About half way between Chichen Itza and Merida I stopped at Izamal and the Convento de San Antonio de Padua, its only significant site. The Convento was completed in 1562 on the base of a Mayan temple using many of the stones from the earlier edifice. The site of Izamal was apparently a significant Mayan settlement since there are still the remains of major Mayan pyramids around the town, but they're unexcavated and covered in low forest and don’t look like much more than big piles of rubble.

The Convento’s claim to fame is an immense grassy atrium in front of the complex which they claim is the largest in the Americas and second in the world only to the plaza in front of Saint Peter’s in Vatican City . Really? It is a big space surrounded by an open structure, but it’s not all that impressive. Pope John Pail II visited the site in 1993, which is also a big deal locally, kind of "George Washington Slept Here" places up and down the eastern U.S.

Izamal’s other attraction is the Centro Cultural y Artesanal Izamal, a small collection of fine Mexican folk art. I can’t get enough of that stuff! But what I really liked most about Izamal is the harmonious color scheme of the town. The Convento is painted a mustard yellow with white trim (somewhat slightly darker than hue of the Vatican’s flag), and almost every building that lines the roads through the town is painting in the exact same color. In some ways it makes it one of the prettiest colonial towns I’ve seen in Latin America.

Northwest Yucatan around Izamal and Merida is some quite dry country where most trees lose their leaves in the dry season and have a stunted look about them because of the lack of water. I think it’s called tropical dry forest but looks a lot like parts of south and west Texas. It’s a landscape a quite like, maybe because of association with dry air. I don’t mind it being very hot if I don’t get to sweat logged from the humidity.