Tulum - An Italian Paradise

Since the Caribbean beaches felt so nice, we really wanted to spend a few days at the beach and found a nice hotel south of Tulum. So we hopped onto the ADO bus to Tulum.

by Uli Probst

What was the best thing in Tulum?

- The ancient ruins located directly on a dramatic beach
- The Caribbean white sand beaches
- The excellent food from different countries
- Snorkeling underground in freshwater cenotes
- The very best hotel right at the beach

All of the above was excellent, but the best thing was meeting our friends from New Zealand, Debbie and Johnny. Just by coincidence we saw on Facebook that they were close by on a tour thru Guatemala, Belize, Mexico and Cuba. We met for dinner in Tulum and spent a nice evening. It was a nice visit in the middle between New Zealand and Germany. I recommend reading the blog posting from February in New Zealand. That was when we meet Debbie and Johnny for the first time thru Servas.

The beaches in Tulum are wonderful. No high rise hotels, just some small hotels along the beach. And we stayed in the very best one. Not only because the owner was Italian, but also because of the nice people and the location directly on the beach.

For me it was just perfect: An excellent Italian restaurant right on the beach in the Caribbean. Linguinis, risottos, fresh fish, Crab sauces, fresh salads, excellent wines, a perfect temperature with the very best views. What else could you wish for?

I was in heaven, but Michelle was missing Mexican food. Walking along the beach we saw a place with a sign “fucking tacos” with many young people sitting on the beach having drinks and tacos.

For some unknown reason we did not go to that place. Maybe because we would have increased the average age of the guests by 50%. Michelle found a place in the other direction on the beach, where they were supposed to have Mexican food. We went there for dinner and found out; they only serve Mexican during the day. At night they are a Moroccan restaurant. So we ate Moroccan found, which was not very good.

My opinion on this one: I felt like Adam and Eve. Not because the little cloths you need to wear in Yucatan. We left the Italian paradise for no reason.

Adam and Eve back in our Italian paradise

They have pretty Mexican women on the beach. But the palm trees are nothing compared to the palm trees on the Cook Islands. Read the blog posting about the Cook Islands, if you want to see how elegantly I hang on the palm tree next to the ocean.

Since we are good European gringos, we rented bicycles and cycled the 10 kilometers to the Tulum ancient temples. We both love cycling, but in 30 degrees Celsius and with 99% humidity we were both happy, when we arrived at the place.

We parked our nice beach cruisers in the shade and looked at the ancient ruins. They are not as important historically as other places in Mexico and Guatemala, but they are amazing, because they are right on the ocean.

Looking at temples and ruins in the sun is one hot business. So we went down to the beach and jumped into the water. The Mayan priests knew how to live, having a wonderful beach next to their religious places.

Afterwards we felt refreshed and ready to continue our archeological tour. Besides the old stuff we also found nice and friendly iguanas, which are much bigger than the one on the Galapagos Islands. But if you want to see the only place where land iguanas and sea iguanas can have sex, you have to read the posting about the Galapagos.

As you might have noticed, this posting contains a lot of hints to other blog postings. We need to make some advertising for this wonderful and lovely blog. That is why I used the word sex in the sentence above, because as everybody knows. Sex sells.

Besides the tour to the ruins, we took another interesting tour from Tulum. Because we had learned how the heat feels in tropical counties, this time not with a bicycle but with a taxi.

Our first stop was La Playa Tortuga, where you can snorkel off shore and see many big sea turtles. It was quite impressive to swim with these huge pretty animals. We do not have any pictures from this activity, but you all know what a turtle looks like. Just imagine, it is huge and eats sea grass from the ground of the water like a cow.

Sac Actun Cenote

After that we drove to a Cenote called Sac Actun. Yucatan does not have any rivers, but it rains quite a lot during the rainy season. Where does the water go? It runs underground towards the ocean. A Cenote is a hole in the ground, where you can go down to the underground river. Really cool places, which attract snorkelers and divers. You can swim our dive from one Cenote to the next one.

We wanted to make a tour not in a big group as planned by the organizers of the Cenote. So our taxi driver was cool, took off his clothes, took a mask and a snorkel and guided us thru the Cenote. Taxi drivers in Munich are mostly not that flexible.

If Michelle would have known, what we would be doing. I am not sure she would have done it. But she loved it as it was great experience, we never had before.

We snorkeled underneath the earth in the dark and saw all the stalactites and stalagmites above and under the water. There is hardly any soil on the land, just rocks. So the tree roots find their way thru the ground and hang into the underground water.

We snorkeled a long time thru the refreshing sweet water and the taxi driver brought us back to the entrance, where we could get out of the water. This guy knows his ways on the roads and also underneath the ground.

He even brought us safely by this cave man.

After all this excitement, it is definitely time to leave Yucatan and visit Andrea in one of the biggest cities of the World. See you soon in Mexico City.