© Oleh Slobodeniuk / Getty Images or magic towns, the designation given by the government to communities that have maintained their original traditions, history, culture and architecture. Valladolid was Mexico’s first. With a prime location between Mérida and Cancún, art-ists from all over the region turned its streets into an explo-sion of colour. It’s the custom here to visit cantinas where you can drink local beers, mezcals and tequilas with their botanas (appetisers), such as sikil pak, a paste of ground pumpkin with tomato, onion, coriander and salt. “Yucatecan cuisine is Mayan or ancestral, it survived the conquest, it is still alive in every community and here is the place where it all converges,” explains Carlos Aguirre Aguilar, President of the Valladolid Restaurant Association. Valladolid is also home to the archaeological site of Chichén Itzá, just over two and a half hours from Playa del Carmen or Cancún. izamal, the yellow city As radiantly yellow as the sun, Izamal has lemon-colour-ed streets and a huge Franciscan convent which, thanks to its great height, can be seen from all directions. Julio Briseño, a native guide, says that 15,000 people live here “very happily” thanks to the excellent quality of life. Izamal is a colonial city built on the remains of the Mayan civilisation. The Convent of San Antonio de Padua, with its more than 7,000m2, has the second largest atrium after the Vatican. Juan Pablo, a Franciscan friar, explains that when the colonisers arrived “it was not so much a violent encoun-ter as an alliance”. There was a pyramid on the site where it was erected, and the stones that the Mayans had written on are visible. “They also concealed the symbolism of their gods within the walls of the temple, such as frogs, so they could pray to both the new God and to their own hidden gods,” he says. Another important element is the Ceiba cross, the sacred tree of the Mayas, “an example of the meeting of two worlds”. Embroidery and honey The magic town of Maní is a sort of journey into the past. It is easy to meet one of the more than 300 crafts-women who work in the embroidery workshops there, experts in the x’manikté (“evergreen” in Mayan) tech-nique, the oldest in Yucatán, now in danger of extinc-tion. Their legacy is protected as much as the melipo-na bees, tiny, stingless insects whose honey is a rare del-icacy, but holds great medicinal and nutritional value and can be found in almost every corner of Maní. MÉXICO Ruinas de Chichén Itzá. // The ruins of Chichén Itzá.