich enclaves of town. Just outside the city center, the architecture switches to square cement houses built right next to each other, forming one contiguous wall on each block, interrupted by fancy windows and doors.

City Center: Palacio de Gobierno, Pasaje Revolución, fancy corner house (by the way, all street corners have this diagonal cutout)

Paseo Montejo: El Minaret, Monumento a La Patria, El Palacio Cantón (home to the Regional Anthropology Museum)

Mérida in Lights: Catedral de San Ildefonso, neon boba sign, old penitentiary lit up with Mayan calendar glyphs

Art

Mérida is definitely a city of museums and lots and lots of art. Every day after school was finished, I would try to get to another museum or gallery.

top (l to r): embroidery depicting typical Yucatecan scenes from the Gran Museo del Mundo Maya
bottom (l to r): sculpture in MACAY (Contemporary Art Museum), painting from MACAY, painting in the Palacio Gobierno by Fernando Castro Pacheco

Food

Of course, tacos are available on every other street corner, but the Yucatan has some special regional dishes. Salbutes are basically tacos, but have a puffier base than a regular tortilla. Panuchos are similar to salbutes, but are filled with beans and then fried a bit. There’s some differences in the toppings, but I’m vegetarian, so those subtleties were lost on me. Chaya, the tree spinach I briefly mentioned in an earlier post, gets tossed into a lot of dishes.

Onto the desserts: marquesitas are crepes filled with your choice of sweet toppings (nutella, cajeta (caramelized goat milk), or cream cheese), a bit of fruit (bananas and strawberries are common), and then topped with lots and lots of cheese before being rolled up into an easily portable street treat. Champola is also a speciality of Mérida in particular. It’s simple a sorbet covered in milk, but not blended together. The best flavors are guava, coconut, and mamey (a fruit with a bright orange flesh that I’ve only had while traveling, but apparently does grow in Florida and Hawai’i).

Mayan styled salbutes (with chaya and pepita seeds), vegan tacos de birria (not Yucatecan, but these were amazing), marquesita with nutella and banana