Ruta Puuc

My favorite moments in Mexico were definitely the times that our tour guide took a detour from the touristy places and allowed us to see and experience the culture there. When we left Uxmal we had a long drive back down the Ruta Puuc (or the Puuc Route) on our way back to Mérida. The Ruta Puuc is a beautiful scenic road that passes through several ancient Maya sites. It led us to the home of the locals I talked about in the last post and to the Ecomuseo del Cacao where I saw fresh cacao plants and banana trees and tasted some of the best dark chocolate I've ever had. It also led us to a ceramic workshop where two locals spent their time creating the most beautiful pieces of Maya art. The gentlemen crafted the ceramics while the lady painted on them. She referred to a reprint of one of the few surviving ancient Maya codices throughout the painting process so that her characters would look exactly like the ones found in Maya art, before the codices were destroyed during the Spanish conquest. I really enjoyed seeing them work and getting a peek into their workshop.

Santa Elena

I was fortunate enough to have a lot of great experiences during my stay in Mexico. Because I went with a class, activities were scheduled everyday and we were really able to make the most of our time there. One of the most memorable experiences I had was when we visited a pair of locals at their home in Santa Elena. Our generous tour guide arranged for us to meet them one morning before taking off to a new city, and I'm so glad that we squeezed it in. It was incredible to see how simple their lives were by comparison to the typical American lifestyle. 

First we visited their home which was made with mud walls and a thatch roof, and I learned that it was an older style home which will probably become extinct in the next few decades because of the rapid influx of concrete homes in the area. That was sad for me to hear because I'm always a little nostalgic when I learn about dying traditions. Anyway that's another story for a different day. Their home consisted of a single room which had an altar in the corner and a hammock that stretched from beam to beam in the center. Next to the altar was a cabinet with several different photos of the couple taped to it which I later learned were taken by tourists similar to me. 

We walked through the main room and into a different building where the wife was making tortillas. She was sweet and smiled a lot for the cameras. We only watched her for a bit before following her husband to his garden in the back. I was so distracted by the visuals that I completely forgot the couple's names and the names of the plants and dyes he told us all about. He showed us how he made twine from what I'm certain was a sisal plant, and then he showed us how he made certain dyes. It was a quick stop for us, but most certainly one of my favorite parts of the trip.