When I was looking at the map of Mexico, I really didn’t have any place in particular I wanted to see. I knew, because of the season, I wanted to see the butterflies. I thought I should see Mexico City, and at least some city other than the capital. I knew I was going to spend a week doing a tourist resort. And then I knew I had to see some of the Mayan ruins.

When I was in college, I needed to complete two quarters of a history requirement, but didn’t want to take the usual World History I and World History II to do it.¹ But you could substitute out specific electives for the general course work, and one of the electives was Mayan History.² I only remember two details specifically. First, the professor was one of the proponents of the theory that anthropogenic climate change — the Maya’s own version of global warming — was responsible for their collapse.³ Second, he had a tendency to raise his forearm, pinch a bit of his skin, and solemnly intone “This is corn.” He must have done it at least once every class.

But I still remember the broad strokes of the Maya’s story. Their civilization didn’t collapse from the European invasion — they had already mostly abandoned their cities from the Classic period, and they were 600 years past the height of their power. The Spanish hastened a process that was already underway. But it’s equally foolish to imagine they just vanished; Maya culture evolved and changed, just as it always had, and much of the Yucatán is populated by those descendants.⁴ A stop felt essential.

Here’s where my general ignorance of geography hurts me: the Yucatán coast is lousy with resort towns — Cozumel, Cancún, Playa del Carmen, Tulum — and a smarter itinerary might have been to spend time at one of those rather than Puerto Vallarta. But I ended up charting a course though the peninsula, flying to Cancún⁵ and heading to Valladolid, traveling down the coast to Tulum, before heading back to Cancún for a single night before my flight.

Of course, like an idiot I failed to realize I had booked a flight out of Cozumel,⁶ so having hopped a 2-hour bus from Tulum I had to hop another 2-hour bus back to get to the airport. I just took it as the capper to a particularly chaotic week, and napped on the way there.

Bus travel is really the best way of getting around the Yucatán, and having been through it I really wish I had spent more time here; I could have spent a full week in just Valladolid, and I never made it to Mérida and would gladly have spent time in some of the touristy areas, if only for a night or two.⁷ But I’m already doing a lot this trip. Maybe I’ll be back, and could spend 6 or 8 weeks, next time.

I started in Valladolid, with zero expectations, and I just really loved the place. It’s a charming colonial-era town.⁸ My bus rolled in after dark,⁹ and so I ended up walking a few blocks to the town square for dinner, which was all lit up and crowded with both tourists and locals, just hanging out in the warm night air.¹⁰ That turned into my routine. There’s a few things to see in the city, but it’s mostly known as a jumping-off point to some of the things in the area, like the flamingos, or Chichen Itza, or the cenotes. But I mostly stayed in through the heat of the day, and wandered out to grab dinner down a side-street or a drink overlooking the main square.

I was expecting to visit Chichen Itza over the weekend, but ended up getting busy enough that I never made it out. Instead I booked a tour of both Chichen Itza and Coba, getting dropped off in Tulum. 1,600 pesos (about $80) got me a driver who picked me up at the hotel at 7:30am, drove me an hour to Chichen Itza, waited for me two hours, drove me another two hours to Coba, waited another two hours for me at Coba, then drove me a final hour to Tulum.¹¹

Both Chichen Itza and Coba are great, in vastly different ways. Everyone knows Chichen Itza, and the real key seems to be arriving early — before 9am, ideally before 8am — which is before the crowds and the vendors really arrive.¹² The space is spread out (Mayan cities were typically divided into districts, with a couple ceremonial buildings in each) so it takes a few hours just walking around to all of the ruins. And you’ll be happier doing it before the heat really starts to set in.

Chichen Itza gives you a sense of the grandeur the Mayan Empire must have had at its peak. Coba is lesser known and not as well-preserved, with a lot of the site still unexcavated.¹³ It’s actually more spread out than Chichen Itza; you can rent a bike or hire a pedicab in the site to get around. The real draw is that you are still permitted to climb to the top of the main temple, Nohoch Mul.¹⁴ And it’s stunning. You’re looking out over the jungle, standing in the same spot where priests stood thousands of years ago, contemplating all the history — the human sacrifice, La Conquista, the riots and wars the Yucatán has seen over millennia. And then you get to turn around and awkwardly back yourself down the pyramid, hoping you don’t slip to your death.

Having already done the impersonal resort thing, I decided to look for more offbeat places to stay while I was on the coast. And both places I stayed firmly fit the bill. I had found a place outside of Tulum —a little too far out, it seems, since there weren’t any restaurants in walking distance — but it was a tiny, tidy place with a small pool and a number of wild iguanas wandering the grounds.

The proprietor was a nice lady about my age who handled check-in and check-out and ran breakfast in the morning and, when I asked about where to eat, loaded me into her car and drove me down the road.¹⁵ She had taken over the place when her father got ill, and seemed to be making the best of it.

The other place, where I stayed the night before my flight, was even more interesting. The owner is an industrial designer, who has been steadily upgrading and remodeling his weekend home for a while. After his daughter moved away to law school, he decided there was too much space and started listing rooms on hotel sites.

So the place is a little closer to a home share than a hotel. It’s also astonishing: the lot he has it in is expansive enough that’s he’s planted dozens of trees and foliage; you literally cannot tell you’re in the city. There’s a pool with a waterfall, a patio with a wet bar and a pizza oven, a master bath with shower that’s exposed to the open air and draped with living vines. He has plans to build a raised room over the pool with the underside forming a shaded terrace, and possibly adding another building for another four rooms (in addition to the whole other apartment already on the site).

Both of these places were great, and I’d gladly go back or look for more places like them. But then, the only reason I know this much about the background of them is because you’re completely reliant on the proprietors. So it’s always a trade-off. You want someplace secluded but centrally located, cozy with a full restaurant and bar on site, a professionally staffed 24-hour front desk with the owner picking fresh habaneros off his own personal pepper plant for you to sample.

In the middle of all this, I’ve managed to weather (or am currently weathering) several disasters. I lost my wallet.¹⁶ I dropped my laptop, which despite seeming basically unharmed has killed the touch bar entirely and invariably crashes five minutes after waking up.¹⁷ And for the second time, I’ve left my Kindle behind at the last place I stayed.

Maybe I’m inured to it by now, but I’m handling it all with some measure of grace. The cards I lost have been canceled and replacements are being sent to the place I’m staying in Mexico City. I’ll be stopping by the Apple Store after the weekend to determine if my computer is still under warranty.¹⁸ And the Kindle has been located and will be shipped FedEx before I leave the country.

I’ll be honest, I would have loved to have a meltdown over any one of these events. But what’s the point? There’s a fix for each of them, or at least an obvious path to move forward. I’ve got flights booked and hotels reserved. And there’s no one with me to help. So onward I go, crisis or not, and fix as much of it I can while on the way. What other options are there?

Next: Guadalajara (GDL) to Mexico City (MEX)
Prev: Mexico City (MEX) to Cancún (CUN)

Footnotes

¹ This has proven to be a mixed blessing, trivia-wise, in that I’ve been filling in gaps in my understanding of world history ever since.

² The other was History of the Vietnam War.

³ The theory, in short, is that Maya civilization flourished during a particularly rainy couple of centuries. When the climate started to dry up, the harvests became shaky, and the Maya responded with increasingly aggressive farming techniques which destroyed the root systems and made rain even less likely.

⁴ My pedicab driver in Coba proudly pointed out he spoke one of the Mayan dialects, not Spanish. And there are 6 million speakers of Mayan dialects in the world.

⁵ Very cheap flights, as you can imagine.

⁶ Also very cheap flights, as you can imagine.

⁷ I had visions of Daytona Beach-style Spring Break festivities, and I’m sure that sort of scene is around if you want it, but there’s a lot that doesn’t cater to that crowd that would have been nice to gawk at, if nothing else.

⁸ Note those charming colonial-era trappings came with a healthy dose of friction between the Maya and the Yucatecos, culminating in bloody riots and a role in the Yucatán Caste War.

⁹ I had utterly failed to grasp that the expensive bus that left at the same time as the cheap one was because it went directly to Valladolid, rather than stopping at every city along the coast before turning inland.

¹⁰ Hot climates lead to cultures that stay up late, if only to avoid the sun at noon.

¹¹ I will never understand cab prices in the Yucatán. You can hire a driver for the day for 1,600 pesos, but getting a cab for the 20 minute drive from my hotel outside of Tulum to downtown? 600 pesos. Also, the cabs don’t have meters, so you’re pretty much stuck at the mercy of whatever the drivers quote you.

And it’s not just the locals ripping off tourists; I had the owner of the house I stayed at complaining about cab drivers tacking on an extra 200 pesos if they see you’re part of a family, local or not.

¹² The vendors are a problem. They line the paths hawking T-shirts and cheap sculptures and, maybe worst, noisemakers that sound vaguely like jungle cats. Which they will loudly and repeatedly blow to get your attention.

¹³ Budget issues

¹⁴ Meaning, disappointingly, “Big Mound”

¹⁵ This seems to be a not uncommon feature of these small boutique hotels. The owner of the second place I stayed (also distant from food options) simply drove me to a taco place where we had dinner, and this morning decided the taxis were too busy so he just gave me a lift to the bus station.

¹⁶ I’m sure I left it in the cab two days ago, luckily without my bank card or any cash in it. So I’ve only lost a couple credit cards and a backup ATM card. And the wallet, natch.

¹⁷ Both these have workarounds; the only essential button on the touch bar is the ESC key, which can be remapped (to the “fn” button, in my case) and if you never put the computer to sleep you never have to wake it back up.

¹⁸ And if they’ll want to confiscate it for repairs, which is a far more painful prospect, honestly