In December, the office I work at will be closed for 11 days, the day before Christmas through the Sunday before the first Monday of the new year, at least if the schedule is like the previous 13 years since I worked there. This will give me ten nights of travel total. I am trying to figure out how I could plan a trip to the Yucatan area of Mexico. I would like to avoid renting a car if other transportation will do the job good enough. My top sites I would like to see so far are the cities of Campeche and Mérida, and at least the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itzá and Uxmal. I haven’t figure out whether I should stay in Valladolid, and/or Pisté near Chchen itzá. Unfortunately, on google maps, I don’t see a good grocery store in Pisté. If I have extra time I would squeeze in the ruins of Edzná south of Campeche, and/or Ek Balam, north and slightly east of Valladolid. The Mayan ruins of Xcambó, north-east of Mérida, look appealing, but I can sacrifice it if it won’t easily fit into my itinerary. If any of you have traveled to these sites, what was your trip like? What towns did you stay in? Do I need to get in line to enter Chichen Itzá before 8am, the time the site is opened?

We did a similar trip in November 2024 as part of a longer trip through Mexico. After time in Puebla and Oaxaca we flew to Merida for six nights, took a bus to Campeche where we rented a very nice apartment for four nights before heading back to Merida for a final three nights before returning to CDMX of a week before flying home.

As far as transport is concerned we eschewed renting a car on the advice of a Mexican friend here in London. Too many issues with corrupt police and hassles with rental companies. Though I have rented and driven all over the world and am happy doing so, from people we spoke to on the ground and from what we observed, travelling around, I felt this was the right choice.

We ended up taking local buses and a few taxi around Merida , but mostly walking. The central sites are easily walkable. We took buses to and from Campeche and hired a very good driver/guide for a couple of day trips out of Merida to Valladolid/Ek Balam and a few Cenotes and another to do Uxmal and the Ruta Puuc and a couple of Haciendas. Both were very worthwhile day trips and would have been difficult and time consuming by public transport.

In Campeche we rented a very nice apartment which allowed us a respite from eating out as we had a kitchen and could cook or own food shopped for in markets and local stores which is always fun , though the food scene in Campeche was so good, it wa hard to resist the restaurants just outside our door and especially the fish restaurants lining the seafront. The beaches was not especially inspiring and overall we could have dome with less time there. The original plan was to sit Edzna form there but we chose not to , partly because the tours seemed very expensive and partly because we were a little weary of ruins by that time.

Overall my impressions of the Yucatan were less favourable than the other parts of Mexico in which we travelled on previous trips. These were our second visits to Puebla and Oaxcaca and we came away feeling we wished we had revisited places like Zacatecas, Morelia, Guanajuato , Patzcuarao which we loved in preference to the Yucatan.

Just my necessarily subjective opinion of course, others may have entirely different viewpoints.