Marnie didn’t have the urge to explore Cancún further. We took a leisurely morning at the hostel before walking to the bus station and buying tickets to Valladolid, where I’d made our next hostel reservations. From Valladolid we could hopefully arrive at Chichén Itzá early tomorrow morning and avoid the legendary crowds.
The hostel in Valladolid is a bit out of city center (.6 km), but I had selected somewhere nicer that I would normally pick for myself, providing a pleasant base for the next couple of days. After settling in a bit, we set forth to explore the surrounding area.
Much like Cancún, everything is dirty and run down. There are few trash cans on the streets, with the associated debris. The curbs have narrow ditches for drainage that would play havoc if I hit them while cycling. Houses are a mess of interconnected buildings and debris. Even moreso than Eastern Europe, I can’t always tell the difference between lived in and abandoned. Still, there are small pockets of quaint. A house here, a street there. Very erratic.
Marnie wanted to visit a cenote (large sinkhole) while we were in the Yucatan, and Cenote Zací is near the center of town. They’re popular local swimming holes as well as tourist traps.
I’m not traveling by bicycle this time, but opportunities abound. I’ve seen a lot of bicycle rental opportunities, including at the hostel tonight. I hadn’t seen many bicycles in Cancún, but they’re common in Valladolid, as are motorcycles and mopeds.
From the cenote we grabbed a late lunch before walking to the other side of town for what our host had described as a street festival. We found the small carnival, with all the rides were shut down for the afternoon heat. In the adjacent space a large street bazaar vaguely reminiscent of Istanbul provided Marnie an additional pair of socks.
I offered Marnie a taxi ride home, but she persevered. We returned to the hostel with 15,993 steps for the day. I surfed through all of the available TV channels searching for something in English to no avail. Sometimes I just want that sound of home.
Chichén Itzá tomorrow!