First International Cultural Festival in Mahahual

While New York is covered under a big pack of snow, here in Yucatan peninsula its getting warmer every day..Thermometro indicated this morning already 80F.

@ Mahahual everybody is now warming up for the first International Cultural Festival Mahahual Cruzando Fronteras to take place at our beautiful beaches.
From february 18 until february 24 the streets and beaches of Mahahual will be the scenary of lots of music, dance, movies, theatre, documentaries and much more during this festival celebrating Italian and Mexican heritage. There will be more than a 100 Mexican and Italian artist present, among others writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II, script writer and filmmaker Guillermo Arriaga, writer and translater Pino Cacucci, musician Vladimiro Cantaluppi, illustrator Chiara Carrer, editor Paula Chaurand,  cinedocumentalist Luis Lupone, writer Élmer Mendoza and compay Salt Imbanqui México.

Like Mahahual is profiling itself more and more as an eco touristic destination, there will also be attention during the festival for the environment, preservation and sustainable tourism.. On saturday february 23, a huge clean up day of the beaches of Mahahual has been planned. Because of ocean currents, coming from different continents, everyday plastic sacks, bottles, cans, etc wash up on the beautiful beaches of Mahahual. This has become a big problem, threatening the flora and fauna forming part of the fragile eco system of the reef, stretching in front of Costa Maya. Like last year, Sustenta year will help to get rid of the tons of floating plastic. Everybody who wants to help is welcome ! At the end of the day there will be a forum called "Mahahual Ecotouristic Village".

You can stay up to date about the festival on their FB page. At Maya Luna we still have a bungalow available, and we are even offering a 15 discount during the festival week, in order to promote this very special first time event.

New managers

As promised I would introduce our new management at Maya Luna. For the past 2 months Andrea and Tim have been doing a great job managing Maya Luna. Andrea studied anthropology and is specialized in the Mayan culture. At this moment she is setting up personalized tours to take Maya Luna guest to, among others, the Maya ruins near Mahahual. We are also working on a special project for parents with children; we will keep you posted on this. Tim is an excellent cook and you will love the dishes that he added to our menu. Of course he continues to prepare our famous stuffed pineapple.

Our bungalows look fantastic and the small palapas with hammocks on the beach  are more inviting than ever. Tim took some fantastic photos of the enormous amount of birds, especially pelicans, for the past month daily visitors of Maya Luna. 
Rio Bermejo, where the water of the mangrove swamps mixes with the seawater, turned into a paradise for birdwatchers, I could not take my eyes off of the huge amount of birds… and all this just a 5 minute walk of Maya Luna.
For those who want to escape the cold and snow...watch our website and FB page, we will soon offer a very special discount! stay tuned ;-)

Wishing everybody a healthy and happy new year!

 I have not updated this blog for a very long time, one of the reasons for lack of news was that I have spend quite some time in Holland this year, remodeling a summerhouse I inhereted. Back in August in Mahahual, we could continue remodeling...Maya Luna, after the incredible had happened Namely exactly 5 years after Dean Hurricane Ernesto took nearly the same path and made landfall 2 km north of Maya Luna. But luckily Ernesto "only" was a category 1, and the damage was mainly our garden and all beach palapas were gone, including 2 of the small palapas on the roof decks of the first 2 bungalows.
Unfortunately we discovered that the people who managed Maya Luna when we were in Holland did not do any maintenance at all... so we found Maya Luna back in a deplorable state. For the past months we have been working very hard, all bungalows have been painted, all wood has been barnished, all palapas have been repaired.  Including the palapa over our restaurant porch has been completely renewed. Maya Luna looks like new now, see the photos. Garden has been re-organized and Don Dolores, our gardener who is already taking care of Maya Lunas plants and trees for 9 years now, has doen a great job. A very pleasant surprise was the mention of Maya Luna in the new edition of the Lonely Planet. The new writer covering the Yucatan Peninsula visited Maya Luna during the summer of 2011 and had dinner in our restaurant. This is what he writes about his dinner:
Try the Stuffed Pineapple, a Mexican/Euro/Indonesian Extravaganza." : Needless to say that we feel very proud about such a comment !
Very happy to read also the mention of Mahahual South Beach in the Mahahual section of this new Mexico Lonely Planet:.
"Quieter, more upscale accommodations are 2km south of the town center – see
www.mahahual-southbeach.com for details."
So we hope to see a lot of Lonely Planet readers the coming year south of Mahahual !

You can follow Maya Luna as well as Mahahual south beach also on Facebook
 Maya Luna: http://www.facebook.com/Hotel.Restaurant.Maya.Luna
 Mahahual south beach : http://www.facebook.com/Mahahual.South.Beach

Thats it for the moment! In a few weeks I will be back with more news, among others introducing Andrea and Tim, German friends of us, who will be managing Maya Luna for the coming year.

For now we want to wish everybody a very happy and healthy New Year !
Carolien and Jan, owners of Maya Luna

Maya Luna, Mahahual and social media

After a very quiet time in october, november is finally picking up a bit. And although there were very few tourists in Mahahual, we have been busy with all kinds of new plans. One of them was a website for all businesses south of Mahahual, Mahahual South Beach. Together with Theo, our neighbour and owner of Casa Bougainvilla we realized this website, he made the photos, I did the webdesign and build the website. Have a look and see for yourself how beautiful and quiet the area is where we are located...Of course we also published a page on facebook please click like if you like what you see.

I also created a page on Facebook named "Amigos de Mahahual" With this community page for and by all business owners in Mahahual we first want to create a big group of friends of Mahahual, and then publish in the near future attractive offers, maybe even a lottery where you can win a free holiday in Mahahual...Check this page out, give it a like, and you will automaticly be informed when we start our campaign. In the meantime days are getting shorter and soon we will find ourselves preparing for Christmas... We are already quite booked for those days, but I still have a bungalow available for Christmas, checking out december 26...

La Bodeguita has been completely renovated, painted with new colors, we are still busy on the finishing touch. We will also be preparing food until late in the evening, to have a nice bite during your favourite sports game...

Hope to see you soon in Mahahual !

Tripadvisor rewards Maya Luna

Yesterday a friend of us dropped in at our restaurant and brought us some real mail...(yes it still exists :-) ) a letter send to us by Tripadvisor and guess what...they rewarded as well as hotel Maya Luna as restaurant Maya Luna with a "Certificado de Excelencia" for the year 2011...a very welcome compliment of course ! I want to thank everybody who stayed with us for their contribution...and invite everybody to keep posting their reviews...and of course...come visit us !

Maya Luna accessible for people in a wheelchair

Last month a big wish of mine was fulfilled. For the first time my mother visited our hotel. Due to health problems she had not yet been able to visit Maya Luna, since we constructed it 8 years ago. She is now 79 years old, and depends for 90 % of the time on a wheel chair, so this was one big adventure, as well as for her as for us! Eugenie Verschragen, head of animation at the house for elderly people in Holland where my mom is living, agreed to accompany her on the long flight (some 11 hours from Amsterdam to Cancun) as well as during the holiday. Cancun Airport is quite accessible for people in wheel chairs. Most of it is all on 1 floor, and there are elevators as well as restrooms accessible for wheel chairs.

The first 2 nights we stayed in Cancun, to get used to the warm weather and to do some shopping like buying a hat and sunglasses for my mom. Getting my mother from her wheelchair into our Ford Windstar was in the beginning a whole adventure, but luckily Eugenie knew some tricks to make it easier. After the 5 hour drive from Cancun we finally arrived at Maya Luna, a very special moment to see my mother sitting on our porch and getting to know our staff, the dog and the cat of course.

To bypass the sandy beach part, we made a “path” of wood leading from the patio to bungalow “La Toza”, our family bungalow where my mother would be staying for the next 2 weeks. It proofed excellent to stay there for handicapped people. We took out one bed out and there was enough space to move with a wheel chair and a rollator. Inside the spacious bathroom there is a toilet some 8 centimeters higher than usual in Mexico, so handicapped people can get up much easier. You can take the shower off the hook, very comfortable if you need help from another person to shower. To add more comfort and support for people in wheelchairs we put handles beside the shower and beside the toilet.

During the next 10 days we visited Boardwalk of Mahahual, the Mayan temples of Chacchoben, the Laguna of Bacalar, Cenote Azul and watched the Carnaval Parade from the windows of La Bodeguita, where they first passed by before turning to the Malecon. Last but not least we had a lunch with 16 Dutch guests; as a coincidence the mother of Justa, and the parents of Selma, 2 Dutch friends of mine living in Mahahual were also visiting at the same moment.

The next plan was to visit Chitzen Itza and the Convent of Izamal but we had to change plans because of problems with the car. So the last day we stayed at Playa del Carmen, the fifth avenue is a very easy to walk shopping street.

At the end, my mother told me that she had a fantastic holiday, and she recommended me to make more publicity to get handicapped people to vacation at Maya Luna, because as she put it “ it’s a very comfortable place, fitted with all modern conveniences for disabled people.
So if you have plans to come and visit and you are in a wheel chair, please contact me and I will happily provide you with tips as where to stay and what to bring.

Safety and Mexico

Finally some good news on Mexico: Tripadvisor published their Travelers Choice 2011 and in their world top 25 you will find 2 hotels in Mexico, the Banyan Tree Mayakoba in Playa del Carmen and the Welk Resorts Sirena Del Mar in Cabo San Lucas. Congratulations to our colleagues!.

Besides that, Merida and Cozumel have been chosen by the The International Committee for the Banner of Peace of the United Nations within the top 100 of safest places-towns in the whole world. Read the whole article in Spanish on:
http://www.yucatan.com.mx/20110105/nota-9/58272-merida-oficialmente-nombrada-una-de-las-100-ciudades-de-la-paz-a-nivel-mundial.htm

With all the ongoing bad news on the drugs war, the country can use positive publicity like that !. I know Merida quite well, half of the construction materials we built Maya Luna with had been purchased in Merida, and last week we were there again for a short holiday, visit some friends and do some shopping. We always stay in the Dolores Alba, a colonial hotel in the center of town. There is busy traffic outside, but as soon as you enter the building, you will find an oasis of tranquility. With a small pool and a lot of shops and the main plaza within 10 minutes walk, a perfect place to spend some days in this beautiful, old colonial town.
Merida indeed is a very safe city, I have never felt uncomfortable there, and even after dark I would walk around alone and not be afraid. That said, I would say that I feel absolutely safe in so many places, cities and towns in Mexico…Especially in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Lately the drugs war going on in Mexico has been in the news a lot, as well as in Europe as in The United States and Canada. Most of this war on drugs takes place near the border, and that’s more than 3000 km from where we are living. So here at Costa Maya you don’t notice anything at all from it. Friends who have visited us in the past 8 years, know how tranquil, quiet and safe it is where we live. And safety has never been a subject of conversation when I was visiting family and friends in Holland. But this time when I was back in Holland a few months ago, all of a sudden everybody started to ask me if it was safe to live in Mexico. Emails with reservation requests more and more contain questions about safety.
Apparently the media have done their "work" thoroughly; those who never have visited Mexico, have nowadays the impression that behind every corner in Mexico there is a drugs lord hiding and you risk to get caught in a cross fire. They have no clue how big Mexico is, and that a big part of the country is still safe to visit, especially the Yucatan Peninsula.
Personally I think as a tourist, the chance is bigger that your airplane is going down while flying into Mexico than that you will be involved in or notice something form the drugs war.

So lets hope for more positive news on Mexico...so that we can share our beach, the sun, the warmth, the Caribbean sea, the little breeze, the blue sky, the million stars at night and of course our spacious bungalows and excellent food with a lot of people who decide to visit this beautiful country
Hope to see you soon in Mahahual…