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I woke up even earlier than usual (for this trip at least) and headed down to the beach while it was still dark… There were a few people on the beach and there were backhoes and other equipment hauling garbage and trying to deal with sargassum (a type of seaweed) that is fouling the beaches…
Their system for dealing with the sargassum doesn’t seem to be working… they run a “surf rake” machine behind a backhoe that rakes up the sargassum and seems to squeeze some of the water out of it but then dumps it right back down on the beach… Then later in the day, people come along with pitchforks and pitch the stuff into backhoes… but by then the tide has come up and has picked up the piles and pulled them back into the ocean where the surf churns it all up and turns the water into a sargassum filled soup… it is turns the azure blue waters a disgusting brown and leaves swimmers covered in pieces of seaweed… so few people go in the water… And the beach looks awful and smells like rotting piles of seaweed… Even worse, there’s a crapload of plastic debris (toothbrushes, six pack rings, plastic bottles, the works)… Things change of course and nothing can stay the way it was but this is really sad to see after being here 20 years ago when the beach was basically pristine coral sand and sparkling blue waters…
I wandered around a bit taking some pictures of the sunrise and the morning light and then found a nice table at a restaurant on 5th avenue and watched the place come to life while writing a blog post and going through the previous days’ photos… The coffee was excellent, the wifi was fast and there were all kinds of people doing all kinds of things (the joggers were particularly entertaining along with the various people doing the infamous “walk of shame” after the night’s revelries…) I sent Marie a message letting her know where I was but didn’t hear back so I just kept writing and drinking coffee until I saw emerge from our hotel, take a kind of bleary look around in the bright morning sunlight and then turn towards the beach and disappear… So I paid the bill and headed down to join them at the beach… We snapped a few pictures of Caitlin on the swings in the morning light, walked a bit on the beach and then headed for breakfast (fruit, yogurt and muesli with coffee and juice all around) then headed back to the room to do a bit of research on getting to and from Tulum to see the ruins.
I was still finishing off a blog post so Marie was given responsibility for planning how to get us to and from Tulum… this is a big deal because with Marie’s sense of direction we could end up back in Canada by the end of the day… After reading some forum posts she decided that the best and cheapest way to get to and from Tulum would be to take a collectivo van (the fixed route buses that basically make the transportation system in Mexico – and half the rest of the world – work)… and that we could find them a couple of blocks up Calle 2 Norte… wherever that was… That’s what I mean about Marie and directions. Calle 2 Norte is the street our hotel is on…
We finished getting ready, I published the blog post and we set out to find the collectivos… They were on Calle 2. There was a huge line of people waiting to board them but the line moved very quickly (the idea of having many small vans instead of one huge bus might be something the transit bosses in Victoria when you see how quickly you can board a whole lot of people). We managed to get seats (not always possible) near the front (a necessity with Marie) which was two small miracles in a row… Our driver couldn’t have been under 70 years old, spoke no English we could discern and drove like the very hounds of hell were chasing him… I particularly liked the part where he was looking down at the something on the console of the van while doing 100km in the slow lane as a car decided to pull out in front of him… a car that he did not see at all because danged if he wasn’t focusing on whatever it was on the console… The car saw the full size van barreling down on him with no intention whatsoever of slowing and promptly pulled off to the side of the road… Which was good because I am sure our driver would have mowed him down and kept on driving… Our driver’s Mario Andretti impression became even more awesome when the clouds opened up and the threatened rain showers arrived with a vengeance… I think his theory was that if he drove fast enough he could create a force field around his van that would keep rain away… It did not work… neither did his windshield wipers… I contemplated updating my will…
We stopped a couple of times to pick people up (no seats for them) and to drop people off (in the pouring rain… sucked to be them)… When we arrived at Las Runas, we paid our 120 pesos (40 pesos each as told to us by the Google) and piled out just as the rains stopped… It was another miracle…
We manoeuvred our way through a labyrinth of tacky tourist shops looking for the mythical banós… eventually we found them and paid our 5 pesos to enter and were granted 7 squares of toilet paper… And were damn grateful for them… We didn’t make it to Tulum the last time we were there but a number of our friends did and they all – every damn one of them – told horror stories of the Tulum outhouse… these banós were clean and had flush toilets… so what if they didn’t have toilet seats… Besides Caitlin told us about using a toilet in one of the Ugandan villages she went to for field work where it was a squat toilet with a slit in the floor and there was human waste swirling around her feet… and because there was no door, all the students watched the mzungu doing her business… so 5 pesos… no problem…
After the banó adventure we joined the herd (and I mean literally Walking Dead zombie herd) of people heading in what we assumed was the direction of the ruins… We were correct… after about a kilometre or so we came to a lineup… a very long lineup… because she was in charge of this part of the day, Marie volunteered to make the trek to the front of the line to see what was up… You see, we were visiting on a Sunday… between Christmas and New Years… and Sundays are special at Tulum… because it is free for Mexican residents (both foreign and domestic according to the sign)… so we were visiting on quite possibly the single busiest day of the year… but it turned out the massive lineup was for the people getting in free… the lineup for the people paying full freight was much, much shorter… There were a lot of people in the very long line who did not know this so more points to Marie for finding this out.
The line of people paying full freight (70 pesos a person) moved pretty quickly and we were soon joining another line of both freeloading taxpayers and fee paying tourists who had to scan their ticket in order to get into the park… always pick the one to the outside… we made it through pretty quickly and were soon in the park. It is very cool – typical Mayan ruins but right on the coast… it was very busy… and very hot… we sweated… a lot… but we stuck it out and explored virtually the whole place… it is actually really cool and totally worth the $5CDN cost to enter… and the rains stayed away and the breeze picked up which cooled things nicely…
After doing the ruins, we managed to exit through the entrance… which is no mean feat when you consider that the ruins are part of an ancient fortress and the entrances are about 4 feet wide and 6 feet tall… there was some interesting body contact as we squeezed out the in door… but it worked out well because as we made our way out of the park the same way we came in, we had to give major points to Marie for timing because the line of people waiting to scan their tickets was positively stupefying… and we got to see some furry little creatures that looked like ant eaters or something (turns out they’re coatis) – they looked like Mexican raccoons or something and were ridiculously cute…
After exiting the park, we traversed the road we’d walked in on and made our way back to the collectivo area (we stopped along the way thinking we’d buy some chips or something but were put off by the $9USD price tag for a small bag of Cheetos and decided to just wait till we got back to Playa… We found the collectivos, managed to get seats near the front again and were soon on our way back to Playa… exactly as planned (more points to Marie). As we were driving back we drove into the rains which seemed to making their way up the coast (more points for Marie) but they stopped long enough for us to make our way back to the hotel to drop our bags (again, even more points for Marie) and then to a bar/restaurant on the corner (Pez Vela) to grab lunch…
About midway through lunch, the heavens opened and the rains came… and they came with a vengeance… and they did not stop… we took advantage of a small break to make a dash for our hotel (thankfully only a couple hundred metres away) and then hunkered down for the evening as the rains continued unabated for hours… At one point Marie and I headed out to walk on the beach… we got thoroughly soaked… We stopped at Las Rancheros to see if they had reservations left for their New Years dinner… they did… the server was fantastic… he couldn’t believe the rains and went to great lengths to find us a table for New Years… (they ended up squeezing in an extra table into a corner so we’d have a view of the 5th avenue New Years Eve antics while eating)… we were thoroughly soaked and Marie was shivering so they wrapped her up in a tablecloth… we tried to leave a deposit for our reservations but their computers were down due to the rain so we left some cash instead and bailed back into the dryness of the hotel room… until we had to go out and bring food back for Caitlin who had decided that nothing was going to get her out of the room again that day… so Marie and I braved the torrential rains one more time to get a few slices of quite possible the worst pizza we have ever eaten in our lives and headed back to the room and called it a night… For a while I wondered if we were going to need to build an ark but the rains finally tapered off around 10pm but we were done for the day…
In all a very successful day (Tulum was totally worth the time to get there) and perfectly executed timing wise so cudos to Marie for a well planned excursion that didn’t end up with us going back to Canada a day early… She might even have erased some of her earlier Dick Points! And we have reservations for a nice dinner and a New Years party tomorrow night… and we (well Marie and I at least) can say we experienced the longest sustained torrential rains we’ve encountered on our travels… We’ve been in heavier downpours but they only lasted a few minutes and then the sun came out again… These rains were pretty much steady for 6 hours… Even the locals were impressed and a whole lot of businesses shut down early… For us, though, it was a great day all around… And I’m almost caught up on the blog!!!
Apologies for the off kilter orientation for the video stills/links below… they play correctly when you click on them but I haven’t figure out how to orient the still images correctly in wordpress… and it’s New Years Eve and I might be typing this at a table overlooking 5th Avenue while sipping cervézas while Caitlin and Marie do some final souvenir shopping…
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