Tulum

A relatively quiet week (in terms of activity) for us this week as we took time to stop and stay in one place for a while. We’ve been to Tulum a few times before so we knew we’d be happy to spend a bit of time here. It’s also a good place to get some work done so we worked and relaxed hard on the many lovely beaches in the area.

Tulum Beach

Posing on the rocks!

Not so quiet was our week in terms of noise, as our ten-day stay just so happened to coincide with a ten-day Mayan music festival to celebrate the harvest. We found out the festival takes place twice a year and in our case, took place on the exact dates of our stay in Tulum!

The Mayans sure know how to party, kicking off around 10pm and finishing up around 4.30am every night. Lucky for us we were well-equipped with earplugs and decent noise-cancelling headphones as the music was so loud!

Unimpressed at the lack of sleep on our first night, Kev took it upon himself to craft a two-page letter to the accommodation management, written in Spanish (using Google Translate) at 4am – I would pay good money to see a copy of this letter now and wonder if it made sense in his sleep-deprived, non-Spanish speaking state!

We have been ‘glamping’ this week – essentially canvas tents with thatched, cabana-style roof and a real king-sized bed inside. All brand new and very comfortable with a pool and free bike hire to get around town.

Kev chilling out in the pool

We made the most of the bikes to cycle down to the beach and back most days – a respectable 15km round trip. The beach is stunning, on the Caribbean coast, but it has been really windy, which has washed in a lot of seaweed. However, it’s also a nice cool breeze to cut through the heat of the day and good fun playing in the waves, despite the odd piece of seaweed hitting you in the face!

Dodging the seaweed at Tulum Beach

We also went to visit some of the other beaches and cenotes just outside of town: Ixcacel beach (also very windy) is where the turtles go to lay their eggs, though being there in the daytime, we didn’t actually see any whilst we were there.

Turtle Beach at Ixcacel

A cenote is a fresh-water pool formed when a limestone cave collapses. There are loads of them in this part of Mexico and are great for swimming and snorkelling. The colour of the water is just gorgeous too.

Ixcacel Cenote

Kev claims he once saw a baby crocodile in one and today, in Casa Cenote, we were talking to a scuba diver who had just seen a six-foot croc during his dive in the same cenote! He said the croc was eating a duck when he saw it, so wasn’t concerned that it might also be interested in him for lunch, but I think he must have had nerves of steel to not freak out!

 

Casa Cenote

We went for a swim but after hearing that story we stayed pretty close to the edge, in case the hungry crocodile comes back out! Sat on the edge, we had our own mini 'fish spa' with little fish nibbling at our toes!

 

Our own mini fish spa!

We made friends with the owner of a local Mayan restaurant during our stay. Having planned to just pop in for a quick drink on our way back from the beach, he kept bringing us tortillas, salsas and Mayan specialties that he wanted us to try, to get a real taste of the region. In the end, we didn’t have room for dinner that night, but we did make sure we gave him a particularly generous tip when only charged us for the drinks.

We went back for dinner again a couple of nights later and loved the local fresh fish, ceviche, refried beans and other specialities he prepared for us. We continue to eat well – especially when tacos for two cost as little as £1.50!

Kev and the Mayan family

The contrast in Tulum is the glut of high-end resorts and Western-style restaurants versus the local Mexican and Mayan establishments – there’s a real divide between the rich tourists and the locals, but it’s still a nice town and done on a budget it is possible to live cheaply – fortunately we’re still on budget!

Today we head an hour along the coast to Playa del Carmen, then hop on the ferry across to Cozumel Island – most famous for scuba diving, and will be our first dives of the trip.

Merida

On to stop two of our Mexican tour!

Merida is the Yucatan state’s capital and is a lively, cultural hub in land on the north coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

The locals are really proud of their Mayan heritage and consider themselves to be Mayan as opposed to Mexican. Many of the shops and market stalls sell traditional handicrafts and colourful embroidered cotton shirts, in the traditional style of their Mayan ancestors and many of the locals still wear these garments today.

The main square with the cathedral in the background

Despite its Mayan heritage, we thought the city itself has a European feel and it reminded us a lot of Seville or Catania. The city centre is arranged around a number of shady squares with restaurants with tables outside. There are even horse and carts – exactly like the ones in Seville – taking tourists on tours of the city centre. 

A shady square by the Santa Ana church

Apparently when the Spanish invaded Merida they knocked down several of the Mayan pyramids they discovered when they arrived and used the materials to build the cathedral and some of the other buildings, hence why it looks and feels a bit Spanish.



Another square, another church...

Merida is quite a small city – well, the city centre anyway. Everywhere is walkable and we only needed a couple of days to see most of the sights.
That said, we walked around eight miles a day according to my fitness tracker – no mean feat in the thirty-four-degree heat and blazing sunshine! It’s good to know that despite not doing any formal exercise, we are at least getting in a few miles of walking every day.

To take a break from the heat we escaped into a couple of art galleries to take in some local culture and to make the most of the air conditioning!

We visited the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Popular Art. The latter was certainly an experience, being a very small gallery, run by a small and very enthusiastic team who spoke no English (and us with our very limited Spanish), but they insisted we saw every inch of the gallery including a twenty-minute video, of which we understood very little! There wasn’t a great deal of content in the museum, but we were really charmed by the warmth of the locals.

In the afternoon, we went for a stroll around the zoo, which formed part of a nearby park. They had an impressive selection of animals (especially considering it was free entry) including white tigers, jaguars, lions, crocodiles and hippos, but I’m not convinced all the animals were living in happy conditions as we saw a couple of them exhibiting some signs of distress, or certainly boredom. Hmm.

There is also a good foodie scene in Merida – many local Mayan specialities and the standard Mexican fare, like slow-cooked marinated pork, chicken 'mole' (a savoury chocolate-based sauce for meat), refried beans and of course, tacos and tortillas.

It must seem to readers of this blog that we do little more than eat and drink on our travels – well, it is certainly part of the experience! Here we had 'chaya' - a green leafy vegetable, very similar to spinach and apparently very good for you - we tried the chaya and lime juice, which was really refreshing.

A traditional Mayan feast!

We also discovered a good craft beer scene and in one bar we went to, of the eight local artisan beers on offer, three were stouts, so Kev was very happy! 

La Negrita - a trendy Merida bar

Next up we will travel to Tulum, on the Southern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula – and one of our favourite places in the world. We are looking forward to spending some time on the beach after our city break.

We’ll put down roots in Tulum for a couple of weeks, so it’ll also be nice to stop and unpack our bags for a while, instead of constantly being on the move. I’ll write again from there.