Izamal Yucatan & Dzilam de Bravo: trip report

Spotlight -September, 2003- Road trip to Izamal & Dzilam de Bravo, Yucatan page 2

    Road trip to Izamal and Dzilam de Bravo, Yucatan

    Dzilam de Bravo
    The fishing village where the pirate Jean Lafitte is said to be buried  photos downloading below....

getting there...
Traveling north from Izamal are a couple of secondary roads, poorly marked but both eventually ending up at the top of the peninsula in Dzilam de Bravo, that is if you make the correct turns (always an adventure). If you were coming from Merida there is also an east/west coastal road from the Mexican port town of Progresso but this is closed due to erosion from last year's hurricane "Isidore". From Izamal the towns you pass through are all small with the customary "zocalo" town square and 16th century Catholic church. Outside town is the typical Yucatecan rural Maya landscape of low jungle punctuated by henequen, corn and papaya fields. Along the way you will see the occasional high chimney of a henequen plantation, usually in ruin. Henequen was harvested in the late 19th to mid-20th centuries to make sisal rope, especially important during the 1st and 2nd world wars, and fortunes were made by the plantation owners. Labor consisted primarily of the rural Maya who lived in virtual slavery working the fields for the wealthy who owned all the land and everything that was produced from it. We came across one of these magnificent abandoned haciendas that has probably been in ruins for the last 70-80 years. Horses were foraging on the weeds inside and outside the main building.

Henequen fields: this plant was processed by the old hacienda plantations. The fibers are stripped from the leaves to produce "sisal" used to make rope and durable utility textiles.
Papaya fields are also along the road. A delicious fruit and important part of the local diet.
(henequen field left, papaya right)

Road ruin- small town abandon building by the side of the road
The customary 16th century Catholic church by the zocalo (right)

¡Taxi!- the taxis in this town are triciclos, tricycles

	arriving in Dzilam de Bravo... Facing the Gulf of Mexico is the fishing village of Dzilam de Bravo, reputed to be the final resting place of the French "gentleman" pirate Jean Lafitte (1780-1827). Dzilam de Bravo is not considered a tourist destination but had interest to us because of Lafitte who supposedly arrived here around 1820 and married a beautiful mulatto lady, Lucia Allen, and had a daughter. Lafitte's buccaneering days included free range Caribbean piracy, assisting Simon Bolivar in his struggle to liberate much of Latin America, and defending the United States in an 1815 battle against England and Governor Clayborne near New Orleans, which was at that time a notorious pirate hangout. In 1960 the Yucatan based exploration group of CEDAM donated a Jean Lafitte memorial plaque to the town. Today it faces the sea next to the fishing boats.
		The gentleman pirate Jean Lafitte's memorial plaque by the sea was donated to the town in 1960 by Akumalian & CEDAM founder/explorer, Pablo Bush Romero
	Fishing boats in Dzilam de Bravo

	And on the way home a suprise... an abandon henequen hacienda plantation
		As we drove back towards Izamal from Dzilam de Bravo, we noticed an ornate smoke stack chimney in a field. We slowed down and saw a open gate and decided to take a look.
		Gary went first to check it out and he found the shell of an old hacienda we figured to be 80 to 100 years old.
		A small group of horses were grazing in what was once the main living rooms of the mansion.
	Back to Izamal main page	Although time had taken its toll on the structure, the villa stood majestically among the overgrowth of plants that surrounded it. It was like a movie set and quite a magical find.