I chatted with one boatman and got the particulars of his estuary tour and we made arrangements for a trip the following morning. However, the town of Rio Lagarto was charming, the waterfront was busy (mostly with day-trippers taking tours of the estuary), there were several restaurants located just off the malecon, which ran the length of town, and our hotel room looked out over all the action. An area very similar to that around Celestun, the ‘ramshackle gritty beach town’ I highlighted in the previous post that we visited a week ago. The estuary and surrounding mangrove swamps are part of the Ria Lagarto Biosphere Reserve (Ria acknowledges the estuary) which is home to many species of waterfowl, including flamingoes, as well as salt ponds. The name is misleading – there are no alligators here (there are crocodiles), and the water that borders town is an estuary, not a river. Moving on from Izamal, we hit the coast at the town of Rio Lagarto (Alligator River).
yellow – Izamal Cute carriage, matching sombrero. Hacienda Sac Nichte, just outside Izamal Quiet, clean and. wearing matching sombreros! Chalk it up to ‘just when you think you’ve seen everything’. The carriages were gaily decorated with bright colors and plastic flowers, while the horses were. Beyond the obvious monochromatic color scheme, and the imposing walls of the convent looming over town, the third thing we noticed upon exiting our car were the horse-drawn carriages making rounds of the plaza. We parked on one of the plazas below the convent and set out to explore. We arrived at the hacienda around one and spent a couple hours at it’s refreshing pool, waiting for the heat of the day to dissipate, before venturing into town to have a look around and find a spot for dinner. Most visitors come on a day trip from Merida, just ninety minutes away, and we had thought to do the same until Heather had found a beautiful restored hacienda just outside town that offered accommodation and looked too unique to pass up. It’s a pretty town, spreading out along narrow streets and small plazas from the Convent of San Antonio de Padua, which sits on a small hill at its center. Izamal is called ‘The Yellow City’, and it’s easy to see where it had gotten its name – every building in the town is painted the same shade of mustard yellow. We had just left one of the more unique little towns along our route. We were on our way to the coast, which we hoped would provide some relief from the oppressive heat of the interior of the northern Yucatan. The road was straight and narrow, the bleak scenery only broken occasionally when we passed through small towns with names like Tekal, Temax and Tzimin. Outside, the landscape rolled past – tinder-dry grassland, stunted trees and dry-stone walls partitioning off parcels of empty pasture.
The air conditioner struggled to keep us cool in the mid-90’s heat of the day. Mariachi music drifted from the car speakers.
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