A vacation on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico doesn’t have to be all about scuba diving or enormous beach hotels, said Melina Gerosa Bellows in National Geographic Traveler. A personal curiosity about an endangered honeybee—the stingless Melipona beecheii—led me to set an itinerary focused on some fading Mayan traditions. My area of exploration would be the Riviera Maya, a 80-mile stretch of beach-laden coast that’s “the geographical equivalent of a hammock hanging between played-out Cancún to the north and less-traveled Belize to the south.” My hope was to lay eyes on the Melipona and to learn why the Maya still consider the bees sacred and their honey a “giver of life.”
I stay outside Tulum in the city’s coastal area, a “boho-chic enclave” known for yoga ashrams and low-slung luxury resorts. At Amansala, I sign up for a Mayan clay-and-honey wrap, joining a dozen other women on the beach as we coat each other’s bodies in “mustard-colored goop” and then cleanse away anxieties in the ocean waves. Renting a bike, I later pedal to Nohoch Mul, the tallest pyramid on the Yucatán Peninsula and a shrine to Ah Muzen Cab, a Mayan bee god. Following the 120-step climb, I survey the jungle and marvel that every hill is actually an unexcavated temple. That night, I witness Mayan theater: After we’re led by torchlight down into a mood-setting pit, we watch Mayan actors—wearing only body paint and animal skins with “jangly shells”—perform a re-enactment of the opening drama in their sacred book, the Popol Vuh.
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