My sister, brother and I have always gotten together at Mom’s house, and at Dad’s house. We’ve had amazing times together, and been through the rough stuff together at those same places. With Mom and Dad both gone now, we were wondering how we’d get together, and where… Kyna and Kyle both live in Alaska, and I live… wherever I live. My zip code tracker probably looks like one of these:
Anyway, we talked it over and decided to go on a trip together. We met up in Denver to start, to see family and to serve as a launching pad. This way, no one had a really long day traveling – despite our relative long distances.
We have never done this: all of us on a flight together. It was a tribute to our parents that we want to, and that we can. So, we made faces. Kyle’s face is Studied Sleepiness.
This was the flight plan: Denver to Mexico City, then a van to a hotel near the other Mexico City airport (who knew???) for an early morning departure to Tulum the next day. We didn’t waste that night, though, enjoying two typical Mexico City experiences: Tamales, and traffic.
Then, the next morning, we upended our world. From snowy Alaska and Denver, we headed to bright, sunny, beautiful Tulum.
I can’t tell you what this crew means to me – my siblings are as near and dear as the blood pumping in my veins, or my left and right hands tapping at this keyboard. Our parents made sure we knew the value of keeping each other close. We dedicated this trip to them.
Tulum
Tulum was an unknown: we three have all traveled in Mexico, but none of us had been this far south on the Riviera Maya. That was a plus. So was the combination of ruins, nature, beach, little towns, and food – which we found to varying degrees when we got there. We didn’t know Tulum was so tourist-y, even while we were there!
How can that be? Well, Tulum is a town and it’s a beach resort. We stayed in the town, not really knowing about the beach resort part, which was very different and (for us) much less what we were looking for. Tulum the town was cute and funky, still with tourists but not so concentrated or so obviously exorbitantly priced (as was the beach resort area). Tulum is also a national park, and all three of these things are in close proximity but not, probably, walkable. So our town hotel (a Marriott Aloft) gave us perfect access to the cute, funky town. We walked all over, burning calories to offset our daily taco feasts.
One of the most notable things about Tulum was visible from the plane when we arrived: it’s just massively green. You can see a bit of that in the pic below, behind me and Ramon in the pool. Imagine that green absolutely as far as the eye can see: that’s Tulum.
Tulum has a new airport, BTW. It is super luxe. They’re clearly planning for a lot more visitors, so my advice would be to go soon!
Off-season October
We had a fair bit of rain while we were there, but that was offset by not having a lot of crowds. It was super pleasant, even when the rain fell like the dickens, which it did for brief spells. We also went to a nature reserve and floated down a lazy mangrove river – which apparently is covered with birds and flowers at other times of the year. To do this we partook of a particular method for wearing the life jacket. Instead of putting our arms through the holes, we flipped it and put our legs through them.
Then we buckled up and dropped into the water. To our surprise this diaper-style method had us floating in a comfortable pose, head and neck and shoulders out of the water, and we could just sort of recline and take the current down the mangrove river. It also caused no shortage of laughter: it really did look like an orange diaper. Very unfortunately, our phones were safely tucked in a dry bag and we have no record of our goofy look.
Fortunately, we do have some pics of the rest of the boat ride that got us to the mangroves. It was a gorgeous day, the blue sky freckled with clouds, and the lagoon was peaceful as we jetted across, sometimes ducking through overhanging vegetation.
For the record, we booked this tour with Yucatán Eli’s Tours which we found on TripAdvisor.
Cenote-hopping
The other wet and wild thing we did was visiting various cenotes. These are pools, connected underground, all around the Riviera Maya. Most are freshwater, but some have a mix with some saltwater since they connect more closely to the sea. We went to Casa Tortuga which has four cenotes in one national park. For the record, folks at the airport tried to sell us a deal to visit this place but we demurred, thinking how weird it was that we were being pitched in an airport. The deal is worth it – we eventually got the same deal in town from a restaurant owner (see Siete Fuegos, below).
One of the cenotes we visited was underground, so we popped into the water and then ducked into a cave system. We had to leave when the water began to rise, as a result of all the rain. But it was beautiful, eerie, unexpected.
Our fabulous guide helped get all the swimmers out as the water rose. It can’t have been easy – we were bonking our heads on stalactites as we went from cave to cave, as there was only a smidgen of space between water and that pointy ceiling. But there was no shortage of cool things to look at, like fossils embedded in the cave walls and glowing water where the light entered some kind of inexplicable way.
Where the cenotes were open-air, we jumped off little cliff faces into the crystalline water – 4 meters, 6 meters! – and in one wider cenote we had a cool snorkel mask that looked like a massive CPAP machine, or an alien head:
With this crazy thing, we could swim around at will, combing the cenote floor with our eyes and spotting fish. Spotted fish, in fact. Also unfortunately, we did not have a way to take pictures of the creepy-exciting undersea landscape. Apart from Ramon, we’re all inlanders, mountain folk, so this stuff is thrilling, captivating. The way the bottom just drops out in places, the green covering the stones, the way fish flash with the sunlight that reaches down to them.
Of course, the food
The food in Tulum was fannnntastic. Some of our favorites were the steak tacos at the grill-happy Siete Fuegos (where a super-sweet and helpful owner helped us with stuff to do around town), enchiladas at homey-delicious Mestizo/Suspiro Tulum, and a a feast of flavors at the very family kitchen Charlies, with its incredibly funky decor. I can’t speak to it personally, but my family also loved the Gobernador tacos with a buncha shellfish at W XYZ Restaurant, which is atop the Marriott Aloft (would that be aloft the Aloft?).
National parks and… not
As noted above, this area is Some. Kinda. Green. Much of it is protected national park area, including the Tulum Archeological site. From Tulum town, there is a road heading toward the beach. When you get to the end of it, if you turn right, you will NOT be in a park – but instead you’ll be in that very long, very fancy, beach touristy area. We finally saw it on our last evening in Tulum, when our concierge recommended a restaurant there.
Frankly, we were underwhelmed by the touristy beachy area, which was much busier and just chock-a-block with hotels, restaurants, and very expensive shops, going for miles. Maybe if you wanted an all-inclusive thing, it’d be fine, but I was really happy we hadn’t ended up there by accident.
If, on the other hand, when you take that road from Tulum town down toward the beach, you instead turn left into the national park, there were more rewards. It still has hotels – you simply have to enter the park to get to them – but they are fewer and farther between, and more eco-. You can also go there for a visit to a beach, park on the road, and walk in. Ramon and I did this one day just to get a look at the water.
From here we also walked up a pathway to the part of the (same) national park that houses the Tulum Archeological site. We couldn’t go in – it was closed for the day. We did, however, get a bird’s-eye view of the jungle, where we assume the monkeys and jaguars live. It is some kinda green.
You’ll find one more blog post on the trip – when we continued on to Mexico City – at this link.
