Mexico May 2016: Sightseeing

Trips!

The flight to Mexico was 10hrs from East Midlands airport, so although we'd booked an all-inclusive which was big enough and had enough activities to keep us going for more than a week easily, we decided we wanted to get out of the resort and explore a bit too. As it happened our week was almost exactly split in half with 3 and a half days at the hotel and 3 and a half days out and about. Tip 1: don't just go for a week! It was not enough to take full advantage of both the resort and the surrounding area!
We went to Tulum Ruins, Akumal beach, Playa del Carmen, and Cenote Azul, and did it all ourselves using colectivos and handy maps drawn by our hotel concierge. If we had found the time we'd have done a 'proper' excursion to go to Chichen Itza, but it was a bit far to go when we were only there for a week. There was no need to go on an organised excursion to the places we went to- it was easy and cheap and we got a bit more of a local experience finding our way around.

Colectivos

I got to put together my first Spanish phrase when we were trying to leave the hotel complex to get to the main road to catch a colectivo for the first time (it was a biiig hotel!). Donde esta colectivo para Tulum: where is the colectivo to Tulum. Pretty sure it wasn't grammatically correct but it did the trick and we were sent off in the right direction.

Our first colectivo experience. We didn't get a seat and they really aren't designed for standing!

These little mini bus things were how we got about. They travel up and down the highway between Playa Del Carmen and Tulum (the Sirenis was on the highway pretty much in the middle of this route), you just stand on the edge of the road, which is a reasonably busy dual carriage way which you have to cross to head to Tulum or Akumal, wait for a minibus to flash its lights at you, flag it down, and hop on and ask for your destination. They do stop at bus stops, but you don't have to wait at one, however if you spot one you at least can get some shade whilst you wait as it's hot!

We had very hit and miss experiences with this; not getting a seat so just having to kind of crouch between the seats, scary drivers who go 50kph over the speed limit whilst drifting between lanes taking a phone call and watching videos on a tablet attached to the dashboard, but we also had good easy cheap safe journeys too, so I guess it's a bit of a lottery!

Tulum Ruins

Colectivo: about 20mins, less than £1.50 each
Entry: less than £5 each








Our first trip out was to the Mayan ruins at Tulum. We didn't use the little tram up from the main road because it was less than 10minutes walk and entirely in the shade at 8.30am (you might want to get the tram if you went later in the day, but just don't go later in the day- busier and too hot to walk around!). We decided to get a tour guide because although I'm generally all for self-guided visits we didn't know anything about Mayan history which we felt would probably enhance our experience here! Our private guide cost 545 pesos, and we tipped at the end, but it still worked out a pretty cheap- 545 is £20ish and it was an hours tour.

We spent an hour or so looking at the ruins with the tour guide, learning about Mayan Gods, ritual sacrifices, and about the Tulum site itself (it was the only Mayan settlement with a port and was the last site of the Mayan people).

I was grateful that this particular group of Mayans had the foresight to settle on the coast, after the private tour ended we got into the sea to cool off because even in the morning we were pretty much melting- there isn't a lot of shade there! Thankfully the backdrop of the Caribbean sea doesn't just make for pretty pictures, there are steps down to a little beach (or you can walk to a bigger beach further along but we didn't), where you can put your stuff on the rocks and jump in!

 

Found this little guy looking after our stuff when we got back out of the sea!

After we got out of the sea we put dry clothes over wet swimstuff and still dried off pretty quickly having another walk around the ruins this time on our own, and then we headed back to the highway to grab a colectivo, this time to head into Tulum itself.

I neglected to do much research for this trip; having decided that the hotel had more than enough to keep us going should we completely fail with the exploring, I decided that it was the perfect time to try a make-it-up-as-we-go-along type of trip. I'd had a bit of a look at things to do and came up with the list of places we did end up visiting, but beyond that I hadn't investigated further.

I don't like this approach, it might work for some people but not for me! We found a few shops, some dodgy side streets, and a bar where we stopped for giant fizzy drinks before heading back to the colectivo. We also did some accidental haggling- we hadn't taken much cash as weren't planning on souvenir shopping yet, but found a shop selling wrestling masks which we'd said we'd pick up for my brother in law... the shopkeeper saw us looking and we explained we didn't have enough. Long story short we showed him what we had and he gave it us for that- which was less than half the asking price! I'm not sure if there was more to Tulum that we just didn't find, or if that was it (in which case we probably wouldn't have bothered!). Good to get a look at 'real' Mexico, but it was too hot to wander aimlessly so back on the colectivo for an afternoon by the pool :)

Big fizzy drinks in the bar in Tulum

Akumal

Akumal was our second day out, and we spent pretty much the whole day there. It was our first wedding anniversary and I can't imagine a more perfect place to celebrate an anniversary! It was only 5 minutes from our hotel by colectivo, and the beach was a long stretch of white sand, lined with palm trees, and covered in beautiful little butterflies! Before I'd even hit the crystal clear sea I was in love!
 

We went with another early start which seemed wise- it was a longish walk through the hotel grounds to the main road and hard in the heat, so we hopped on the colectivo about 8am. We got off at Akumal but then realised we had no idea how to get to the beach! Just as we were reaching for our map from our concierge the colectivo driver jumped out of the beach and pointed us in the right direction!

I knew that we didn't actually have to join an official snorkel tour, we just needed to hire life jackets, but we decided to get a guide anyway and I'm so glad we did as our guide took us out via turtle hotspots to the reef and then back. We would definitely have found the turtles by ourselves, they were everywhere, but I'm not sure we'd have got to the reef or had the confidence to explore.


We saw 8-10 turtles on the way to and from the reef, and 2 rays. The fish out at the reef were beautiful, so I was completely in my own paradise! The turtles were not at all bothered by our presence which suggests to me that tourists generally follow the rules and respect the turtles- don't try to touch them, hound them, etc. They came quite close to us, I actually thought I was going to end up on one at one point as it swam up from beneath me to surface a short distance away.

We did an hours tour, and then went to Lol-Ha (a bar/restaurant) for a drink, before hiring a life vest and fins each from the dive centre to head back out by ourselves. We had an incredible time and were out for another hour, by now nearly midday, and burnt our backs in the shape of the life jackets... whoops!

View from Lol-Ha, quite a nice spot for an anniversary lunch...

We went back to Lol-Ha for lunch (I expected extortionate prices given the prime spot but not at all), then spent some time walking on the beach and sunbathing whilst our dinner went down, before heading back out for one last snorkel and then back to the hotel. After a busy day we were exhausted but very happy- swimming with sea turtles in their natural environment was a dream come true.

Playa del Carmen

After getting some hefty sunburn on our backs with a white patch the shape of our life vests the next day we decided to do something that involved remaining fully clothed. So we hopped on another colectivo and set off to Playa del Carmen. It was a somewhat scary ride- the driver was speeding and drifting between lanes, and quite often didn't pick a lane just straddled both. We were relieved to be there in one piece! We came into Playa through the outskirts which looked much like Tulum- run-down and a bit rough. The colectivo dropped us near 5th avenue though which is the tourist area and this was clean and looked nice and well cared for. Aaron did get asked if he wanted to buy drugs though from 4 separate people in the street (my favourite line being "time to get high?".. it was 10.30am! Even if we did smoke it really wouldn't be time to get high!), usually after trying to sell us a tour.

Playa has a lovely long white sand beach as far as the eye can see, lots of shops including loads of tourist souvenir shops and also your standard high street stores from H&M to Mac. If you were staying along this stretch of coast and needed to buy anything, this is where you'd go. We did some mooching around the shops and got a few bits, including some really expensive tequila for Aaron and randomly a couple of baubles! The tequila was good though- it was just from another of these big touristy shops but they let you sample the tequilasmso Aaron tried some mezcal (the stuff with the worm in or in this case a scorpian) and some tequila and settled on the tequila. By this time we were absolutely melting so went into a bar and had a cold drink before heading back to the colectivo. We didnt spend long there, and wouldn't bother going again unless we needed something, but nice to know what's there and I can imagine it'd be fun in the evening.

Cenote Azul

The colectivo from Playa to the cenote was if possible more terrifying than the one to playa! We were in the front which meant I could see how fast he was going and he was consistantly averaging 50 to 60kph over the speed limit (which was usually around the 80 to 90 kph figure). He had a tablet propped up on his dashboard so he could watch music videos, and spent some time talking on the phone. He also did the drifting between lanes business and made such a sharp last minute turn off the highway into Puerto Aventuras that I'm surprised he didn't flip us!!! I was so relieved that we came back on to the highway behind the police as he then had to drive legally! Anyway, defying the odds we got there in one piece. I'd asked the driver to drop us at the Barcelo hotel, which is the closest place to stop if we were coming from the hotel because there are no places to stop on that side of the road outside the cenotes. However we were coming from the other direction as we were coming straight from Playa, so we should have asked for the cenotes and saved ourselves a hot dusty walk. Hindsight is great!

There were 4 or 5 cenotes in a row- tripadvisor recommended Cenote Azul, our concierge recommended Cenote Eden, and the couple we spoke to in Tulum said Cristalino was good. We went with the tripadvisor recommendation as it was so highly rated by lots of people. It was lovely, and only 80pesos each to get in (just over £3 at current exchange!). The negative- there wasn't really anywhere to lay down and dry off between snorkels- we just had to walk along the path until we found a little shady dead end where we could leave our bags with a couple of rocks to sit on whilst we suncreamed and had a drink. Oh! And had the chocolate bars we picked up in Playa, I'd picked up a Milky Way which was not packaged like our Milky Way at all so I wanted to see what it was.. turns out in Mexico they call a Mars bar a Milky Way! It was even made by Mars, so it really was just a Mars bar, I wonder why it has been rebranded...

Anyway, whilst refuelling we watched the many fish in the shallow water next to the spot we'd chosen, and had a good look around at the scenery. It is basically a lagoon, surrounded by trees and rocks, and absolutely full of fish. The water was freezing (not what we're used to in Mexico where the pool is like bath water and even the sea is mild) but that was so welcome after our very hot morning. It was also freshwater so a: different fish, and b: no saltwater in our mouths :D. The water was so clear and there was a brilliant variety of fish. The underwater rock formations looked cool but I'm incapable of diving down. There was a high rock to jump off into the water, which Aaron did, giving our go-pro-type-camera a new  challenge, normally I would too but I had the beginnings of a headache so chilled under the rocks instead whilst he jumped.

After spending some time snorkelling and cooling off we decided to try another cenote- one with an underground river. I had tried to book a tour of an underground cenote but didnt get a response before we left and a quick search hadn't found an alternative that was easy to access without hiring a car or going on a big expensive all day excursion. We picked one and after a confusing lost in translation conversation with a girl at the entrance, embarked on a long walk down into the park... only to find when we got there that it was expensive (being an eco park not just a single cenote- probably very reasonable if you planned to stay the day) and it closed in an hour so we wouldn't really have much time to explore. So we gave it a miss, headed back to the colectivo (which thankfully had a sane driver this time) and I flaked out in our room- the heat had really battered me!