Fodor's Expert Review Yaxcopoil

A visit to Yaxcopoil (yash-co-po-eel), a restored 17th-century hacienda 47 km (29 miles) north of Uxmal, makes a nice change of pace while touring area Maya sites. The main building, with its distinctive Moorish double arch at the entrance, has been used as a film set and is one of the best-known henequen plantation in the region. The great house's rooms—including library, kitchen, dining room, drawing room, and salons—are fitted with late-19th-century European furnishings. You can tour these, along with the chapel, the storerooms, and the machine room used in processing henequen. In the museum, you'll see pottery and other artifacts recovered from the still-unexplored Classic period Maya site for which the hacienda is named. Yaxcopoil has restored a one-room guesthouse (reserve online) for overnighters and will serve a continental breakfast and simple dinner of traditional tamales and horchata (rice-flavored drink) by prior arrangement.