Tulum to Valladolid
Trip Start
Dec 25, 2008
1
4
7
Trip End
Jan 04, 2009
Valladolid, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
After finally finding an ATM and filling up the car (they only seem to take cash everywhere) we drove west to Gran Cenote. This cenote was much bigger and deeper and had stairs descending onto a wooden deck in the middle. I'd brought my swimming googles so we took turns looking at the little silvery fish, and bigger bright yellow fish swimming about in the crystal-clear water. We swam around the side of the cenote and discovered that if we dived down, we could see the walls curving into massive underwater cavern that slipped away into blackness. It was filled with stalactites and was an amazing sight, with the light refracting through the water, which gave all the stalactites an eerie blue hue. I wished I'd had an underwater camera but I don't think a photo would have done it justice. Apparently people go cave diving in there and we could see why. Further around on the other side of the cenote there was a cave that we swam into, which joined another much smaller sinkhole on the other side. It was cool to swim around in there although I don't think the tiny resident bats liked the visitors. There were only half a dozen people around when we first arrived but by the time left it was getting busy.
Coba was our next stop, another 40 minutes west. As we drove through town we passed the lake and as luck would have it, actually spotted a crocodile swimming not too far out.
Coba is the site of more Mayan ruins, right in the jungle, which are divided for the most part into three sections. The first was a strange ball court with walls set on angles and stone rings - apparently the players had to use their bodies and hips (no hands or feet) to get a rubber ball through the ring. Understandably the games could last for hours. We were impressed with the stone skull in the floor of the court too.
We spent a couple of hours wandering around the site, looking at the various temples, structures and stelae (stone tablets with depictions of Mayan life on them, although many were badly eroded). Finally we climbed the famous Nohoch Mul temple, which is the second-highest Mayan structure in the Yucatan. From the top we had a spectacular view of the surrounding jungle, the lake and the other structures of Coba. It's quite a large site and we'd probably walked about 5km by the time we'd seen all of it.
Pushing on to Vallodolid for the night, we hadn't booked any accommodation in advance so decided to splash out and treat ourselves to a beautiful colonial hotel on the main square that had been recommended to us. It was 2/3 of the price of the hotel in Tulum and twice as good! We went for a refreshing swim in the pool and later had dinner at the lovely courtyard restaurant. We had celebratory margheritas in massive glasses and fantastic fajitas.
The next morning we walked down the streets to the famous church St Bernadinos. We were admiring it from the outside when the caretaker came up to us and asked us if we'd like a tour. We had a look at the amazing frescoes in the chapel and he showed us where you could go down to all the tombs below the gravestones on the floor (although I wasn't going down there without a torch!). He took us through the convent section and outside to a grotto from which we could peer down into a gigantic cenote far below. In the small museum it became obvious how deep the cenote is - archaeologists have pulled all sorts of artefacts out of it! Apparently these areas of the church are only open to the public during holidays such as Christmas and Easter so we were pretty lucky to be there at the right time.
By this time it was time for us to head out of Valladolid and head for Chichen Itza, one of the new seven wonders of the world.
