Merida & Valladolid.
Exploring Chichén Itzá and celebrating Día de Los Muertos in the candy floss towns of Yucatan state.
- Día de Los Muertos.
Day of the dead has become super popular around the world since it was in the James Bond film, Spectre. However it’s been ingrained into Mexican culture for centuries, celebrated as a public holiday to remember the lives of people who have passed away. People set up altars in their homes in remembrance including photos of the deceased and offerings of their favourite things. Although it sounds kind of creepy (not helped by the fact everyone wears skull makeup), it’s ultimately a party where families and friends meet up, visit graves and honour the dead. I love the sentiment.
First things first we headed to the face-paint stall. Somehow I managed to get some kind of artist as (trying not to brag) my face-paint was epic! I honestly didn’t want to take it off at the end of the night. We did learn that face-paint standards vary considerably, as Tom found out later!
Face-paint donned we walked to the cemetery where the parade started. It was buzzing. The streets of Merida were decorated with bunting and altars had been bought out in-front of peoples homes for display. Families gathered around the altars in traditional white dress with embroidered colourful flowers on the neckline. The parade itself was a bit of an anticlimax (more of a group walk) but I’ll never get board of watching the outfits and face-paint!
2. Chichén Itzá.
One of the seven wonders of the world, the whole site is impeccably maintained and fascinating.
It blew my mind how clever the Mayans were and what they built in 1000AD. El Castillo may look like a normal temple but it was built to use as a calendar. Depending on how sunlight hits the temple the Mayans deciphered (amongst many things) the season, when to sow seeds and when to harvest crops. There are four stairways with 91 steps each, add on the top step to access the temple, and it totals 365 (the number of days in a solar year). Very clever stuff.
Slightly more morbid, but still impressive, are the skulls carved into the stone platform. The skulls represented prisoners that died in battle and were to scare off enemies.
The place was busyyyy, we hopped on the first collectivo from Valladolid to try and avoid the crowds – there were a shed load of people compared to the likes of Tikal!
3. Valladolid town.
Mainly a stop-off to get to Chichen Itzá, Valladolid is a very cute little town with candy floss coloured buildings lining the streets and retro beetles driving around, it’s also got lots of Cenotes nearby!
4. Accommodation.
We stayed in a wonderful Airbnb in Merida and cooked a lot for ourselves (it’s been a while!), a bit out of town but totally worth it.
We visited Merida & Valladolid in October 2018.
