Yucatan, Mexico

I’m not entirely sure who’s in charge of the wonders of the world. Lists vary. But one place that appears on most is the ruins of Chichén Itzá, a Mayan city surrounded by jungle, where warriors were worshipped, humans were sacrificed, and they played ball sports to the death. So we headed to the Yucatan peninsula to have a look. 

I find it staggering that the ruins were just in the jungle for hundreds of years, known to local people, but only relatively recently rediscovered by the wider world. The vines and creepers were cut back from the stones in the early 1900s, revealing the scale of the city. Obviously, it’s now a lot more visited than it was at the beginning of the last century, so we had the usual plan of ‘get up and get in before the hordes arrive’. It worked, and for the first few hours of the day we had the city of Chichén Itzá almost entirely to ourselves.

The most famous sight at Chichén Itzá is the central pyramid, the Temple of Kukulcán. This huge stepped pyramid is now completely out of bounds as people kept falling off and dying, and it’s all the better for it, standing majestically in a clearing, the morning sun casting a long shadow into the nearby trees.

We explored the huge ball court, with its carvings showing the sacrifice of the losing captain. They think the head was possibly even used as a ball for the next game. A little path from the centre takes you a few hundred yards to Cenote Sagrado, a natural reservoir that goes deep into the earth. When archaeologists explored the bottom, they found gold, jewels and the remains of many humans, mostly children, who were sacrificed by the people of Chichén Itzá.

But aside from temples and cenotes, Chichén Itzá was also a city with over 35,000 residents, so had the usual stuff too, such as the city bathhouse, the marketplace, and what every city needs, a Temple of the Warriors. One of my favourite buildings was El Caracol, a little circular building which was thought to have been a Mayan observatory. It’s a truly magnificent place and I felt very lucky to be there and explore it. After a successful morning of avoiding the hordes, Chichén Itzá started to get busier, so we headed out, taking a little glance back at the incredible pyramid as we returned to the car. 

Our base for visiting Chichén Itzá was Mérida, a chilled little town on the Yucatan peninsula, its streets lined with colonial Spanish style buildings. We were in our usual routine of eating some tacos, and wandering in and out of art galleries and museums, when we sensed that someone was following us. I’d noticed this man looking at us a couple of times, and realised that every turn we made, he made the same turn. 

I couldn’t work out why he might be following us, but any reasons I could think of weren’t hugely positive, so we decided to lose him. We ducked in and out of pillars, crowds and streets, only for him to emerge just behind us. So, we had to take it up a notch, using years of knowledge from watching terrible spy films. We went into a church, removed our hats and bags, and snuck out of a side entrance, heads down, looping back and forth through alleyways at pace. We emerged into a square where a local brass orchestra was mid-concert, so we silently slipped into some seats a couple of rows from the back, giving us a good vantage point of anyone entering the square. After a few minutes, we decided we’d finally lost him. And a bonus was that the brass band was fantastic: a group of elderly men, all dressed in their freshly pressed suits, playing their little hearts out. 

Yucatan is covered with cenotes, far more than the few at Chichén Itzá. When plotted on a map, they form a ring, and it’s generally accepted that this is the shape of the crater from the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Many of these cenotes are undiscovered or unexplored, but there are a few that you can explore and even swim in. There’s even a cenote in the car park of the Mérida branch of Costco. 

Rather than trekking through unexplored jungle, we headed to one of the more commercialised cenotes and donned our life jackets for a swim. And realistically it was one of the most disgusting experiences of my life. It was hundreds of feet deep, so you had to tread water or use your chin to float in the grubby life jacket. There were large fish swimming about and brushing against your legs. We already knew there were most likely a load of bodies at the bottom. Birds and bats were flitting around, eating bugs and shitting into the water with every swoop. We looked at each other, decided it was horrible, and scrambled out.On the way back into Merida we stopped at a restaurant that we’d seen recommended, Nectar. It didn’t look much from the outside, in a short row of shops underneath some office buildings, but it served one of the most memorable dishes I’ve ever had: cebollas negros, slow-cooked onions in a coal-black tempura batter. A contender for the least photogenic dishes of all time, it was absolutely delicious.

Our next stop was originally meant to be a little end-of-trip break in Tulum. But the more we looked at Tulum, the more we decided it wasn’t really our thing. During covid, it seemed to have become a haven for antivax tech bros. Then the cartels moved in to supply them with drugs, and at the time we were going to visit, were starting an all-out war for control of supply on the beaches and streets of Tulum. We had no wish to get caught in the crossfire outside Starbucks, and certainly not because some trust fund idiot wants to snort coke on a beach. So instead, we headed to the quieter town of Valladolid, to relax and hopefully stay out of the line of fire.

Valladolid was a good shout, and a lovely relaxing end to our Mexican trip. We stayed in the bizarre Zenti’k Project, where they’ve hollowed out a cave into an underground pool. Tortoises roam the grounds and murals and tapestries adorn every wall. With our flight back to the UK fast-approaching, we spent our last few days in Mexico eating long leisurely breakfasts under the bamboo roof, swimming in the pool, having massages in the mini spa, and sheltering on our balcony when the afternoon rains arrived.

We had a final sundowner cocktail – a margarita, naturally – before we headed home. Mexico had been a great mix of amazing food, brilliant cities, genuinely fascinating history and a chance to relax. And the chap who had been following us never did find us again.