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Discovering Yucatan

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And so it begins! We are off and running on another winter program with our students from the
College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. Our 14 students arrived this past week, excited and
ready for adventure! We spent one day in the capital city of Mérida, the headquarters of our
program, and then set off for four days of orientation throughout the state of Yucatán.

Our first day in Merida, enjoying breakfast.

We kept the students busy, between exploring the wilderness and its plants and their uses, to a
workshop in basket weaving with the local material “bejuco” in which each student produced their
own work of art. We also had our first experience sleeping in hammocks, a necessary skill to earn
your badge as a “Yucateco”. Apart from being woken up by roosters in the morning, everyone
lasted their first night in hammocks.

Our first night in hammocks!
The next day we tested our strength and repelled 200 ft into an underground cave. Once inside the
cave we enjoyed the refreshing waters of the “cenote”, the natural underground wells common in
the Yucatán peninsula. In the evening we enjoyed the preparation of “cochinita pibil”. A yucatecan
pork dish that is cooked underground, which we were able to enjoy the next day at breakfast.

Rappelling into the cenote.
And good thing we did, because we needed not only our strength but also our bravery. We entered
in a cave called “Gruta Chocantes”, the cave of crystals. Our students completed a 5 hour expedition
in the cave. They encountered bats, geckos, spiders, and other creatures inside! Not to mention the
splendor of the cave covered in crystals.


Leaving the cave intact, although dirty and tired, we were off to Valladolid, the second largest city
in the Yucatán. We slept the same, outside in our hammocks among the trees, in an apiary reserve.
In the morning we learned about the bees that are kept there and tasted their delicious honey!


Exploring the first of many Mayan ruins we will be learning about. 

En route back to Mérida we stopped in Uayma to enjoy a traditional ceramics workshop. We learned
about the extraction of natural clay, and made our own traditional mayan whistles. Full of new
experiences, questions and excitement for the next stage of the program we arrived back in Mérida.

Before the cave

We had an incredible time exploring just a part of what the Yucatán has to offer. The rest of our
program remains ahead of us to get to know even more of her beauty! Tomorrow our students will
meet their host families and get a head start on spending the first weekend getting to know them!
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