To describe Tulum in 3 words, it’s beautiful, touristy, and hot. All of which we expected, but I think each surpassed our expectations.
We landed at the Cancun airport around 10pm, where we met our shuttle to drive us the 2 hours to Tulum. It was amazing how many giant beach resorts we passed during that drive, they must line the entire coast! We, on the other hand, stayed at a small apartment building. Our room did come with a hammock we could set up inside the room though – true luxury! The most important feature by far was the A/C. When I say I have never sweat more in my life I mean it. Just walking 5 minutes down the street required a full water bottle, the heat and humidity were no joke!
The City Sites
The place we were staying had free bikes for us to use, so on our first day we took advantage and biked to the famous Tulum Ruins that are in the most beautiful setting on the Caribbean Sea. We both agree if we were to live in any ancient city this is the one we would choose! Being our first day, we didn’t realize how intense the heat and sun really were yet. But we realized it quickly after the 15 minute bike ride resulted in us both (admittedly mostly me, John enjoys the heat) being completely drenched in sweat. I was pretty unsure I could handle an hour walk through the ruins, but thankfully the Mayans chose to build their town in an area with the most wonderful sea breeze and it made it bearable. Beyond the ancient temples and beautiful sea views, we had a good time watching all of the iguanas that were roaming around. They seemed to be as common there as squirrels are to us, and some are pretty huge! We learned this city was one of the last Mayan cities to be built between the 13th – 15th centuries, and it was used as a large trading port across all of Latin America.
On our second day we ventured to the beach, since we were now armed with the knowledge that being near the sea breeze was key to surviving the heat. Now “going to the beach” isn’t quite as easy as you would expect in Tulum – almost all of the beach is owned by resorts, many with a $100 USD minimum requirement for entry (so you’ll buy drinks, food, etc.). This is what I mean by insanely touristy! Luckily the night before we met up with a couple we met in Oaxaca who had already been in Tulum a few days, and they gave us a tip about a beach that only charged $15 for entry and included a beach chair, umbrella, and access to a cenote. We had a very nice and relaxing day, until we got home and realized we were both incredibly sunburned! We’re not sure how it happened considering we were under the beach umbrella the entire day and reapplied sunscreen constantly, but our guess is our sweat was a little too powerful for the sunscreen. We learned our lesson and hid from the sun the next couple days.
The town of Tulum is set back from the water quite a bit and is full of souvenir stores, restaurants, bars, and clubs. Apparently it’s known for its nightlife going on until 4am – though we can’t speak for anything past about 11pm (sleep always wins). It definitely wasn’t the town for us, but for a party/beach vacationer I can see how it would be the place to be!
Cenotes
The Yucatán peninsula has over 6,000 natural pools called cenotes. They begin as underground cavities carved out by rain and seawater that seeps into the limestone, and they become exposed to the air (and swimmers) when their ceilings collapse. Many cenotes are connected by vast networks of underground tunnels. We took a tour with a local guide named Suriel where we biked to 4 cenotes in Chemuyil. The first was a small cenote full of tiny fish that will come up and eat the dead skin off of you (like those pedicure fish – if you don’t know look it up!) It was about 9am when we got there but still plenty hot out for a nice cool dip in a pool to feel good. Our guide pointed out the giant iguana that was resting on a tree above, and told us that each cenote has a male and female iguana that “own” the cenote. If another male wants to live there, the two males fight and only one will stay. We found the owner iguanas at every cenote we visited, it seems to be true!
We then walked through a short jungle trail to the 2nd cenote which was mostly in a cave. Our guide gave us swimming goggles so we could see under, and it was amazing how deep it went. He told us that the Mayans believed it was the entrance to the underworld. These days people scuba dive through the deep caves, some tunnels even reach the ocean. He also guided us through a couple air pockets that were full of stalagmites, so cool!
We then biked to the 3rd cenote which was completely open air and had diving boards to jump off. Our guide clearly was used to taking tourists that wanted cool videos of them flipping off the boards, so our hesitant unskilled jumps were probably pretty boring to him. But jumping at all was pretty adventurous to me!
We then biked to our final cenote that was located in a large cave full of bats. It was midday at this point but there were still dozens of bats flying around above us. The cenote water was extremely clear and beautiful. John was more adventurous than me and followed our guide through a couple tunnels to other openings. I stayed back and enjoyed not being enclosed in a cave – no regrets from either of us!
Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve
The coolest thing we did in Tulum (and maybe on our trip in general so far) was visit the Sian Ka’an Reserve. It is 5,280 square kilometers and includes part of the Caribbean Sea, coral reefs, Mayan ruins, marshes, and a large part of the jungle. We took a bus there early one morning to ensure we could take a boat ride through the ancient Mayan trading canals (they limit the number of boats that go out each day). A man named Manuel was waiting at the bus stop and the minute he saw us offered to take us to the boat dock – it’s like we look like tourists or something! Typically we’ve been avoiding tour vendors that approach us on the street, but he was the only one around and had a booth so we took him up on the offer. Manuel turned out to be fully fluent in English and clearly loved his job, he gave us such a fun tour! He took us out on a little motor boat through the canals while pointing out all of the wildlife and foliage. About 30 min into the boat ride we came across a dock next to a Mayan ruin and we got out to look around, but were advised against going inside because of the snakes that hang out there – yikes! But then we got to start the best part of the tour – we repurposed our life jackets into floating vessels that we wore on our legs like diapers and got in the water to float the canals without a boat. It was the most peaceful, beautiful, and unique experience we’ve had so far. Manuel, who does this tour twice a day everyday, had goggles with him and swam behind us checking out the water creatures and letting us check them out while we blissfully floated along. We floated for 45 minutes or so until we reached another dock, then we walked back through the marsh to the boat. We felt like we had the entire place to ourselves, and felt lucky to have this private tour where we also got to know Manuel. He told us he’s lived in Tulum his whole life, so we had a very interesting conversation about how it has changed due to the tourism boom in recent years and the pros and cons of what it has done to the community. Our biggest takeaway was to stay with locals in their vacation rentals when possible, rather than in the properties being bought out by international companies that are pricing the locals out of their own communities. Staying with locals are usually the best experiences we’ve had, too!
After our boat ride we took a walk through the jungle to the Muyil ruins, one of the oldest and longest inhabited Mayan ruin sites on the Yucatán peninsula. Even with bug spray John got his first bug bite of the trip on this walk, so of course I got five. The ruins were beautiful and surrounded by the jungle. The bugs drove us out pretty quickly, but it was an amazing setting to walk around.
Transportation
Rather than buses, Tulum has a really impressive collectivo system. They have dozens of shuttle vans that just run back and forth along the coast and will you pick you up anywhere you flag them down, you jump in and tell them where you’re going, and they’ll take you there. Kind of like a joint taxi, but much cheaper. In town, there are specific collectivo stops where you line up to get in the next one, but anytime they see someone along the coastal highway they’ll pull over and let you in right on the side of the road. You never have to wait more than 5-10 minutes, and the most we paid was $3 for a decently long ride. Not a bad system!
The Food
One of the primary culinary draws of the Yucatán peninsula is cochinita pibil, a traditional Mayan variety of roasted pork. In our imaginations, this conjured the juicy pork roast with Caribbean spices we’ve tasted at Cuban sandwich shops around Seattle. When we tried it at a popular taqueria in town, it was a bit disappointing. Since we were so close to the water, we also sought out some seafood. We ordered ceviche at a restaurant in town known for their giant portions (a “medium” was nearly too much to eat between the two of us), and some amazing battered fish and shrimp tacos from a street cart near our apartment. Generally, locals don’t seem to be phased by the heat (at least they don’t show it) but the fry cook working behind the sizzling hot burners was drenched in sweat. Must be why they were so good!
This was our last stop in Mexico, what a wonderful month!
Christine