Lepan - road tripping in Yucatan

It can only occur to me... 4 pm on a Sunday afternoon, I get an urge to go for a drive and explore. 

We had spent all day indoors and even though we were at the hacienda, I started feeling desperate to get out and about... 

I said to Arcadio ´Lets go to Mayapan, we haven´t been there in a while and its close by´. 20 minutes later we were at the gates to the archeological zone, only that they shut the gates at 4.30 and they litteraly kick people out from the site at 5pm on the dot. Sad face, turn around, let´s go back.... however we were not giving up, we decided to explore a couple of turn offs form the highway, so that our trip was not totally for granted. 

The first turn to the left, heading from Mayapan back towards Merida, had a promising sign... Lepan. We roll slowly in the truck, on the horizon two chacuacos ( chimneys) appear, a sign that we are about to find something interesting...

 In front of one of the first houses as we enter the pueblo, there is a large sign : Cenote, Tours, Bicycles for rent! The guy fixing a tricycle on the doorstep smiles and waves. Mr. A goes up to him and starts a conversation...  We find out that Lorenzo together with 20some other inahbitants of this village, run  a small cooperative which does tours of the hacienda and the cenote. It is late so we take his number and drive off to explore on our own.

Sunday afternoon in yucatecan villages is often dedicated to baseball. As we drive on and reach the drying fields of the hacienda, we notice quite a crowd gathered watching the game, caguamas, coca-cola and papitas in hand.

As the baseball game was taking part on what used to be the dying field for the henequen fibers, and many gathered to watch. Trying not to interrupt, we took a quick look and decided to come back and explore properly the following weekend. We left intrigued and excited. The ex-hacienda buildings have been abandoned for years, they are one of the most impressive I have seen... 

Lepan used to process henequen fibre from Acanceh, Sotuta de Peon and even Tecoh, therefore it needed two big chimneys, one of them shows a scar left by a lightening.   The old locals say that there have been sightings of ghosts, Huay Cochino and Huay Pek - animal like mystical caracters have been scaring kids who would go and play in the abandoned rooms.

It must have been a very important hacienda and it shows in the grandure of the remaining buildings. We were told some of its original machines are now in the museum in Sotuta, only useless and oxcidiced parts remain.

One week later,this time accompanied by guests,  we freely walked around the property. This ex-hacienda has been left without heirs and had been donated to pueblo community. Since all the inhabitants own rights to it, there had been conflicts of interest as to selling it and the place is falling apart. However,  I can see charm and beauty in its arquitecture and mystery. The machine room is just a shell, graffiti on the walls that are still standing... What seems to have been the main house is also a ruin, few rooms remain, overgrown by weeds and trees. We find a cow enjoying the shade and chewing on grass in one of them. 

At the back two huge norias ( wells). Arcadio throws in a stone trying to figure out the depth...  cannot remember the count but was deep... If you fall into one, the experience may be lethal,  there is no way out, and sometimes they can be 6-12 meters deep. I struggle to imagine how over a century ago the hacienda workers would make those wells, without drills and the machinery we have now, it must have been a tough labour to cut through the limestone to reach water. Luckily here in Yucatan you can find water almost anywhere you dig so at least it is a safe bet... The deep walls all the way down are covered by perfecly cut stone. I get dizzy as i look down, so I step away.

My imagination transportes me in time to the days when Hacienda Lepan was in its full glory, days when its walls were standing tall, painted red and yellow, the drying field filled with fiber, i could  even smell it. I picture workers dressed in white, rushing between the machinery, and the owners sitting under the arcade, wathing so that everything runs smothely, elegant ladies flogging off flies with their lace habanicos... An annoying fly snaps me out of my fantasy and brings me back to reality.

The best conserved building is the bodega. Here the  dry fibre was compressed and wrapped in packs. It would be stored waiting for transport. Until mid xx century Yucatan had a pretty impressive railway, most of it was cargo network connecting all the haciendas, collecting the green gold ready for export, and transporting it to Sisal and then Progreso. 

The storage building is huge, its still immaculate pasta floor could easily be used as a dancefloor. 

It is noon and the baseball team starts preparing for the game. We decide to look for Lorenzo and ask him for a tour to the cenote. 

Whenever I have the oportunity to talk to the locals from the villages and small towns we visit I try to find out as much as possible about their lives at the haciendas. They open up, happy to share their life stories and anegdotes from the olden days. I often notice a kind of nostalgia, I get a feeling they were happy times, when the haciendas were prosperous and people had work. I never heard directly form someone about being treated badly or being a slave...  at least not yet. People are very friendly in the Yucatan, they are good natured  and well mannered, I m sure this is one of the key factors to the states safety. They often are taken by surprise that as a foreigner I speak Spanish, they appreciate it. I ask questions about their families, where they live, what work they do, and i pull their tongues and wait for my hacienda tales. I should remember to record the conversations...
We meet Lorenzo by the rainbow and korean signs decorated school building. There was a large community of Korean workers in Lepan, so there must be some kind of a cultural descent and the school is supported by a Korean Samsung foundation. Lorenzo said that volunteer groups visit and teach the school kids korean. We follow him through the fields on what used to be a truck line.

About 2 km into the countryside the path narrows and we are forced to abandon the car and walk. There are four things you should always carry with you when sightseeing in the Yucatan: water, hat, sunscreen and repelent.. We had none of my list... It was October, one of the cooler and most pleasant months here. But the midday sun was unforgiving, and no shade in sight, we walked for about 10 minutes in the field once covered with houndreds and thousands of henequens. Now covered with weeds, grass and random plants, uncultivated and abandonned. Lorenzo pointed out that his grandfathers had told stories about the cast war, and instucted we follow him into the weeds to see a secret cave used as a hiding spot by his ancestors.

After a short walk that seemed eternal under the scorching sun, we arrived at Cha Chaac. We had the place all to ourselves! There is place to camp, dining area, hammock palapa, changing rooms, and bathrooms, all very clean and brand new, this group has been working real hard on this project, soon planing to expand to offer snacks for their visitor. Our guide left us cooling down in the cenote and went back to the village to organise some food. The cenote is almost a cave, has an opening that lets just enough light, the wooden staircase can be slippery so you have to hold tight no to fall in. The cooperative members lit the cenote and with a laser pointed out some interesting natural sculptures in the stalactites. We bathed for quite a while, undisturbed, finding more shapes and shadows in the limestone, one of our favourite cenote pastime. Our new friend and food promised were nowhere to be seen, so we decided to head back towards the car. We met him half way in the campo, in a spot that could not have been more perfect: under the only tree providing shadow on what used to be the truck. On his motorbike he was carrying tacos, sauce, chopped onion, local avocado, salsa, soft drinks, napkins.... It took a while because his wife  had prepared it fresh from whatever she could put together at such short notice. We set up a picnic under the tree, and Lorenzo served us using his bike seat covered with paper towel as a table. The food was delicious, we ate and laughed, there we were 6 of us, sitting in the middle of a dirt path on top of one small towel and fighting for salsa picante and the last taco.

Living in Yucatan has taught me to enjoy those simple, unexpected moments, to find beauty in details, to be be close to the nature. The trip to Lepan was realy special! I hope you will enjoy it as much as we did!

If you found this entry of interest, please leave your comment below and share! xxoo K

If you are planing to visit Lepan and Cha Chaak you can call  those numbers
Circuito Ecoturistico Lepan: 999 903 4186 ( find them on facebook)
Lorenzo : 999 150 6294