yucatan, part I

Before we left my father warned me not to drive at night in Mexico. The roads are unlit, everything is two-lane, many cars are incapable of traveling faster than 35 mph, and people pass at dicey intervals. All of this is true. Somehow, though, it feels safer than America. There aren't many vehicles on the road. You feel like you can set your own rules. Anyways, we'd planned carefully so that we'd be through the airport and up to town with plenty of time before nightfall. Of course, the flight ran late, it took forever at the rental car office, the car they gave us was all but out of gas, and by the time we filled up it was full-on night.

Valladolid turned out to be a very sweet, surprisingly colonial village. My experience with Mexico had been limited to border towns and Cancun. Here I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't in Spain. Traces of the Roman Empire live on in Yucatan much more than I would have guessed. It's in the language (Latin more prevalent in Spanish than Germanic English), in a certain formality of speech and manner. It's in the arched galleries that hold their stores, in the public plazas, in the centrality of the churches, and in their classical architecture (especially in towns like Campeche and Mérida, below.)

Of course, the same block that holds an old Spanish house can also hold a thatched-roof Mayan hut.

Some towns reminded me of Santa Fe, and New Orleans as well. I'd forgotten that before it was French, the Big Easy was Spanish.