After 2 days of alternating between lounging on the beach, feasting on
buffets, walking the zona and siestas in room once it gets too hot out, we
decided to venture out of Cancun.
Armed with limited Spanish, a map, a GPS, my Philippine driver’s license and
a whole lot of sense of adventure, we took our lives in our hands and hopped on
a teeny car rental and bravely drove onto Highway 307 to Tulum. The rental
process was slow-going but smooth. No reason to hurry, we’re on a holiday after
all. Car rental was cheap at about $30 thereabouts but including insurance it
came to about a $100 USD with some change enough for some chips, a candy bar, sandwiches
and bottled waters for the drive.
The GPS kept resetting to Spanish challenging our severely addled
vocabulary and adds to the confusion that we decided to chuck it a few minutes
into the drive. I guess our sense of direction have drastically improved as we
only got lost once on the way to Tulum ruinas. Because we hesitated on the
turn, we drove right on and discovered the Centro for a little bargain shopping
to add to the clutter at home. The best Mexican food we’ve had on this trip
turned out from a roadside open air kitchen in this area.
The archaeological zone of Tulum is the only major Mayan site built right
on a cliff overlooking the Mexican Riviera. Although small, it is
considered to be the best preserved Mayan site on the coast of the Yucatan and known
to be the most beautiful. Apparently, Tulum was a port in the 12th century and
was abandoned 75 years after the Spanish Conquest of 1521.
Framed with perfectly blue skies and turqouise waters, the ruin’s indeed
magnificent. Worth enduring the intense midday sun for and crossing paths with
gigantic iguanas roaming freely around the area. Watch out for them, one was
even too cheeky to run after kids. The whole thing is so stunningly beautiful even
if we were mercillesly under attack by the fiercely hot Mexican sun with little
shade to escape to and on the cusp of sunstroke. My belly flipped and Kimbee
had goosies! Best to visit early in the morning to avoid the bus loads of
tourists and the heat.
Cooling down from exploring the ruins and the hike back at a taqueria
munching on the best nachos and sipping on fresh coconut juice on a husk, we got to watch a Traditional Mexican
performance called Voladores
de Papantla. It
was all so spontaneous and unexpected!
The show
started with a dance around a metal pole with a background of live flute music
and drum beating. The dancers then deftly climbs the top of the pole and ropes
themselves and then jumps upside down and swings gracefully unwinding the rope around
the pole until they safely touch the ground again.
It was
pretty amazing to watch although my heart was in my throat the whole time and I
was kind of holding my breath. Our necks were sore from looking up but we were
happy to hand in our $5 when after the show one of the performing member went
around passing a sombrero asking for donations.
They’re quite specific about the figure but we felt it was worth it.
We didn’t want to drive back in the dark so we decided to skip the Playa
and knew we had probably missed some of the other must-see in the area but we
were satisfied with what we’ve already seen. We’re also grateful that the
traffic police let us off the hook with nothing but a shake of his head when we
entered the wrong way. In our defense, the road wasn’t clearly sign posted.
We were actually kind of sad to end our drive but happy that we got back to our hotel in Cancun safe and sound.
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