SFBG photog Ariel Soto -- of Street Threads fame -- documented her recent trip to Mexico, to help chase away our rainy week blues

Cozumel

Tulum

Tulum

With winter upon us, my fiance and I found ourselves yearning for sunshine and so we packed a few small bags and headed south to Mexico. The Yucatán had been calling to us for years, ever since my parents told us of their trip back in the mid 1970s, where they walked through forgotten Mayan ruins at Uxmal and Chichen Itza and experienced the frenzy of the bustling vegetable markets in Merida. We also found all these monuments, cities and markets busy and alive. Everything was saturated in all the colors of the rainbow and dripping with history. And of course there was the aqua-colored ocean, so clear you could look straight down to the sandy floor.

Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza

Tacos con Pibil, Piste

Merida

Merida

Merida

Uxmal

Everyday we munched on fresh tortillas, slathered in guacamole or pibil, a slow cooked pork dish, spiced with achiote and topped with tangy pickled red onions. The ruins made our imaginations run wild, with unsettling stories of human sacrifice and wide-eye awe in the massiveness of these ancient structures. The Yucatán would take months, if not years, to thoroughly explore, but in our two weeks there we at least got a sense of their unique cuisine, cultural norms and incredible past. Mexico is such a vast and diverse country and each part has so much to offer that it's impossible to say which is the best. Now, where should we go next? Viva Mexico!

Uxmal

Tulum

Merida

Merida

Merida