I’d forgotten how much I enjoy traveling on buses. Buying tickets and finding the right bus is always stressful and masks really don’t help when you’re trying to understand what someone is saying in a noisy place. But being on the bus itself is nice, you can just chill out, listen to music and watch the world go past your window. You get to see the non-tourist parts of the country and people just going about their daily lives.
The bus to Tulum was especially nice as it was away from the American influenced Cancun and further into actual Mexico. It was a fun trip down memory lane of all the different parts of our last trip we’d forgotten about, how locals play instruments that look like cheese graters, the performers who juggle fire infront of cars waiting at traffic lights hoping for a tip to be thrown at them, the beautiful murals painted everywhere and how the bus drivers always drive like they’ve stollen the bus.
Tulum itself was very different from the place we left four years ago, much more touristy. We opted to stay in the slightly less touristy town center rather than the beach front. The hostel was fun and lively, on our first night we were treated to a violin concert by two girls who were both traveling with their instruments. It was very different from the guitarist playing wonderwall we’ve come to associate with hostels! They started with some classical pieces and then with some encouragement tackeled some club and regatón (Spanish dance/hip hop) songs with a good level of success!
On our first day we decided to check out a Laguna de Kaan Luum, a beautiful fresh water lagoon with a sandy bottom. There is loads of cool stuff to do in Tulum and this was one of the things we didn’t have the chance to do last time. We got there quite early as we heard it’s popular with locals who arrive around 11am. We headed for a wooden jetty that headed out into the lagoon and ended with a large square space on the end that could fit around 10 people lying down. There were two Americans sitting there already, but before we could attempt to put our things down they informed us we couldn’t sit in the square and they required the whole space for their session. We tried to argue that surely you can’t reserve such a large area in a public area and it should be first come first served. Eventually we gave up in a very British attempt not to make a scene and tutted as we settled a bit further down. They did the same thing to several other groups of locals and tourists for about an hour until their friends turned up. They then set up for a sound healing session…
However, I don’t think they were prepared for how petty me and Grace are. If you’ve not heard of sound healing before, (lucky you! I’ve had to listen to far too many people telling me about how it can cure me of anything from my Crohn’s to my sunburn..) it’s in the same realm as crystal healing and aligning you shackras. Sound healing mainly consists of a person lying down and someone playing various bells or ringing bowls over their body, the cleansing sounds are apparently what do the ‘healing’, although there is no scientific proof for this ‘healing’ as I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear… The relaxing sound is definitely the key point. Although they could exclude people from the area they couldn’t stop us making noise.
We started with over enthusiastic opening and crunchy consumption of a bag of Doritos and then a long and loud conversation about the various flavours of Doritos and what other crisps we liked. A British couple next to us, who had also been forced out of the square, picked up on our attempts and joined in on our obvious attempts to be as noisy as possible. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as patriotic as I did wordlessly coordinating a campaign of passive aggressive noise making. We were shooshed by the sound healing group and asked not to speak. After more tutting, the couple had the frankly brilliant idea of cleaning their flip flops by loudly smacking them together or against the jetty. We joined in with sporadic loud yawns. Now instead of annoying low level noise they had relaxing bowl ringing randomly interuped by loud piercing noises. Eventually we felt they had learned their lesson and left them to it. But they then made the mistake of clearing some locals out of the water where they wanted to float about. And wouldn’t you know it, Mexicans dislike entitled rude people too. They cleared the water but would periodically dive bomb next to the floating group. I’m not sure many ailments got cured that day…
On our second day in Tulum we decided to rent some bikes, I was a bit apprehensive as I never seem to have much luck with bikes. Last time I rode one I dropped my phone and it was immediately run over by a car and the time before that, I came off in Cambridge and had a concussion for a week. But Tulum is only a small beach town so thought that hopefully my luck would be better here (spoiler alert it wasn’t!).
We first cycled to a supermarket and got lots of fruit and water to keep us going for the day and then we headed to the Grand Cenote, one of the most impressive cenotes we saw last time, about 5km away. However, the guy on the entrance was trying to charge us around £25 per person entrance, last time it cost us around £5 and as £25 is roughly our daily budget we decided to decline and to head further along the road to the next cenote about 3.5km further on. Unfortunately, this one was closed so we decided to head back and try one closer to town. We cycled ~8km back and paid the entrance for another cenote we had visited last time in Tulum, it had changed quite a bit. Three years ago it had been a single track through forest into a cleared opening containing the cenote and our group were the only ones there. Now there was a toilet block, restaurant, shop and sunbathing area all centered around a cenote that could only hold a few people at once. But we’d cycled a long way in the sun so any cool body of water was appreciated!
We did our obligatory jump in and got a photo before the next group of people wanted to get in.
It was quite busy at the cenote and more of a photo opportunity than somewhere to chill out so we decided to head to the beach instead. We cycled the rest of the way back to town, grabbed a quick lunch and then headed to the beach (another 8km of cycling, this time in the midday sun!)
The beach was busy but very beautiful with crystal clear waters and beautiful golden sand, we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing there.
On our cycle home from the beach, another 5.5km, we were feeling pretty knackered. We’d cycled around 30km throughout the day and obviously it was all going a bit too well… While cycling the last leg into the town Grace swerved a broken bit of pavement that was sticking up at odd angle and shouted for me to do the same. Unfortunately I couldn’t hear her so looked up to see what she was saying and slammed straight into it and toppled off of the bike. Fortunately I got away with just a scraped knee and a bruised ego. I quickly slapped some hand sanitizer on the wound and cycled off in embarrassment. Luckily we ended up chatting with some Danish medical students at the hostel who assured me my leg wouldn’t have to be amputated just yet!
We spent the rest of the evening with people we had met in the hostel, playing drinking games with an American, a German, a Finnish guy and some other English girls. Discussing life in our respective homes, which mostly meant we felt gutted about how good Finland’s holiday is compared to the rest of Europe. But not as bad as the American guy who was spending two weeks in Mexico which consumed the whole of his annual leave!
Next we’re off to Cozemel for Grace to do some diving. I will let you know how it goes soon!
Lots of love, Alice x