Quick Stops in Tulum & Playa del Carmen

When Melina was a baby I looked at a trip to Tulum (we ended up going to Puerto Rico instead). At the time Tulum was a sleepy town where you could rent cheap cabanas directly on the pristine beach. Since then the town has exploded as a trendy destination, and when I looked at it for this trip I ruled it out pretty quickly. Cabanas on the beach are now $200+ a night for the most basic accommodations. Based on many reviews, the pristine beaches are plagued by stinky sargassum seaweed to the point that swimming and snorkeling is often not recommended.

However, the ruins in Tulum are directly overlooking the beach, and we decided to make a pit stop there on our way from Bacalar to Cozumel. The road soon became by far more congested than we have seen on the entire trip. Strangely enough, the “jaguar crossing” signs we also saw in the jungle were even more numerous here, wich is either because of the nearby Sian Ka’an bioreserve or to impress tourists. We decided it was the latter based on the number of billboards also lining the sides of the road.

Jaguar sign in the jungle…before we entered the urban jungle

Mural in our restaurant

We first went into town and quickly found an adorable spot for lunch that specializes in juices and had tons of vegetarian options. This perked us all up and we had a great lunch, although the portions were enormous, so we headed to the ruins feeling quite a bit over-full. As we drove the tiny road to the “archeological zone,” we marveled at the swanky hotels, the hipsters with man buns, and the women in barely-there clothing and high heels. Most were walking or riding bikes in the direction we were driving. Touts shouted at our car to sell us their parking spots and acted as if there were no parking ahead. We didn’t believe them and drove on. We were right, of course, there was plenty of parking near the entrance of the archeological zone, and one guy told us we had to pay 150 pesos (about $7USD) to park there, even though it was clearly free parking. We felt like we had to pay since all our luggage was in the car and we didn’t want anything to happen to it, but we balked at buying tickets to the ruins from him. “They are only 150 pesos for each of the four of you! If you go ahead you will have to wait in long, long lines! The tickets say 85 pesos but that is for Mexican citizens, for foreigners it is 150!” We took our chances and walked to the entrance and right up to a kiosk with no line where we paid $85 each for three tickets (Diane was free). Zach and I are used to this kind of thing but the girls were horrified.

The parking and entrance tickets were immediately worth the price when a coati emerged from the woods and Zach and Diane followed it like the paparazzi for an extensive photo shoot.

It was early afternoon and the sun was brutal. We hadn’t had time for our sunscreen to be fully absorbed into our skin, so Melina and I raced between patches of shade and Zach and Diane took pictures of the gorgeous ruins and the sunbathing iguanas.

Idyllic (except for the seaweed)

We liked that the three Mayan archeological sites we saw on this trip were so distinctly different. Chichen Itza with its single giant pyramid in the center of a huge clearing, Calakmul buried deep in the jungle, and Tulum peeking out over the sapphire Caribbean sea.

We were soon back on the road and headed north to Playa del Carmen to catch the ferry to Cozumel. With the flights we originally booked we were going to take our car on the ferry to Cozumel and then spend a night in Cancun before flying out on Monday. Unfortunately, Frontier Airline canceled that nonstop flight and rebooked us on a connecting flight that leaves on Sunday instead. Because of this and the limited number of car ferries, we had to leave our rental car in Playa del Carmen, which was much more difficult than we’d imagined given that the ferry dock does not have a parking lot. But we found a private lot and left them our car and our keys, and jumped on a ferry bound for Cozumel.

As we left Playa del Carmen we eyed the massive amounts of sargassum seaweed I’m the water and on the sand, the crowded streets lined with Starbucks, Burger King, and similar international chains, and the rowdy beaches. I started to worry that Cozumel was a poor decision. But at least our ferry was practically empty and the sea breezes were wonderful! In 45 minutes we were in Cozumel, and very grateful that it was much greener and quieter than the highrise-filled chaos we had just left. And to top it off, the sunset from the beach at our resort was one of the best we’d ever seen.

For our final days in Mexico we are in a resort so dissimilar to the rest of our trip that it is actually disorienting. More on all that later, but to give an idea, here is a quote from Diane as she danced about, THRILLED to be in a resort: “you KNOW it is super fancy, because you can even flush your toilet paper here! That is the true sign of LUXURY!”