Yucatán, a limestone shelf full of water

Yucatán is flat, hot and made of limestone, and it has no rivers at all. Rain sinks straight through the rock and travels underground, opening in thousands of cenotes, collapsed sinkholes of cold clear fresh water that were the peninsula's only supply and, for the Maya, doorways to the underworld. A ring of them traces the rim of the crater left by the asteroid that fell at Chicxulub. That geology decided where people settled and what they built. Chichén Itzá stands above its own Sacred Cenote, with the stepped pyramid of Kukulcán throwing a serpent of shadow down its balustrade around the equinoxes and a ball court so acoustically strange that a word spoken at one end carries the length of it. South-west, the Puuc hills hold Uxmal, where the Pyramid of the Magician rises on a rounded base and the Governor's Palace runs a mosaic frieze of stone masks along its whole front, with Kabah, Sayil and Labná strung along the same road. The state's two anchors for travellers are its cities. Mérida, the capital, is a grid of colonial blocks and henequen-era mansions with free concerts in the parks most nights of the week. Valladolid, halfway to the Caribbean, is smaller, pastel and slower, with a cenote in the middle of town. Between them lie Izamal, painted yellow around an enormous Franciscan monastery, the flamingo lagoons of Celestún and Río Lagartos, and the haciendas that made fortunes from sisal rope. The kitchen is its own tradition: cochinita pibil wrapped in banana leaf and slow-roasted in achiote, sopa de lima, papadzules, panuchos, and habanero always served on the side. Yucatec Maya is spoken daily. April and May are the hottest months; rain arrives from June.