Valladolid and the Most Beautiful Cenote

I arrived in Valladolid exhausted from the two nights I’d spent in Holbox where the hostel parties kept me awake half the night. The room I’d reserved in Valladolid was part of the same hostel chain that I’d stayed in in Holbox and for a few nights in Merida, and by this point I’d learned my lesson. Though the good reviews and affordable rooms were enticing, this hostel chain prides itself on its party atmosphere, and I am simply too much of a hermit to deal with it. But the hostel in Valladolid ended up being a wonderful surprise.

I’d booked a private room at the hostel that was so cheap it seemed suspicious, but some investigating led me to discover that the price must have been a promotional deal because the hostel had just opened when I booked it. By the time I actually arrived at the hostel, the room prices were nearly double what I’d paid at booking, and even then they were a good price.

The hostel was quite small, and though it was trying desperately to be a party hostel like the others in the Che hostel chain, it simply wasn’t happening. I kept getting Whatsapp messages from the hostel group saying things like, “Pool Party at 5:00pm! Free drinks for the ladies until 6!” But when I’d leave to get dinner, there would be only a handful of people in the pool. No matter how much they tried to force it, Valladolid is simply not where people go if they are looking for a party. Especially not at 5:00pm. (This did not stop the hostel from blasting loud music at strange hours to try to lure us out.) The hostel room was huge and gorgeous and a lovely place to work remotely for a couple days.

The town was bigger than I expected but still very small when compared to Merida. Like Merida, it’s in the Yucatan state, so Mayan cuisine and culture were far more prevalent than in Holbox. Valladolid is a town that most people visit only on day trips. All the tour buses bringing tourists to see Chichen Itza stop in Valladolid (the nearest town) for lunch. Each day, a huge line of charter buses surrounds the main plaza. But after a few hours, they’re all gone, and the town is quiet again. I spent a lot of time wandering up and down the Calzada de Los Failes, a beautiful cobblestoned pedestrian street full of boutiques, restaurants, and cafes.

On one of my free days in Valladolid, I wanted to take a tour of some nearby cenotes with the same tour company that I went to Chichen Itza with. When I tried to book it though, the tour was already full. I worried that it would be too expensive for me to go on my own by taxi, but I ended up meeting a new friend, Daphne from the Netherlands, at the hostel who wanted to join. We hired a taxi for the morning to take us to two nearby cenotes and wait an hour for us at each location.

I knew that Cenote Suytun was known for being the most “Instagram famous” cenote, and I was prepared for it to be crowded, but I also wanted to see if it was as beautiful as it looks in the photos. What I was not prepared for were the influencers. Luckily we arrived right when the cenote opened that morning, so the line wasn’t very long yet. We showered and changed into our swimsuits, but as we entered the cenote, we realized that no one was actually there to swim. People were only there for photos. The women wore flowing dresses and kept climbing the stairs to get back in line so their partners could take their photo again. A worker hurried people along as they went out onto the circular platform one by one to have their photos taken. There were signs on the wall about renting the entire cenote for your engagement photos. We were the only ones in swimsuits, and the water was murky and dim. Though it WAS very pretty, it was also lacking every other element that make cenotes interesting.

We decided very quickly that we didn’t need to spend any time swimming there. We did grab a few photos for ourselves since the line was very short, but as we were leaving, a giant tour bus arrived, and it was hard to even get past the crowd lining up on the stairs. If you have several days in Valladolid and have seen many other cenotes, it might be worth making a brief stop at Suytun. But if you have to pick and choose just a few cenotes to see on your Yucatan trip, definitely skip this one.

Next, the driver took us to Cenote Chichikan, and it ended up being one of our favorites. Chichikan is an open-air cenote at the bottom of a deep hole. When you look up, trees canopy the circular opening. A slightly submerged platform extends into the water, so that you’re in just a few inches of water without needing to swim. Tiny fish swam around us, and the water was so cold it burned. A thin waterfall streamed down one side of the cenote creating a rainbow above the water. Though it’s fairly popular with visitors, we had the place nearly to ourselves, and we agreed that it was one of the most beautiful cenotes either of us had seen.

Our private cenote tour ended up costing each of us only about $26 USD (including the driver waiting an hour for us at each of the two cenotes. This is about half the price that a 15-minute Uber ride to the airport would be back home.). Each of the cenote entrances cost about $14 USD. The group tour would have been a bit cheaper because it would have included a third cenote and lunch, but we felt very pleased with the cost and felt it was well worth our money.

Back in Valladolid, I went to see Zaci Cenote—the cenote that sits in the center of town. I convinced the ticket sellers to let me in for free just to look at it for a few minutes since I didn’t want to swim. It was very pretty but quite crowded, and I imagine it would be ideal to go first thing in the morning.

For dinner, I went to a restaurant near my hostel called Conato which was stunning. I was seated in a patio area with a thatched roof, and when a sudden storm hit, rain fell straight through in a few sections of the roof. The waiters rushed to move customers who were getting rained on, and they ended up consolidating tables so that strangers were sharing tables with one another. I was tucked away in the corner safe from the rain, but at the table next to me, two couples who had never met before were suddenly sharing a meal. The waiters rushed to bring drink menus to everyone because we all knew we’d be stuck for quite a while amidst the flash flood. I had the best cochinita pibil (classic Mayan dish) of my entire trip and some perfect mezcal drink, and after we all sat happily trapped there for a while, I decided this was one of my very best dining experiences and favorite restaurants of my whole trip. Everyone was laughing and in such good spirits, and the couples who had started the meal as strangers had exchanged contact info and become friends by the end of their meal.

On my last morning, I walked to the bus station at 5:00am, which was not something I intended to do, but the front desk at the hostel had assured me taxis would be available when they weren’t. It didn’t matter though. There aren’t many places in the world where I’d feel okay walking around town alone in the dark at 5:00am, but Valladolid really did feel that safe. I took a bus back to Cancun to spend my last night in Mexico, and then flew out early the next morning. It felt different than most of the trips I’ve taken in that I felt ready to leave. And it wasn’t because I didn’t love my time in Mexico—I think it’s because the trip felt as though it tapered off nicely. I loved the two weeks I spent in Merida, but I did not love Holbox and didn’t feel sad to leave it. I liked Valladolid a lot, but the four nights I spent there felt like plenty. If I’d spent the entire trip in Merida, I think it would have been much harder to leave. As it was, the trip felt like it had come to a natural end.

For a place that wasn’t even on my radar to visit a few years ago, Merida and the entire Yucatan state exceeded my expectations, and I think all the time about how I’d like to return for longer and take more Spanish classes. My hope is that more Americans venture inland and don’t listen to the American media that tries to convince them that the entire country of Mexico is a scary place. You can’t imagine a place with warmer people.