Crellston..found the driver's name:

Manny Lug

El lun., 6 de enero de 2020 9:00 a. m., manny lug <[email protected]> escribió:

If you want a recommendation for a rental house, let me know!

I wrote you the name of our driver but it got sent to moderation for some reason.....keep watching..he was great!

Crellston, I found this clip in an e-mail that I sent to my driver, Manny Lug mannylug who uses gmail.
I am pretty sure I must have written it here on these forums but cannot find the entire thread on which I posted it...

<<<<Just want to make note of a lovely driver who we hired, based on recommendations of an expat American couple who know him well. His name is Manny Lug. He drove us to Uxmal, and to three cenotes, and before we left, we invited him to lunch at Pueblo Pibil, our second visit to that wonderful restaurant.

We hired Manny for two very full days and found him to be personable and very informative. He always arrived ahead of time. His English is excellent due to his having lived in the USA for about a decade. He looked after us in all the best ways. His prices are based on distance, so each trip will cost a different amount. We checked the prices he asked with the hosts of our B&B (Casablanca Living. which I highly recommend) and they thought that they were very reasonable and they will, from now on, be recommending Manny to their guests.>>>

[email protected]

There are so many great attractions outside Merida and while collectivos are fine, they are not the best option if time is at a premium. And there are many rural destinations not serviced by taxis or UBER. (we learned this on our first visit to PUEBLO PIBIL, when we had an UBER drop us off and naively asked the host to call us a taxi when we finished our comida!!)

I thought hiring a private driver was a very good value option. I am already hoping to return to Yucatan to focus on cenotes (!!) and will certainly be calling Manny, hoping he has the time to take me around.>>>>>

I will continue to find the names of the centers we visited which were both close to Merida. to reach one of these, we had to take a horse drawn cart to the cent which was fun......

On our way to our first cenote near Merida

Map of the three cenotes of Santa Barbara....we visited two here, and then our driver took us to one in another area

Who could imagine how beautiful these cenotes were, and how few people were swimming during our visits? There was no required tour here, as there was at another we visited. It was so large I was able to swim laps and we did not want to leave!!

Our driver, Manny Lug, of Merida.

Many thanks for this and also the PMs. I will make contact once our final plans are known.

Thanks for that. When saving the location on google maps I couldn't help but notice that in one of the reviews it was noted that this Cenote is an a Costco car park

Thanks for the suggestions kja. Seems that around Valladolid is rich in Cenotes. May be a little too far for a day trip, but , depending upon the timing of the Hanan Pixal parades in Merida, we may be able to steal a couple of nights from there and head to Valadolid

Thanks Eksc. Those Santa Barbara Cenotes sound great and are within striking distance for a day trip from Merida.

I couldn't resist... Enjoy your Chicken Bake!

Love those! Along with Ikea meatballs my guilty pleasure!

Another one I missed.......madly catching up. Can't wait for the Trip Report x

Cant wait to go - 4 weeks today until we fly!

Many thanks for this great trip report!!!

Crellston! I see that I haven't been following along and you are going sooner than we are. I did post a comment on aussiedreamers stream and gave you a shout out, disregard that post! LOL We are looking at a week in Merida and most of the same places you are except we fly to Cancun from LAX, stay a night and then on to Merida by bus. Can't wait for the Trip Report. We just got back from Croatia which was our first Europe trip since Covid. Have a great time.
All the best!

HiTdiddy12 . Yes, not long for us now 10 days and we fly to Madrid, a couple of nights there and then on to Mexico - cant wait! Shame we are not there at the same time, would hand. been great to catch up again. I have been following along on your Croatia trip - sounds like you had a great time. Not somewhere we have been but Carolyn is keen to head Eastern Europe for a couple of weeks . We have friends who just bought a place in Bulgaria and another in Albania and I have a hankering to do a rail trip around Europe so may add in a few other destinations and extend a bit.

Will try and find the time to write up our trip here.

Have you been traveling less since the house? We have been traveling to Mexico every year since Covid, so much simpler for us. Three hours from LAX and we are on the ground. Looking toward going to England next year. May do another Rick Steves tour and then time on our own. Who knows maybe we will catch up there. Have a great time in Mexico, best to Carolyn.

A lot less. Pre pandemic we were travelling for chunks of six months at a time. Nowadays it is a month per year plus change. We have family in Australia so tend to head down there every other year and nother years , like this one it is a month in Mexico. Even though we finally bought the house we still house and pet sit for our American friends in London (it was there place in Pasadena where were staying when you kindly showed us around downtown LA) whilst they are off on their travels or back in the US, usually for 4-5 months of the year plus one or two other pet sits in other parts often country. If you do head this way next year, give us a call it would be great to catchup depending on timing you would be welcome to come stay with us either here in Oxfordshire or in London.

Will see if that can happen. My wife always says, "Don't invite us, because we show up". LOL. We've been doing a lot of traveling in our camper van. Have spent 50 nights in it each of the last two years. When we are in Mexico, we have met a ton of Canadians who have become friends and this year we spent 7 weeks on the road visiting friends North of the Border. All in all, we saw 7 groups of people we know from Mexico. Again, we will talk my friend. Viajes Seguros

Crellston - One last question, did you decide on a rental car company yet?

I did a lot of research into car rental in Merida as I had heard a lot of bad things re rental car companies in Mexico. In the end it came down to a choice of two https://easywayrentacar.com and Avis. A lot of regular visitors to Merida seemed to favour Easyway, a local company based in Merida and Cancun. They had a full insurance , zero CDW excess option. Avis, I have used a lot around the world but in Mexico they are just franchised operators but seemed to get reasonable reviews and booking via the UK site the CDW was only around £100 (past experience of getting ripped off has made me nervous of booking anything where I could be on the hook for large sums for actual or imagined damage) . There seems to be some weird requirements for levels of 3rd party insurance in Mexico. Easy included this Avis charged $19 per day.

The original plan was to do a road trip around the Yucatan but in the end I decided to just use Merida as a base and are using a driver guide to visit Uxmal and the Ruta Puuc on one day trip and another to go to Izamal and visit a few cenotes and haciendas. We are spending a few days in Campeche which is a couple of hours by bus and may hire another guide there to visit Edzna (if we haven't had enough of ruins by then.

The car would have been a nice to have for the flexibility but given the amount of time we would actually be driving , at £100 per day , the guide + driver route proved fairly cost effective. Plus I am awaiting an operation on my shoulder at the moment so it is probably not a great idea to drive while spaced out on painkillers!

I will likely kick off a trip report sometime before we leave on Friday and will post details of our route.