The state of Yucatán is the cultural heart of the peninsula and the half of it that was never built for tourists. There is no coastal strip of hotels here; there is limestone, henequén country, and more Maya spoken than anywhere else in Mexico.
Mérida is the capital and one of the most liveable cities in the country — a grid of colonial houses, Sunday streets closed to cars, and a tradition of free music in the plazas every night of the week.
The ruins are the draw. Chichén Itzá is the famous one and the most crowded; Uxmal in the Puuc hills is the better building, and the Puuc route beyond it runs to sites where you may be alone. Izamal, painted entirely yellow, has a monastery built on a flattened pyramid.
Cenotes are everywhere — thousands of them, from tourist-managed swimming holes to collapsed openings down a track — and the ring of them across the north of the state traces the rim of the Chicxulub crater, where the asteroid landed.
On the coast, Progreso is where Mérida swims, and Río Lagartos and El Cuyo sit on the Ría Lagartos reserve, where the flamingos breed.
Valladolid in the middle makes a far better base for Chichén Itzá than the coast does.
