Chichen Itza and Vallodolid

Thursday 22 – Saturday 24 January

Up early again for our pickup and the drive from Izamel to Vallodolid via the archeological site at Chichen Itza (CI).

The plan was to arrive early enough at CI to beat both the crowds that ‘day trip’ in their dozens of hundreds from Cancun, and the heat. We didn’t quite pull it off as it was already quite crowded when we arrived just after 8… seems like everyone had the same plan. It was also perhaps the hottest day we had since Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica a few weeks ago.

The site at CI was certainly the most ‘popular’ we have been to on the this trip …. Maybe Teotihuacan had as many folks there as the day built up, but the sheer scale of that site made it seem less crowded. CI was like the forecourt of the MCG on the first day of the Boxing Day Test.

The site was interesting… but maybe we are getting a bit jaded , it didn’t make quite the same impression as other places.

The main pyramid itself was different insofar as it was the first one we have seen that had stair on all four sides. The site also had the largest ‘ball court ‘ we have seen at any Meso-American site . Some images:

And the ball court – the concrete ‘rings’ are the goals for the game:

Yep, that’s the goal, all the way up there ….

CI also had its resident Iguanas taking advantage of the heat reflecting off ancient rocks:

By the time we left CI the place was heaving with bus loads of people – we retreated to the airconditioned comfort of our car for the approximately one hour drive into Vallodolid.

Vallodolid is a neat little city – much bigger than Izamal and much smaller than Merida. It is pleasant, but looks much like a ‘typical’ colonial town founded by the Spanish in the region – central square with a cathedral , grid system of largely one way streets and lovely old buildings.

A notable feature during the day was dozens of tourist bus disgorging large numbers of tourists into the central square every hour. Vallodolid is on the ‘Daytrip loop’ with CI for people from Cancun seeking their day of ‘culture’ away from their all-inclusive resorts, binge drinking and tacky souvenirs. Thankfully by around 5pm they are all satiated and are on their buses back to swim up bar paradise.

The Yucatan is known , among other things, for its ‘cenotes’ and the area around Vallodolid is cenote central. A cenote is basically your classic limestone ‘sink hole’ ( 99% of the Yucatan peninsula is underpinned by limestone). Cenotes come in essentially four ‘types’ – open , partially open, largely covered and fully covered (ie – a cave). They are full of water, fed by the underground rivers ( which in turn create the cenotes with the action between water and limestone).

So when in Vallodolid, one ‘does’ cenotes. We were pretty much overwhelmed with the amount on offer and having to ‘choose’ which one(s) to go to. So on Friday we just signed up with a local day tour that took care of all that and the transport between them.

This was the first cenote of three we visited

The cenote trip was a lot of fun – we visited three different sites, swimming in all. They had ‘adventurous’ things you could do like zip lining into the water and jumping off various platforms- and when that got too energetic you could just float around in the crystal clear water looking up at the sky though the ‘holes’ in the roof. Great fun.

The day was made more pleasant by the good group we were with – a couple from Dublin and two blokes from Washington DC .