Mérida is the capital of Yucatán and the cultural heart of the peninsula, a flat, hot, well-kept city of more than three-quarters of a million. It was founded in 1542 by Francisco de Montejo the Younger on the site of a Maya city called T'hó, and the Spaniards used the stones of the Maya pyramids to build their cathedral and houses. The cathedral, begun in 1561 and finished at the end of the century, is one of the oldest on the American mainland.
The Plaza Grande is the centre of life, with laurel trees, white stone benches called confidentes where couples sit facing each other, and the cathedral on one side, the Casa de Montejo, with its ornate Plateresque doorway of 1549, on another. Paseo de Montejo, the grand boulevard laid out in the late nineteenth century when henequen, a fibre used for rope, made local landowners rich, is lined with mansions. Free concerts and dances fill the plazas most evenings.
Mérida is the base for riders heading to the Maya sites. Uxmal lies about eighty kilometres south, and the Puuc route, with Kabah, Sayil, Xlapak and Labna, continues beyond. Sayil's palace, with its long tiers of columns, is one of the finest. The roads are flat and straight, through scrub forest and small villages with thatched houses and speed bumps, called topes, which are numerous and unmarked, so ride carefully. Heat and humidity are heavy, particularly from April to September, and afternoon storms are common.
Fuel is easily found, and so is food: cochinita pibil, pork slow-cooked in achiote and sour orange, sopa de lima, panuchos and salbutes, with fresh agua de chaya. Hammocks and guayabera shirts are the local souvenirs. Parking in the centre is limited, but hotels often have courtyards. Cenotes, the natural limestone sinkholes, are everywhere on the peninsula, and a cool swim in one is the best way to finish a ride.