Friday we caught the 11:50am hour-long bus ride to Tulum. We opted to stay in Tulum Pueblo, the inland town center 3 kms from the ruins. Our other option was the hotel strip right next to the ruins. It took a bit of wandering in and out of doors before we found a nice but decent priced hotel, Hotel Chilam Balam. We had two comfortable beds, air-con, a TV with one English channel, and Internet. Honestly, it was a bit hard to leave that room after so many travel days and two weeks without Internet. We pulled ourselves together around 4pm to eat local tacos and gringas (similar to quesadilla) at a stand with a small sit down room. After checking out some of the souvenir shops that line the streets and buying water, we returned to our hotel and caught up on the new episode of Mad Men, thanks to the Internet and Emily sending us the show.
Saturday morning we grabbed a few over priced pastries from a cafe, met our first real Portlanders, and then walked the 3km to the ruins. The couple from Portland asked about our travels and when we told them we were traveling for a year, the guy blurted out, "how? You get inheritance money?" We laughed, told him we planned for nearly 2 years and saved, but I appreciated his quick filter-less response because I wonder how many people assume someone else is forking our bill. This led to Micah and my discussion about people's perception of travel and how it is possible to travel cheaper than most do, by staying in hostals (we've paid $9-$30 per night everywhere but all inclusive heaven in Cuba) and eating local food instead of big restaurants (we've had 2 meals over $20, most are under $10 and a lot are under $5). We discussed this while we walked to the ruins, as bikes and cabs whizzed by with other tourists, making our point all the clearer!
Tulum ruins were worth the visit, set beautifully on a cliff overlooking the Carribean. The ruins themselves weren't as impressive as Palenque or Chichén Ítza, but the location is amazing. We were able to walk down from the ruins on to the beach where people were swimming, but we decided to leave the ruins and walk further to the public beaches for a quick swim. There was more seaweed floating in the choppy water, but it was refreshing to spend a couple hours there and Micah even worked on his sand castle building skills. We walked to the main road, now near the hotel zone, and caught a taxi. A man working at one of the hotels asked where we were going and we settled on 60 pesos, talking him down from 80. He flagged a taxi down, we assumed filled the driver in on our destination although we told him the hotel name again to be sure and we took off. Five minutes later, he pulled in front of Hotel Shebalam and said "adios!" and stuck out his hand for payment. We said wrong, and showed him our key with the hotel name (Chilam Balam) on it. He seemed annoyed and back tracked all the way past our original spot to our hotel, 10 minutes away. When we arrived a few blocks away and told him we could walk from there, we got a mini lecture about this area being Centro and that we need to specify. We were feeling equally fire-y and informed him that we did tell that to the man who flagged him down and told him where to take us. He didn't seem to understand or care and kept telling us, so Micah handed him the 60 pesos as we slid out of the cab. He demanded 10 more pesos, saying the price was 70, so we again told him the other guy said 60. I believe we learned a few spanish cuss words, so we shut the cab door and walked away.
Tulum ruins
More ruins
Ruins overlooking the sea
While walking around on Friday, we spotted a few local empañada diners so hit one up for lunch after returning from the ruins. We each got a chorizo empañada, I got a carne, and Micah had a pollo with queso and a chicharron. One of my favorite perks of the food here is the drinks you can get; nearly everywhere serves a fresh fruit smoothie with milk or water for $1-2. They're always blended with chunks of the fruit right then and so refreshing in the heat. After lunch, we found some ice cream to wash down the spicy chorizo and checked what time our bus was leaving the next day then returned to our hotel for a little more R&R. Once the sun set we were back out on the street in search of our next meal. We found a burger and rib diner just off the main road and the hamburgers we had were by far the best we've had on this trip; Micah ordered one with an onion ring above and below the charcoal grilled patty. To walk dinner off, we headed towards the city park where we bought some churros for dessert. There was a girls soccer game going on in a field with a small cement wall around it, so we stood behind the fence and watched almost the entire game. They weren't overly skilled but it was fun to stand with the locals and get a bit lost in the moment, cheering for the girls and holding our breath when they almost scored (they never scored). I'm not sure we've mentioned how different littering is here but in all of Central America, people simply discard their trash by throwing it out of the bus window or dropping it on the sidewalk as they're strolling through the park. The soccer field the girls played on had a fair amount of trash in the corner where we stood, including a few plastic bottles that they would stumble on as they ran, but no one ever bothered to pick them up.
Empañadas with pico sauce and sour cream, plus a strawberry smoothie
Sorry we're obsessed with talking about and taking pictures of our food
Sunday morning we left our hotel before 9am, picked up some bread and left on a bus headed towards Bacalar. We decided to stay one night in this town to break up our long travel day to Belize that was in our very near future. It was an easy 3 hour bus ride that dropped us off on the main road. We began walking towards the long, skinny lake of Bacalar around noon with no shade, as it seems we always find ourselves walking with packs on at this time. After a bit of a search, we settled on a hotel with a row of run down rooms that looked like it was once a very long trailer. We switched into swimsuits and headed towards the Laguna, stopping for tortas on the way. The first beach access we entered cost 10 pesos per person, had a large water slide, and was insanely overcrowded with people. We kept walking to the other access point, which was free to enter and had less people. We spent 2-3 hours alternating between sitting on the dock and jumping in the beautiful blue water to cool off. Around 5pm we made our way home before heading back out for dinner. We had a nice change in our diet, split a Caesar salad and a pizza for dinner, of course followed up by churros at a stand. The churro price has steadily increased during our trip, which has us concerned for the future. The churros this night were 30 pesos, although a very large serving. Initially we were paying 15 pesos for churros. This led to a full blown analysis of the churros we've eaten thus far on the trip. Our first churros were in Antigua (Guatemala) but the majority have been consumed in Mexico. The best, however, were the only churros we indulged in in Cuba. We prefer a combination of leche (milk) and chocolate drizzled on the churros. We hope to continue eating churros in Belize, Guatemala and Honduras and hope that the price comes back down.
Laguna Bacalar
Yesterday, Monday, turned out to be a long travel day. We left Bacalar around 8am to walk back to the main road to catch the bus. Had an hour long ride to Chetumal, the Mexican border town where we could catch a bus all the way to Belize City. It took a 30 minute walk, asking for directions multiple times, and one very nice man selling ice cream who spoke perfect English to walk us to where we were to switch buses in Chetumal. We left Mexico (but unfortunately had to pay an exit fee which we didn't think we'd be asked for) and entered our 6th country of the trip, Belize. The bus ride took 5 hours total and was uneventful, minus one event. I was listening to a podcast and oblivious to my surroundings, Micah was sitting in the aisle seat with people standing along the aisle. He tapped my shoulder and when I turned to look, he was pointing at the little girl standing next to him, holding her moms hand. On her other hand was a booger, on the tip of her extended index finer, about 2 inches away from Micah's thigh. Micah was terrified as she waved that adorable little finger around.
We hopped off the bus and began to walk towards the boat taxi, which would take us to stop #32 of our trip, Caye Caulker, a small island just off the coast of Belize. We were able to exchange our pesos for the Belizean dollar just before the 45 minute water taxi ride to the island. We had found a place in our travel book that we were hopping to stay, on the southern side of the island with little foot traffic. After almost giving up, we found Ignacio's beach cabins. There are 10 cabins on stilts, painted bright purple and blue, small decks on each, and 20 steps from the water. Not too shabby for $25/night. We spent the rest of Monday afternoon exploring part of the island, the whole which can be done in an hour. We walked to the western side and caught the sun setting in to a cloud before eating a nice sit down dinner of coconut shrimp and creole chicken.
This morning we are plotting our next few days. We hope to take a boat trip to snorkel around the reef, eat some seafood, take a few dips in the Carribean, and figure out how to safely set up the hammock on our rickety porch. We anticipate staying on this little island for 4-5 days before we head inland for more big cities and touristy places to explore.
Fantastic updates. Love the beaches ..... would like to see a shot of Micah getting his hair cut though :)
ReplyDeleteSounds like you may have to wait a few months for that photo, Chris. I'd settle for one of him shaving :)
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