Day 31: Coba to Tulum

January 12, 2024

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The hotel owner asked yesterday what time we would like to leave in the morning, so he would unlock the gate. I said at first light, meaning when one could read a newspaper, or in our case more like a menu. Based on Valladolid, that would be 6:50 a.m. But since there is a time zone change, I made that 7:50. No, no, said the man, it will be 6:00. I looked at him funny, but figured well, he lives here.

So today around 6:00 a.m. we showed up, in the dark, at the gate. We had to turn on our lights and flashers, but we were not perturbed, because we happened to know the little grocery opened at 6, and we would go there for some breakfast supplies.

We got those great miniature bananas, and some donuts, taking them to eat at a nearby bench. By this time we still needed our lights, but dawn (and dusk) come very quickly in the tropics. Rather than leave town right away, we decided to use some time and cycle down to the lake, to see if any birds were yet awake.

We got there to find that indeed there was some activity. We first noticed a Great Blue Heron. He was standing so still, for so long, that we almost decided he was a cardboard cutout. Eventually he caught a fish, proving that he was for real. But when I went to take his picture, it would only come out fuzzy. Same for the other birds that were about. I was puzzled, until a voice from my photographic past whispered in my ear. "What settings is your newfangled automatic camera choosing for this situation?" Aha, I had a look, and it was shooting at 1/60. That was clearly too slow for my handheld shooting. Unbelievably, I had never set a shutter speed on this camera, but I learned fast, and got some decent if not great photos.

Tropical Mockingbird - they are everywhere!

We came around the lake and spotted another kind of endemic wildlife - the Early Morning Birdwatcher. It seems these can always be spotted at the lake at this time. We have sadly never gone to talk to any to see what they are up to. So far they have seemed like something to observe, rather than interact with. In retrospect, it would have been useful to see what camera the fellow on the left has on his shoulder!

My own camera was still not quite playing nicely, but we did snap this ... out on the lake.

We set off along Highway 109, which is a straight shot into Tulum. It's a high speed road that does have a shoulder, but it's busy and the noise is very wearing. The trip is broken up by three small towns along the way. These are more strip development than towns, with the largest being Macario Gomez. There was lots along the road that we found interesting, such as extensive displays of macrame for sale, furniture, pottery, and many local style food stands and restaurants. We didn't photograph all the stuff this time, since we did that when we passed this way on the way west. There was one "new" thing that caught our eye - a four decker palapa design that looked good for creating ventilation.

There was something else, in the line of birds, which was a small flock of Ocelated Turkeys, that were truly wild and that disappeared quickly into the bush. See the dramatic colours, especially on the Tom.

As we drew ever nearer to Tulum, the traffic, especially of gravel and other large trucks, increased. The one in the photo is in fact giving some clearance. Others may run straight down the line.

We passed the area where we have decided trucks like this "come from". Sort of a breeding ground. We have no scientific information on how they actually breed, but the photo is very suggestive.

A feel for what the road was like. As usual, the kid on the push bike, riding the gravel, was faster than us.

Dodie had found a new place for us in Tulum, Casa Almendro (843 pesos) and we arrived there hot and tired, and way early, because of our misguided too early start. Fortunately, the owner welcomed us in, saying the room was ready so we might as well go into it. This gave us the chance to offload some of our valuable stuff, like computers, to prepare to leave our bikes outside our next objective - the Tulum ruins.

Nice as Casa Almendro was, our happiness index skyrocketed as we discovered a really super fruit store across the street. They had piles of bulk fruit like this:

But also great prepared fruit like this.

Since our room had a fridge, we snapped up three packages (just 25 pesos each!) not to mention a litre of fresh squeezed orange juice. We later found and bought from them fresh squeezed toronja (grapefruit), not to mention even more orange juice. When the store man told me it was toronja, I was proud to know exactly what he was talking about. No prissy "pomelo" or other Spanish from Spain, amigo!

We joined into the main street of Tulum perhaps 3/4 of the way along, and set off east, on the Playa road, out of town and toward the Tulum ruins.

Main street Tulum, but not all the way downtown.

Tulum does have some nice bike paths, along main street and down toward the ruins.

Some of the properties look very attractive.

The area of the ruins are a chaotic mix of people waving flags to direct traffic to parking, and swarms of tourists, well, swarming among souvenir shops, people dressed as original Maya, or guys that will let you hold a spider monkey (for a fee, of course).

Although there were lots of people in official uniforms, ranging from tour guides to armed soldiers, what was dramatically lacking was any or much signage about which way to go. We joined an obvious looking long line, that wound its way to a ticket office. We were looking for a place to stash the bikes, but someone in the line told us that bikes were "allowed in", so we hung on to them. The ticket office supplied us with wrist bands, for 60.37 pesos each. A big sign declared "exact change only" so unless you had coins of 37 centavos, which do not exist!, you were into a credit card use. Some sort of government silliness.

With our wrist bands, we thought we were set, so we followed the crowd, not any signage, loosely toward the "entrance". To do this, we pedaled along a roadway, dodging various tourists, for a bit of a fair distance.

We passed through some construction along the way.

Those white chunks with which they are building the wall? We dodged truckloads of it on the road from Coba.

We then came to a sharp left where the way led up some rocky steps and to a gap in a stone wall. This was apparently the "entrance". I lifted the bikes up along the stony way and steps toward the gap in the wall, but a man at a desk there told us sternly in Spanish "No", and where were our tickets? "Say what?", we exclaimed in Spanish. "Your tickets! Look like this!", the man brandished a laser printed slip of paper. We retreated, and someone directed us "back there", to another line, before a non-descript white ticket office box.

We can now tell you what the drill is, not that anyone told us, not even our two guide books to the region. One sort of government outfit maintains an exclusion zone, tightly surrounding the "archeological" zone. If you get into the first zone, you can follow a road to Tulum beach. That's the wrist band. But to enter the actual site, you need to pay another outfit, 30% more than the first one collected, and get that laser printed ticket.

The critical little white ticket office #2, unless you hire a guide, who will also sell you the ticket.

Exact change only again, but at least no centavos involved.

One plus for standing in line at booth #2 was that Dodie spotted a woodpecker just nearby. It was a beauty, and not far away.

With our bikes permitted in the "beach zone" but banned from the ruins, we found a place to stash them in the bushes. We did this after an officious official tried to push us around as to where they could go. We fixed him with a "No Spanish". It's too much effort to yell at us if we deny knowing what is being said.

Tulum is a unique ruins site in that it stands by the sea, in an unimaginably gorgeous setting. It was part of a seagoing Mayan trading network, but one can't help but think that like today, people were enjoying Riviera luxury. There are no really tall pyramids here, but the buildings are compelling, for their setting, for carvings, and for the way they used to be painted. Tulum, unlike other sites, was only built in the 13th to 15th century and was still in operation when the Spaniards came. It played a role in the 19th century Caste Wars, as a place of sanctuary for some Mayans.

Tulum is dedicated to the "Great Descending God". Ah Muzen Cab is the Mayan god of bees and honey. He is possibly the same figure as "the Descending God" or "the Diving God" and is consistently depicted upside-down.

The "Castle", one of the most important and imposing buildings.

The Painted Building, has the most remaining carving, and some remaining red hand prints.

The most iconic Tulum shot. The temple of the Wind God (Kulculkan) overlooks the sea.

We assumed this was a male with some lady friends.

This building was placed over a cenote critical for drinking water.

The Mayans had literally dozens of gods, each devoted to some aspect of life or nature. There was for example a god of wine and a god of bees, a goddess of the moon and night, and so forth. It sounds a lot like Greek mythology. These gods are usually represented by colourful drawings, which may come from the Chilam Balam holy books or other written sources, or perhaps from carvings on temples, not sure.

Carving on one of the buildings (apparently).

Red pigment hands - one with seven fingers.

Many carvings are still visible, but hard for the untrained to make out.

Walking around the Tulum site was great, particularly with all the views to the beach and the Caribbean. But the heat was really tiring, and it was time to go before we had crawled over everything. To really get into it one would in fact have to hire one of the guides.

I was glad to get back on the bike, because with it you move so easily, and I was really beat. Back at our "favourite" corner, the one with Super Aki, we had to really fight to cross. A nice quiet night's sleep is going to be essential, to tackle the noisy and busy road back to Playa.

Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 1,375 km (854 miles)

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