Tulum, A Day in Life.

The Plan: See the Mayan Ruins at Tulum and Cobá, both right here in Quintana Roo, the youngest state on the Yucatan Peninsula - a quick and easy overnight trip.


The Team: Crick and Deb (your trusty Farmer and Yogi, respectively), Noah and Lynn (next door neighbor friends just beginning their world backpacking adventure). They're pretty danged awesome and you can learn more about them here, on their blog, which you want desperately to read:

Early to Rise:

We hit the ground running at 9am. We're groggy because it's the Hot Tropics and none of us really slept well last night. No matter, we head toward some food at La Vagabunda, two blocks from the bus station. It's typically a favorite breakfast haunt of The Farmer and The Yogi...

It's not the cheapest breakfast around, but it is delicious. You can have your fill of fresh-squeezed OJ, their Belgian Waffles and their vegetarian breakfast burrito are as good as morning gets,  and the staff is usually in an awesome mood, laughing and cracking jokes with us.

Not today. Our usual waiter was somber at best. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure the universe was giving us a hint. We totally miss the message.

Breakfast is quite good, though, and we tackle our Breakfast Burritos like champs!

Next up: The Bus

Two minute jaunt to the bus station, only to discover the next bus is full...we've got about an hour to tool around until we can make our way south.

At this point, I'm feeling a bit embarrassed, as I was the one who talked up our breakfast location (mediocre experience today) and dragged my compadres out of bed earlier than their usual rising hours so we would 'make the 10:30 bus, 'no problem'. Ah well, minor hiccups do not a disaster make. Let's find a shady spot on the beach and chill for the next 60!

Hmmmm....the water's a bit rough today. Too rough for swimming...good thing we're going to Tulum, and supposedly the most amazing swimming beach in the area. Yes!


The Yogi asks me some questions about our destination and I realize, with slowly mounting horror, that I may not have done adequate research before declaring to The Squad that we were ready to hit the road.
Does the hostel we've booked have somewhere for us to securely store our belongings while we explore the Archaeological Zone? Is there storage at the ruins?
How late are the ruins open?
Do we have to leave the beach when they close?
Where is the bus station in relation to the hostel?

My answer: "I've no flippin clue. Crap!"

Well, I've got no internet or phone at the moment, so I guess we'll be flying by the seats of our pants, yeah?

This is, undoubtedly, another of the universe's attempts to get me to prick my ears up. Do I do it? Not a chance.

Bus-boarding time! Deb and I grab the first two seats just behind the driver. Noah and Lynn post up directly across the aisle...sweet. Front seats mean nobody leans their seats all the way back onto our laps! Score! Not really, since a rather uptight fellow climbs aboard and begins waving his ticket in my face- angrily demanding that Deb and I relocate because those seat numbers are on their tickets. I waste a couple of seconds trying to explain that, according to the ticket agent, the buses don't really have assigned seating and he and his sour-faced travel ghoul can sit in any of the buses 50-or-so unoccupied seats, but the ticket waving only increases in intensity. Alright, cranky tourist-man, you win. We'll move- hope your seats are worth that stroke you're about to give yourself!

An hour later, feet on the ground, we walk three short blocks to Mama's Home, the hostel I've selected! Yes! The hostel looked great on the web, this will be AWESOME. No, wait, it's actually a nightmare. The management was scammy and condescending, to say the least. And the ticket-waver from the bus is staying there, too!!! Fantastico! We took a brief look at the rooms and paid our $800 pesos (about $15 USD). Two minutes later, we had a firm grasp on a new lesson: When in a new place, thoroughly search for insects, dead bodies, and other instruments of shade before handing your money to the beast behind the desk- tear that freaking room apart if you have to. We checked three rooms, and all were infested with lice.

Do you know what lice looks like? Before Mama's Home, I didn't, either. (Photo borrowed from http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com because I don't have an "ewwww, gross! lens for my iphone...yet!)

One mattress has a giant bug-and-bogeyman infested hole burnt into it, and another is extraordinarily moldy and soaking wet!!! If you're curious, we refuse to stay. The owner's daughter 'conveniently' has availability at her own hostel, Lobo Inn...which she tells us is walking distance to the ruins. She 'kindly' drives us there for free, quickly sets us up, and tells us it will cost an extra 100 pesos for us to stay in these loud, exhaust-filled, mosquito and spider-infested, middle-of-nowhere cells on the side of the highway. The Yogi puts her foot down at that, and the owner, Cynthia, concedes that we will not be required to pay the additional cost. I still call shenanigans though, because the owner then told us she could rent us bicycles for 80 pesos each (a little over $6) because it was too far to walk to the ruins (she had previously told us it was walkable)...come to find out the walk was quite short and very easy AND the bicycle rentals come free with a room rental. Fuming. She leaves as quickly as she possibly can, and we are stuck there with Rosie, the eye-rolling housekeeper/manager who is annoyed when I ask her to dispose of a ginormous Wall Crab Spider  that has scuttled into the cavernous box masquerading as a bed-frame in Noah and Lynn's room and for clean sheets, as the bed is littered with lizard feces (at this point, I make no mention of the army of small spiders in our room or the sewer-smell, chalking it up to 'this is Mexico').

Noah and Lynn's Roomspider is a face-eating monster...well, not really, but...yeah

Rosie tells me she will , but it's not her responsibility since we have chosen to rent a hostel instead of a hotel. Wtf, Rosie? Hostel or hotel, I should not have to sleep on a layer of lizard droppings just because I'm budget-conscious and enjoy the company of other travelers! Gorsh! Not that there were many at this particular location!

The Farmer  is disgusted by the shade thrown her way by the Host-hell owners.

We decide to make the most of the rest of the day. We dump our backpacks in the rooms (at least this locale appears lice-and-bed-bug-free) and let our feet carry us toward the promise of Mayan history...

We eventually make it to the Archaeological Zone. Four hot, sweaty, and exhausted messes fork over $5 US each and, to be honest, by this time we are mostly focused on dipping our sweaty, stinky selves into the ocean, nature's bathtub (and nature's toilet, I suppose, but we won't concern ourselves with that right now). Bring on the beach!!!

Once we have forked over our $5 US each, we head through the entrance gates and down a shaded path toward the ruins. About a hundred feet down the path, we stop to gawk at a treeful of Yucatan Jays...these guys! Thanks, nature, you thoroughly brightened the mood!

original photo from wikipedia

Finally, the ruins, and just under two hours 'till they close up shop for the day! We will enjoy the living ish out of this place if it kills us. Oh yes, we will! The ruins are pretty neat looking, but lack placards providing the in-depth historical details that push an archaeological tourist experience from 'pretty good' to 'mind-blowingly, awesomely, amazingly wow'. We realize we could have gotten a tour guide for about $30 US, but we already felt taken for a ride by the hostel folks and weren't really in the mood to plunk down additional dollars for 'maybe helpful'. Mood makes such a difference!

Anyway, we take some photos, shoot some video, gawk at iguanas sunbathing on 700-year-old walls, and imagine life here as a pre-Colombian Mayan- always bearing to the right- toward the beach we've heard so much about. The whole time, we can smell the salt air and feel the cool spray of the ocean 50 feet below.

Tulum's Mayan Ruins are so fresh and so clean, clean...

Diablos! No swimmy today!

Cautiously, we climb down the rickety wooden staircase and over the sharp rocks that lead to the beach. Remember my comment about the beach in Playa Del Carmen being rough today? It's so much rougher here! A wave of sadness washes over me as I realize I will not be able to see the ruins from the ocean- the view I've been dying to see since we reached Mexico over a month ago. It's all I really want to do at this point, and the lifeguard will not let us get into the water. He won't even let us walk 100 ft down the beach to a cluster of rocks that will, at least, provide a pleasing and quiet side view of the ruins. I know the water is simply too rough, and the ocean can be unpredictably brutal. The lifeguard makes everyone leave the beach- the park is closing soon. We ascend the not-completely-safe staircase back to the main ruins. I feel somewhat defeated- today was a big pile of suck, you know? And all we have to look forward to is sleeping in a creepy building bearing only a passing resemblance to any hostel I've ever seen or read about and having a junkfood dinner at the Pemex gas station across the highway.


And then it happens. Everything starts to turn around. Sitting on the rocks at the top of the stairs, we chat amongst ourselved and we remember that we are the rulers of our own frickin' destiny. Why should we stay in that smelly, bug-infested nightmare tonight if we don't like it? The highway hostel is so loud from passing traffic that none of us will get any sleep, anyway. We don't want to be in  a crap mood for our much-anticipated trip to the Mayan ruins at Cobá. We're only an hour from home! And we love home. We can do Cobá next week- as a daytrip!  There are countless colectivos (cheap minivans that act as bus service along the highways here) heading in that direction! We paid a grand total of  $800 pesos for both rooms...so each couple is out, what, $30 US? We've already paid it, so we it's out of our pockets whether we stay or not! We decide to cut our losses and head home. And it feels good. Our day starts to feel pretty funny. The roller coaster ride of today's nuttiness feels like a cartoon, and we make jokes about it. Lots of jokes. All in all, it was a good day. We collect our belongings from the roadside hostel and hop the colectivo back to Playa Del Carmen. That day, we learned some lessons and we learned to roll with the punches. We found new love for our home base in Playa del Carmen and we bumped up our self-respect by a couple of notches. We acknowledge that there might have been some signs that we were in for a heck of a day, but we wouldn't trade it for anything...it was the kind of day we'll look back on and laugh about for the rest of our lives! Here's The Yogi's video on our final say about our experience that day:

Update: We did do a day trip to the ruins at Cobá and had a fantastic time riding bikes and climbing in a Mexican Jungle Downpour. It was amazing!


Love and cacao nibs,
  The Farmer

P.S. Check out Noah and Lynn's hilarious video accompaniment here: A Day in Ruins: A Travel Misadventure in Tulum, Mexico