Road trip around Valladolid

We started the day early and left around 7:30 our hotel. Today we gonna explore the area with our rental car. First stop are famous Mayan Ruins Chichen Itza located approximately 45minutes drive from Valladolid. It’s recommended to arrive directly at 8am when they open or shortly before 4pm when they are closing the ticket office. The places is super crowded and there is a huge queue just to get to the parking lot. We parked in the last parking lot and walked the rest which was definitely faster.

Ticket is also very expensive around 30€ per person. Although we were shocked how many people were there around 8:30 in the morning the whole area is huge and people spread well and we could enjoy the sight without many tourists and observing fascinating pyramid of Kukulkan. The pyramid has 91 steps from each side and together with upper platform it consists of 365 steps. The whole area is large and consists of many other buildings, sacred Cenote and star observatory. People usually spend there 2-3 hours.

After the visit of Chichén Itzá we were shocked how packed the visitor center was and the whole bus parking lot was also full. To escape the crowds we left to less popular but equally beautiful small village of Izamal. Izamal is known as a pilgrimage place with the biggest monastery of South America. Once even the pope came all the way for a visit and as preparations for such an important visit all the houses were painted yellow (the color of Vatican). So now Izamal is know as yellow magical village located approximately 1 hour drive from Chichen Itza. The town is very small but very nice. We visited the monastery and had super delicious lunch in restaurant Kinich Izamal.

Once back on the road we took highway all the way back to Valladolid. We were surprised how expensive the highway fee was approx. 12€ for 100 km 🙈. It was still early to return the car so we drove to Cenote Xkeken & Samula. The advantage is that you pay only one entrance fee and can swim in two cenotes. Cenote Xkeken was almost completely underground with huge cave formations. Cenote Samula was almost empty as we were there shortly before closing. In general visit of Cenote is highly recommended and we enjoyed it a lot! Last stop of our road trip was small village of Uayma with incredible church. After that we returned the car, had dinner and left back to our hotel.Read more