Day 29: Coba to Tulum

January 28, 2023

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Last night, seeing my disappointment on learning that the Lol-Ha restaurant would close at 5, Freddie agreed to stay open for us until 6. At 6 when I came up to the restaurant I found not Freddie but maybe his aunt and cousin staffing the kitchen. They said they would bring our chicken quesadillas and garlic chicken (with fries) down to our room. I paid the bill, which again seemed to be 50% high. Dodie theorized that once again I had ordered three meals, the third being the not included with garlic chicken, fries. At the same time, I somewhat bullied the ladies to get up and make breakfast at 7, which in this time zone is dawn.

At 7 we found ourselves locked in, which figures because I had forgotten to ask not to lock us in! But the ladies heard me rattling my chain, woke up, unlocked, and went to make breakfast. Dodie tried to get them to forget breakfast (and go back to sleep), but no, they had promised.

In describing what I would like for breakfast, I was keen on huevos fritos, and "over easy" at that. But auntie said they could only come scrambled (revueltos). Dodie agreed to this on my behalf, leaving me to muse about Mexican inflexibility. I was just saying "well anyway, try getting an egg any way but boiled, in Germany, and try getting any egg at all in France" when auntie arrived with my fried eggs, perfectly over easy, and making my day!

I think that is auntie and cousin watching us go. Now they can rest a bit.

There is this bike path for a bit on leaving Coba.

Some kind of swallow? Forked tail, creamy yellow tummy.

We had a comment about the typical church in Tipical. Here is where you get the typical food.

About half way to Tulum are the towns of Francisco Uh May and Macario Gomez. These are real hotbeds of craft sales. You can see macrame, basket work, carpentry, and pottery, all very well done.

The furniture is made from tropical hardwood, of course.

Here we also have honey sales. Honey is a big thing here, featuring the meliponas bees. We ate the honey we bought two weeks ago in Coba. It had a great taste, something like what we associate with buckwheat honey.

We don't see people actually making these things. Do they really come from here?

We are reminded that we are in the tropics - duh!

Here someone is building a wall by their front gate. We were intrigued by the nice jigsaw puzzle work. We could also see that the whole thing is on a concrete base, and that the wall is doubled, to be filled with concrete in between.

The raw materials. It would take experience to turn this into a nice wall. We have seen walls here running for kms.

All along the road from Coba we still had to watch out for the encroaching jungle. But at one point Dodie stopped, just for a brief break. I later watched how she does a stop. The right foot comes down first and contacts the ground, and then often takes one step before the bike is totally stationary. That is the opening the jungle was looking for. A jungle vine snared the foot as Dodie was taking that step, and tripped her. That sent Dodie over to the right, with the bike on top. I had the camera out to record this heap of bike and rider, but the rider seemed interested in getting the bike off really quick, so no shot.

In the ten seconds it took to get the bike off, two cars had pulled over and the drivers were ready to offer assistance. So nice. Dodie was only a little bruised.

By the way, in case we haven't mentioned it enough, the roadways here are covering in mainly plastic garbage to an insane extent. Try as we might, we can not get our heads around people doing this to their environment. One cultural thought we might have is that the often unmaintained street facing parts of houses is balanced by beautiful inner courtyards. So it's an ethos of not caring about the public spaces or public facing things. Can we accept that?

The first people who topped when Dodie did her toppling over routine were in a white hatchback. Just a couple of minutes later, we had again come to a stop, because Dodie wanted to discuss what phones we would use here next year and with what SIMs in them. We were standing over our bikes side by side earnestly figuring this out, when a white hatchback pulled over ahead, and three people got out to walk back to us. I thought it could be the first people checking back, but no, it was Tomas, Igna, and Saul, originally from Lithuania but now living in Seattle. The thing is, ten years ago, riding their tandem, they met us near the Everglades. They remembered our Bike Fridays and DaBrims! Soon I will check the blog from back then and see if we mentioned them. They have now put LiGo batteries on their tandem. Such a small world. We may yet be able to hook up with them tonight for a chat.

Remembered us from ten years ago in another country. Wow!

The next spectacle on our way was a gravel truck getting a new coast of paint. We hate these growling, snorting monsters. But this one was docilely getting prettied up. That was worth a photo to us!

This is where our quiet life kind of goes to hell. In Mexico our favourite thing is the little village, with dogs sleeping in the street and flocks of cargo bikes carrying abuelas or firewood or both. Next I guess there is Merida, with its hyperactive but Mexican commercial life. And finally there is the Cancun strip, with its hyperactive tourism based life. The boundary point, coming in from still quiet Coba, is the Gran Cenote, a few kms out of Tulum. It actually has no sign, but the crowd of cars in unmistakable.

And soon, the intersection with dreaded 307, at the Super Aki market. In fact there is a good burrito stand on the road over there.

At the dreaded intersection, a somewhat dated hippie effort to buck us up.

Instead of turning right and heading on in to Tulu town, where our hotel is, we carried on straight, with the idea of having a look at the sea. This is a side of town we have not visited in over a dozen years, when we arrived by "chicken bus" and rented two clunker bikes for the same mission. In the over a decade that has passed, things have changed and a concrete walking/bike path now shows the way.

Note the really long stone wall on the left!

We are soon joined on the path by flocks of tourists on rented oe speed beach bikes. If you take an ordinary tourist and give them just the power of a beach bike, they will often go berserk and speed down the walking/bike path eager to scatter anything in their way.

Now here's a strange one. We carried on down the path for a lot further than I thought the beach would be, but finding the beach front completely sealed off and hidden by hotels. So we took a seat on a bench to eat papaya and banana from our food bag. Soon a car pulled over and out popped two men, from Texas, but one originally from Panama. One said that he is a big Youtube watcher, and likes to follow world travelling cycle tourists. Could they take our picture? Wow, two fan encounters in the same day. We could begin to think we are famous!

The water continued seal off by development, and we had to fight our way with traffic along the formerly deserted road. This is where all those 2,000 to 4,000 nightly peso place are that we will not stay in. And anyone here that wants to go to town will need one of the many white taxis, that were trying to shove us off the narrow road. We frequently took the lane, and to hell with them.

And look, it has sea birds, like this Snowy Egret

Steve surveys the water and wonders "Where do I go from here?" The answer is, straight out from here is Cuba.

We are at the same latitude as the Sahara!

Back along the strip, we could easily see that we were no longer in a little village. Authentic Italian Woodfired Pizza!

Since 2018 - yes - last time we were here there was "nothing".

Did I mention - do not rent ATVs to tourists.

We made our way along back streets, finally arriving at Lo Nuestro Petit Tulum. We were greeted at the gate by Mrs. who we knew to be French. So we spoke to her in French. I think she rather appreciated this, as we had a long chat. For our part, I think our "trying to communicate with somebody in a foreign language" circuits have been strained by Spanish, and they enjoyed being able to actually get somewhere, though in French.

At 1100 pesos, our room here is not cheap, but it is one of the lower prices in Tulum. We are lacking in a thing or two - like enough towels, and hot water, but it's good. And it is downtown. We sent Dodie out and she came back with tortas, fried bananas, and churros, quite handily!

Flash: we did not end up getting together with Tomas and Igna, but here is the photo we made of them in Florida, in 2015!

Today's ride: 57 km (35 miles)
Total: 1,344 km (835 miles)

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