Valladolid

Today we decided to venture out a couple hours east to check out Valladolid (recommended by Lucy Watson). It is about one tenth the size of Merida but has many more obvious tourists. We were interested to see how many Europeans were visiting in addition to Canadians and Americans. We started with a visit to the Mercado Municipal, the main city market where we bought a bunch of lovely produce for a song.

We stopped at a wonderful cafe (los portales) across from the main square park. I was entertained seeing the names on the taxis. See the Dammit Boy! Next we walked around the side streets to explore. We tried walking the pedestrian street ( Cal de los Frailes) with lots of tiny shops but with no shade we had to revert back to the more central part of the city and the park with large trees and shade. Finally we walked to Wabi Gelato where we tried some amazing flavours (chocolate with red fruits and pineapple with coriander). Yum!!!

We took the scenic route back to Merida along the old highway and drove through countless small villages and stopped at one of the local cemeteries. I was fascintated to see that many of the graves seem to be a cap of poured concrete into which someone has scratched the name and DOB and death in with a stick. See the last photo of the garbage bin at the entrance to the cemetery. No idea what Bob Marley was doing on their bin but...Read more