Merida

The cathedral, the city hall and the old governor's house take the four sides of this square. White seats built for two people facing each other stand around it.

A wide avenue modelled on the French boulevards with mansions along both sides. On Sunday mornings cars are stopped and it belongs to bicycles and walkers.

The building takes its shape from the ceiba tree and lays out Maya history in order. Alongside the objects it carries the record of Maya people living now.

Sixty minutes out by road, a site of curved Puuc style buildings. Hundreds of rain god masks are set into one wall.

Flamingos gather on a lagoon two hours away through the winter. Boats approach them but stop short of a set distance.

Estate houses where the fibre was processed still hold their machinery and sheds. Some were turned into lodgings and others left as ruins to be looked at.

One village holds more than twenty sinkholes, most on private land. Hiring a three wheeled motorbike and picking three of them is the usual round.

The large market south of the centre sells spices and blocks of achiote by weight. Its food counters open mornings only and run out before midday.

A different square hosts a free performance each evening of the week, mostly regional dance. The dance where trays are balanced on the head has its own fixed evening.

A coastal town forty minutes away with a pier running 6.5km into the sea. The water is shallow, so cruise ships tie up out there and only the passengers come ashore.

The mansion the conquistador Montejo family raised facing the Plaza Grande from the south in the 1540s. In the facade carving, armoured Spanish soldiers stand on the heads of Maya men, a frank record of conquest. Inside is a bank-run museum, free to enter.

Finished in 1598, among the oldest cathedrals on the American mainland, built with stone taken from a demolished Maya temple. Inside is the Christ of the Blisters, said to have blistered rather than burned in a fire. Bare of ornament, it feels vast.

The seat of state government on the Plaza Grande's northern edge, its upper gallery and great hall lined with Fernando Castro Pacheco's murals of Yucatan history: from the Maya myth of people born from maize to conquest and sisal estate labour. Entry is free.

A Maya site some 20km north of Merida; on equinox mornings the sun rises dead centre through the door of the Temple of the Seven Dolls. Visitors may swim in its Xlacah cenote, fish gliding between water lilies. A museum of the Maya people stands alongside.

A Puuc site some 20km south of Uxmal. The Codz Poop palace's entire front is covered in hundreds of masks of Chaac, the rain god with the curled nose. Across the road a lone arch marks where the old white road to Uxmal began.

About 40km southeast of Merida, the last great capital of the late Maya world. At its heart rises a pyramid modelled on Chichen Itza's Kukulcan, and some murals keep their colour. Tour buses rarely come, and on many days you walk it alone.

A horse-drawn cart on the narrow rails of an old sisal estate takes you to three cenotes in turn. The carts share a single track; meeting head on, one gets lifted off the rails to let the other by. The cave cenotes are entered by ladder.