Valladolid

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Publicly embraced travel guides classify Valladolid as that off-the-beaten-path, less-visited destination where only the more adventurous tourists go to. With its high density of travel agencies and gringo-filled tourist buses (and I mean the real ones, those red open double-deckers where headphones are handed out before foaming off the highlights), I beg to disagree. However, that doesn’t discredit Valladolid, there’s a reason international travel organizations adopted this little hamlet in their daytour-offers to cater to the wealthy, North-American masses spending their capital mainly in million-dollar-whitetrash destinations like Cancún.

This place has something the southern side of the peninsula consciously lost at the beginning of their tourism extravaganza: authencity.

I looked at those big, shiny tourist buses driving into Valladolid’s direction, standing on the side of the highway. The people in these buses looked at me. I was hitchhiking, holding up a carton on which I had sloppily scribbled my destination. Hitchhiking in Mexico is not as easy as in neighbouring places like Belize, Costa Rica or Panama, but somehow I ended up getting a ride at last in most occasions. Also this time euphoria hit me when after 45 minutes a car slowed down in the gutter. A sturdy chick with her gay BFF cleared some space for my backpack and raced off with me on the backseat. Therefore it didn’t take long before a cop-block stopped us and asked her how fast she thought she was going (in that typical power-imbalanced sarcastic voice only road police communicate in). However, this is Mexico and corruption is widely celebrated, like everywhere else in Latin America, or I mean: the world. So after some sneaky chit-chat she only lost 200 pesos to his pocket instead of 2000 to the state’s reserves. Easy as that.

While sipping at a western-approved coffee the 20-year-old tourism-student Rossana waved at me to welcome me in the town where she was born, raised and still living. Was I ready to walk about 15 blocks with my overloaded backpack to the house where she lived in with three family generations? Not only did Rosanna, her mother, grandmother, adult brother and sister host our stay… also cat Lola, dog Cooper, a nameless dog in the garden and an also still nameless hyperactive puppy did their best to entertain me. As it was late Rosanna took me back into town to score some affordable restaurant meal, before giving away her bed for me to sleep in (Yucatan-people rather sleep in a hammock anyway).

I woke up by the barking and moaning of the pup and tried to fabricate some breakfast without working electricity. Apparently every fifth of the month electricity is turned off for reasons I don’t understand. I watched Rosanna and her mum eating something unfamiliar: volcancitos, beans wrapped in corn flour and inevitably deep-fried, served with chilli. Yes, this is breakfast. I’ve always been a local streetfood enthusiast, until veganism condemned every single piece of it.

So I asked Rossana and the mum a question she probably never heard of before: Can you teach me how to make Mexican food without meat?

She had to process this information… meat, the motor of the Latin American kitchen… but yes, she thought she could manage. They wrote down a shopping list and we scheduled the private cooking class for that evening.

As the weather wasn’t that great for local standards, I postponed my plan to visit one of the dozen surrounding cenotes, and went out for a cultural city exploration instead. That didn’t take me long, as there’s only one museum consisting of one exhibition room… but it’s free so why complain? The City Museum boringly guides you through the town’s history by the means of endless Spanish displays. Not quite the day activity.

I headed to the small market to buy the essential ingredients for my cooking adventure and headed back home. Mexicans eat only a few pieces of vegetables, but those they eat in every single meal: tomato, lettuce and avocado, the standard topping of every dish together with some cream and cheese. Another essential ingredient since the Mayas is corn, believed to represent the gods. About 95% of the worldwide corn consumption takes place in Central America (a number I completely pulled out of my ass).

Tortillas, tacos, cochinitas, flautas, empanadas, tostadas, nachos, fajitas, panuchos, gorditas, salbutes, tamales, quesedillas, enchilladas, burritos, chalupas, huaraches, elotes, esquites.... corn corn corn corn COOOOOORN!

So after we cut the veggies Rosanna’s mum showed me what? Right, the corn dough. Swiftly moving her fingers she demonstrated how to produce tortillas for the salbutes in five seconds, and how to fold the beans in or cheese to either produce volcancitos or empanadas (basically the same thing). Without the same skilfulness I slowly followed and watched Rosanna deep-frying everything like little sponges.

Yeah… you for sure won’t see original Mexican food represented in any popular diet books (this cuisine wipes out everything Atkins stands for). But sinning can be so delicious at times.

It all got served with a traditional cup of horchata, some rice drink I got acquainted with in El Salvador and fell in love with, although the mum said it would be more ‘authentic’ with a glass of Coca Cola… Quick info update: Coca Cola has been a legend in brain-numbing propaganda-marketing worldwide, but their campaigns never hit as hard in any place as in Mexico. Coca Cola has risen to the level equalling a god’s nectar. Babies are occasionally given milk bottles with Coca Cola instead, sugar is considered a healthy energy source. How we Europeans snob about which wine has to accompany certain dishes for the ultimate taste sensations, the Mexicans advice their table guests to sip on a glass of coke to benefit the digestion of the greases (a statement that can easily be wiped out scientifically). Brainwashing done well.

I woke up early (late for people with jobs) in order to join Rossana in a school excursion to one of the more unknown cenotes: Dzitnup. In the back of a pick-up truck we drove down to this natural wonder, tucked away deep in the forest.

After an adventurous hike along the oasis-like holes in the ground and a green lake full of flora we were guided to an underground cave. What my eyes witnessed was something absolutely extraordinary: Without expecting it from the outside some gigantic, stone wonderland stretched out in front of me. Large stalactites and dripstones built up in millions of years… and the bluest crystal clear water you can imagine. I felt like watching the Latin Aladdin exploring the treasure cave after cracking open the spelunk with a magic spell.

Cenotes are something so intriguing you might want to formulate it as your goal to plan your trip around all of them, but let me help you out of that dream: In the peninsula you will find a couple of hundred… so unless you are planning to stay for at least two years you might adjust your aims slightly. The same goes for Maya ruins. I saw a map of the peninsula putting icons on all the archaeological sites and the shape of the map couldn’t be seen anymore… they are all over. The solution is to accept that you can’t see everything and make choices. That day I decided to let go of the crazy famous ruins of Chichen Itza en Uxmal and go for the underdog Ek’Balam instead. I’m not convinced if I made the right decision or not.

Maybe it’s just that I’m really “ruined out” after checking off Maya sites in Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and also already in Mexico… Maybe after seeing Tikal and Palenque nothing can be topped anymore (yes I saw Machu Picchu too, shut up, I’m talking Mayas not Incas)…But I felt a bit ripped off after paying almost 200 pesos (more than $10 and they charge extra for cameras) to see this small site, without museum. The Mayas did well, again, but not better than they did in the 500 other places scattered around in this area. Yeah… Ek’Balam, don’t let me stop you, but I’m not going to push your visit either.

Let’s talk some more culture: Carnaval. Back home this is indisputably my favourite time of the year. Dressing up like a retard, quality time with friends, no lack of drinks, parades… what’s not to like? That’s what they think in the Caribbean too, although there are some essential differences between Valladolid and Bergen op Zoom (The Netherlands): People don’t dress up, unless they are in a parade... Dressing up means wearing a glitter bikini or some bling-bling-dress instead of a fur jacket with some curtains, obviously related to weather... Talking about weather: It’s hothothot, no snowstorms like in Holland... Also, people dance on salsa and cumbia music instead of Dutch folklore (I would be very surprised if they did).

Another essential difference I noticed is that it’s pretty lame in Mexico.*

Parades have no wagons, the parade-people don’t even dance, they just walk passed. Instead of dressing up themselves, carnaval participants just dress up their pet animals against their will, exposing them on stages with music louder than those fragile ears can handle. I recall last year’s carnaval in Barranquilla with the bombastic spectacles full of feathers, shiny glitter-nude and salsa-shaking and I was instantly homesick for one of my many homes: my beloved Colombia.

Let’s just focus on the things Valladolid is excellent in: Cenotes… Give me more cenotes! This time I didn’t go to one of those hidden, obscure ones, because you don’t have to: There’s even a cenote boom-bats right in the city centre. It’s really odd but pretty incredible at the same time. What looks like a polluted, shabby city park on the outside is in fact an immense inner-city oasis.

An amphitheatric cave embracing an ice-cold sinkhole, allowing the townsmen to rinse off the city fumes and cool down the brain. Not me though. While checking out the water I ran into an old persisting youth trauma: band-aids. As a child my primary school provided swimming classes, completely useless for me as I got both my A & B certifications before the age of 5. Nevertheless, I was obligated to participate, being forced to jump into a swimming pool standard full of floating band-aids and gauze. I would see them approaching me while swimming underwater with my eyes open, I would feel them stroking my leg, I would step in them with my bare feet on the poolside… Up until today they return in my nightmares, me falling face down in 5-meter-garbage-bins full of humid stinky band-aids.

I can’t see them, I can’t be around them, if I touch them I rather cut off my flesh than washing my hands…

Conclusion: I wasn’t going to swim in the cenote that had a used band-aid decorating the waterline. I rather admired it from a distance, valuing the layers of earth and natural splendour like a wedding cake: a layer of trees and grass, a layer of rock, a layer of water. All in the middle of the city, I was impressed.

I was impressed in general. Valladolid did more to me than Cancun, Tulum or all these touristy hotspots together.

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