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Friday, July 25, 2025

An instinctive fascination with Valladolid

by

Jan Westmaas
334 days ago
20240825

west­maas­tour­ing@ya­hoo.com

    

The writer re­cent­ly ac­com­pa­nied a group of 35 trav­ellers on a vis­it to the Yu­catan Penin­su­la in Mex­i­co.

I was stunned, speech­less even, when a young trav­eller, on her first out­ing with our group, turned to me and asked in all sin­cer­i­ty, “So what was the high­light of the tour for you?”

She was in her mid to late 20s and stood out in a group that com­prised 35 way­far­ers, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of whom were in their 60s and 70s, with one cou­ple in their ear­ly 80s.

In all hon­esty, I searched for words, won­der­ing how to re­spond. I had been to Yu­catan twice be­fore. I first went in 1975 with my wife on a one-month ad­ven­ture by land across Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Mex­i­co.

I re­turned in 2019, ac­com­pa­ny­ing a group of fel­low na­tion­als, straight to the Yu­catan via Pana­ma on that oc­ca­sion, much as I was do­ing this year. But there was some­thing spe­cial about this one.

With mem­o­ries of our clam­ber­ing to the top of the Mayan ru­ins of Ek Bal­am, of vis­its to bril­liant­ly cu­rat­ed mu­se­ums, of overnight­ing in quaint colo­nial towns, of hav­ing our faces whipped by the wind as we sped in boats along the Rio La­gar­tos (Croc­o­dile Riv­er) in search of flamin­gos, croc­o­diles and pel­i­cans, of mul­ti­far­i­ous oth­er things that flashed across my mind, my re­sponse was not what one would ex­pect. “The four nights we spent in Val­ladol­id,” I said, per­haps an­ti­cli­mac­ti­cal­ly.  

In­deed, hav­ing al­ready been ex­posed in 1975 and 2019 to some out­stand­ing ru­ins of cities that the an­cient Mayan civil­i­sa­tion left for pos­ter­i­ty, my in­stinc­tive fas­ci­na­tion with Val­ladol­id led me to an­swer the way I did. It is not that The Tem­ple of Kukulkan which dom­i­nates the an­cient city of Chichen Itza, des­ig­nat­ed a World Her­itage Site in 1988 and a Won­der of the World in 2007, failed to ex­cite me any­more. 

Nor that I was no longer moved by Ek Bal­am (Dark Jaguar in the Mayan lan­guage) or by Ux­mal. Ek Bal­am is one of the largest build­ings in Mid­dle Amer­i­ca, 162 me­tres long, 68 me­ters wide and 32 me­tres high. Found­ed in the third cen­tu­ry AD, it reached its height be­tween 770 and 840 AD. Re­cur­rent mo­tifs on the city’s wall are carv­ings of the Jaguar. Ux­mal is an­oth­er Un­esco World Her­itage Site with its stepped Pyra­mid of the Ma­gi­cian ris­ing steeply to 30 me­tres from its unique round­ed base. No climb­ing to the top on this one, as we had done at Ek Bal­am. 

No news about

‘pueb­los mági­cos’

Mex­i­co of­ten makes in­ter­na­tion­al news head­lines. Af­ter all, it’s a vast, fas­ci­nat­ing coun­try com­pris­ing 31 states plus its cap­i­tal Mex­i­co City. Three of these states– Quin­tano Roo, Campeche, and Yu­catan–are in the pan­cake-flat Yu­catan, a penin­su­la of lime­stone rock that projects from the main­land, like a hu­man foot, in­to the Gulf of Mex­i­co and the Caribbean Sea. 

In 2022, it’s es­ti­mat­ed that 2.37 mil­lion peo­ple lived in the 181,000 square kilo­me­tres that com­prise the Yu­catan. The penin­su­la alone is 35 times larg­er than Trinidad!

To put things in per­spec­tive, Mex­i­co’s en­tire pop­u­la­tion is 133 mil­lion and its area is 1,973 mil­lion square kilo­me­tres, with the Yu­catan tak­ing up 12 per cent of the en­tire coun­try’s land area. In the mid-19th cen­tu­ry, Mex­i­co was a coun­try far larg­er than it is now. In the Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can war of 1848, it was forced to cede 55 per cent of its land to the USA, in­clud­ing the present-day Amer­i­can states of Cal­i­for­nia, Neva­da, Utah and New Mex­i­co. 

As I write, to­day’s head­line sto­ry on the in­ter­na­tion­al news is not about the rev­e­la­tion of yet an­oth­er Mayan site on the Penin­su­la. Ocom­tun was dis­cov­ered in June last year, but re­ceived lit­tle press cov­er­age. Nor do you read or hear any­thing in the news about the penin­su­la’s en­chant­i­ng “pueb­los mági­cos”–mag­i­cal towns like Méri­da and Val­ladol­id. On this tour, we spent six nights al­to­geth­er in these charm­ing towns, roam­ing through its streets and squares at all hours of the night, with­out fear of be­ing at­tacked or ha­rassed–some­thing we can­not do any­where in our own coun­try.

True to the stereo­type that many of us have of Mex­i­co, the lead sto­ries in the in­ter­na­tion­al press are about in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and crime. Just re­cent­ly, Mex­i­can left-lean­ing out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Lopez Obrador was re­port­ed to have backed off from a planned meet­ing with the pres­i­dents of Brazil and Colom­bia to dis­cuss the ques­tion­able re­sults of the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Venezuela.

Even be­fore that, the head­line news fea­tured the ar­rest of two top lead­ers of the no­to­ri­ous Sinaloa drug car­tel, who were sub­se­quent­ly tak­en in­to cus­tody in the Unit­ed States. One is Ish­mael “El Mayo” Zam­ba­da and the oth­er is Joaquín Guzmán López, son of the no­to­ri­ous drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo Guzmán”, who was ex­tra­dit­ed from Mex­i­co to the USA in 2017 and was sen­tenced to life im­pris­on­ment in 2019.  

This in­for­ma­tion over­shad­owed the re­cent elec­tion of Mex­i­co’s first woman Pres­i­dent, cli­mate physi­cist and No­bel Prize win­ner, Clau­dia Schein­baum. Sim­i­lar­ly down­played is the plight of the thou­sands of un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grants who gath­er at the Mex­i­can/US bor­der, des­per­ate to cross be­fore No­vem­ber, fear­ful of a vic­to­ry by Don­ald Trump in the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in No­vem­ber.

Free of has­sle

Putting aside the un­god­ly hour of our flight (4:08 am) by Co­pa Air­lines from Pi­ar­co to Can­cun via Pana­ma, cross­ing the bor­der in­to Mex­i­co at Can­cun air­port was free of has­sle. T&T cit­i­zens trav­el­ling to Mex­i­co as tourists have visa-free en­try in­to the coun­try.  Nev­er mind the brouha­ha on the in­ter­net about the pay­ment of Vis­i­tax, a vis­i­tor’s tax sup­pos­ed­ly im­posed on all for­eign vis­i­tors by the state of Quin­tana Roo, where the Can­cun air­port is lo­cat­ed. The tax was in­tro­duced in 2021, but its im­ple­men­ta­tion has been hap­haz­ard and ap­pears to have been aban­doned.     

Once cleared by Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms, we met Loren­zo, the af­fa­ble dri­ver of our coach. Soon we em­barked on our eight-day round trip across the penin­su­la from Can­cun on the Caribbean coast to Campeche on the Gulf of Mex­i­co and back. Up to 1970, Can­cun was a tiny fish­ing vil­lage with a pop­u­la­tion of about 100 in­hab­i­tants of Mayan ori­gin. Kaan Kun is a Mayan word mean­ing snake’s nest, but with sun, sand and sea in abun­dance, tourism grad­u­al­ly be­came the back­bone of the lo­cal econ­o­my. It is now a me­trop­o­lis with a mil­lion in­hab­i­tants. 

Campeche did not dis­ap­point

Can­cun did not de­tain us. We had not come to Yu­catan for its city life nor to sun­bathe on its beach­es. We head­ed straight for the his­toric, charm­ing small-town Val­ladol­id (60,000 in­hab­i­tants) where we were due to spend the first four nights of our tour. It was a mere two-hour dri­ve away on an ex­cel­lent high­way. As we got clos­er to our des­ti­na­tion, Loren­zo point­ed to the rail­way that runs along­side the high­way. “Para tur­is­tas,” (for tourists), he said. “El tren Maya,” he added. I had read some­where that the Maya train, on­ly com­plet­ed in part, had be­come a po­lit­i­cal hot pota­to. “It’s an en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter,” says one crit­ic.  

By late af­ter­noon we had set­tled in­to our com­pact 70-room ho­tel, Maria de La Luz, ide­al­ly lo­cat­ed around Val­ladol­id’s main square that brimmed with life. In full view in the cen­tre of the square is a wa­ter foun­tain adorned with the stat­ue of a woman. In the back­ground on the south­ern side of the square is the Cathe­dral of San Ser­va­cio with its domed roof, in­tri­cate­ly de­signed al­tar and high twin tow­ers dom­i­nat­ing the land­scape. 

“Val­ladol­id was first built in 1543 by the Spaniards but was re­lo­cat­ed in 1545 to where we are now,” said Miguel, our hand­some mes­ti­zo guide, in per­fect Eng­lish at the San Roque Her­itage Mu­se­um. “Be­lieve it or not, the colonis­ers built this place on top of a Mayan town named Zaci, re-us­ing the orig­i­nal Mayan stones,” he con­tin­ued. 

“I imag­ine you’ve heard of the Caste Wars,” said Miguel, point­ing to an ex­hib­it on a wall in the mu­se­um. “In those days in the Yu­catan, on­ly the Penin­su­lares (Spaniards born in Spain) and the Criol­los (chil­dren of Spaniards but born in the New World) mat­tered. Un­sur­pris­ing­ly, the Mes­ti­zos and the in­dige­nous Maya re­volt­ed.” 

With guides like Miguel and Manuel, I knew we were in for a treat for the rest of our tour. And a treat, in­deed, we had, tra­vers­ing the Yu­catan, go­ing off route to vis­it the Rio La­gar­tos Bios­phere Re­serve where Ni­ka, a par­tic­u­lar­ly ad­ven­tur­ous trav­eller in her ear­ly 70s, opt­ed for a Mayan mud bath. 

We even­tu­al­ly got back en route to Meri­da, deemed not on­ly the cul­tur­al cap­i­tal of the Yu­catan but al­so “the safest city in Mex­i­co.” Af­ter two de­light­ful nights here we con­tin­ued to Campeche, on the Gulf of Mex­i­co. 

This city, the cap­i­tal of the state with the same name, did not dis­ap­point. In the cool of the evening, Loren­zo drove us along­side its sev­en-kilo­me­tre male­con (sea­side prom­e­nade) with its mon­u­ments in ho­n­our of events and he­roes in the city’s his­to­ry. To crown it all, lat­er in the evening, most of us di­vid­ed in­to small groups to take a tour on an open-air rus­tic bus with wood­en seats that ran every hour. The tour took us through the old walled city built by colonis­er, San Fran­cis­co de Campeche, in 1540 atop the Mayan town of Can Pech. 

Our re­turn to Can­cun saw sev­er­al of us vis­it­ing one of its fa­mous white, sandy beach­es where lo­cals and vis­i­tors alike spent most of their time on the sand as the wa­ter was quite rough that evening. Hap­py to be go­ing home, but re­luc­tant to take leave of our fel­low trav­ellers and our Yu­catan ad­ven­ture, the group was al­ready ea­ger­ly ask­ing where the next tour would be head­ed!

Jan West­maas is the au­thor of Out of the Box, Tales of Trav­el 1972 to 2013. Avail­able as an E-book on Ama­zon.      


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