Mucuyche hacienda and cenotes

Backing up a bit to show a map of the area where we are staying and visiting in Yucatán state. We don’t need (or want!) a car for days spent in Merida, where the city center is very walkable. But we did rent a car for the 3 day weekend to do some day trips. The day we rented the car, we drove to Progreso, which I totally forgot to write about, possibly for good reason! Will touch on that in a later post. Yesterday we went to Izamal, you can see in the right most purple box below. Today we went to Mucuyche for a visit to the hacienda and cenotes. I’ve been carrying this map around for 3 years – so it also includes previous sites we’ve visited.

Cenotes are natural sinkholes filled with fresh water. They can be more of less open on top, ranging from an open pool to a cave. The Yucatán peninsula is full of cenotes! We’ve visited several over the years, and typically they are informal, and you drive up, pay a small fee, park, shower to remove any sunblock or skin/hair products that could harm the environment, and climb down a staircase to the pool. The Cenotes Hacienda Mucuyche is a much more organized and built out place, and so we made a reservation (via WhatsApp text, super easy) for 9am this morning. Even before the tour we had a chance to see building textures, trees and some very cool seed pods that are everywhere.

Luis was our tour guide and did a great job with a bilingual tour of the haciencda first. We had just 4 people on the tour, which was very nice especially in the swimming part. In the photos below, note that the arches with a point at the top are a Moorish influence brought by the Spaniards, John standing in a tools room, and a tree that was knocked over by a storm but is still alive. Its sign says “I fell but I never gave up.” Then in the third row below, the spiky plants that look like the top of a pineapple, growing on top of the stone wall, are henequen (a type of agave). We got a really clear demonstration of how the Mayans made rope from agave! Third row below, right photo, shows you cut off the fronds, then you put the frond on a wooden board attached at the top and scrape the outer skin off the frond, exposing the fiber. It’s like a scratchy and super strong corn silk. Then you cut the fiber off and do more processing to make it into long pieces that can be twisted into rope.

Or, if you want to make a lot of money, you bring in machinery from Milwaukee and mass produce it. Until the market pops when plastic is invented and synthetic rope can be made. This hacienda was inhabited until the 1980s with some work going on, and the last payments were made to the workers at that time. There were disagreements about the payments and the owners moved out and sold the property, and the workers took out some frustration on the house. Not sure in what order. The property has been purchased now for tourism and is being renovated in stages. See a derelict but quite striking part of the building in the right photo in the first row below, then the quite beautifully renovated chapel in the second row right. The chapel was renovated quite recently after the ceiling collapsed during a storm.

After the land part of the tour, we moved to the water part. We changed and showered and went down steps to the first of 3 cenotes – called Carlota, after the Empress of Mexico who as the story goes was the first person to swim in this cenote, during a visit in 1865. I should mention that we really liked the cadence of the tour – where we walked around with the guide first, then went back through and took photos at our own pace later. You’ll see us in clothes and swimming mixed in below, just an FYI!

As we got into the water, there were many, many swallows swimming in a circle above us, hopefully eating up all the juicy mosquitos they could! See the nests (not sure these are swallow nests, but there are some kind of nests all over the ceiling). The water was a perfect 74F / 23C, and super clear. Life jackets are mandatory, it’s very deep, and our guide Luis did the whole swim part with us too and talked a lot about the cave. After some time in Carlota, we swam through the archway in the third row and out into the river or channel that leads toward a waterfall. Most of the stone surfaces you see here are naturally occurring, but they did build out things like stairs, walkways and platforms, so it’s very secure feeling while you’re getting in and out.

There was an official photographer there who took these photos of us in the water, first in Carlota then in the river and right after the river. The waterfall is from an aqueduct way above and really hits your head like a massage!

Then we went into the final cenote, called Maya Azul (or Maya blue). This was such an amazing place, and the one that was least capturable in photos – really all cndkmen readers need to go float in this one to experience it! It’s completely enclosed except for 3 openings at the top that were the wells the Spaniards dug to get water, not realizing there was a whole huge cavern beneath. Sunlight shines through the wells now, and also there is lighting that has been placed deep in the cenote, lighting ripples from below that shine all over the walls. There are stalactites and stalagmites and columns all over, and you can swim right up to them (no touching!) Luis had an underwater flashlight that was really helpful for pointing out bats, fish, and limestone formations. We really loved this cenote and would love to experience it in different seasons (the whole experience is said to be amazing in the rain!) but feel very fortunate to have gotten this visit today.

After our tour was finished, which was about 90 minutes total, we headed to the swimming pool. I couldn’t help but do some laps before lunch, then we sat at a very shady table and had empanadas with Chaya (a local spinach) and Edam cheese, and cochinita pibil (roasted pork) tacos. Come to think about it, I really doubled down on chaya by also having a drink that was infused with chaya and lime.