I recommend this visit to anyone wishing to go off the beaten track, without venturing too far, but yet wants to see beauty, serenity, and well preserved and restored history.
It is a beautiful site, full of gardens, orchards, pools, flowers, trees, restored hacienda buildings, a small church, friendly service and more than I can describe. There is a restaurant where you can try traditional Yucatecan food, and the hostess (whom is the daughter of the owners) can speak English and Spanish so is willing to tell you the history of Teya or even the food that you will eat. It is not overly populated by tourists, and has made many beautiful pictures in my photo album.
Here is some History taken from a panflet direct from the Hacienda itself:
Hacienda Teya
12.5km Highway Merida-Cancun
Tels
28-18-89
28-18-85
28-50-00
Like all other Yucatecan haciendas (of which there are more than 500), was founded by the Spaniards. In the late 1600's the Yucatecan Penninsula was divided and each Spanish conqueror was given a share of land and a number of Indians to work the fields.
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Was founded around 1683 by Doņa Idelfonsa Antonia Marcos Bermejo Caldero y de la Helguera, wife of the Count of Miraflores. originally, the hacienda was a large argricultural plantation and cattle ranch. However, in the late 19th and early 20th century, it became on of the most important henequen (sisal) plantations in the region. Teya continued the cultivation and processing of sisal up until the late 1960's.
The present owners, the Cardenas Sosa family, bought Hacienda Teya in 1974 in a state of complete ruin and abandon. In 1987, they began restoration work on the hacienda which lasted until 1991, although improvements are always being made.
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In this garden you will find many fruits and spices typical of this region region such as:
Ahiote (annatto seed, a red spice used in mead and fish dishes), black peppercorns, oregano, cloves, holly herb, aloe vera, lemon grass, yucca, Seville oranges, grosella, guanabana and avocado.
The garden also contains the old chimney of the machinery house.
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The machinery house was built in 1905 during the French period in Merida. In this building, the treads were extrated from the sisal plant and later used to make rope, hats, bags and many other items. The machinery house was divided into two levels. The upper level contained the machinery to process the sisal and the lower level was used for the collection of waste pulp. The building has since been converted into a beautiful ballroom for weddings and parties. The roof functions as a large terrace which offers a spectacular view of Merida and the surrounding countryside.
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Off to one side of the machinery house, you will find an impressive stone sundial. This sundial has Arabic and Mayan numbers and is inscrubed with a Latin phrase that means:
"Here there is always time for a friend"
From the sundial you can see the platform and some of the old machinery which was once used for the transport of sisal and workers.
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This chapel, build almost a century after the rest of the hacienda, has at its entrance a small area surrounded by beautiful guamuchil trees and lined with benches which are the same as those in the Main Plaza of La Havana, Cuba.
Inside the chapel there are various works of art. Over the altar hangs a Christ figure carbed by a Yucatecan artisan out of the tropical wood known as zapote. Towards the front of the chapel there are two extraordinary oil paintings by the Yucatecan artist Lleana Sale. The first painting is of St. Ildefonso, patron sait of the hacienda and Merida's Cathedral, and the other pof, the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron sait of Mexico. In addition, in the chapel's vestry you will find replicas of two famous Spanish paintings: Velazquez's Christ and Graco's Christ.
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The two story main house was originally the home of the hacienda owner and his servants. The upstairs portion of the house, a grandiose space with high ceilings and large arches, served as the owner's lodgings, while the downstairs, a beautiful but less ornate area, was used as the servant's quarters. In the living room of the main house, you will find a beautiful collection of watercolors painted by the Mexican architect Sergio Gual Aguilar. From this collection, which the haciendas of Yucatan did not have one common architectural style, but rather reflected the unique tastes and preferences of each individual owner.