I guess I am required to tell you about La Ermita. We have scampered over its brick pavers, risked lightning bolts by entering its ancient church, wandered its quiet streets, and desolated the provisions in its bakery, served by a true cinnamon girl. I’ll tell you about it, even though I will have to betray my new friends to do it.

Everyone is sworn to secrecy about La Ermita. When asked about it, you’re first required to deny its existence entirely. You can increase the efficacy of this approach by feigning deafness, or speaking Italian all of a sudden. In some cases, if that doesn’t put the inquirer off the scent sufficiently, the fallback approach is lying like a Turk in a bazaar.

• The Germans bombed it flat during WW2. Little known battle. Nothing there casts a shadow anymore
• It’s an iguana sanctuary. They say the iguanas are rabid, but that’s silly. They’re just vicious
• There’s a narcoterrorist hiding behind every bush, waiting to kidnap you. They’ll hold you in a bunker underground and collect your Social Security check, and they keep renewing your prescription for Paxil, which they sell in the US for fabulous sums. It’s also a desert, so there are no bushes
• I’m not saying it’s aliens, but it’s aliens
• Two words: human sacrifice. Even the Catholic church has ’em. At least they’re not cannibals, like the Methodists down the block
• It’s a leper colony. It’s illegal to wave to passersby, because their hands fly off
• It’s incredibly boring there, so the locals appreciate the daily earthquakes. It breaks up the monotony. And the houses
• It’s in the Guinness Book of Records under “tarantulas”

Of course the real story I’m supposed to hide from you is La Ermita is the pleasantest little barrio in Merida. If too many people find out about it, it won’t also be one of the most affordable barrios near the centro, and it will be filled with expats like me instead of the MexiMayans who live there now, and like it.

Luckily for the Ermitans, pretty much nobody reads this blog. This is as close to a cone of silence as you’re going to see in this world. So it’s safe to tell my several readers, an NSA agent or two, and four thousand  scraper bots how much we like La Ermita. The barrio will slumber peacefully at night, knowing not a manjack from the US will ever be enticed by my description to go there. Except my wife and I, but La Ermartians seem to like us OK.

Walking down the streets in La Ermita is a trip. I am, for want of a better word, an exotic there. The whole time we were there, we only saw two people who looked even vaguely gringolicious, and when they walked by us they were arguing in some European argy-bargy language. Well, if arguing is defined as a guy being yelled at in Cyrillic by his consort. I didn’t need an interpreter to know the problem was it was hot, and nearly-noon hot at that, and it wasn’t her idea to visit Mercury on short notice.

Yes, it’s hot in La Ermita. The temps were in the high nineties, and they routinely go well into the hundreds. Hitting 120 is not unheard of. I’d stay away from the place if I were you.

But the place is built for it. The houses show blank masonry faces to the sun. The walls of every structure are thick enough to hold in a thousand Edmond Dantes, and hold out the heat at the same time. The roofs are catapulted off the floors into low earth orbit, which is about eighteen feet high if I remember my high school science classes correctly (I skipped school a lot, but it doesn’t seem to have hurt me none). High ceilings, thick walls, and fans and minisplits make the indoor climate straddle the line between bearable and comfy. The little square by the old church is shady and cool with lots of benches to malinger on. Some people call it the Plaza del Gallo, because way back when it was an empty dirt lot where they held cockfights. See, this place is too scary for you. I’d give it a miss.

The square isn’t square, which is a rarity in Merida. The city is laid out on a grid, E-W, N-S, so parks and squares really are square. But La Ermita is very old, and was once outside the city proper. The road leading out of town headed straight to Campeche, so it collides with the city grid at a Flatiron Building angle. This lends interest to the park, and it makes the streets around it bustle in unusual ways.

The La Ermita church is now called Santa Isabel. My recollections of Science class might be sketchy, but I had the nuns for grammar school, so I remember that Isabel was John the Baptist’s mother. I don’t recall her opinion of Salome’s recipe for The Head of John the Baptist With a Side of Fries, but I assume she didn’t approve.

That wasn’t the original name of the church, though. it was “Nuestra Señora del Buen Viaje.” Our Lady of the Good Journey. The road to Campeche (the Camino Real), was pretty scary back in the day, so people stopped to pray and fill their canteens and reload before setting out. It’s still terrifying, I’ll bet. I’d stay clear away if  I were you.

As I mentioned before, we were served in the bakery across from the park by an actual cinnamon girl. She had bright eyes and a winning smile and a cinnamon complexion. She brought us stuff with actual cinnamon on it. She wore a T-shirt with a cute little unicorn on it, a kind of My Little Pony riff. And in a cute, girlish, glitter font above unicorn, it read “Don’t F*ck With Me.”

I’d stay out of La Ermita if I were you. With terrifying creatures like that roaming the land, it’s not safe.