Paseo Montejo

Ayer me di un paseo arriba y abajo El Paseo Montejo . . . . 

Yesterday I took a walk up and down the Paseo Montejo. "Travel guidebooks talk about Paseo Monejo as the "Champs Elysees" of Mérida. Paseo Montejo is a wide tree-lined boulevard "with restaurants and cafés, which share the space with banks, insurance companies and beautiful mansions, some luxurious and some abandoned." Even the Starbucks (featured in my slideshow) was on the fancy side.

Mérida was founded in 1542, but Paseo Montejo came to be in the late 1800's. The mansions were built due to Yucatán's prosperity in the late 1800's as "a result of the enormously lucrative henequén industry". (Henequén is an agave whose leaves yield a fiber used to make rope or twine.)  Then as that industry died out, many of the mansions were abandoned, and some are now in the process of being revitalized. It was easy to imagine what life might have been like in those days walking down this street. 

Be sure to click on my slide show to the right of this posting, but you can also see some beautiful shots by clicking HERE (Google Images) Those photographers had some better angles than I could get.

Quick weather update- I heard that last week's weather here in Mérida was 104 degrees and HUMID with lots of intense sun. I arrived at the end of that with a pretty hot and humid Sunday. Then Monday was cooler and today was almost too cool for the summer clothes I only brought, in the low 70s and windy. It is to get hotter each day until 90s towards the end of the week.