Mexico as a Family

When we asked K what he wanted to do in Valladolid, he said ruins, so ruins it is! In the early 2000s, you could climb on the structures in Chichen Itza. You can't any longer, which is probably a good thing; over 2 million tourists visit Chichen Itza, which is up to 4 million feet that would be wearing down the ruins yearly.  In Ek Balam, though, a site only 40 minutes away from Valladolid, you can still climb the structures - in fact, to get a good look at the sculptures, you have to climb the huge pyramid.  We were lucky enough to get not just an archeologist to lead our tour of Ek Balam, but one of the first archeologists on the site when the ruins were being uncovered in the 1990s. (I repeat: in the 1990s - when Matt and I were in middle and high school, ancient buildings and tombs were being unearthed. And, as every guide tells us, pointing to hills of rocks held together with tree roots, there is still so much to uncover. History is not all figured out.)  We had als...

After Izamal, we made our way to a hotel 3 miles to Chichen Itza, across the street from a cenote. When we arrived, when went to the cenote, Cenote Ik Kil. There are 3 types of cenotes. In Playa del Carmen, we went to open cenotes. These are kind of like really awesome lakes or ponds, if lakes and ponds had super clear water and awesome limestone formations underneathe. There are also cenotes that are in caves, completely covered. And then there are semi-open cenotes. They are kind of like a vertical cave. You can see the sky, but there are rock walls and stalagtites all around, covered in vines, ferns, and long roots of the ceiba tree. We went over to Cenote Ik Kil the first day we arrived. It's 91 steps down through a man made passage way; K says it's like a dungeon. When you're floating around or looking down with a snorkeling mask, you kind of understand how the Maya would have though cenotes go to the underworld. They seem to go on forever and ever. Cenote Ik Kil is as...

 Like Izamal, Valladolid is a Pueblo Magico, but it's much busier - it feels more like a city than Izamal, though still smaller than Merida. It's about 2 hours from Cancun on one side, Merida on the other, and less than an hour from Chichen Itza so there are plenty of tour buses and tourists and expats from all different countries.  In fact, one expat couple who retired here invites people to tour their huge collection of Mexican folk art in their house ! ( Casa de los Venados ) They collect donations for the tours, which go to local charities. Everywhere you look in the house there is art, and the house itself is so cool. There are guest rooms that are like small apartments, with private outdoor spaces in addition to a private balcony, individual bathrooms, a sitting area, and a separate place for the bed. There's a huge pool with a see-through bridge you have to go over to get to the back seating area. It took them eight years to rebuild, partly because of the regulations...

On our way from Merida to Chichen Itza, the giant ruins, we stopped by the beautiful Pueblo Magico Izamal. Pueblo Magicos are towns designated towns by the Mexican federal government as having some unique cultural or historical aspect work preserving and are within 2 hours of other travel destinations. Izamal is a beautiful small town with a monastery/convent that the Pope once visited and with many artisans. The whole town is painted this deep shade of yellow. There are horse and buggies and the horses wear hats with little holes for their ears!   Izamal has its own pyramids - and you can climb on them! (You can't climb on Chichen Itza   because there are so many people that come to visit, they would ruin the .... ruins.) Here's some pictures of us climbing on one of them. Another one had its corner in the courtyard of a hotel restaurant! Some parts still have stairs and some don't. You can still see each of the levels, and sharpness of the cut stone, and the careful round...

We're going to be in Merida, the capital of the state of Yucatan, for the next couple weeks. Here's a little map of our journey so far! We're staying at really cool airbnb . Merida is an old colonial city and the Spanish recreated the buildings that they had in Spain here; a lot of the buildings were built around 1800s. The buildings are squares that go right up to the sidewalk, but then a huge square courtyard in a minute. So the rooms are all on the edge of the square, and our unit is a little slice of that; the bigger buliding has been cut up into smaller units It's 3 bedrooms, with M's bedroom out of the main building, off of the small pool. K and my bedrooms are on the top floor; there's a balcony off of my room. Here's a diagram of our place.  The courtyard is really cool. There are two orange trees with green oranges. (We've tried one - dry and sour). We've gone swimming in the pool and built and tested Lego boats. There's cool little deta...