It was the third time for me in Mexico. Weird if I think about it, but I went to Mexico for the very first time in 1997. It was the very first overseas trip my boyfriend at the time and I made. We rented a car for a week and we had booked a fancy hotel in Cancun for the second week.
Any investigation as to where we were actually going was not done or I wouldn’t have picked Cancun but at the time it seemed like a good idea.
Group tour
This time I went with a friend and I will be sharing more about Mexico in other posts. This is just a first travel post on this site so I thought I do a little introduction of Mexico and the trip we took.
Charlotte and I booked a tour with a group. It had been ages since I last went on a group trip. What it means is that the organisation is in the hands of the tour operator. In our case Sawadee. They have the whole itinerary mapped and all hotels are booked. Once in Yucatan there is a guide who does all the hard work.
There are a lot of pros and cons to booking a group tour. The advantage is that it is easy to travel that way. You do not have to worry about tickets, hotels or where to go to next. It’s all arranged. Another plus is that it is social as well. You travel with a group of like minded people.
The disadvantages are the lack of self control. If you happen to like one place a lot you can’t say you want to stay longer.
You’re a lot less flexible. I have to say that I am not entirely sure I will do another group tour. I guess it largely depends on the destination as well. Some countries will be better with a group. It’s safer too. There is – after all – safety in numbers.
The route
We started our tour in Cancun. That was really only the first place to stay and spend the night after the long flight (we had a stop over in New York, which was really not the best route to fly) and the next day we moved on from there to Merida. We stopped in Valladolid (where I would have loved to stay longer!) and in Merida we visited the flamingos.
Ruins
Of course we also visited a couple of Mayan ruins, such as Chichen Itza, Palenque, Tulum and Uxmal. If I had to choose I would have to say I liked Palenque best. Chichen Itza is obviously the most famous one, but that also makes it the busiest one. And I like the mood at Palenque and Uxmal much more. Palenque has something mysterious due to the location in the middle of the rain forest. We had rain too, which – although wet – did add to the moodiness of the place.
The food!
You gotta love Mexican food. It is one of the reason why we chose Mexico in the first place, because well, without food traveling is half the fun. There is a large food culture in general in Mexico and I had a huge list of dishes I wanted to try while in Yucatan. Obviously I never got around to even half of that list (it was long!) but I will be sharing a couple of recipes that I loved and will try and recreate at home.
Some of our favorites where conchinita pibil, gorditas, marquesitas en so much more. Another absolutely fun thing to do is of course stroll over the markets.
More to follow
Of course there will be more to tell soon with better details and tips on things to try and do if you are planning to go to Yucatan in the near future!
