Warm Weather Jaunt to Sisal

Beryl Gorbman
www.yucatan-yenta.com

Although it’s still too hot to jaunt comfortably, Mary and I bravely set off for Sisal on Saturday, to meet some people who were going to show us the octopus farming operation they have going there. Unfortunately, we missed our signals on the meeting, but found plenty of other stuff to do. Walking along the beach, we did find some strange floating structures that looked like some kind of aquabusiness and I’m betting it is connected to pulpo farming.

Mary looking at octopus apparatus?

This is Mary, looking at one of the strange fishing structures. It looks lovely on the beach, but it was hellish hot.

The charming Sisal pier

We had a nice lunch in a restaurant with a view of the pier. You’ll never guess what we had! You’re right! Fried fish.

We were disappointed not to find the octopus growing project, but we’ll go back when the weather better allows us to amble around asking questions.

Sisal seems to grow exponentially every time I go there. I’ve heard there are foreigners buying and building homes there, although most of the places we saw looked pretty basic. One house had an unusual occupant waiting on the front porch.

Let me in, please

You see lovely details if you look, in the Maya countryside. A lot of country walls look like this, although we did see on on large ranch what might be the beginning of the end. Rather than using the traditional stone walls, they had embedded several miles of bright yellow fenceposts into the ground and strung them with barbed wire. Seems like overkill.

The following pictures are on a half abandoned hacienda between Hunucma and Ucu, on the way home. The doors on the casa prinicipal were secured gently, so we gently opened them to see the inside of the building. The bats flew around a little, but the rooms were empty. We gently re-secured the doors when we left.

Generally, haciendas are either structured for cattle raising or sisal (henequen) growing and processing. This one, although fairly small, had both. The stacks of henequen were limp and dried and the drying racks for the fibers were rusted and askew, but the narrow gauge tracks were in good shape and there were some loading carts on them. It looked like the sisal processing had stopped recently. There were still cows and bulls in the compounds. Several nice dogs with yellow eyes followed us.

Hacienda

Original designs hand painted in inside room

archway to nowhere

Hacienda resident