Taking teens to the Yucatan

August 12, 2024 1:21 PM

I’m heading to the Yucatan with my daughters (12 & 15) next week. Now that we have our itinerary set, I'm looking (one last time) for advice, tips, recommendations, warnings, and anything else to maximize fun and minimize stress.

We’re going for five nights: fly to Cancun, one night there, then rent a car and drive up to Holbox to snorkel with the whale sharks. Two nights at an AirBnB on the island, then down to Valladolid for 2 more AirBnb nights to explore the city and visit Chichen Itza or Ek Balam, then home.

I’ve traveled a lot in Latin America and speak Spanish pretty well, but this is the first time I’m taking my kids abroad. The gatekeeping on travel subreddits has gotten kind of ridiculous, so I’d love any Mefi-mind advice on things like:

1. Food/activity recs in and around Holbox or Valladolid?
2. Security for parking a car in Chiquila for 2 nights while we take the ferry to Holbox?
3. Best cenotes to visit?
4. Tips for Chichen Itza or Ek Balam, especially since my younger daughter will be in a walking boot after a stress fracture earlier this summer?
6. It will be my younger daughter's 12th birthday the day we're going from Holbox to Valladolid. What's something special we can do en route or when we arrive?
6. Anything else?

posted by gottabefunky to Travel & Transportation (10 answers total)

If your kids are at all, ahem, food motivated, there is a ton of great food in the Yucatan. Get a marquesita (sort of like a crepe) from a cart. Cochinita pibil and pata relleno negro at a beautiful colonial building. It's a little harder to use the guideline of going to busy places, because the schedule is more Spanish. Lunch at 4 isn't unusual. Ziplining through the dense jungle is a ton of fun. The cenote right off the plaza in Valladolid is cool but be very careful to not get any water in your mouth. Bring oral rehydration salts, they aren't as easy to get as you might hope, and traveler's diarrhea is extremely common. Ubers are very cheap, parking is difficult, we didn't rent a car and had a great time. The long-distance buses are frequent, affordable, and convenient. I speak a bit of Spanish, not fluent, and we had one successful car rental experience and two nightmares in Mexico. Even if you're renting from "Hertz", it is not the same at all. Take copious pictures and be prepared to walk away if they're ripping you off. If there is ever a toll road ("cuota") option, take it, the regular roads get pretty hairy in spots and lane markers can be a vague suggestion. You'll also want to keep an eye on your gas tank that the attendant resets the pump so you don't pay twice. Only use bank ATMs during the day. Having traveled for several weeks in various parts of western Europe, Mexico is very different. Low social trust in most areas of society.

It is so god damn hot. Even the locals are suffering. You truly want to be in air conditioning, not just shade, for the hottest part of the day. It took us a while to calibrate our level and timing of activity. Any outdoor activities that don't involve the water are best first thing in the morning. Insects are fierce, bring Picardin (nearly as effective as DEET, and can be applied to clothes) which is also sometimes hard to get.

All the ruins you list are huge, lots of walking. You might see if you can get a pedi-cab driver. Chichen Itza is much, much more interesting before it gets crowded with cruise ship traffic and day trippers from Cancun. My ruin ranking from first to worst would be Uxmal, Coba, Chichen Itza, Tulum.

We had a blast in the Yucatan, I don't mean to dissuade you.
posted by wnissen at 2:01 PM on August 12 [4 favorites]

I'd like to second Uxmal in terms of ruins! Also, if you are renting a car (see above) be very aware of speed bumps. If you are from the US, you will be astounded at how much more serious their speed bumps are.

I also think it's a good idea to both bring DEET/Picardin and try to seek some out when you get there. We had what we thought was high-level DEET and I still got covered head to toe in bites before we bought some local stuff.
posted by queensissy at 2:51 PM on August 12 [2 favorites]

MexiGo Tours in Valladolid is a great day tour company. Friendly, knowledgeable local tour guides, reliable van transport from your lodging, interesting assortment of tours. I liked Ek Balam more than Chichen Itza. You can still climb on some of the Ek Balam ruins and it's a more compact site. At Chichen Itza it's look don't touch and you're trekking around a vast site while trying to beat the cruise ship hordes.
posted by jointhedance at 5:34 PM on August 12

There are plenty of good tacos in Holbox but two favorites are breakfast tacos at the place with the colorful stools at the mercado municipal, and pork or barbacoa tacos from the outdoor stands in the square. As good as any sit down spots, or better!
posted by CheeseLouise at 6:00 PM on August 12

Ek Balam is amazing, and would be my top recommendation (there's a cool cenote you can go swimming in! and food & hammocks & incredible architecture) but to get from the ruins to the cenote they lend you a bicycle, and I am not sure what the other options for getting around are if you are not up to biking. Going up the pyramids there might be too hard in a walking boot- they are not super high but I remember the steps being kind of narrow & treacherous (and the best part, which is a bunch of perfectly preserved figurative carving on one of the pyramids, can't be seen from the ground).
Valladolid is a beautiful town! It is super hot but watching the sunset from little squares & just wandering around there is lovely.
All of the Cenotes have pretty long metal staircases to get down to the water level, and then usually a little storage place where you can leave your shoes right at water level, near a platform where you can get into the water. I think that you could do it in a walking boot if you weren't having too much trouble walking.
posted by velebita at 6:36 PM on August 12

If you’re in Valladolid you’ll almost certainly want to swim in Cenote Palomitas. They open at 8AM (give or take) and you’ll do well to get there early if you’d like a peaceful experience.

Ek Balam is a lot less crowded than Chichen Itza and offers a chance to get very up close and personal with the ruins. Unfortunately the main pyramid is a half a mile away from the parking lot so that may not fit with the walking situation.

Ancient Mayans were nowhere near the Aztecs when it comes to human sacrifice, but they did do it and Chechen Itza was a major location. Among other things the bodies of sixty four boys from ages 3-6 were found in the Sacred Cenote. It’s a stain on a great culture, and between that and the heavily touristed nature of the place I generally give it a miss.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:06 PM on August 12

As a matter of interest there are 1.2 million Mayans living in Yucatán, many of whom speak Mayan as a primary language. If you’re talking to someone who is five feet tall and having trouble communicating you may both be a little rusty in Spanish.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:17 PM on August 12

Restaurant IX CAT IK is superb. Subtle variations of traditional Mayan food plus a small museum of the ingredients and how they are grown and used. Cash only. I'd love it for a birthday dinner.
posted by jointhedance at 6:26 AM on August 13 [1 favorite]

I visited the Yucatan as a teen with my best friend and his parents. Granted, it was 40 years ago! But I can affirm that Uxmal is worth seeing, and that you should definitely avoid the local water.

I eventually got a stomach bug, probably due to ice in a drink. The heat and humidity are oppressive, and you may be tempted to have iced beverages... but don't.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:47 PM on August 13

Oh, that one tip that folks may find handy. There is a particular type of ice that is safe. It's the same rough size and shape as a slice of a push-up popsicle, though clear, obviously. Very distinctive, doesn't look at all like like moons or cubes or anything else. And in the hotel zone in Cancun (which does not include the airport or the downtown) you are safe to drink tap water. Since everything has been built from scratch for tourism purposes starting in the 1960s, there is modern sewage and water supply.
posted by wnissen at 4:09 PM on August 13 [1 favorite]