Tilted Town

The write-up

This Mexican village is built on a tilt to fool your balance. El Pueblo at Xenses Park, Riviera Maya: your eyes overrule your inner ear.

1. Exhibit A

   Where it is

   Xenses is a half-day 'sensory park' run by Grupo Xcaret. It's about 10 km past Playa del Carmen on the highway south from Cancún, next to Xcaret and Xplor, and roughly an hour (about 74 km) from Cancún.

2. Exhibit B

   El Pueblo

   The tilted village is officially just 'El Pueblo' on Xenses' 'Ruta del Hacer'. It's a white-walled, red-tiled Mexican street where, as the park puts it, you can't tell whether you're walking uphill or down.

3. Exhibit C

   How the trick works

   The whole village sits on a pronounced slope, but the houses, doors and windows are built square to a false horizon. It's a full-size 'tilted room': the buildings look level, so your brain decides that you're the one leaning.

4. Exhibit D

   Eyes vs. inner ear

   Berkeley psychologists studying the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot found that when the true horizon is hidden, people take their sense of vertical mostly from the surrounding scene. The tilted-house effect gets two to three times stronger when your body is tilted too.

5. Exhibit E

   A hierarchy of senses

   Lab work on the 'rod-and-frame' illusion suggests a hierarchy: vision dominates the sense of upright, the vestibular system modulates it, and body sense (proprioception) comes third. A tilted frame is never fully overcome.

6. Exhibit F

   Water that runs uphill

   Because everything looks level, water and rolling objects seem to move uphill. Visitors tend to stagger and over-correct, which makes it a favorite photo spot.