A few days exploring the Yucatán Península
After leaving Chiapas, we did another long bus journey to Valladolid in the centre of the Yucatán Peninsula. We only spent a few days here, mostly because we (well, mostly me!) couldn’t wait to go to the coast, and into the Caribbean Sea. Swimming in cenotes The main draw for us to this part of Mexico was the cenotes - a natural sinkhole or cave filled with cool groundwater, where the roof has collapsed or partially collapsed. There are around 6000 cenotes in the Yucatan, and we visited a few whilst we were here. The Mayans believed that the cenotes were a gateway to the underworld, and used them to make offerings and sacrifices to the gods. At the bottom of cenotes, divers have found jewellery, pots, sculptures and human skeletons. Human sacrifice (mostly children), was thought to appease the gods and bring about more favourable conditions for everyone (food, crops, rain etc). The Mayans would use psychedelic mushrooms to reduce the suffering of the sacrificed person. We bo...