After over a week in Cancun, I'm finally away from the frenzy of the city. It was quite a chance arriving in Valladoid... a fairly quiet old colonial city 80 miles or so inland from Cancun. It's fairly laid-back and pretty.

I got in around noon and walked around a little bit. I bought a sack of fruit from an old Mayan woman on the sidewalk. It may be the death of me, but it was good. It appeared to be peeled tangerines and some kind of tasteless but filling fruit with an apple-like texture.

"A lot of the old colonial feel"
The central square... or zocalo as they call it around here... is really nice and has a lot of the old colonial feel to it. I sat around watching the Mayan women sell their dresses and stuff... and the guys roll their ice cream coolers around trying to drum up business. The perfect answer to a frenetic week in Cancun.

It ain't easy being a pedestrian in Valladoid. Frequent readers will begin to notice a pattern here. The sidewalks

The San Bernadino Convent

are like 3.5 feet wide and trucks rumble by just inches from your head. One wrong move and the trip ends very quickly and dramatically. Adding to the excitement is the street vendors who take up all but a tiny piece of the sideway about the width of your shoe. Step carefully... especially if there's a Super-Expresso bus barreling down your street.

"That seems hard to believe..."
There's also this amazing old church that dates to the 17th century... or the 1600's for those of us who have difficulty with the whole "there was no zero-th century thing." There are frescoes on the sanctuary walls that the guy said are from the same period as those at Chichen Itza. That seems hard to believe since I thought the whole Mayan thing was over a few hundred years before that... but they're really old nonetheless and pretty striking to see how well preserved they are. They'd been hidden behind a false wall and were only discovered like 25 years ago. The church does't have money to restore them, so they're protected behind curtains.

The tour of the church was very cool, too. There's no official tour at all. I showed up while a bunch of Mexican tourists were there and they said a boy was going to open

Gorgeous Pastels Inside the Convent

the doors and show us around. He spoke very clear Spanish and more-than-adequate English and seemed to know a lot about the history of the church. He never even asked for a tip or donation. But everybody forked over something. Who knows if it went toward restoring those frescoes or a new pair of Nikes.

"Conflicting stories about which I should go to."
So tomorrow morning I have a 7:30 bus to Chichen Itza so I'll be there shortly after they open at eight. The only problem is the confusion about which bus terminal it leaves from. There are two and there are conflicting stories about which I should go to. I suppose I have a 50/50 chance.