If you’re looking for a great day out whilst staying in Merida, then I highly recommend the Mayapan ruins plus a cenote as a fabulous option. What could make for a more fabulous day than a bit of history and a refreshing wild-swim?

There may be affiliate links in this post. If you click through and make a purchase, I may make a small sum at no cost to you. This helps me to keep my blog going. 

Visiting The Archaeological Site Of Mayapán

Mayapan is one of my favourite archaeological sites in the whole of Mexico. Not only is it close to Merida, which makes it a perfect easy day trip, but it’s also far less visited than many of the other sites in the Yucatan, which means you’ll have it more or less to yourself: no pesky instagrammers getting in the way of you actually enjoying the site. If you have kids along for the ride then Mayapan is also perfect as you can climb the structures and there are plenty of great places to hide and play.

History Of Mayapán

Mayapan’s heyday was between 1220s-1440s, just before the arrival of the Spanish, when it was the political and cultural capital of the Maya people. It was abandoned at some point in the 15th century, probably following a violent struggle. The main structure is the Pyramid of Kukulcan, which is similar to the pyramid at Chichen Itza, just smaller (and less well reconstructed).

To read more about the other Maya ruins in Yucatan, click on this link.

Directions For Visting To Mayapán

First of all, if you’re driving, ensure you put ‘mayapan ruins’ into google maps, not ‘mayapan’ as the village of Mayapan is a good forty minutes further away from Merida. You really don’t want to get that wrong!

Mayapan is just off the 184 (direction Chetumal) shortly after you see signs to Telchaquillo.

Bus: You can grab a bus from the corner of 50 and 67 in centro or a combi bus from 65 x48y50. On the way back you will need to walk from the ruins to the main road and just flag down the bus as it drives past.

Cost: $45pesos per adult.

Facilities on site: Bathrooms. There’s a small stall on the 184 where it meets the track to the ruins where you can buy soft drinks. Otherwise you’ll need to head into Telchaquillo to buy drinks and snacks.

Do ensure you take enough water as it can be extremely hot on this site and there truly is nothing around if the stall isn’t open! We generally take a picnic when we head to a site like this one as there are few options around unless you head back up the road to Merida.

Add A Cenote To Your Mayapan Trip

Once you’ve explored Mayapan you may well want to add a cenote to your day trip, however, in order to do this, you will need a car at your disposal. If you don’t have a car then my list of recommended cenote tours from Mérida will come in very handy.

Telchaquillo has a small and shallow cenote could be a perfect first cenote for kids. Head into Telchaquillo. Park by the church and head onto the plaza. Someone will come and ask you if you’d like to visit the cenote. If they don’t, either hang around by the entrance (it’s obvious) or head into one of the small stores and ask.

To read more about child friendly cenotes, click here

Pixya, a more remote village some 5km from Telchaquillo is where you’ll need to head to find the cenote of Noh-Mozon. From Telchaquillo, head through the village, turn right after the church and head straight until you enter Pixya. As soon as you reach this village you’ll be stopped by guys (and kids) asking if you want a guide. Honestly, you do.

We kept saying no to the guides. I mean, we speak Spanish and we knew we were heading to a cenote. What more could we need, right? Wrong. You don’t need to pick up your guide right at the top of the village but I really do recommend you agree with someone to take you.

Head through the village to the hacienda and turn right. At some point, you reach a junction and here, you need a guide. If you have got this far without one you’ll probably meet a few amused faces at this point. They know you need them now! We didn’t agree on a price with our guide but just agreed to follow two guys on a motorbike. I gave them $20 pesos each and they seemed happy enough. I suspect if you want them to wait for you while you swim and direct you back again then you’ll need to agree that in advance. The guides also open all the gates along the way, which saves you getting out of the car every few hundred metres.

After about 20 minutes on a dirt path through the jungle, just when you really start to wonder if you’re mad for following total strangers through the jungle, you come to a group of people who will take your entrance fee of $30 pesos each (including children, whether you’re swimming in the cenote or not). You can rent life jackets from these guys too. We always take our own life jacket for our kids as we want to be certain they are of a high enough quality (and that we can guarantee small enough jackets).

If you do plan on visiting with your kids, you need to know that this is probably not a starter cenote for small children given the steps down to the water and the depth of the water itself. My kids were four and six when we first visited here but they’d already swum in numerous cenotes and aren’t afraid of water.

You then drive five minutes further down the road until you reach the ‘carpark’ of cenote Noh-Mozon.

Wow. Just wow. This is a truly special cenote. You enter by means of a very rickety and wet suspension staircase that takes you to a small platform just above the water. A diving team I met there told me it was eight metres deep in the middle of the cenote and the internet tells me it’s around 45 metres deep in some places, hence the interest in diving there. This is a very low impact tourist site, in fact, I’d wager most people have never heard of cenote Noh Mozón.

Take down very little as there is only a narrow ledge for swimmers. We took our underwater camera and goggles, leaving everything else in the car. Entry into the water is either by jumping from the platform, maybe one metre above the water (both my kids choose this entrance), a ladder into the water, or by a diving point halfway up the stairs.

Check out this helpful list of items to take with you to a cenote here. 

There was an unfortunate death in this cenote in late 2018 when an unusual current appeared and dragged a teenager underwater. I would always recommend a lifejacket in this cenote.

Note that this is a very isolated cenote and while I do think it’s safe, I wouldn’t want to be leaving the site after dark given that the route back is on rough tracks through the jungle. Do leave yourself time to get back on to the main road before dark.

Of course, this isn’t the only cenote in the area, click here to read more about cenotes near Merida