Have to say right away I knew I was going to like Tulum. The main part of the town follows the highway with an adjacent collector road, lined with bars, restaurants, hotels, etc. It gets fairly noisy around rush hour, but essentially it is a nice setting to sit and relax and people watch. The town itself runs both north and south of the main road, with the beach being 3.5 km to the south. While most people think of Tulum as the site of the historic Mayan ruins, and it is that, the town itself is quite quaint and does not have the same touristy feel that Playa del Carmen has. The vendors are right in front of you, but not as pushy as you see elsewhere.
Arriving by bus from Chetumal late afternoon, it was an easy walk from the station to Hotel Latino, with my room ready and waiting for me paid in full on Paypal. The hotel, which has good ranking on Trip Advisor, is a small two story boutique hotel one street south of the main drag. It is a quiet area, or quiet for a Latin American town anyway, clean and basic with a large bathtub pool. Great deal for $50 a night. I will give it a good review on trip advisor.
As I hadn't eaten yet, the first job was finding a nice Mexican meal. After scouting several blocks on both sides of the street, I settled on El Capitans. Excellent choice, the food was good, and though they didn't have Sol, Model Especial did the trick. The Chicken Burrito was huge and tasty and filled me for the rest of the day. Had no plans for tomorrow, and decided to go with the flow as this was only a three night stop over.
Monday morning I was up early, and awoke with surety that the beach was the order of the day. Took a quick walk to the Mot Mot cafe, which caught my eye yesterday, and ended up with a delicious breakfast of pancakes and syrup. The place was full, and I was taking my time reading a book on scuba deaths and how to prevent them, when I was joined by a couple of Spanish speaking ladies looking for a place to sit. It took them a full 30 seconds to determine that I had no capability in Spanish ( was quite proud of that), so now I am shooting for 45 seconds in the next discussion. Luz is an Argentinian living in Switzerland and Janez a Mexican from a town about an hour away. They met a year ago on an English course in Britain. They laughed when I said that Janez was the A student right? Had a nice conversation with them. That Janez is one smart cookie. Her eyes were bright, intelligent and she picked up on everything no matter how subtle. She reminded me of some of the young engineers from back at the office. Now Luz I had some fun with. Told her I knew alot about her home country as I saw Evita twice, and watched all the coverage on the Falkland Islands. Neither was a topic she was fond of. By coincidence I ran into them back at El Capitans at supper and we ate together again.
The cafe is owned by the Mot Mot Divers next door. After a quick stop there I signed up for a cenote dive the next day (see previous blog), then bought a ticket on the bus for the beach. Walking on to a beach in the Caribbean always invokes a strong emotional response from me, and I was almost in tears. Almost. What a stunning view. I had to sit down and have a couple of Sol just to regain my composure. This section of beach runs for about a kilometer, and if you go to the far north of the beach, you can see the palace of Tulum. So that's what I did.
I located the beach bar and grabbed another Sol, put down my beach towel and stared out at the Caribbean Sea, which is amazingly soothing to the soul. About ten minutes later when I started looking around, it hit me. I had sat down in the topless section of the beach, and they were popping out everywhere. Call it good luck, radar or just being my oblivious self, but there I was trapped not knowing where to look without being a creep, so I stared back at the sea. But alas, I was not to be let off the hook that easy. Inga DD sitting next to me decided to strike up a conversation. Now in golf, when you come up to a water hole, you visualize the green and don't see the water, thereby taking the water out of play. Most excellent strategy for a topless beach, so I put my sunglasses on, closed my eyes and had a ten minute conversation with Inga cool as a cucumber. Very fine day all around.
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