Welcome to our Uaymitun 2018 Blog!
This blog concludes our road trip to the Loltún Caves and other sites south of Mérida!
We enjoyed our stay at The Pickled Onion very much and I thought I’d include a few more pictures to highlight what a great place it was! If you click on the link above, you’ll see their website!
The owner and proprietor, Valerie Pickles, was there to greet us upon arrival and spent time with us the next morning during our breakfast! She is a wonderful lady and a great host! The service was attentive and the food was outstanding!
After breakfast, we checked out and retraced our steps along the Puuc Route to the market town of Oxkutzcab. This part of the Yucatán is well-known as the Fruit Belt, with large groves of citrus fruit everywhere!
The Mercado Municipal caters largely to retailers and restaurants as they sell fruit by the crate. Inside the building, it’s a typical local market selling most anything including lots of fruit and vegetables!
After circling the square, we pulled into the first place marked as ‘public parking’ only to find it was full of trucks loading and unloading produce for the market! We parked anyways!
We walked through the crowded outside market, which was full of bicycle carts that would deliver your crates of goods back to your car if you wished!
Then we toured the inside stalls and picked up some fruits and veggies!
For lunch, we sought out the Restaurante Rex Cafe at the corner of Calle 49 and Calle 62, on the recommendation of Valerie at the Pickled Onion!
They have a very broad International menu, including Yucatecan, Mexican, American, Thai and other dishes!
I had to include pictures as the dishes were quite unexpected in a small town in the Yucatán! When we questioned the waiter, he told us that the owner was an American from Oregon who now lives in Oxkutzcab and owns a couple of restaurants! Very interesting! A great lunch!
After lunch, we heading north out of Oxkutzcab to the historic town of Mani to see the Church and Convent of San Miguel. Apart from being an interesting Catholic building, there was a significant event here that altered Mayan history. With help from Wikipedia…
Maní has been continuously occupied for approximately 4000 years. In the postclassic Mesoamerican era it was home to the Tutul-Xiu Maya dynasty, which moved their capital here from Uxmal in the 13th century. The Xiu were the dominant power in the western Yucatán after the fall of Mayapan in 1441. Maní served as the main religious center in honor of the deity Kukulcan (Cukulcan, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl) for the Maya with an annual chic kaban festival until 1341.
With the arrival of the Spanish the Xiu of Maní allied themselves with the Spanish and assisted in the conquest of the rest of the peninsula.
On July 12, 1562, Friar Diego de Landa, who held the office of inquisitor before the Monastery of San Miguel Arcángel, held an auto de fe Inquisitional cerermony in Maní, burning a number of Maya hieroglyphic books and a reported 5000 idols, saying that they were “works of the devil”. The number of books burned is disputed. Landa claimed only burning 27. This act and numerous incidents of torture at the monastery were used to speed the mass adoption of Roman Catholicism throughout the region.
After wandering through the church grounds and planning to return home, I wanted to head towards Tipikal and then to the main highway North to Mérida. My trusty GPS laid out our route and before I knew it, we were heading, not to Tipikal, but towards Dzán and hidden peril!
First a definition: “In the middle of nowhere”
Pronoun: a place that is remote, uninteresting, or nondescript.
“a stretch of road between nowhere and nowhere”
While driving between Dzán and Ticul, in the middle of nowhere, we happened upon a teeny, weeny bit of road debris!
We were very fortunate that more damage or injury didn’t occur, but that pointy bit took a large chuck of rubber out of the driver’s side front tire and we quickly pulled over to examine the damage and our very flat tire!
While Doug and I attempted to jack up the car, the girls were busy flagging people to slow down and go around! Several slowed and asked if we were OK… several sped past with little reduction of speed!
Then, a couple of local men stopped and with a much better jack were able to assist us in changing to our spare tire! After their labours, I wanted to thank them with some money, but they declined… in essence, when translated, they said “Today we help you, tomorrow you would help us”! There are wonderful people here in the Yucatán.
Without any further incident, we returned home to Uaymarima in time to take in a great sunset!
That’s it for this blog post… see you again soon!
Cheers from Uaymitun, MX!
Loved your pictures of the Pickled Onion, better than the ones I took. An interesting blog…again!
Another great blog mi hermano
Wow – that food looks fantastic! Especially the Mongolian beef.
The weather looks pretty good as well…… 🙂
Doug, what a great post! From the impossibly lush shots at the Pickled Onion (“impossible” compared to the snowscape I am looking out at right now), to the market and restaurant at Oxkutzcab, the church and convent and its story, to the drama of the flat in the “middle of nowhere”, and the comforting return home.
Of all these, the market was perhaps the most interesting since in all of the Yucatan bits we covered we did not find anything like a large roofed market. Maybe Oxkutzcab does not fully qualify either, but it sure looks worth a visit once we return.
In 4 weeks we will be in Paris, ready to cycle another 4000-5,000 km. Strangely we have not found a covered market in Paris either, but we will be all over France, including Provence, and will surely have good luck finding them.
We are looking forward to the next report from sunny Yucatan!
Thanks, Steve! We will look forward to your Grampies Paris Blog!!!
Great Blog !!!!!!!!! Doug That food look so yummy !!!!!
I just love to see your many adventures. The Pickled Onion looks like an interesting place to go.
So glad you are have a fun time with your friend.
I see your beautiful sunny pictures and I envy you all. As you know we had another dumping of snow. So I look out my window and look at all the snow. Then I think 6 more weeks and we will be at the resort in the sunshine too !!!!!! So enjoy and have fun!!!!!!!!
Sandy