Mérida Local Customs

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Mexico is famous with its painters and their murals. I’m fond of Diego Rivera and his murals that I saw in the Royal Palace in Mexico City. Since then I took every chance to watch Mexican murals on our way from Mexico City to Cancun. When in Merida I saw several murals that attracted my attention. One of them I saw in the University of Yucatan-Merida. I saw another in the Palacio Municipal.
A lot of murals I saw in the hall of my hotel Hayatt Regency Merida.

Have you ever seen such benches when people don’t sit together but they sit opposite side from each other? They can't touch each other by their bodies and can see each other and talk only turning their heads.
I haven't seen!
You will see such benches in Merida if you also haven't seen!

You can watch my photo of Merida on the Google Earth according to the following coordinates 20° 58' 2.03" N 89° 37' 27.51" W or on my Google Earth Panoramio Palacio Municipal 2.

Have you ever seen electricity meters outside houses? I haven't seen.
Have you ever seen electricity meters facing pedestrian parts of the streets? I haven't seen! For the first time in my life I saw it in Merida.

Perhaps it's because Russia is a cold country and it is common to have such electricity meters and place them outside houses in warm countries?
In this case an electricity meter outside a house must have been waterproof, but in our case it also must have been freeze proof.

Leaving Merida to Uxmal, we stopped in a restaurant with two different spaces. No, it was not smokers or non smokers, it was "only men" and common area. It was the only time that I saw that kind of segregation in America, and found it so funny, that... I had a severe distraction - my son Tito ate a salad, and, in the next morning he was over 40º, forcing me to invade a doctor's house at 7AM, after driving almost 20km searching for an inexistent hospital. Two days later he was better, but the "exclusivo caballeros" kept connected to the only situation of "Moctezuma's revenge" in our family.

Merida & the Yucatan makes & sells hammocks like the one that was on the porch at our Mayaland Resort guesthouse. We had fun getting into it - a little tricky when you haven't been in one for a long time. Once in, it is very comfortable. From Chichen Itza to Merida we took the back roads through several small villages and saw the tiny houses that many families live in. Several people during our visit explained that the people in these villages (and many others) sleep in hammocks rather than beds. The hammock in the photo opens fully to wrap around the body. The website link shows them in use.

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Coming from Portugal I had no serious problem driving in Mexico. Reasonable roads, not much traffic and acceptable discipline.
The only notice is the condition of many cars, that, I don't know how do they keep moving. Exiting Merida, the noise called our attention for a truck that, while advancing was bouncing from one side to another and shaking.
As far as we saw he didn't loose any piece. What a miracle!

As is so often the case when visiting another country, it's confusing to try and figure out what types of service should be tipped, and how much. Our guidebooks and talks with other travelers helped us decide on the following:

1) At a restaurant, tips should range between 10 and 15%. At smaller, more local places, 10% is generally appropriate, while more upscale spots expect tipping on the higher end. As is true anywhere, tips should also reflect the quality of service (just about everywhere we went the service was excellent).

2) For your hotel stay, a tip of 10 to 15 pesos per day for the housekeeper is generally appropriate. We always left one large tip in the room on our last day.

3) Taxi drivers are not usually tipped in Merida or other areas in the Yucatan.

4) Tour guides can be tipped at your discretion. If you go to the ruins and accept a local guide on the spot, you should definitely tip, as this is his only source of income.

For Americans, who are always in a hurry (generalization, I know!), Merida's slow pace can be a bit of an adjustment. People meander slowly down sidewalks and don't seem to notice if you try to get around them. Meals are equally unhurried; you can sit forever without leaving, only paying the bill when you flag your waiter down (similar to many places in Europe). It's a nice pace, but takes some getting used to!