Spanish in Merida

Vaqueria and the Pyramid Across the Street - By Jeremy Carter - Guest blogger traveling in Merida, Mexico. Last night, I headed down to Merida's main square for the weekly performance of the vaqueria, a dance native to Yucatan. In this dance, couples dressed in traditional attire (white suits and white dresses, all with intricate embroidery) do a spirited dance where their torsos remain nearly motionless and their legs and feet move. (Think a Mexican version of Riverdance, only a lot more graceful.) To further demonstrate their skill, the performers dance with a glass of water balanced on their head…then they up the ante and dance while balancing a platter of five or more glasses of water. As if that weren't enough, they next dance with the platter on their heads while standing on a small box that's no more than a square foot in size. Today, Armando – the archaeologist who doubles as our Mayan culture instructor – took our class to Izamal, a town about 45 minutes east of Merida. We were expecting an archaeological site with perhaps a few homes and small tiendas, so we were shocked to find a rather large and very beautiful colonial town where all of the buildings are painted yellow with white accents, and the streets are paved with cobblestone. The town square is lined with shops and vendors, and today was quite a busy day…although compared to the hustle and bustle of Mérida, Izamal seemed to be a sleepy town. The focal point of the town square is the Franciscan convent, an enormous structure built in the 16 century on the site of a Mayan pyramid which the Spanish conquistadors dismantled. The convent still contains many of the original murals showing the Spanish settlers, while the cathedral contains elegantly dressed statues of various saints and the Virgin Mary. Then of course there are the ruins of Izamal. What makes these ruins so different from the others we've visited is the fact that they're scattered throughout the town. So from a back staircase at the convent you have a view of a pyramid being restored, and a nearby residential street divides a row of houses from another pyramid. I can't imagine what it must be like to look out your front door and see a pyramid that's more than 1,400 years old, but the people living in Izamal likely don't think anything of it. We climbed one of the pyramids, which has been restored about halfway up, but the second half of the stairs leading up to the top were extremely rocky and even. However, the view from the top -- with the convent and matching yellow stores and homes in the foreground and a 360-degree view of the flat, green Mexican countryside -- made the climb up (and the even more harrowing descent) well worth it.