Tulum

We would spend the longest amount of time on our travels in Tulum, 11 days in total and would be there for Christmas and New Years. There is alot of hype about Tulum, friends who had visited Mexico in the past sung its praises and Instagram is a wash with photos of its beautiful beaches and art installations. I had been advised not to visit at Christmas and New Years as it was the busiest season and everything becomes very expensive. But wanting to be somewhere great for the festivities as well as having tickets to New Years Eve music festival in Tulum made it the place we had to be.

Tulum has a reputation for being a cool little hippy town, with adorable little cabaña huts on the beach and fantastic parties. And in some ways that is true, or at least traces of it remain. Its perfectly situated for visiting the many Cenotes and Mayan ruins which are close by. It has a beautiful beach, which stretches for miles, some great, very trendy, restaurants and shops and plenty of instagram opportunities.

 But in many ways its a victim of its own success. The cute little cabaña cost anywhere from €600 to €1200 a night during the Christmas season. So we stayed in the town for our stay, which is more affordable, but still expensive by Mexican standards. The town is 5 km from the beach so to get around we rented a scooter we called our little 'Moto' and it was more of a blessing than we could have initially realised. The beach road stretches for 10.5 km (as does the beautiful beaches) but it is a nightmare for anyone who uses it, particularly for the high season. The businesses on it are high end, pricey affairs but the road is a narrow, pothole ridden track and is no way adequate for the massive volumes of traffic. There is no footpath along it, so you have pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, cars and trucks all competing which makes it very unpleasant. But with little Moto we could weave in and out of traffic. We heard stories of people being stuck on buses for 2 hours trying to get to the beach.

The beach is split into two zones, the archeology side, which has mayan ruins and easy access to the public beaches. The second is zona hotel side, which crammed with restaurants and hotels. The beach access has been blocked off by all the hotels, despite the beach being public, but if your a brazen Irish couple you'll have no problem using the hotel carparks for free and walking through a hotel to get to the beach.

For our first 6 days in Tulum we stayed in a lovely hostel called Mimosa which was run by an Australian man who had opened it a year ago. We were his first honeymoon couple and he was very excited it have us. Flowers and sparkling wine greated us in our room when we checked in. The next day Jonny would be struck down with the same mystery gasto infliction I had in Mérida, which would also last for 24 hours. I spent the day nursing him as best I could, as he had done for me. I only ventured out for breakfast. I got chatting to the two other people at the breakfast table, one was Carrie, an American who told me she was an astrologist. The other was Frank who was German. They had been deep in discussion about the pandemic when I joined them. When I told them I was Irish they said they had just been discussing the potato famine and how the British orcastrated the whole thing so they could take control of Northern Ireland. I corrected them, telling them Britain already ruled all of Ireland at the time so they didn't need to orcastrate anything, but they certainly didn't help the Irish, sending other crops which were grown in the country to the UK and letting the Irish starve. Instead of accepting the correction, Carrie put it to me that maybe I only believed that because it's what the main stream media in Ireland had told me.

It was going to be a long breakfast.

I silently listened to them discuss how the pandemic was a hoax, how the Mayans had predicted it, that next comes the year of enlightenment when people would 'wake up' to the lies. How Bill Gates wanted mass extinction. Frank spoke of how when he returns to Germany he's going to have to fill out a form for the authorities and he doesn't want to give them his information. I wondered why he had come in the first place. He said he'd have to go back at the start of January for work. He was a teacher. He spoke of how he won't get a PCR test because it's all a cover to just harvest our DNA and plant chips in people. When I told them I'd been getting tested every week in work they looked at me in absolute horror.

Not everyone we met in Tulum had such extreme views on the pandemic but without fail with everyone we met, the conversation would always circle back to it. All European tourists we met (and there was alot) said that they'd come to escape the lockdowns. Some said they couldn't handle it anymore, some already had covid and were making use of their antibodies, some were working remotely and had been there for months. And for anyone wanting to hide from the realities of the world, Tulum was the perfect place. Life was completely normal in Tulum, the old version of normal. Although it was apparently in 'orange', like Mexico City was, we saw no signs of it. Most people didn't even wear masks on the streets, and all businesses, pubs, clubs were operating as normal. Rumour has it, it's down to the cartels heavy financial interest in Tourism. 

The freedoms we had in Tulum was something we took full advantage of on Christmas Day. Unlike home, pretty much everything was open. Christmas Eve is a bigger celebration in Mexico, they traditionally don't have Santa Claus, one Mexican telling me 'he is for the North Americans'. The Nativity plays a more important role, some having a whole room in their home dedicated to life size statues of its characters. Baby Jesus isn't added until Christmas Eve when gifts are exchanged with family and piñatas shaped of strange stars are smashed. 

Our Christmas Day involved drinking DIY Mimosas on the beach, a restaurant in the town for dinner and then onto an amazing music bar called Batey which is famed for its Mojitos and Guarapo. There was a fantastic jazz band playing and the place was packed, we were seated at a table with strangers, which is always a great way to get chatting to people. Charles and his wife were sat at our table, traveling from Texas. Charles was in the military and had travelled to more than 70 countries with work so knew plenty about the world. He was very found of a drink, and for that reason really wanted to come to Ireland. His wife was very quiet to begin with, wearing a mask, which she then confessed was an attempt to stop her from throwing up. They had been drinking all day with new friends they'd made that day on the beach and unlike her husband she wasn't much of a drinker. Luckily Charles had us, and he bought us shots of tequila to celebrate our honeymoon. At some point his wife, after a couple of trips to the bathroom to be sick, insisted they go home. 

The bar only accepted cash so Jonny left in search for bank machine. He was gone so long by the time he returned the band had finished, I had got chatting to them (they were French and Mexican), and they thought my new husband had abandoned me. Jonny eventually returned with cash, and three new friends in tow. A guy called Erin, from Israel, who was living in the States and had been turned away from the Israeli border when trying to get home for Christmas to see his mum, so they both came to Mexico instead for Christmas. And two young English girls who were on holiday, both of which had gotten covid at home from their parents who worked in healthcare. They were still stoned from some brownies they'd had on the beach and were ready for bed until Jonny convinced them to come to a nightclub we'd heard about. 

So off we all set, originally planning to go to the locals nightclub called Chizpa, but instead ending up in the more tourist La Taverna across the road. It was a pre pandemic version of busy, with sweaty tourists feverishly dancing to electronic beats. Initially being in a busy nightclub felt strange, after nearly a year of being told to keep your distance from stranger but quickly the thrill of normality took hold. Jonny and I barely saw each other that night, instead drunk with the excitement of talking to strangers. Jonny would only reappear sporadically to introduce me to particularly interesting strangers. Two of my favourites were the Mexican junior doctors, Jonny spoke in Italian with one who was fluent, and I with my terrible Spanish. They were in Tulum for a couple of days to party, and were flying back to Mexico city the next day at 7pm. Yes the Mexican hospitals were in a bad way with Covid, and no they weren't worried about catching covid in the nightclub. They looked almost confused when we asked 'we have to live', one replied. 

They also told us how they, like all doctors, had to pay money to the cartel. 'Everyone has to pay' the told us. 

When we left at 4am, the party was still going strong.

For the next few days we visited many cenotes which surround Tulum. A cenote is a natural pit, or sinkhole, resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater. Cenotes can be open, semi-open or caves. Most impressively, they were formed when the asteroid that killed the dinasours hit the earth. It hit where the Yucatan peninsula is today. They are incredibly beautiful, magical and other worldly. For some you can swim, snorkel or dive between their underground caved passage ways. My favourites were the Choo-ha and Tankach-ha cenotes outside of Coba, where we also spent a way walking and exploring mayan ruins.

Coming up to New Years Eve we saw an influx of new visitors, we had to move accommodation, and our shoe box room beside a motorway felt more like a coffin ship. It was still more expensive than most places we had stayed so far on our trip. Our New Years Eve Festival, Zamna, which was to happen in the Tulum jungle, was cancelled after some American tourists had gotten covid attending another Tulum festival in November. They blamed Tulum for their sickness and it had gotten some media coverage in the States.

There were plenty of secret parties organised in the jungles for NYE, but we had heard stories of police showing up to previous such parties, looking for bribes, and people being stranded in the jungle. However, finding an affordable New Years event in Tulum was a struggle. The Instagram famous Papaya Playa Project was charging 670 US dollars per person for the night, which included a dinner, but no drinks, and there was a minimum consumption charge. We did venture down to the beach front to explore some options, most charging 150-200 dollars each for a meal. We snuck into a few to see if they were worth the money but most were half empty and not much fun. We even tried a small, unassuming sushi restaurant beside the busy traffic ridden beach road. After we were seated we were told there normal, reasonable menu we had been given wasn't being served that night and instead they were doing a platter of sushi for 150 dollars each.

We left and high tailed it back to the busy town where we found a nice, normally priced restaurant beside the main strip. We bar hoped about the town, ending the night with a street party with music from some amazing street drummers. We then went to La Taverna but they were now charging 50 US dollars to gain entry. 

If you are looking for a good meal along the beach front while in Tulum, Arca is worth worth every penny. For a cheaper meal Sabor Del Mar in the city does amazing seafood. 

After our 11 days, we were more than ready to leave Tulum to venture further south to Bacalar.