Tips 👏
- The ruins and cenotes close at 5PM.
- There’s plenty of beautiful cenotes in the area.
- The distances can be long without petrol stations, make sure to fuel-up.
🏠 Accommodation
We slept literally in an AirBnB Kitch Castle in Oxkutzcab, and that was unique. The place was huge, retro, with a nice view, making it a pretty fun experience.
🚲 Getting there
We drove 1h30 from Merida on good roads, doings stops in cenotes.
⏱ Duration
We stayed there one night and one day and felt that was a good duration.
Cenote Yaal-Utzil 💦
We left Merida around 11PM, and arrived at the cenote an hour after. We parked the car, paid the 50MXN/person entrance fee, and walked down into the open cenote via a tiny stair case. That one was quite unique since the water was crystal blue, and got two underwater caves which can be observed by snorkilling around. There was also two jumps for funzies but no food facilities around.
Uxmal Ruins 🏛
Post bath and food, we reached the Uxmal archeologic site. We safely parked the car at the entrance for 80MXN and got inside for another 430MXN/person. We arrived at 3PM which was perfect since the heat was already down, but later would have been problematic since it was closing at 5PM.
Once inside, we followed the classic path, starting by admiring the main pyramid which sadly was not allowed to climb. We then carried on to the impressive old temples full of bats, the pelota court, to finally climb at the top of the Adivino Pyramid from where we took a break and enjoyed the splendid view.
Overall, it took us 2h to visit without a guide (one would have been better) and we actually enjoyed it way more than Chichen Itza since it was in better state, less crowded and felt more authentic. Clearly a must-do while in the area!
From there, we carried on driving for an hour up to Oxkutzcab, a little quite town on the way to Bacalar, where we slept in a super retro castle, which turned out to be one of the things to visit in the area.
Restaurants 🍲
- Hol Chac de Uxmal: A classic bus-tour restaurant with average cheap mexican food, good option on the way to the ruins.
Read Next ⏭️
Our 2 days stay in Bacalar, check again Merida, or go back to the main Yucatan post.