On January 2nd 2015 It was a beautiful day
to take a tour of one of the newly restored haciendas that used to grow
henequen, the green gold of the Yucatan. Henequen was a plant that was grown for
the purpose of making materials from its fiber, and in the late 1800’s and
early 1900’s the Yucatan had a monopoly on this product which made it one of
the 5 richest cities in the world at the time. Out of this great wealth came
many beautiful hacienda’s which are very similar to the plantations that used
to exist in the southern United States. The particular hacienda that we visited
was called Hacienda Sotuta de Peon, and it was built in the late 1800’s during
the boom of the henequen industry. We were fortunate enough to have an
excellent tour guide who painted a very detailed picture of what the hacienda
used to be like during its prime years of production. We got to tour all of the
haciendas operating facilities and saw the complete process that transformed
the henequen plant into a usable fiber. We even got a chance to try the old method of separating the henequen fibers over a metal comb, and it was definitely more difficult than it looked.
This hacienda happened to
have restored many of its original machines back to a working order, so during
the tour we were able to see how the hacienda operated during the prime years
of production.
This particular machine made rope from many separate henequen strands.
After our tour of the production facilities we
were transported by cart and mule out into the henequen fields where we met an
81 year old Mayan man who has lived and worked on this hacienda all of his
life. He told us the story of the hacienda’s history, and how much it has
changed over time. One thing that surprised me about this man was how happy his
job seemed to make him. He had been working one of the toughest jobs in the
world in an extremely harsh environment, but it seemed that he couldn't be happier.
He told us that when he was younger he would have never imagined getting to
meet people from all over the world that came to tour his home, and he said
that it made his life worth it to be able to tell us about his history.
After we finished talking
to him we got on our cart again and traveled out to a cenote to go swimming. A
cenote is essentially a cave filled with water from an underground spring, and
when we descended into the cave I was amazed at how beautiful it was. I had
never seen such beautiful, crystal clear water from a natural environment in my
life, and going swimming in this natural spring felt so refreshing. Because the
water is so crystal clear I thought it was only a few feet deep, but after putting
on goggles and trying to dive to the bottom I found that it was actually around
30 feet deep with tunnels that descended much deeper into the earth. It was an
amazing sight to behold, and definitely one of my favorite experiences of the
trip.
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