Month: September 2006

La Jarana is the typical dance of the Yucatan. It is danced to 3/4 or 6/8 timed music. In its strictest form, the dancers do not touch except an occasional hand hold. It is not a dance, but a style of dancing. The clothing used is typical of elegant yucatecan dress.

The city of Mérida has several weekly events where the jarana is highlighted. On Monday nights there is a show of just the jarana dance for an hour. We thought it was to start at 7:00, so we were downtown ready to go at that time. When we found out it did not start till 9:00, that put a damper on the evening. One of the ladies with our group had to take a few hundred pictures, so the wait did not seem that long. A little bit of ice cream helped pass the time as well.

The lady in the picture with me is a Deaf friend who did a special presentation of jarana dance for us at the Deaf school this evening. She has gone to dance school to learn how to do the jarana. She just needs someone to tell her when the music starts (a particular song) and she dances along with the music and finishes right on cue.

After the festivities on the main square, we went to get my truck out of the parking garage. We got there and found out they closed at 9:00. I thought they closed at 10:00 or 10:30. Fortunately for us, there was a city worker going in to get a vehicle. This lot is used by the city. He took my money (and a bit extra) and said he would pay the parking lot in the morning for me. I think he probably will. Either way, I have my truck and I did not have to figure out which bus passes near my house.

We have had some friends in from Guadalajara this last week and have continued with our site seeing. Yesterday we went to a place called Cuzama here in Yucatán. There are several cenotes around this area, but 3 are well known and developed as tourist stops. This was originally a plantation (hacienda) that had the henequin (sisal hemp) carted around on small carts pulled by donkeys or horses.

The attraction is that you ride on a cart drawn by a horse down these old tracks about 6 miles to go see the three cenotes. At the end, you turn around and come back the way you came. If you meet up with another cart, one of you has to get off and pull the cart off the tracks to let the other pass.

The cenotes were crystal clear. All three of these are below ground in a cave. This is unlike the cenote at Dzibilchaltún which is open to the air. The one at Dzibilchaltún is considered a “mature” cenote in that there is no cave structure around it. A new cenote is one which is really just a well to the under ground river. And a developing cenote is one that still has the cave around it.

These cenotes were just amazing. We were told that it was approximately 35 feet deep in one of them. You could easily see the rocks on the bottom. We were inside a cave, but there was enough light coming in through the ladder entrance and natural entrances to be able to see. I am not sure that it was really that deep at one point. But it was really deep. I don’t know how deep I can dive, but I can hold my breath for well over a minute. It took me everything I had to dive down and touch the bottom and then swim back up before the breath ran out. It was very deep.

I swam in two of them. One was 40-60 feet deep. I did not get in that one. The third one we were in was a large cave. A friend of mine and I swam to the back of it. I love to swim and scuba dive, but I am somewhat of a chicken when it comes to water and I cannot see the bottom. Being in a cave, it got darker as we got further away from the entrance, which made the water impossible to see through even though it was perfectly clear. After a bit of anxiety, I made it to the back and quickly swam back to the entrance.

Very well worth checking out if you are ever in the area.