“Builders intentionally oriented the structures to register solar phenomena such as solstices and equinoxes, important events for initiating agricultural activities.” One of the only Maya ruins on a beach, “Tulum is located on a rise from which it is possible to contemplate the sun’s journey by day and to admire the heavens at night,’’ the guides say along the pathways of the 1,400-year-old Maya fortress. Unlike towering Egyptian pyramids, the tallest of Tulum’s ancient structures – including 40-foot El Castillo – were used primarily as observation towers, astronomical calendars and a lighthouse along the Caribbean coast. Don’t miss Part 1: The Ruins of Tulum The ancient Maya ruins at Tulum have a spectacular view of the Caribbean. Shake and serve on ice, garnish with a mix of chilies, pineapple powder and dehydrated pineapple. raicilla (a Mexican liquor similar to mezcal) (Mark Gauert/South Florida Sun Sentinel)ġ oz. The pineapple cocktail at Chaká, a restaurant at the Grand Velas Riviera Maya resort that features Yucatecan regional and international cuisine. Shake and serve on ice with the garnish of orange and mint. If you’d rather go full Maya, try the pineapple cocktail – featuring honey anise flavors the ancients knew – at Chaká, Chef Carlos Montejo’s exceptional restaurant on the Zen Grand Suites side of the resort, featuring Yucatecan regional and international cuisine. These two – with interesting twists – are especially easy to succumb to. Travel in the land of mezcal and Maya honey long enough, and you’ll eventually be tempted with a cocktail. (I didn’t go there, but the couple at the next table ordered their “grasshopper on the side” and seemed to be doing fine.) If not, the house margarita (recipe below) will help you forget any discomfort fast. The guacamole and blue corn chips, for example, come with a side of crickets (and, because I’ll apparently eat anything with guacamole, I can confirm that they are toasty and nutty!) The shrimp taco in chili butter with mezcal comes with grasshoppers. Fair warning, the Manzanillo native’s dishes are delicious as well as authentic – which means a couple of them arrive as something of a dare. There, I’ve said it.įrom a crispy seafood chimichanga with smoked cheese to a short rib served in a mole de olla reduction with truffled potato purée to a warm corn muffin with cream spices and corn ice cream for dessert … every dish Chef Laura Isadora Ávalos Sierra sent out of the cocina here was a flavor bomb on all my fond childhood memories of Mexican food. So here goes: I have never had better Mexican food than at Frida at the Grand Velas Riviera Maya. (Ha! If God had intended Texans to ski, we say, He’d have given them mountains.) But hard. Not as hard as saying Texas has better skiing than New Mexico hard. So what I’m about to say here … well, it’s hard for a New Mexican to say. I earned my affinity for Hatch Valley green and Nambé red chiles honestly, clean plate by clean plate, at The Shed in Santa Fe, The Rancho de Chimayó and Doc Martin’s in Taos. I grew up north of the border, up New Mexico way. The Grand Velas Riviera Maya resort in Mexico, near Cancun. No meeting with a Maya shaman, who, after an ancient ceremony near Tulum involving copal smoke and cenote water dabbed with a leafy branch on my head, shoulders and knees, smiled and said a few words I didn’t understand. No visit to SE Spa, arguably the best spa I’ve ever been to. None of the best Mexican food I’ve ever had (at Frida) or the best (and first) Yucatecan regional and international cuisine I’d ever had at Chaká, both at the resort. No floating on clear artisanal waters in a natural cenote water hole. No side trip to the jaw-dropping Maya ruins of Tulum. You may listen, absorb the same advice and advisories, and decide not to go.īut if I’d listened to friends, the State Department and my mother, there would have been no waking up to sea breezes and a cute coati (a raccoon relative) scampering through the bougainvilleas on the terrace of my suite overlooking the Caribbean Sea. I’m not here to tell you what to do or how to feel about your own level of comfort. We passed both without incident.Įach of us has to decide what risks to take when we travel, of course. (Like the jaguar-crossing signs posted along the same highway, just to let us know they were around). We got caught up in a checkpoint on the main highway by machine-gun wielding Mexican Marines, but that seemed more for show than anything else. Sure, there was a long-gun toting guard on a watch tower overlooking one end of the resort’s 1,000-yard, powdery-white beach.
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