Day 32: Tulum to Playa del Carmen

January 13, 2024

Heart

Comment

I got a chance to look around our hotel a bit this morning, mainly looking for someone to give the room key to. It's not as simple as just leaving it in the door, because they seriously want you to lock the front door any time you leave, from the outside.

This is the terrace on top of our hotel.

From the terrace there is a view of the non glitsy aspect of Tulum.

We found ourselves once again on the Tulum main street, heading out of town. It's said there are three Tulums - the main downtown, the resorts by the sea, and the ruins. On the main street, we get a glimpse of the downtown aspect of Tulum. The first thing we note is that while there is no scheduled public transit, there are scads of "colectivos", which are unscheduled shuttle busses running up and down. On the back, they all say "paradas continuas", which means continuous stops. In fact there are bus stop shelters all along the road, where they expect to pick up passengers, but it seems you can flag them down and also get let off anywhere. The mystery (to us) is whether they just run up and down a given street, or whether they have some more complex routes. In terms of schedules, they just seem to come along all the time, like every 5 minutes, on streets that we frequent.

This lady struck me mainly because her cargo bike seemed bigger than she was. Also in a land drowning in litter, here is someone seemingly being paid to pick it up. Also as we have read from the Bartletts in Japan, natural brooms are preferred.

In most countries cycle travelers are no better than third class users of the streets (cars#1 by a long shot, trailed by pedestrians). Road hazards for cyclists seldom get much attention. In Mexico, it's really one hole in the street, speed bump, or missing traffic signal after another. But how about this one? Spikes in the presumed bike lane that maybe used to hold a divider, but now have just been hammered over. Traveling here is stimulating, because you really have to stay alert at all times.

Out along the highway now, here is something that might interest certain readers. Dave, are you out there? On the other hand, do we know any reasons why beer here should be interesting or superior?

A White Winged Dove. Not going to find many, or any, exotic birds along this highway!

We had not been on the highway long before with all the car and truck noise, any kind of escape would seem an attractive proposition. Google Maps had such a thing on offer, by sending our track down by the water and then back to the highway. Google does not care about noise per se, but it will take a chance to take the bicycles off the high speed road. So we decided to go for it, though it was a longer way to go.

As soon as we made the turn, we found we were essentially on bumpy dirt road. We soon also found that though we were certainly near the water, every inch of frontage had been gobbled up by housing or hotel development. We did come to one very lovely thing, which was an open air cenote, by the road, and therefore very near the sea as well. For some reason I didn't spot the "cenote 300 pesos, get your tickets and life vests here" stuff, which was tucked a bit around a corner. So I was able to delude myself into thinking that a beautiful natural green pool was just sitting here. The pool looked deep and cool on the hot day as well. There were also many large fish in the pool. It's hard to tell what type they were.

Some kind of fish:

The road, and the buildings where we had hoped the sea views would be.

The road was not only dirt, but it dispensed with the yellow "topes" and was using rope to impede our bikes. Rope will not throw you as well, but it is rather jolting!

We came to a construction looming in the jungle, that seemed somehow like it belonged in a novel.

This was followed rapidly by a Mexican style route Barree. This was 3 1/2 km down the dirt road.

A jogger came along, and ducked under that wood on the right. Aha, maybe there is a way. After all, Google would not send us down here for nothing, right?

Wrong, beyond the wood was a security guard, and beside any continuing road looked like this.

Google gave us the red line, and claimed the plan was sound. But a close look at the underlying map shows it to be hot air.

We had to backtrack, pondering the fact that our attempt to circumvent the big road was wasting a down and back, putting us again at square one. The one positive was the chance to look again at that cenote.

Back out on the highway, I thought of measuring the decibel level, but in the end lacked the initiative. There were lots of other amusements, like trying estimate the number of taxis in this taxi line. The line was about five times what is visible in the photo. There are numerous adventure parks, like Xel-Ha and Dos Ojos in the vicinity, which perhaps explains all the cabs.

The adventure parks may seem a bit artificial, but they are rooted in the cenotes and the natural landscape here. But something like the beer, and the thing pictured below, glass blowing, seem to have been just parachuted in.

In this case it seems like the parachuted idea blew down.

In past years we have noted closely spaced guard towers and eight foot fence along the eastern side of the highway. The GPS shows the many huge adventure park developments to the east, along the coast, and we like to quip that it is unclear as to whether the guards are to keep the tourists in or the Mexicans out.

This is the next adventure park we will pass.

We did eventually reach the outskirts of Playa, of course, and benefitted from a bike path that obviously was more to carry customers from the town out to the XPLOR theme park. Whatever, we'll take it!

Our hotel, the Maya Turquesa, has some good features - like a large ground floor room we can roll our bikes into, and a very central location. But some of their policies are harsh. For example, if you arrive before the 3 p.m. checkin, then its 100 pesos per hour if you want to go into the room. Say what? They also wanted 3000 pesos to store our suitcases for a month!
Thanks to the Turquesa, since we hit town at 2 o'clock, we had an hour to kill. We went down to the heart of town, near the ferry dock, and were struck again by the beautiful sea and beach, and by all the activity (though we still think business is down over past years).

We came upon what we assume what a sort of traditional activity, in which 'acrobats' descend from a tall pole, spinning as a rope slowly unwinds. At the top, someone is playing a traditional pipe instrument.

A little further on, by the "Portal Maya" sculpture, a drummer provided the rhythm for some traditional seeming dancers. We can never be sure how much research such performers have put into their costume and acts, but we get the feeling that they are authentic and may not need much research to recreate their parents' or ancestors' dances, dress, or performances.

Being finally by the sea gave us a chance to appreciate the shore birds, like these graceful in flight Laughing Gulls.

24060 Ruddy Turnstone (thanks Scott for the correction)

24061 Western Sandpipers (and one Ruddy Turnstone). Thanks to Scott for correcting the identifications.

We still got to the Turquesa early, but they remembered us and we got a warm greeting and a roll straight into our room. We were so hot! We jumped right into the hotel pool, and then without drying off, walked down to the sea. I was the one that waded out into the waves. It was a little tricky to avoid tripping on hidden rocks.

After changing, we walked out again, past the super noisy Senor Frogs, and to a restaurant for chicken fajitas and also another form, with mushroom, cheese, and spinach. In the photo, that guacamole is super fresh and so is the orange juice. Dodie got a drink concocted from ginger and strawberries. In the soft evening air, we read email from our friends the Prices, describing freezing conditions back home. I may have to turn the air conditioner down one click, to get ready!

Today's ride: 72 km (45 miles)
Total: 1,447 km (899 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	4
Comment on this entry	Comment	0