Cycling through Carrillo, colors consume your vision. Greenery lines the blacktop roads, palms and gigantic banana leaves, mango trees, papaya trees, pepper trees, sweet orange trees, bitter orange trees, avocado trees, nopal cactus plants, baby banana trees, chile plants, lime trees, cilantro. Then there are the flowers that you crane your neck to hold on to as you roll on by, fusia blasts with soft petals spilling from twisting vines, neon orange long-bodied blossoms littering the streets from trees planted in the medians, orchids in your neighbor’s garden, cadmium reds that demand attention, stationary meteorites suspended on the shores of your winding pathways. You drift away from the black impervious pavement and turn left down a sandy white trail, dodging watery ditches and bored, defensive street dogs that ceaselessly chase you for game. You climb, pushing harder to reach the hillcrest, then relax your muscles and exhale as you coast down the rocky slope ahead. Yellow daisy invasion and you are greeted by golden sunshine that boasts the hour of the butterflies. Hundreds of fluttering shimmering winged-beings take flight, playfully mingling with varied resting spots on stems, petals, and branches in an endless and impenetrable garden. You pick an orange, cut it open, and suck out the sweet nectar, feeling the Caribbean heat of the afternoon on your back. You’ve left the paved roads for the monte jungle trails, the camino blanco, the white road. Some of these paths will bring you to abandoned farms, some to small communities and pueblos preserving and surviving on the fruit of this wild landscape, some to ominous lagoons creeping with crocodiles, some to rickety wooden look-out towers beckoning you to stay until nightfall and wait for the thousands of stars, some still, some shooting, that are sure to appear and leave you in disbelief and core-striking awe of such true pure beauty. Other paths will bring you to otherworldly cenotes with their bright blue green and yellow striped and speckled fish and velvety ultramarine waters – so magical, so cleansing. The natural world in this pocket of the Yucatan is unbelievable – frightening and intimidating at times, yet roaring with sweet abundance, vigor, and mystery. 

Margaret Thompson, an English teacher at Na'atik Language and Cultural Institute, has been living in Felipe Carrillo Puerto for over six months and, as you can read, is fully embracing the beautiful, vibrant culture. www.naatikmexico.com

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The best way to experience the Mexican lifestyle is in person, with a Na’atik Immersion experience. Not only do you live with a local Mexican-Maya family, sharing home-cooked meals and free time, but also receive expert instruction in your chosen language at our school. Best of all, every immersion experience helps fund our subsidized and free local education program, helping local students to access opportunities and make their own futures.