The Environment
At Coyote Mistico, Yucatán
Points of Interest
Organic Farm
Beautiful
Rainforest Trails
Land of the Ancient
Maya Civilization
The Ruta Puuc
The Pueblo of
Santa Elena
A HISTORIC
Mayan Village
In Yucatán
The Organic Farm
This property is historically part of Rancho San Agustin. The ranch itself dates back 300 years to the days of the great Mexican haciendas, and before that it was farmed by the ancient pyramid building Maya. Here they grew the surplus food to feed the kings, priests and construction builders. Today it is a working organic farm. You can gather your own organically grown eggs from free range chickens, pick your own avocados, limes, watermelons, bananas, dragonfruits, mangos, and oranges depending on the season. You can also go for horseback rides in the forest trails.
The Pueblo – Santa Elena
Since the collapse of the ancient great Maya city states, the historic rural Maya would have a house in the village with a vegetable garden and a yard to raise turkeys, chickens, and pigs at home. They would also have a cornfield or two outside of town and supplement their diet by hunting wild game. These times are not gone. These traditions are alive and well in Santa Elena, Yucatán.
If you stroll into the town, you will hear the sounds of roosters, turkeys, and even livestock. Perhaps you will see the local vaqueros riding their horses or the ladies balancing their tortilla masa on their heads. You are witnessing a part of the traditional rural Maya lifestyle.
Almost all of the people in the village are Maya. They are proud of their village and are happy to meet you. Very few speak English, but those who do love to practice it with visitors. Most of the shopkeepers can speak Spanish, but some citizens here only speak Mayan.
The Maya love their holidays, and on national holidays and special saint’s days, you can hear their musicians or follow their parades through the streets. The evening celebrations are almost always accompanied by singing, music, and shooting off of rockets or fireworks.
The church is well over three hundred years old and is a fine example of Mission Architecture. Next to the church is a small museum where you can see the mummies and learn some of the history of the town.
In the early 1840’s the town was called Noh Ka Kab and was a base of operations for the fabled explorer and travel writer John Lloyd Stevens. His book Incidents of Travel in the Yucatan has some detailed accounts of the Maya culture at that time. We can show you the room where he and his illustrator Frederic Catherwood stayed in Santa Elena during their epic explorations.
In 1849 the village of Santa Elena was burned to the ground during the intense fighting during the Caste Wars. Some of the locals can point out the bullet holes in the buildings of the town plaza. If the church is open, if you are in good shape, fearless, and have a flashlight, you can climb up the ancient spiral stairs to the top of the church where the Maya sentries posted themselves to look for enemy invaders.
In 1865 Santa Elena was one of the two areas settled by German colonists brought into Yucatán during the brief reign of Emperor Maximilian I. Without outside support or any familiarity with the local agriculture, the colony itself did not last long but a number of the Maya in Santa Elena today have blue eyes or German last names.
The Ruta Puuc – Land of the Ancient Maya Civilization
The grounds of Edznab have a long history. You will be sleeping, dining, working, and meditating where where the ancient Maya lived a thousand years ago. That rich red dirt that you see on the nearby farmlands was prized by the ancients to feed the priests, kings, and pyramid builders. A thousand years ago these soils helped to make this region, the Puuc, one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Five hundred years ago there was a probably a pyramid in Santa Elena where the church stands today.
The only evidence we have are the pyramid stones that the Spaniards used in constructing the church walls and the steps leading up to it. Uxmal, Kabah, and other excavated archaeological sites are nearby, but the Maya built stone temples and manor houses for the elite pretty much everywhere in the region.
If you are interested in the archaeology, we can put you in contact with our resident archaeologist.
Nature in the Tropical Forests
When you walk through the gardens and trails you will be greeted by the small lizards that make their home here. Edznab is at the edge of a vast tropical forest stretching for hundreds of kilometers. Yucatán squirrels, agouti, opossums, foxes, iguanas, deer, armadillos, and other forest creatures are known to wander through the grounds.
The buildings may have several resident geckos. These are harmless lizards, they eat bugs, and are fascinating to watch. You can pause to wonder how they can scamper across the ceiling. They actually use bio-chemical bonding on their toes to attach themselves to the surface. Just consider them to be your room’s unofficial mascot.
And then there are the bugs. Because we are in the midst of a tropical forest, both we and the town are vigilant about spraying for mosquitos, but nature lovers and entomologists can discover some interesting creatures found nowhere else in the world. In the mid summer we are on the butterfly migration path. Watching the flocks of yellow, white and orange swirl around can be a fascinating experience, but our favorite insects are the ancient dragonflies that love to hover over the pool.
Those of you who come during the rains can experience the strange and wonderful sounds of the Yucatán frogs at night. You can marvel at the variety and volume of sound that these small amphibians can make. During the rain ceremonies, the small boys will squat and make frog noises to bring on the rains.
EXOTIC AVIAN ENCOUNTERS
Vibrant Tropical Feathers Unveiled
