A Nighttime Escape – continues

photo by Cam & Nicole Wears 

     With a stroke of luck, for us, the largest tourist hotel in Emiliano Zapata was not full of those fleeing the Zapatista conflict.  We happily occupied 13 of its rooms, bathed, dined, and then took...

This is Casa Mexilio’s first bar, created with the tiles of the original 1930s steam bath.

There is evidence of Mayan steam baths and associated rituals beginning in the Classic Period and through the Late Classic times.  At Chichen Itza, you can see what it left of the...

Getting caught up in the Zapatista struggle in Chiapas was an accident, and an adventure too risky for even me. There I was, leader of a group of 23 women who had come together in the weeks after Christmas in December of 1993 for what they named the Mystical Mayan Rain...

     The urban importance of the neighborhood of Santiago was increased in the second half of the nineteenth century as it was the forced and proper passage, the beginning of the Royal Road from the city of Mérida to the port of Sisal, from where the export of the fibe...

     For the past forty years, living in a home once owned by chicleros, I’ve heard a few stories, and a few very old people have shared memories of those years.  The Gonzalez brothers who had an office across the street from Casa Mexilio and who were in business with...

We owned a sizable chunk of Caribbean beachfront within the wild and undeveloped Sian Kaan Biosphere.  We were seldom at home.  The ‘coastal living’ beaconed - the drive was 5 hours each way. 

     And there came a scout looking for a large old colonial kitche...

     For my Catholic family this is the month of Holy Souls, and tonight at midnight they - those dearly departed who have been among us since October 31 - must return to their realm before midnight tonight.

    This is Jorge’s altar remembering them.  I asked...

Thirty-nine years ago when we arrived on this street in the Barrio of Santiago to begin a new life and to open one of the first romantic and historic small hotels in Merida, made of cast off, thrown away architectural history, these houses could have been saved.  But t...

My Mexican Family has asked me to cook the turkey for the November birthdays of three family members.  I consider it an honor.  In my early expat days, the ingredients were hard to find.  There were no sweet potatoes or yams, but the grey or purple camote was...

Apologies to Miss Dickinson.  And, yes, cathedral tunes are 
oppressive.  I sat on the organ bench from age twelve ’til old age.    --Perhaps a mistake - “Church” was definitely a mistake.

Sometimes we wake up late.  No one forced me to do it....