We spent the night before visiting Chichen Itza in Valladolid. For years, this colonial town had been overlooked by visitors and served primarily as a lunch stop for people traveling to or from Chichen Itza. Recently, Valladolid finally started to get tourist love as more travelers began including it on their itineraries.
Valladolid is one of Yucatán’s two Pueblo Mágicos (magic towns) — a designation by the Mexican Board of Tourism aimed at promoting tourism in places known for their architecture, history, traditions, cuisine, and natural beauty. While it may not be as flashy as other colonial cities, like Puebla, Guanajuato, or even the nearby Merida, Valladolid packs enough to warrant a visit on its own.
The starting point for exploring any Mexican town is its central square. Valladolid is no exception. The main plaza, with its imposing cathedral, is the true heart of the town. Valladolid played an important role during the Mexican Revolution and is known as la ciudad heroica (the hero city). Nearly every building adjacent to the central square has plaques describing the valiant efforts of residents during the Revolution.
No matter where we went, we kept returning to the central square. Here, we drank our cafecito in the morning and took refuge from the heat in the shade in the afternoon. But the best time to visit was in the evening when it was particularly lively. The place is great for people-watching, eating elote, or just sitting and relaxing on a bench while listening to the cacophony of birds settling in tree branches for the night.
One of our favorite attractions in Valladolid, Casa de Los Venados, is right off the main square. It's the house of a wealthy retired U.S. couple, who open their doors daily for three hours to show off an impressive collection of Mexican folk art. The collection includes folk art from all over the country and can easily compete with other museums.
On the morning of our visit, we were the only people there. To our surprise, the owners themselves greeted us at the door and explained their involvement with buying, remodeling, and preserving this immense colonial house and turning it into a house-museum. They told us that after they die, the house and the collection will be donated to the people of Mexico and will always be open to visitors.
The owners got super excited when they found out we were from Chicago, as they had lived in Chicago's northern suburbs before moving to Mexico. They wanted to know if we knew so and so, but our circles of acquaintances didn't overlap. After welcoming us in, they settled in the interior courtyard to eat breakfast and entrusted us with one of the guides.
After we were done with the museum, we needed to grab lunch, and we were ready to try local cuisine. As we repeatedly wrote, the generalizations about Mexican food are grossly inaccurate. There is no one general “cuisine” as each region has its own take on Mexican food.
Because we were in Yucatan, we wanted to try Yucatecan dishes. Arguably, the most popular is cochinita pibil — slow-roasted pork meat marinated in the juice of bitter oranges and cooked in banana leaves underground. The tender meat with a zesty zing can be used as a taco filling or ordered as a separate dish. Other popular dishes include sopa de lima (lime soup), papadzules (enchiladas with hard-boiled egg filling), and salbutes (corn masa with various toppings).
There were plenty of restaurants with Yucatecan food, but our favorite was Yakunaj Cocina Mexicana, just several blocks off the main plaza. It had a lovely back patio and the most delicious cochinita pibil tacos.
There was also something in Valladolid that we tried for the first time — Mayan food.
Initially, we had our doubts about Ix Cat Ik restaurant as it had all the attributes of a tourist trap. When we arrived, we noticed a mammoth tourist bus parked outside. Inside, a large group of Russian tourists sat around a long table loudly discussing their trip to Chichen Itza. When I saw several young men dressed in Mayan outfits performing Mayan dances, I prepared to be disappointed. But it got only better from there. Yes, the restaurant is touristy and caters mostly, if not solely, to tourists, but the food and the atmosphere were great.
Looking at the menu, we were puzzled: t’zotobichay, tsi’ikbil wakax, polok waaj, kay tikin xik, mak’ulan. What are these dishes? This is Mexican food too? We ordered k’uum (small, steamed pumpkin stuffed with sautéed local vegetables) and k’eek’en pibil (traditional cochinita pibil). Although it's debatable what really constitutes Mayan cuisine, the food was delicious and healthy. After the meal, our waiter even gave us a short presentation on Mayan food at the demonstration table filled with different types of corn, tomatoes, pumpkin, chili, and other vegetables native to Yucatan and used by the Maya.
We liked our meals in both Yakunaj Cocina Mexicana and Ix Cat Ik so much that we returned to eat at these two restaurants on our second day in town.
NOTE: After enjoying Mayan food in Valladolid, we were eager to try it again. To our surprise, we discovered an exceptional Mayan restaurant not in Mexico but in Louisville, Kentucky (go figure!). Chef Bruce Ucán, who grew up in Yucatan and opened Mayan Café in downtown Louisville in 1996, has quietly created a gem of a restaurant with tasty Mayan dishes.
In addition to a burgeoning restaurant scene, Valladolid boasts several old churches, a fortress-like XVI-century Franciscan convent, and a few art galleries worth exploring.
Another fun way to enjoy it — and escape the scorching midday heat — is at one of the town’s cenotes. A cenote is a naturalal sinkhole formed after the limestone bedrock collapses and exposes groundwater. There are thousands of cenotes in Yucatan, and visiting one can be a fun half or full-day outing. Those who don't want to go far from Valladolid can drop by Cenote Zaci, right in the town's center. We felt a little bit adventurous and ventured outside of town on a bumpy dirt road leading to a cenote at the colonial Hacienda San Lorenzo Oxman, a former agave plantation.
After paying the entrance fee and changing, we took a long spiral staircase to the bottom of the cave. The place was stunning. The sun was peeking into the cave with sunlight bouncing off the tall limestone walls. We floated in the still, blue cenote water, with the long roots of tropical trees hanging overhead. The most popular attraction was a swing rope with people launching themselves into the middle of the cenote from a platform.
Before our trip last year, we had spent most of our time in Mexico exploring its colonial heart — Mexico City, Puebla, Guadalajara — believing the Yucatan peninsula was full of all-inclusive hotels and tourists interested only in beach vacations. Valladolid revealed a different Mexico, with unique food, culture, and natural beauty, a Mexico that beckons us to return again and again.
