By Shel Horowitz, Editor, Global Travel Review

Everyone's heard about the glitzy Yucatan Peninsula beach resorts like Cancun, Cozumel, and Playa Del Carmen. We wanted to see what the inner Yucatan was like, just as in earlier Mexico trips we'd explored the heartland cities. But of course we had to experience the beach as well, starting in Cancun.

Cancun

Our original plan was to skip the big beach resorts entirely. But after reading about the Mayan Museum and the Undersea Museum, we decided to build in a day in Cancun, so we'd booked a hotel for the first two nights.

The museum is in the heart of the 29-kilometer tourist village. But we didn't want to stay in the tourist section. When we stay in a Spanish-speaking country, we like to hang out with locals, observe how they live, practice our Spanish, eat in local restaurants instead of American chains, shop in the markets instead of big shopping malls, and pay the prices the locals pay. So we found a cheap hotel downtown, a good half-hour away from the museum, and took a cab across town, over the causeway, and down the tourist strip to kilometer 17.

After conversing with us in Spanish the whole way, our cab driver asked if it was ok to take us past our destination to the famous Mirador Caribbean Sea viewpoint, no extra charge. He said if he didn't take us there, he would have felt guilty because we wouldn't have really seen Cancun. Of course we said yes, and it was quite spectacular - and crowded.

The museum includes a small archeological dig in a beautiful mini-forest, which was full of iguanas. Signage in this part is somewhat scant, but it's a pleasure just to be in these woods, even without a deep understanding of what we're looking at.

Then it's up a long twisty ramp or a see-through elevator to the exhibit floor, several stories above the forest. Not sure what the middle floors are for, or how to access them.

In the museum proper, the permanent exhibits have English translations of the general informational signage, but not of the artifacts. But the temporary exhibit (during our visit, a very extensive one on human sacrifice) had only Spanish.

I found myself curious about the parallels between Mayan and Egyptian cultures. Both built pyramids, though of very different styles (and the museum showed that even within Mayan culture, many different types of pyramids were built in different areas). Both used pictographic written languages. Both worshipped multiple animal deities.

Of course, Africa and South America were once connected. But Egypt is on the east side of Africa, thousands of miles away from the part that used to nest into Brazil. And though the Mayans did sail south as far as Colombia, that's still a long way north and west of the Brazilian shoreline.

We got conflicting information about the underwater museum and walked a couple of hot, unpleasant miles along Avenida Kukulkan (the main drag on the tourist island) to the aquarium. We could have done it on the local bus, but we were feeling underexercised.

But the aquarium didn't do the undersea part. That turned out to be all the way out in Isla Mujeres, which we didn't have time to visit. And the basic admission was just the usual aquarium with a late-evening dolphin show. Various higher-priced options included swimming with dolphins, but that was well over USD $100 per person - about double what we were willing to spend. So we chose to keep going.

We salvaged that part of the day, first with a stop at Ah Cacao, a spiffy little shop inside La Isla Shopping Village (where the aquarium is located); they also have a location in Playa del Carmen. Lots of exotic choices, mostly from organic local chocolate. I had an unsweetened cold chocolate drink and Dina went for a mango frappe. We both were very satisfied with our choices.

Refreshed, we walked a few blocks south again to the Playa Marlin, one of a very few public access beaches on the tourist strip. Crowded with local families, this beach offered perfect white sand, pleasant water temperatures, and a current strong enough to create resistance, but not enough to cause harm.

After taking the bus back downtown (for about 60 cents each), we walked the last several blocks to our hotel and happened to pass by 100% Natural, 998-884-0102, which turned out to be a terrific and very reasonably priced natural foods restaurant with numerous vegetarian choices (as well as meat) and a gorgeous main dining area. We shared vegetarian kale-lentil tacos, a wild mushroom and peanut soup in a coconut milk base, and a huge pineapple/orange juice. All were superb and served in generous portions - with a total bill of about USD $10 (198 pesos). We went back for breakfast the following day. I had a spectacular parfait of goat yogurt, fruit, and an excellent granola, along with a traditional Mayan drink made of cacao and various grains and flavorings; Dina's frittata was not impressive.

Valladolid

OK, so enough of Cancun. Let's get to the parts we came to see. After an hour and a half on the bus from Cancun, we arrived at Valladolid and found our clean, quiet, centrally located, and friendly B&B, Maria de Guadalupe, at 198 44 th between 39 th and 41 st , around the corner from the bus station and two blocks from the central plaza - a lovely and very affordable place with only eight rooms. (NOTE: Booking.com thinks the address is 195, across the street). It took us about a day to figure out that even-numbered streets are all parallel to each other, and odd numbers are perpendicular to the evens. A bustling city that's outgrowing itself, Valladolid's sidewalks, streets, and squares are vibrant and crowded. The sidewalks are too narrow for the number of people, the bus station is jammed - everywhere, signs of a city that grew beyond its capabilities.

And yet it retains a lot of charm, old architecture, and a relaxed, friendly spirit. Mayan women in white blouses or dresses with embroidery patterns of large flowers line the streets, selling various foodstuffs. The city pulses with throbbing music emanating out of many storefronts. Interference from touts is low-key, and most of them freely accept 'no, gracias.'

The tourist information office at the Pal'cio Municipal (City Hall) on the main plaza was quite helpful; with their instructions, we set off down Calle de los Frailes in search of the Diamante Chocolate factory and museum. And then for various reasons, we found ourselves going up and down that street several more times during the afternoon and evening. The chocolateria was closed the first several times we went by, but at night as we were going off to dinner, it was finally open. However, the exhibits were minimal and somewhat dingy. At that moment they only had one sample - an admittedly delicious 100% cacao bar that would be way too much for most people. As it happens, I eat a lot of unsweetened chocolate so for me it was great.

Then we continued down los Frailes all the way down to the end, passing several interesting craft galleries'one located in a traditional thatched-roof Mayan cottage. The street ended at a small park alongside the Franciscan Convent of Saint Bernard, built in the 1500s and still an active church. Across the park was a juice bar and natural foods restaurant called Yerba Buena, a clean and inviting place that made great juices, using bottled water or fresh orange juice as a base. We shared a yummy build-your-own with pineapple, ginger, and other fruits. We'd have gone back for dinner except they closed at 5'and would be closed for New Year's during the rest for our visit. Later, we discovered that it's rated #1 of all Valladolid restaurants on Trip Advisor.

Another place we passed on that street was Taberna de los Frailes, a restaurant located behind a beautiful tropical garden, advertising Mayan specialties. They had several vegetarian choices, so we decided to return for dinner. The garden was lovely, and we liked the look of the actual restaurant: a large, 30-foot-ceilinged place made of bamboo or wood. The staff was friendly but the food (pumpkin stuffed with mushrooms and cheese, guacamole) was mediocre'wildly oversalted and the pumpkin overcooked.

On our way to the restaurant, we passed a caf - called Caffeino, offering a rather extraordinary Happy Hour deal: two generous glasses of keg beer for 49 pesos (around USD $2.50. I didn't want to do that on an empty stomach, so we came back after dinner. As fans of many Mexican mass-market beers including Bohemia, Tecate, and Carta Blanca, we were excited to discover the special was for a brand we were unfamiliar with and didn't quite get the name of. It turned out to be the worst beer I've ever tasted'made Bud Lite seem like a craft beer. I managed one sip, almost gagged, and didn't go back for more. Dina took three sips and said it didn't improve. We left money on the table and walked out, leaving our full glasses behind.

Although we were now zero-for-three on our night walk, after the chocolate tour, poor dinner choice, and wretched beer, we weren't discouraged and continued back to the convent for the nightly Sound and Light Show. Spanish at 9 p.m., English at 9:20. A mass was in session when we arrived at 8:40, and it turned out to be a wedding. We watched from our perch on a low wall several hundred yards back as people streamed out of the church doors, the doors were slammed shut, and the newlyweds were showered with several pounds of rice as powerful camera flashes blazed in the sky.

Then came the show, 'The Heroes of Valladolid,' a visual extravaganza with different images projected simultaneously on different buildings in the long convent complex, tracking the city's history from the Mayan era through the Porf'rio Diaz presidency in 1910, then jumping rapidly to modern times. We'd thought we could stay for the English if we didn't get enough of the Spanish, but it was well within our comprehension ability. The narrator's Spanish was slow and carefully articulated, and we got almost all of the hokey but not unpleasant narrative. It was a nice way to wrap up the day.

Valladolid is only about 25 km from Chichen-Itza, one of the most famous Mayan sites in all of Mexico (and a place we'd waned to visit for more than 30 years). Knowing that busloads of tourists would arrive from Cancun and Merida later in the morning, we got an early start and caught the 8:30 public bus, arriving about 40 minutes later. The bus stops directly in front of the entrance gate, unlike some other ancient sites elsewhere in Mexico, where you could face a long walk in the middle of nowhere. And while we didn't exactly have the place to ourselves, it wasn't crowded at all for the first couple of hours of our exploration.

The general advice was to allow two hours and to spend the first hour with an authorized guide. However, we chose to do it on our own, using the trilingual (Spanish-Maya- English) signage on the site as well as a handy online visitor guide and spent nearly four hours exploring at our leisure. Of course, we overheard snatches of many guide presentations in both English and Spanish, and felt we'd made the right decision. Most of them gave pretty much the basic information, and they weren't cheap. One or two were considerably more thorough - and some of the best guides were red-shirted people associated with outside tour companies, rather than the white-shirted guides who work full-time in the park.

The site is extremely well laid-out, for the most part easy to find your way around (although we did have a hard time finding the Central/South Zones). With one exception - the long corridor to the Sacred Cenote - it never felt crowded even after those buses arrived, though there were several times as many people scattered around the site at midday as had been present at our arrival. And blessedly, there's lots of shade; it was several degrees difference between the shaded and sunny areas. Terrain is for the most part flat, easy, and with very few obstacles, and the ruins themselves are off-limits. Having climbed several ancient pyramids in other parts of Mexico, we'd brought hiking poles, but we'd have done just fine without them.

To me, what was most special here was how many of the stones still have their original artwork. Not only was this massive complex built entirely with hand tools, but intricate carvings, some of them spanning a sequence of large stone tiles, still line pretty much every building. Popular themes included jaguars, serpents, kings, and skulls.

But our day was far from over. Once back at our hotel, we gathered our swimsuits and walked the few blocks to Cenote Zaci. Cenotes, natural swimming holes in caves, are among the coolest things in the Yucatan, and the region is full of them. Relatively few are in a downtown, however, so it was great to have one in walking distance.

This was our first one. Paying our 30 pesos apiece (and 5 extra to change clothes in the bathroom - next time I'll be wearing my suit already), we descended a long, curvy mix of stairs and ramps, offering splendid views of the cenote water, lounging swimmers, and the amazing cavern roof high above our heads. The water was cool and refreshing, with a diving area roped off so people could jump from the cliff 30 or 40 feet above the water.

Since it was New Year's Eve, we splurged on dinner at El Atrio del Mayab, a tourist- friendly authentic restaurant on the main plaza. But splurging in the Mexican parts of Mexico is rather different than splurging at home. We shared a plantain appetizer, a sweetish cream of elote soup with croutons (elote is the local corn, tasting more wholesome than sweet but with just a hint of sweetness - the stuff good tortillas are made from), two mixed drinks (a super-smooth pi'a colada and a wonderfully tangy, citrusy 'Margarita Maya'- both a bit too light on the alcohol even for us, but very tasty), one entr'e'papadzules: hand-made tortillas (we watched the Mayan women making them in a corner of the restaurant) filled with chopped hard-boiled eggs and served with a pumpkin-seed (pepita) and tomato sauce - and even a chocolate mousse for dessert. This huge repast, which we enjoyed in the beautiful garden behind the indoor dining area, cost about $30 to feed two people very well, and all of it was delicious.

Around 10:30 p.m., we made our way back to the main plaza to wait for the New Year. Local families, many with small children, slowly percolated into the park and an adjoining street, which had been closed to vehicles and set up with a full stage, sound system, and restaurant tables where people brought their own celebration dinners. Attire ranged from going-to-the-opera down to super-casual. The crowd was amazingly low-key and mellow, with zero evidence of the drunk and rowdy behavior that mars many New Year's Eves in the US. We noticed an effigy of an old man propped up on a chair.

At about 11:45 p.m., a row of dignitaries (we think it was the mayor and city council) took the stage and made remarks, the mayor (a young-looking woman in a long dress) wished us all a year of happiness and prosperity, and then one of the men led the crowd in a countdown as fireworks began overhead. By my cell phone clock, they were about two minutes early when they hit midnight, with a big blast of fireworks and a live band immediately kicking in. We danced with the locals, some of whom came up to us to invite us to join. After four hours of walking the ruins at Chichen-Itza, and being morning people anyway, we only made it to 12:25 a.m., but the party was still going strong. We could hear it from our hotel until we went to sleep around 1. As we walked away from the stage, we noticed the effigy of the old year, burning brightly. It was the sweetest New Year's party I can remember, and very different from our two previous Mexican New Year celebrations (ringing in 1985 and 2007).

On New Year's Day, we started by walking to a big produce market and buying an avocado, going to another stall to buy two ultra-thin wheels of hand-made Mayan chocolate, maybe five inches across and roughly the thickness of a compact disc - one dulce (sweet but really bittersweet, probably 50-60% cacao) for Dina and amargo (bitter, 100% cacao) for me. We went across the street to get a few hand-made corn tortillas but the line was long and moving slowly. Since we didn't want to spend over an hour on this errand, we entered one of the many restaurants that offer hand-made tortillas and purchased five, still warm, for 5 pesos (about 25 cents). Then we got some cheese at a supermarket and picnicked in one of the parks before catching a collective taxi (40 pesos each) to Cenote Dzitnup, just a few minutes outside of town.

This complex actually incudes two cenotes: Samula and X'keken. A discounted ticket that covers both is 125 pesos (about USD $7-8); it would be 160 to buy them separately. There's an inexpensive option to add a buffet, which - having just eaten - we didn't investigate.

We recommend going to both, starting with Samula. But if you only have time for one, make it X'keken. Samula is beautiful, with smallish stalactites over a fairly open cavern, and you can get in a good swim. But X'keken is visually far more spectacular, with enormous stalactites descending from the roof far above right to the water level or just above, and in the very back of the cave, a rock formation at swimming level that looks like a pipe organ. Swimming as exercise is a bit trickier, because you have to be very conscious of the rocks both ahead and beneath. Swimming there, I wanted to make a movie or write a symphony (neither of which is in my skill set), or a least have a musician like Paul Winter perform there. Alas, I don't even have a water-safe camera, though I took plenty of pictures from the terrace on the rim.

To finish our day, we took the free walking tour that leaves nightly from the Visitors Center. We'd seen several of the sights already, but we wanted to see the four murals on the second floor of the Pal'cio Municipal. Our tour guide was amazing. He spent 40 minutes going through the deep details of these beautiful murals, giving a college-level minicourse on the history, religion, and culture of the Toltecs, Mayans, Conquistadors, and the development of the city - and pushing the limits of my Spanish comprehension. Then we got another 20 minutes on the history of the cathedral.

Some of my takeaways:

• The more than 3000 cenotes scattered around the Yucatan were created by a 30- meter meteorite shattering the soft limestone and sending most of the rivers underground.
• The area had no silver, gold, or other metals but salt was mined. Other ancient Mayan industries included corn, textiles, and sisal fiber for rope-making (from the maguey plant also used to make tequila).
• Mayan prophecies about the coming of the white men may have led to the abandonment of their cities, requiring the Spanish to import black slaves from Cuba.
• The Mayan calendar end date of December 21, 2012 was not a false prediction of the end of the world; it was merely the start of the next cycle.
• The church on the main square is the only church in the Yucatan to face north. All others face east, toward Rome.

A block off the main square, a 400-year-old 18,000-square-foot private home, Casa de los Venados (House of the Deer), contains an extraordinary collection: more than 3000 works of Mexican folk art, many of them commissioned by the US-native couple who lives there, both of whom have been collecting since the 1960s. Reservations are not necessary and admission is free (with a voluntary donation requested at the end of the tour to support various social betterment charities) - but you must be there at 10 a.m. and join a tour. Our guide was excellent and this is not only one of the best folk art collections from any culture I've seen anywhere, but one of the best curated, too. Many of the pieces are displayed strategically to interact with each other. The collection is especially strong on alebrijes - those fantasy animal sculptures made up of parts of many different species (for example, one we saw here had butterfly wings, a tiger's head, two brightly colored parrots as arms, and frog's legs). This stunning collection didn't show up in our online explorations (we'd heard about it from another traveler on the walking tour the previous night). But I'd call it an absolute must.

Another Mayan ruin, Ek Balam, is easy to get to on collective taxis. However, it's important to time your departure for when tourists are still arriving, or else have your taxi wait for you. It's much smaller than Chichen-Itza, and all the buildings allow climbing. I climbed the smallish structure near the gate, which gives a terrific view of the main building way across the courtyard, and then up that one as well, which is much taller and provides a view of the entire complex, as well as some very cool tile wall carvings and sculptures about - of the way up. The grounds are lovely, a lot less dry than anything else we've seen in the Yucatan so far.

For dinner, we chose Conoto 1910, several blocks past the square at 226 Calle 40 (between 45 and 47). We sat in the beautiful second-floor terrace and enjoyed two dishes that complemented each other very nicely: panuchos - the only place we've seen a vegetarian version of this popular regional specialty, in this case home-made corn tortillas covered with a thin layer of beans and an assortment of shredded vegetables. The second dish was pasta with chili cream; the sauce was delicious and had a nice bite, and the fettuccini noodles tasted home-made and were perfectly cooked. We also shared a strong and tasty margarita and a glass of tamarind water made to order (no ice, no sugar).

Then we went to Wabi Gelato just off the square at 197A Calle 41 for rich, not-too-sweet gelato. In a town where most of the ice cream is from a mass-market company called La Michoacana, this tiny storefront is worth hunting for. It was late in the day and the shop was down to four flavors. We found the Jamaica (hibiscus) a wonderful new experience and the chocolate savory and deeply satisfying.

The last morning in Valladolid, we went through the small City Museum, with one large gallery divided into pre- and post-Spanish conquest, and another much smaller gallery featuring photographs of local VIPs. It contains several nice Mayan Period pieces as well as a case of modern reproductions showing how the pottery was decorated. The entire museum can be seen in under an hour. It's around the corner from Casa de los Venidos; we actually discovered it while looking for the folklore collection. The museum attendant was so thrilled to have Spanish-speaking foreign visitors that he took a photo with us.

M'rida

The bus ride to M'rida was smooth, but approaching from this direction, the city of more than a million felt like a huge sprawling mess; it took about 40 minutes from the Bienvenidos a M'rida (Welcome to M'rida) sign to the bus station. The central plaza is lovely, and the neighborhoods immediately around it quite pleasant, but the outlying areas reminded me of everything I didn't like about Cuernavaca: a city that allowed itself to grow without any urban planning, with noisy, overcrowded streets and ugly architecture. This is also the first place in the Yucatan with lots of beggars (the other two cities had street performers, but almost no one just holding out their hand).

But first impressions aren't always accurate. Very quickly, M'rida worked its charms on us.

We stayed in one of those nice neighborhoods, a few blocks from the z'calo (central plaza) and just one block from lovely Santa Lucia Park. And those few blocks along Calle 62, as well as Calle 60 one block parallel include several promising restaurants. For our first dinner, we chose La Chaya Maya despite a 30-minute wait standing in the adjoining parking garage (better than out in the pouring rain at that moment). I had the papadzules again, and thought they were better done than those I'd had in Valladolid. Dina had another Yucatacean specialty, salbutes, which turned out to be similar to panuchos but much oilier. We ate the toppings and left the tortillas. The place was fine but not worthy either of its fabulous reviews or the ridiculous long lines we saw every time we passed by.

The tourist office on the z'calo had a poster about daily walking tours at 5:30 p.m. As of January, 2018, the tour is also given at 9:30 a.m., which was more convenient for us.

The next day, we took a tour out to the Uxmal (pronounced Osh-Mahl) and Kabah ruins, about an hour south. Our very animated guide, Jos', was excellent, with a nice mix of interesting information and free time, and some very different theories about Mayan symbology; he proposed that the Mayan human sacrifices were metaphorical and ceremonial, though from everything I know, the evidence disputes this.

Most buildings at both ruins were climbable, though steep (we were glad of our collapsible hiking poles). Jos' told us that the very unusual rounded walls of the main pyramid were probably designed to mitigate the impact of hurricanes. The Kabah site is much more compact, and the architecture is quite different, but the carvings look very similar. Both sites featured hundreds of carvings of Chac, the rain god'a different deity than Chichen-Itza's (and Cancun's) Kukulcan war god. Jos' told us that Kukulcan and Quetzalcoatl are actually the same god, and pointed out many other cultural differences among the various Mayan kingdoms. As an example, at Uxmal, the goals for the poc ta poc ball court are low to the ground, and players could have scored using hips, legs, feet, or hands. But at Chichen-Itza, they're nine meters (about 30 feet) high, so the game has to be played differently.

In the evening, we took in the weekly folklore concert at Plaza Santa Lucia, a fun hour of traditional band music, singing, folk dances, and a guitar trio. Every evening, M'rida offers a major public cultural event: A program on Yucatecan cowboys on Monday, concerts on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a night tour of the town cemetery on Wednesday, a recreated Mayan poc ta poc game, complete with opening ceremonial rituals on Thursday, Mexican Night on Saturdays, and Sundays a program about Sunday activities. Although these events happen every week, thousands of people come out.

Finishing the evening in style, we slipped away from the concert in time to get into the artisanal gelato shop Pola, on 55 th Street just off 64 th , which closed at 10 just as the concert was ending. Using high-quality ingredients and only modest sweetening, this store creates a very rich gelato in flavors such as avocado, lemon-melon-chili, and cardamom, along with more typical flavors.

The next day was supposed to be about exploring downtown M'rida, getting a few errands done, and shopping. But instead of shopping, the focus turned out to be on eating really well.

Since our time was short before catching a walking tour, we went for a known quantity for breakfast: 100% Natural, which we'd enjoyed so much in Cancun (Calle 62, just before the z'calo. Turns out this restaurant has more than 30 locations across Mexico.

Then we spent the next hour and a half looking at the z'calo from above, around, and inside, and venturing about two blocks off to see not just the cathedral but also the next- most important church, often used for weddings of the wealthy classes. Highlights included explanations of why Spanish and Catholic symbols were literally ripped off the cathedral almost a century apart, why the Spaniards built here even though it's not near a river or the sea (because destroying five Mayan pyramids provided precut stones for their most important buildings, which were built directly adjacent), how one symbol survived on the other church (it was covered over with stucco), and Victor literally jumping several feet in the air to point out the six specific blocks of reused limestone that still showed Mayan carvings, conveniently all along the same wall.

He didn't talk about the two large paintings that flanked our meeting point (resembling the Valladolid City Hall murals), but when I asked, he said they were part of a series of 25 showing the region's history. I don't know where the others are.

In Mexico, first-class buses have assigned seats, and credit cards are accepted only for those buses. Since we had to walk back to the bus station to get our tickets to Tulum anyway, we made a triangle and walked down to the massive Mercado Lucas G'lvez, M'rida' largest market, covering several buildings and courtyards. We've been to traditional markets in many parts of the world and we usually like them, even the crowded ones'but this one was wildly overcrowded, filthy, and filled with unappealing merchandise. We 'got out of Dodge' as soon as we realized that going deeper in didn't make it better. The smaller market at Calle 60 was more to our liking, and we bought a few utilitarian items (a belt and a purse). But the beautiful handicrafts we'd hoped for were not at either market; they seemed to be the exclusive domain of the pricy tourist shops along Calles 62 and 64 and the Paseo de Montejo. I guess we should have done our shopping at Chichen-Itza, which had vast numbers of craft booths and very reasonable prices'but we'd wanted to wait until later in the trip so we wouldn't have as much luggage to juggle. At several of these shops, the quality was excellent but the prices were much higher than we'd hoped for.

By this time, we were ready for lunch. We walked back along Calle 60, and just before Santa Lucia Park, we found vegan Neek'ich Juice Bar and Vegan Burgers at #480.

In Mexico, like many parts of the world, the restaurants and hotels along the main square tend to be quite a bit more expensive than those even a block or two away. This is not true in M'rida, where the restaurants along the z'calo are no more expensive than other restaurants of comparable quality, with entr'es typically running USD $3-$6 'and on adjacent blocks, those who want really cheap eats can get a sandwich for 50 cents. However, those bordering Santa Lucia Park are considerably higher.

Neek'ich looks like an ordinary natural juice bar/burger joint, nothing fancy (although a very pleasant courtyard) but its prices are higher than what we'd been paying. But after more than a week in Mexico, eating cheese or eggs at almost every meal, vegan burgers sounded perfect. And these were, quite simply, the best veggieburgers I've ever had. The patties, made in-house, were made of crunchy chickpea pieces, carrots, and pumpkin, topped with potato-based 'cheese' and a mountain of vegetables and served on whole wheat buns. The burgers don't hold together particularly well, but boy, they're tasty! And as usual, a splurge in Mexico is much cheaper than a splurge at home. The two burger plates and a mug of rich, unsweetened artisanal hot chocolate came to about $20.

After lunch, we picked up our laundry, dropped off the previous day. I love the Mexican laundry system: washed, dried, and folded with typically one day or morning-to-evening turnaround. Our 6-1/2 kilos (about 15 pounds) cost just over $5, and no vacation time had to be sacrificed.

Then we explored M'rida's most elegant street, Paseo de Montejo. This wide boulevard is lined with beautiful old mansions on one side of the street, several of which are now museums'and several others are vacant and rentable. The other side has mansions as well, but also various (mostly tourist-focused) businesses including an artisanal chocolatier offering a tour and samplings. Since it was January 5 and therefore still Christmas season, one end of the Paseo had a Three Kings Day festival sponsored by a local hotel, the main activity of which seemed to be buying a piece of the traditional ring- shaped fruitcake'and the other end had a very festive seasonal kiddie park with great holiday lighting, temporary cottages, and lots of families.

Then we went back to the cathedral for the ball game demonstration. As with all the other free events, it was mobbed. We were able to catch glimpses of the costumed actors doing the opening prayer and drumming, but once the game started, we couldn't see anything, so we went to dinner.

We made up for our pricy lunch at another vegan place, Lo Hay Que Caf', 533 Calle 55, between 64 th and 66 th . Located inside the gorgeous Hotel Medio Mundo, this inexpensive place was a real treat. The door will probably be locked, but ring the bell and a hotel staffer will let you in and lead you down the long corridor to the poolside restaurant with its beautiful flowering trees.

Everywhere else we've been in the Yucatan, the portions have been gargantuan. And in fact, Lo Que Hay offers a daily special that would have been more than enough to share. But we ordered a la carte, and the portions were just right. We shared a delicious bowl of corn-based cream of elote soup. Dina had the samosas, which were in filo dough and were under-flavored. But I had an amazing dish of penne in mole sauce, with very strong tastes of cacao and an unfamiliar hot pepper. Normally, it's hard to find mole without chicken stock, and the sauce is way too sweet (we once took a Mexican cooking class, in Guanajuato in central Mexico, where the instructor threw overripe bananas, Nestl' chocolate bars, white bread, and a bunch of other ingredients into her mole'this one was a gazillion times better).

The next day we took a day tour out to Celest'n, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. This was a highlight for both of us. In the morning, a boat ride in the National Eco-Reserve to visit flamingos and pelicans and walk the short boardwalk through a mangrove forest, then to the village to lunch and swim on the beach. We learned that the Caribbean flamingo gets its dramatic pink color from eating a red shrimp, that the mangroves dye the water red (and other plants at times provide other colors, including a vivid fluorescent green)'but that the recent rain had diluted it to look more like an ordinary seashore. The village is small and cute, with a lovely and largely unpopulated beach, and the swimming was very pleasant (though all the Mexicans in our group thought it was too cold). We did this tour with Mayan Heritage, located directly across from our hotel on Calle 62 at Calle 55. This company had its own vans and somewhat lower prices than other tour companies we checked. The driver at first described the sights we were passing in Spanish and English, but once he overheard our animated Spanish conversation with the older couple sitting behind us, he dropped the English. At first I felt guilty that we'd ruined it fro any other English speakers in the grou0p, but at our first stop, I realized we were the only Anglos.

For our last night in M'rida, once again we took to the streets. Saturday nights, the theme is Noche Mexicana (Mexican Night). Calle 60 and parts of Calle 62 are pedestrianized, and this particular Saturday was a street festival with various participatory art and video projects (including at least one by a gringo with a translator, both speaking into bullhorns). The area we'd seen the previous night at Paseo de Montejo was completely transformed, with 40 or 50 artisan booths, a massive crowd, and a folkloric dance troupe that favored the famous mariachi numbers. Though there were plenty of kids there, it no longer felt like a fairy garden.

To wind up our visit, we spent Sunday morning at two museums: the anthropology museum on the Paseo de Montejo(located in one of the wonderful old mansions'I looked into the elevator, a jewel that has not been made over and looks late-19 th - century)'and the museum of contemporary art on the z'calo. Both were small and easy to see quickly before getting out to the bus terminal, and both were worth the trip. During our visit, most of the anthropology museum was given over to an exhibit on the Mexica civilization, conquerors from the north, with a small area devoted to the Mayans. The contemporary art museum featured a work or two from several of Mexico's most prominent 20 th -century painters, including Diego Rivera (though not his wife Frida Kahlo)'along with many newer works. It was kind of interesting to go from the precolumbian civilizations of the Mexicas and Mayas to the 20 th and 21 st centuries just by walking for ten or fifteen minutes.

Tulum

Downtown Tulum divides roughly at the bus station. South of the station, a sweet hippie town with prices not too different from the other towns we've visited this trip; north, bar culture and tourist prices. Talking with a couple of travel agents, we heard about a fascinating-sounding trip to the Sian Ka'an Bioreserve and Muyil ruins.

But the prices were from $110 to $165 US, and we thought we could do better on our own. With the help of this useful article, we went to the bus station and were told to take the colectivo (shared taxi-van) to Muyil, rather than the bus, which didn't seem to exist.

On the plus side, we were pleased that it stopped directly in front of the ruins rather than at the official bus stop, but the cost was 70 pesos per person, not 28. Once there, we paid 45 pesos each to get in, walked quickly through the ruins (a small complex including a central pyramid and a few outbuildings, not that impressive'but surrounded by beautiful woods), paid 50 pesos to enter the bioreserve, follow a boardwalk through the jungle, climb a somewhat rickety observation tower, and then pay another 700 pesos each for the boat ride, all of which had to be done in cash'for a total of 865 pesos each. At an average exchange during our visit of 18 pesos per US dollar, that's about $48, so less than half of the cost of the cheapest tour.

And totally worth it. The boat trip was only a few minutes, but it took us across two emerald-green lagoons and through a Mayan canal in a mangrove forest, and deposited us by a single Mayan ruin, decaying into the forest.

From there, we had a magical half-hour floating down the canal, ducking mangroves, enjoying the crystal-clear water, and letting the gentle current carry us to the boardwalk, where our boat driver met us with our shoes and towels. No adrenaline rush, just an amazing experience (and why the boat, quite expensive by local standards, was totally worth it). If you're scared of water or have walking disabilities, skip this. Otherwise, this may well be the highlight of your Yucatan vacation. It was for us, anyway.

The only snafu was getting back. The colectivo goes well past Muyil, and if it's full on the way back, it won't stop. Same problem with taxis. We did see one ancient tour coach pull over going outbound, but it didn't look like a public bus; none came on our side of the road.

With two of us, one of us could stay on the road and flag down any vehicles for hire and the other could talk to travelers exiting the ruins into the parking lot. We got lucky and the first driver Dina talked to was happy to take us back into town. Traveling alone, that would have been impossible.

Food in Tulum: We salvaged a bad dinner with gelato at Panna e Ciocolatto, right near the bus station. Breakfast at Deli Fresh Adonai, on Calle Jupiter, was good enough that we went back the second day for more fantastic juice creations. Decent crepes and amazing juices. (Adonai is one of the names for God in Hebrew, and yes, the owner was aware of this.)

Second night dinner at El Vegetariano, Calle Sol #25 (near the corner of Calle Orion), one block south of and parallel to the big commercial Avenida Tulum, was much better. We enjoyed excellent guacamole, terrific salsa roja (red salsa), a really well-prepared vegetarian chile relleno, stuffed with tofu instead of meat'a dish that's easy to find vegetarian in other parts of Mexico but not here in the Yucatan'as well as mushroom pozole (corn stew) that was totally fine but not as richly flavored as vegetarian pozoles we've had in New Mexico. It was better after throwing in the radishes, onions, and greens that came on the side, squeezing in juice from the lime slice also on the plate, and letting all this steep for two minutes or so. With delicious fresh carrot juice and a coco frio (chilled water coconut served whole, with a straw), it was about USD $25.

Since we couldn't find the handicrafts we wanted in M'rida, we did some looking here, at the few shops that didn't pressure anyone walking by. Gray-haired Se'or Gutierrez had three rug runners with a pattern of very large fish, in purple, aqua, and chartreuse. This was so similar to a rug we still regret not buying on our first trip to Mexico, more than 30 years earlier that we walked away to discuss where we might put it and then came back to get it. We told him the story of the rug we hadn't bought because it was too early in our trip and never saw again until now, and he was delighted. I asked him for a business card, but he said he preferred to rely on word-of-mouth and repeat business. He told us his own name but not the name or address of his store. If you're walking the strip, ask other shopkeepers which is his store.

And with one more morning left to tour, we took the collective out to the Tulum ruins. Oddly, they were less dramatic in real life than in the pictures I'd seen ahead of time. The Castillo (castle'the main pyramid) looked imposingly tall with the Caribbean Sea behind it in pictures, but up close, it was rather less interesting. We'd heard that there would be no bathrooms inside the site (true, but there's a large one just outside the gate) and that there would be no shade (utterly false - plenty of shade, but all on the periphery), and lots of heat even in the shady parts.

We'd also heard that a guide is pretty essential, which we also found false. I'd recommend a guide if it was your first Mayan ruin, but it was our seventh and we did fine on our own. Signage is pretty good, though the site is quite crowded and it may take you a while to get near enough the signs to read them, especially if you're part of a tour group.

The colectivo cost only 20 pesos each from the center of town, but on the way back, we had a ticket on a specific bus back to Cancun for our flight home and worried that the colectivos (originating in busy Playa del Carmen) would be already full, so we splurged 100 pesos on a taxi, which was quick and convenient.

If I were to go back, I would skip Cancun entirely: get off the plane and go right to the bus station, or rent a car and head to one of the national parks - maybe even Palenque, which is some distance away. There's lots more to see and do, and we could easily enjoy another couple of weeks some time.

When not traveling, Shel Horowitz speaks, consults, and writes for businesses that want to combine profitability with social good. His main site is https://GoingBeyondSustainability.com

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