Email & ShareOne moment, you find yourself in the center of a small pueblo outside of town. Students dressed in crisp school uniforms ride by down the middle of the street on their bicycles, laughing and calling to each other in the hot midday sun. There is not another car but yours in sight. In the distance, a 16th Century church rises against the bright blue sky. You wonder "Where am I?".
Then there’s the far-off stare of a huipile-clad woman in the streets of the mercado, her dark hair bound and coiled behind her, children at her side. As if she wonders what she is doing in this crowded market with cars and fumes and cel phones. Where have all the chicle hunters gone?
Another time, you are struck by the unaffected smile of a city worker as you walk by. He is doing his job, sweeping trash in the street. You aren’t young or beautiful. You smile, he smiles and you both say Buenos Días because that is what people do here.
You notice the morning traffic of black xcav crows as they commute in flocks up Paseo Montejo, going north for the day. They swoop straight down the avenue in surges, flying between the trees, like strangely silent flying businessmen. At dusk, the reverse commute is noisy and raucous, thousands of black-suited birds screeching and reciting the details of their day, ecstatic about the encroaching evening and their nightly party in the trees.
There are those precious Sunday mornings in the Centro. Not in the zocalo, where the crowds gather, but out in the surrounding neighborhoods. Whole blocks with no cars, no people, just the quiet heat of midday, the background cries of boys playing out their soccer dreams in a distant street. Old men rock on old chairs in old doorways, stubbled and bare-chested. Old women sit inside their homes watching Catholic mass in Mexico City on television. 
Briefly, the silence is broken as a family drives up, unpacks itself from a little car, carries aluminum-covered dishes into a dark doorway.
Then there’s the sound of empty coconut shells clapping together when a horse-drawn calesa trots by, mixing centuries with uncanny ease.
Or that wonderful Latin-American phenomenon of lovers in the park, when each bench is occupied as if it were a hotel room with a Do Not Disturb sign hung on the door. Lovers mate in full sight, fully clothed. Whispers and smiles swirl around them like honeybees, protecting their intimacy from passers-by. Sometimes, a woman will glance up from her lovers’ conversation but though her face is caught by the streetlight, she doesn’t see you walking by.
Sometimes, you happen to notice the dripping, tropical crowded undercurrent of revolución just after a heavy rain, when you can sense the plants in your garden start closing in, plotting an overthrow of order with their newly-emboldened viridian chaos.
Or you’re driving past a Mayan pueblo after sunset, when each small home glows from within, bare lightbulbs or christmas-lit altars casting light out onto the paths. The present recedes like a tide to reveal a timeless place where people visit in the streets and children play quietly, dogs lie down unafraid and women laugh.
Every once in awhile, it’s just the pink prick of bougainvilla, the hollow drum of the ceiba tree, the swishing miniskirts of palm trees with long legs, the flaming flowers of the flamboyanes, and the yellow dripping lluvia de oro and its rain of gold.
And then there’s that indescribable high when the red grease slips out from between two ends of the folded tortilla and drips onto your hand just as the almost-sweet spices of cochinita are taken over by the intensity that spreads across your tongue like a habanero prairie fire and blossoms into your throat like a bright red hibiscus of pain.
And afterwards the cool, pop-rock elixir that pours out of the sea-green iconic bottle, like foam from a Caribbean wave, quenching the fire that burns from your mouth to the back of your brain. Brief relief, and then the flames surge back, unabated and hissing for more. Why is it that Coca Cola tastes so delicious here?
At times, its that lazy moment when the day reaches the golden hour, and the sun casts elaborate shadows through the iron protectores across your window onto the brightly colored mosaico tile floor.
Or the moment when you find yourself sitting in Santiago Park, on a park bench painted with 100 coats of green paint, listening to the birds and church bells chiming, watching a young family on a bench opposite you. The children are making faces at each other while they eat ice cream. And the young parents are just quietly enjoying them.
Late one night, you wander down to the center of town and find the zocalo ringed by groups of men, in twos and threes, dressed smartly in their guayaberas and carrying old guitars. From around the square, the strains of singing and strumming reaches you and you realize they are all here just to sing. And some of them have been coming here for decades. Where else could you be but Merida?
The last few days it has been moments when you see your neighbors, walking down the unusually quiet street, blowing horns, laughing and generally enjoying themselves because they just walked back from watching the 
Carnaval parade.
Merida sometimes seems like it is lost in time, just drifting, occasionally caught up in a swirl of history, but a city apart, receding from destiny, approaching perfection, hotter than hell. Sometimes the beauty of it just stops you in your tracks. For a moment.
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Beautiful.
O………m’God!
Thank you for the moment, the poetic moment, that *you* gave us, your adoring readers.
Stunning! Absolutely stunning!
Thank you for the word painting of Merida… all of what you describe are among the reasons we bought a house in Santiago. (I’ve sat on that very bench in the picture to the left of the fountain.)
Jim
A beautiful description of Merida. And in many ways a description of living in Mexico. It just seems to envelope you, tie you to the earth. You feel so connected even if you are an ex-pat.
A-h-h-h-h-h…….
This is why my wife and I just bought a little Mexican home near the Santiago park. Now comes the interminable wait to see if it actually closes.
Thanks for all your beautiful word images. They seem to appear on my computer when I most need them.
You’re killing me. You’re saving me. Thank you. My only consolation is knowing that I’ll be back, soon… and that I’ll have you to read in the meantime.
I have never seen – nor heard of – another city that has the power to cause people (citizens and visitors) to fall in love with her. Indeed – the entire state of Yucatan seems to have the same power. …and what a blessing for those of us who have come close enough to have fallen under her spell.
How this article makes me miss my esposa, Ariadna, and Merida. I’ve visited almost every place in Merida. Rode many of the Camions Urbanos. Went to every know Parada de Camions in Centro. Visited all the Plazas (Gran Plaza, Plaza Fiesta, Plaza Dorada, Plaza Americas, and Plaza Oriente). Medical treatment at CMA and IMSS T-1. I’ve eaten at the Mercados in Chuburna and Aleman Colonias. The Main Mercado in Centro. I miss it there.
Oh, so true! I did not live in Merida, but I can relate to what you say. What I loved the most, even though it seems very small, was hearing the paper boy yell every morning “Heraldo”. It was like hearing a rooster crow on the farm. Then you would here the wagon with fresh tortillas coming down the dirt road. A lot of people think Mexico is such a poor country, but I’ve never seen happier people. They do not have “things” like we have, but they have true happiness and they love what they do. They are “rich” with love of life and family. It makes you stop and reconsider what is truly “important” in the whole scheme of things.
I am stunned. Thank you!
poetic and profound…
thank you.
Me too, stunned and moved by the poetry of your words.
Made me wonder why I left Merida…..until I got to the HOTTER THAN HELL part. But, I suppose, even that is a small price to pay.
MP.
WOW!!!!!! I’m in awe…… this is one of the most beautiful articles I’ve read in your blog…… Thank you.
I think that we Meridanos are really lucky on having you working gringos living here and writing about our beloved city. You are great. Thanks!!!.
Wow – you have perfectly captured experiences similar to those we have seen in the Yucatan.
Interesting to me is the juxtaposition of these magical moments with the frustrations of undertaking rather major tasks. The roadmap in a gringo brain doesn’t fit the landscape of Mexico. All too often, we’ve tried to work with someone who seems to fit the roadmap, rather than throwing the map away and truly learning a new set of rules. I’ve done it so many times I can now see myself as I do it, but cannot stop.
I wonder how many years it will take before we can finally ’surrender’ gringo-think and become truly ‘local’. The experiences you describe are part of the wonder outside our own paradigms of thought. I hope I always feel amazement, joy and mystery at the ways of this incredible land. But I also hope to fit into it better than I do now.
OK – we are convinced that we must plan a second visit to the Yucatan when our first visit is in two weeks.
i know,i know
Absolutely beautiful. Are there any RV parks close by??
Gracias. Yes, we believe there is an RV park at the north end of town, just north of Liverpool.
One all too brief winter in Merida in 2003 just all came back to me…..what beautiful words for a beautiful place. Thank you.
An invitation to all to visit the Museo de La Ciudad, in the afternoons. To say hola to my esposa, “Working Yucateca”, Ariadna. To say how much her esposo, Carlos in Texas, misses her. The Museo is small, and only takes a few minutes to walk through it. It is FREE. It’s a history of Merida. There are signs in english. Be sure you sign the guest book when you enter the door way. That’s where you’ll find Working Yucateca sitting. The Hours are 8:00 am – 8:00 pm, Tuesday – Friday; 8:00 am – 2:00 pm, Saturday & Sunday. Closed on Mondays/Lunes.
Carlos D. Gallegos
What a beautiful, verbal canvas for us all to enjoy. Thank you.
[...] At the insistence of some of our more pragmatic readers, we’ve been working on an editorial we were going to call, “The Dark Side of Yucatan”. We thought it might offer some balance to our Merida Moments article [...]
I am an artist in California. I have no clue why, or how I found this web site. Can a city beckon perfect strangers to it? I was fortunate to visit a small island off Belize last year, but I think I may have overshot my target. Your words of Merida describe the essence of what I think I’m searching for as an artist, as a human being. Thank you.
De nada, Bruce. I must tell you that most of us who live here, when it gets right down to it, feel as if we were chosen to be here. Its inexplicable, but we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t love the mystery.
Visiting this website always makes me wonder why I live abroad. I was born in Yucatan, but have lived most of my life in California. Now that I have a family, I wonder if my children would enjoy Yucatan life as I did for the brief 5 years I spent there during my adolescence. I did marry a Yucateca, so it would not be difficult to convince her, but I am afraid of not making it in Yucatan. Yet, I am tired of the pressure of big city life.
Visit my hometown, Kanasin! A quaint town in the outskirts of Merida.
Encontre tu blog de puritita casualidad…. Soy una mexicana (ex patriota) que ahora vive en los suburbios en Texas. Me encanta tu blog! Pero te voy a ser sincera, no lo leo muy seguido porque me haces extrañar a mi Mexico como nadie o nada mas!
Adaptarse a la vida en los “estates” como le digo yo, es muy dificil despues de vivir todo lo que mencionas en tus blogs. Y yo vengo de la Cuidad de Mexico! Imaginate!
Gracias por correr la voz…. tu blog hace ver a Mexico con una optica diferente, aqui solo nos conocen por mojados, no saben nada de nuestra cultura, y no nos quieren conocer. Pero gracias a blogs como el tuyo, hay un poquito de nuestro Mexico regado en la red, con unas descripciones tan maravillosas, que manera de escribir! Gracias por describirnos, por plasmar con letras nuestro color, nuestro folklore, nuestro sabor!
Sigue adelante, espero que sigas teniendo mucho exito y que sigan disfrutando del calor de los mexicanos para que nos sigas deleitando con tus versos. Y que para los ex patriotas que estamos de este lado, nos recuerdes lo bonito de nuestro Mexico.
For those of you not fluent in Spanish yet, here’s what Susana said:
I found your blog by chance… I’m Mexican (expat) living in the suburbs of Texas. I love your blog! To tell you the truth, I don’t read it that often because you make me miss Mexico as nothing else can!
Adapting to live in the “estates” (that’s how I call it), is hard after you experience everything that you mention in your blog, and I come from Mexico city… Imagine that!
Thank you for (letting people know)… your blog allows people to see Mexico from a different perspective. Here they only see us as wetbacks, but they don’t know anything about our culture and they don’t want to know about us. Thanks to blogs like yours, there is a little bit of Mexico on the internet, with marvelous descriptions… what a way to write! Thank you for describing us, expressing with words our color, our folklore and our flavor!
Keep up the good work! I hope you keep having success and continue enjoying the Mexican peoples’ warmth, and that you continue delighting us with your verse. And for the expats on this side, (I hope that you continue) to remind us about our beautiful Mexico.
What a beautiful picture you have painted, an artist could not have done any better with a canvas and brush. Do you ever get the feeling of being infinitesimal in the scope of the centuries that have have passed? It’s like time stands still and one realizes they are but a second in time on this beautiful landscape.
¿Si la ciudad de Mérida era un lugar mágico tan asombroso, por qué hay 20 millones de ilegales mexicanos en los EU?
Frank (Orgullo Criollo),
As a Luisiana gringa criollo francés… I too have “orgullo criollo” – nice to see the expression…
As for your larger question, that is one we all know the answer to – but it is so multifaceted that it certainly cannot be fully discussed in this forum. As we matured, we accepted the reality that the world is simply too big for us to fix all of its problems for all of its people. But we are not simply “lost in the world”… We are in Yucatan… a place where everyone is working around the clock to improve the standard of living for all Yucatecos and ensure that our young people have less perceived need to cross the border than other young Latinos might feel. Those who do go have excelled in all they have turned their hands to do in the E.U., giving us an even greater measure of Orgullo De Yucateco because of the respect earned by our people in the E.U. No matter how you look at it – Yucatan is a great place to live… and it is a great place to claim as one’s home, no matter where one chooses to live in the world.
Thank you….for a moment or two, I thought I was there right with you…..God willing, I will personally see the beauty of the people and the places soon……
I read this out loud to Ned, and I had to keep stopping because something kept catching in my throat and tears were blurring my vision. You have beautifully captured so much of what I love about the Yucatan, and have made me miss it even more ferociously. I can hardly stand it. I am planning to relocate there soon, and these little reminders make me want to leave tomorrow. Thank you, Ayata
[...] We have a saying here in the shop, Fuma menos – Fuma mejor, or Smoke less – Smoke better. Adding an occasional cigar to your routine helps to enhance the elements of the Merida environment we have all come to appreciate. Sitting and smoking a cigar allows you to slow down, relax and enjoy your surroundings; listen to the birds, the far-off marching band, and the fiesta. Let the breeze brush against you as you watch the slow plume of white smoke escape your cigar and rise to the clouds. Choose you cigar wisely and you will be richly rewarded with a deep and rewarding Merida Moment. [...]
dios mio!!
I am crying as i write this letters.
It becomes hard to see the right leter i need to type on this keyboard.
I wonder what nerves did your writing touched to make me feel this way?
I should not be crying!!
I am not a yucateco, nor have I ever been to merida or the state.
So why im i crying?
It is because your writing made me remember a lot of things that are mexico.
I am crying not of sadness but hapinness!!!
I am a mexican living in the usa.
I am going back to mexico soon!
Thaks for all the poetry.
Whomever wrote this is clearly observant and sensitive in their musings and searchings in and around Merida – this captures that wonderful city in a way it conjures up the images, smell and sounds beautifully.
On a day full of snow here in Toronto, this reading made for a gleeful reprieve.
Muchas Gracias.
Juana
My gringo husband and I had planned a trip to Merida, Playa del Carmen & Belize a couple of years ago, but the hurricane hit & we switched the plan to Pto. Vallarta. Now I wished we had stuck to the original plan! I had read about Merida and all it’s charm in travel books (even though I’m 100% Mexican, regretfully I don’t know the land like I should). I recently came across YucatanLiving subscribe to your newsletter. I check into the articles at least once a week. I feel your articles & website keep me connected with who I really am and provide insight to how the country is evolving, and not. It’s comforting to see that somethings don’t change. It is with great pleasure to recall my childhood days in northern Mexico, playing barefoot and shirtless in the streets with my other siblings. To chase the ‘paletero’ for a ‘raspa’, La muchacha de ‘las donas’ for my favorite sugar doughnuts, or many of the other street-cart vendors selling corn, or fresh fruit. At night we would climb into the huge walnut tree in our back yard to catch a cool breeze, or sleep on the rooftop “patio” altogether just to keep cool. And when it rained nothing was said if we wanted to play in the rain; now I recall the smell the wet dirt from the adobe home we lived in. You couldn’t resist walking up to it and pinching a piece off to taste! It was all so sweet and simple!
CasiYucateco & Susana said it best! “The experiences you describe are part of the wonder outside our own paradigms of thought. I hope I always feel amazement, joy and mystery at the ways of this incredible land. But I also hope to fit into it better than I do now.” One day we too will return home. Thank you all for showing the heart of Mexico and our people.
Irene de Chicago
I was a fan.
Now I adore your talented, beautiful, and accurate
description of why I love the Yucatan.
I will print this article for my mother. For her to understand why it is that I fell in love with her (the mayans and the yucatan). I will hope that your words touch my mother, as deeply and poetically as it has for me.
If she understands from your words and your painting with those words onto a canvas of pure perfection – I am forever in your debt.
If strong men weep on reading your prose, I feel better about so often being reduced to tears at beautiful Merida moments like bougainvillea blossoms filling a birdbath, and blubbing out loud reading your article. Merida and I first met on January 7, 1997, and life in Ontario hasn’t been the same since.
Hello again,I’m sorry to say its been a month too long to be away from such a beautiful,well thought out,well laid out, forum of wonderful places and People equally as genuine as I have come to know from My all to short visits to the Yucatan… How I miss it more than ever, as this will be the first time in 6-years that Myself and wife will not be making what is more of a sacred, spiritual, cleansing and destressful way of getting out of Our -Gringo rat race… This has been one of the hardest winters in Maine in a long time, 10 degree days mid 20’s for a high, hardly any sun, snow almost every other couple days,15-feet of snow. The price of gas home heating oil , plowing bills it just never ends.. When I just finished this Beautiful article about life and People the simplicity, the honesty, the sights ,sounds smell and tastes just overwhelms Me ,it has taken Me away from here as I sit here I feel I’m there with every word I read, I thank You So MUCH… even if for a short time. Reality will set in and I have to think of tomorrows woes…the clock is ticking at such a tremendous pace its so hard to keep up as We struggle away in the Ol-USA… Take care Everyone TIM
Para “Orgullo Criollo”. No, there are not 20 million Mexican “ilegals” in the USA. There are 12 million ilegal aliens, of which about six million are from Mexico. The other six million come from all over the world. But if you really want an answer to your question, you should go and visit yourself. I don’t know where you are from, but I can tell your intentions are far from good. Your orgullo sounds very suspicious to me.
And yes, this article on Merida was excellent. Merida, a place I have never visited.
As a note to our Mexican friends: There are many gringos who do not believe the terminology of “illegal” is at all appropriate. A person is never “illegal.” Their actions could have been illegal, but the person is still a person.
Of the many undocumented workers in the USA, not all have crossed the border improperly. Large numbers of undocumented workers came “legally” on student or work visas and overstayed the timeframes allowed. I know of areas with large numbers of Irish undocumented residents and personally know a Scottish undocumented resident who overstayed a student visa 20 years ago.
Why do people do such things? Because the Byzantine process of becoming “legal” is so incredibly complicated. As one example, there is a Philappine Doctor and wife who have lived legally in the USA for over 15 years. His parents filed the papers for him to immigrate to the USA, not knowing that he and his wife had already married in the Philappines. No one knew that this was any problem. They both received totally legal papers and provided medical services to the small town where they live for the past 15 years. Now that they have applied for citizenship, the “lie” that he was “unmarried” on the papers filed by his parents long ago means that instead of being allowed citizenship, the draconian ICE wants to deport both he and his wife – who have had legal papers all along and who have followed every law while providing vital medical services in an area underserved.
A recent article delved into the number of “open visas” available to Latin Americans who have no family or pre-arranged work in the USA: 147. Yes, in an entire year, only 147 visas are available for people desperately seeking a living to feed their families:
I have two experiences to add to the ones on this article:
Have you noticed how the trunks of flamboyant trees ressemble human torsos, or arms, or legs!? There is a flamboyant tree on “Avenida Colon” whose trunk looks just like the torso of a woman, belly button and all.
Then there is this man that sells corn, “elotes”, around my neighbourhood. His voice, as he announces his elotes, is a deep, rich, strong, baritone, that many a classical singer would envy, and his song is like a romantic ballad.
I just turned 65 and want to retire either in my homeland, Braszil, or in Mexico. The cost of living in the US is rising faster than my income can keep up with. But with the week dollar, it’s rising faster and faster in Brazil also. I’m wondering what it is in Merida, MX. I realize that it’s rising there too, but probably not as fast as here in the US. How hard is it to emigrate to Mexico? A lot of paperwork ? Is it safe ? Alhtough I’m not a gringo, I’m not mexican either, and have a gringo accent when I speak spanish, for I have lived in the US for some 43 years…Whatever light you can shed on this will really bd appreciated. Thanks…
Desi…
Ola Desi,
nao sei quando voce escreveu essa mensagem e se ainda esta procurando uma resposta.
Eu conheco a vida no Brasil e Merida.
Atualmente Brasil e muito caro pelo Real alto (ou dolar baixo). Em comparacao Merida ainda e muito mais economico, mas precos aqui tambem continuam subir.
Obviamente tambem depende com que lugar de Brasil estamos comparando.
Sao Paulo e muito caro, mas no interior a vida, suponho, deve ser mais economica.
Se precisa alguma ajuda me avisa.
Abraco
Harald
Thank you so much for the description and the pictures. When both put together, it really paints a beutiful picture. Merida is my town. I grew up there. I walked every day to the market, to school, visited those villages (my parents still live there and speak Mayan). I moved to the United States 15 years ago. I am a United States citizen now. I go to Merida every year and dream in going back to my land and live there again. Because of my career, I can not move there now. But, I always wondered, why do I miss the panuchos, the cochinita pibil, the streets, the markets. The description coming from somebody like you, just reassures me that that is the place to go back. I am thankful for the United States, for what it has given me. But I long to go back to where I belong!
An update from my 2007 entry. The Museo de La Ciudad, is now located in the old Correos building. My wife, Ariadna, still works there. She has gained a good position. I encourage all Visitors to visit the Museo, it is the History of Merida. If by chance you should see my wife at the door, she worrks during the Manana. Tell her how much her esposo Carlos in Texas miss her. Be sure to also sign the guest book when you enter the Museo. Also, my wife want to let all the extranjeros from the USA know, please do not touch the glass cases or the exhibits. As the saying goes: “Look but Don’t Touch”. Muchos Gracias.
Oh, how well the words describe the feelings. They fit Merida to a “T”. I can’t wait till we return in Sept. I miss it sooooo much! Thank you!