I like Valladolid, a city on the eastern edge of yucatan state near chichen itza, very much, in spite of its currently torn up streets and dust. it is not pretentious but it has many charming churches with small squares and the people have been good to us overall.
the highlight of Valladolid in these pre-Guadalupe-Day nights, has been having boys sing to us earnestly in praise of the virgin in order to gain a donation for their favorite charity... their pinata. in the early times just after dark, we went on a long walk from the main square of Valladolid, down a long avenue to a monastery which was once way out of town, a monastery-convent that was able to be independent because it had its very own water supply, a cenote, one of the limestone-cave type wells, within its walls. anyway then we cut across the south part of town to find the park of San Juan, and on the way we had two nervous looking boys about 8 and 10 approach us with sweaty palms and demand that we hear them sing a song to the Virgin. They held a fan palm about 2 feet wide, bordered with purple tinsel around a pasted on picture of, you guessed it, the Virgen de Guadalupe. They proceeded to sing us a very nice medley of 3 songlets that blend into each other. one is about getting clear that the virgin is in a house made of sticks and is soon to be a mother of our lord and that she is the queen of all the flowers, and part two or is it the bridge is about a cock crowing exactly at midnight to announce that jesus has been born, and the third part is similar. that´s the cue to drop the coin in the little paper-topped box they carry. then that´s their cue to sing a little farewell song. We did this, felt proud of ourselves, and promptly ran into our next set of 2 boys. then another set... finally in the main square of town, a group of about 6 at once. we were out of coins pretty darn quick. but I got to know the gist of the songs pretty well. And see a lot of variations of the ´virgin-on-a-stick´palm leaf signs. it was charming and they all sang pretty well.
Another really nice thing about valladolid is its taxi driver routes, there are a number of ´combi´ routes where a whole van goes to the same place, and there is a new route, which I like a lot, the ´Ek Bolom´ route. in between the time that our two current Yucatan guides, the Moon and the Lonely Planet, have been updated, a spankin´new fast straight road has been cut to the gorgeous ruin of Ek Bolom, and the taxi service is definitely updated. so now, you get to the ék bolom taxi stand which is only a block off the square, you arrange to pay 120 to 130 pesos for the ride for the 2 of us, and you get driven out. then miraculously when you are ready to return, someone is there. how is this, you wonder... it´s radio and cell phones. on the drive, I could hear the drivers talk on the taxi radio about what tourists were there, what were they wearing, and were they cute, and did they or didn´t they understand spanish, and what had they paid. it´s much easier than the old system where you had to ride a combi taxi to the village of ek bolom and then figure out how to get from the village to ruinas and etc etc.
Ek Bolom is a great place. it´s a pretty small mayan site, only about 5 pyramids and a ballcourt and a few accessory buildings, and one of the larger pyramids has not even had a whiff of reconstruction on it so you can look at it, thinking its a natural hill, and only slowly realize no, it´s similar to the other pyramids but covered with natural growth. hope it stays like that a while. between the time our earliest guidebook, Cadogan published in the mid 90s, and now, a major find occurred at Ek Bolom. A workman tripped over a stone, dislodged it and brought to life a great wall of plaster carvings so detailed and lifelike, it´s totally great to see. We will have to post photos. the pyramid they are part of is great and once you see these plasters, you get a new sense for how truly amazing all of these stone pyramids were, when at their plaster best. At one of our hotels I was able to read some of their guest copy of Stevens book published in 1841 or so, about what he saw, and at that time, more of the plaster was intact. now I see what they used to be.
Another really nice time in Valladolid is to take the combi out to the cenotes about 7 k outside of town, run by the community of Dzitnup. one is called Xkelen, and the other is something like sumatra. From the writeups in our books I was expecting both more, and less. somehow I was expecting them to be larger, and they are actually intimate, and I was expecting them to be more úsed´, and instead they were clear and sparkling at least compared to what I had envisioned. They are big underground caves that you go down steps into, and they are large enough to have plenty of swallows and bats flying in through the few holes in the roof, and clear enough to have plenty of dark black catfish and some tiny clear small fry also, and have mostly limestone at the entry so it feels pretty clean, not gucky or muddy, to get in and swim. then also they have some great ropes suspended at the water surface level, in many places, from one end of the cave to another, so when the water feels cold or you feel tired, you just park your bum on a rope and sway for a while before you swim somewhere else. The main cave, Xkelen, has enough stalactites in it that you can feel like you are somewhere special, swimming in and out of them.
As we get closer to Cancun and Tulum and Chichen Itza, the clueless americans are more present, and also, the locals seem more reserved and not quite as interested in talking to touri. the hawkers are more fevered. we learned from one driver that about 2 months ago, all construction work over on the resort-laden coast came to a stop. these folks will be hard hit by the slowdown, as the peso has really been falling compared to the dollar and workers are coming home from the states. I have overheard a few more snarky remarks here, and am more aware of some of the tensions. therefore it doesn´t quite surprise me that here we have experienced a little hotel thievery... apparently the whole rest of Yucatan state is exuberantly honest, but staying (sortof by accident, due to the need to avoid jackhammers) at the ´best´hotel in town, made us more of a setup. oh well. we generally are very careful to not leave things around as a temptation, whoever went for our stuff in this hotel thought we were leaving and didn´t realize we had decided to stay an extra day and probably is very very sorry now that they robbed us, as I´m pretty sure the hotel knows who it was. I think when you stay in hotels that are NOT the best, you are much safer, as the staff are much less likely to think you are made of money. Also today at the cenotes, we could tell that people have been suffering from the fall off in tourism... hawkers were more desperate. we hope things will work out ok for them, and us.
I just skimmed craigs blog and realize there are two fun things he didn´t talk about. one was that when we took our combi to the cenotes to swim, the combi guy didn´t leave for a while, even though some local ladies were waiting. why this happened, is that he had to stop off at the local catholic school, to scoop up about ten small fry, to get them home! it was really fun to get stared at by the kids. they have never seen anyone like craig up close, specially craig wearing shorts displaying his freckly skin.
Another thing is that on our second class bike ride across the countryside, there was a lot of fun for us when we´d get stuck behind one of the flotilla of bike riding pilgrims. they not only carry flags, and torches, they also carry these ´car alarm´ and-or police and ambulance type sirens. so you can get stuck behind them and enjoy watching. also many times in town i´ve been sure there was a fire... no, just another flotilla of sweaty virgin-clad bikers arriving.
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