valladolid, mexico | underground sinkholes + ancient mayan ruins

I recently had the amazing opportunity to go to Mexico with my family! I'm splitting the trip into three parts. This first part is about when we got to stay in this adorable small town called Valladolid. :)

I also did a vlog of the trip which you can find up above or here. If you aren't already subscribed to my YouTube channel it would mean the world to me if you could and also hit the notification bell to get notified every time I post! 

We arrived at the airport a bit early so of course selfies had to be taken. 

There wasn't an airport where we were staying, so our first stop was in Cancun which is this big tourist town. 

After riding the bus into town and checking into our hotel, we needed food! The first place we stopped gave us rubber duck tacos as a little tourist joke and I was not the most amused as you can tell from the photo. 

The next morning it was time to leave! We took the two hour bus ride to Valladolid and checked into our absolutely adorable hotel we would be staying in for the next 3 and a half days. 

We had half a day left so we decided we should check out our first cenote! 

It was absolutely gorgeous. Cenotes are these amazing water filled sinkholes which I'm pretty sure are only found in the Yucatan which is the part of Mexico we were in. 

This one had a rope swing which you could use to get into the water which was extremely fun. At first I fell immediately but I got the hang of it eventually haha. 

The best thing about Cenote Oxman (aka the one we went to) is that they have a restaurant and pool right by the cenote! You can pay 150 pesos to get in and all of that money goes towards credit for the restaurant! The cenote itself is basically free. You can also pay 80 pesos for just the cenote but I would recommend paying for the food. It was quite! They also have a couple of drinks like Horchata which is what I have here in the picture.

After the Cenote we just walked around and explored the town a bit! They have both a cathedral and a convent which are both gorgeous especially at night. 

Our hotel had this super cool map filling up one of the walls in one of the common spaces which I thought was cute. 

The next day we got to go to Ek Balam which is this amazing ancient Mayan ruin. 

Over researching for the trip and actually on the trip itself, I learned so much about the Mayan culture. It's amazing. They built these amazing structures and had there own language at a time when that wasn't super common. Plus every day they are finding more and more structures in the jungle. 

Ek Balam they didn't even find till the late 1900's and they only finished exhibiting it in 2004. The only reason they stopped is because they ran out of money. There is still more. 

We climbed to the top of the biggest structure! 

The view was crazy amazing.

We decided to go Ek Balam instead of Chitzan Itza because you get to climb everything and it's so much less touristy. We were the second family there (you have to go early immediately when it opens) and there were only like 5 families by the time we left.

After climbing and walking all morning it was time for some lunch. We went to this cute Tamale place and got both Tamales and some juices as you can see in this adorable pic of me and my sister. :)

Did I mention our hotel had a pool and hammock? Yeah it was great. It's called Case Hipil by the way. :)

They had these work out things near all of the playgrounds and so me and my dad decided we had to try it at least once. 

Then it was photo shoot time! 

The town has so many cute colors and buildings so I got a lot of cute pics. If you want to see more I would recommend following my Instagram. :)

As a little snack before dinner, we went to this cute place and got a couple of dips and drinks. They were very good. 

At night we watched this cool show about the time which was projected onto the convent. It was incredibly well done. You'll have to look it up for yourself but I'm pretty sure it started at 9. 

The next morning I had some tea so I had to take some pics haha. My dads phone has portrait mode and I'm kind of very jealous. 

First thing on the agenda for the day was a tour at this amazing house with old Mexican folk art. 

The house was gorgeous. 

The art was so interesting and unique and our tour guide was extremely nice.

After the tour we went to two more cenotes that were right by each other since we had enjoyed the other one so much. 

These ones were more caves and only had one small opening at the top letting in light. I think they were prettier than the other one but the other one had food which was cool so I would say overall they're even. 

After relaxing for a while in the cenotes we headed back into town to see some dancing. 

As we were walking back to our hotel we came across this panateria (bakery in Spanish). We decided to get some bread for the next morning. One of my parents tips for use childrens when we travel is to find bread places like this. Tasty and cheap. :) 

I feel like you can clearly tell how uncomfortable Naomi is in this photo and it's great. I swear she loves me she just isn't very keen on being photographed. 

There was quite a bit of street art which I of course loved. 

Dinnnnerrrrr. I realized most Mexican food is just stuff on bread. My dad loved it but I wasn't sure if that many carbs were good for me lol. 

The next morning we went shopping for a bit (I got souvenirs for my friends) and then it was time to leave. 

Get excited for part two and three of my trip coming sooooonnnn! While you wait feel free to follow my insta where I've already posted some pics from the trip. :) Also if you didn't already make sure to check out the vlog I filmed! 

Other posts from this trip: Mansion blog post: https://hottowncoolgirl.blogspot.com/... Mansion video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcB6s...

Have you ever been to mexico? Are you going anywhere this summer? Where is your fave place you've traveled to?