We decided to head down to Tulum and drive out the spit of land from Tulum to Punta Allen (Santa Julia on the map). There are two Tulums. One is the town which lives on MX307; banks, lots of tourist stores, a super or two, restaurants, etc.; basically a small town split by the highway. This is the Tulum we know and we always make a special point of hitting the panaderia there for the best bread we’ve found (so far). Yesterday, we headed out through what the guide books call the “hotel zone”. This zone lasts seemingly forever, but the hotels are not the giant development type, but much simpler, more “eco” style hotels and palapas. There were even two camping spots. One of the last hotel-compounds we passed was “Maya Tulum” and now I understand why Julie kept calling her destination “Maya Tulum”. I thought she simply recognized the great Mayan influence in the area but she was actually referencing her hotel name. (I hate how the emoticons screw up the post, another thing to fix)
There was very little view on the road; it is a dirt/limestone road and runs right through the jungle.
Ocassionally you get glimpses of the lagoon (north side of road) or
the sea (south side of road). At two points, you’ll come out to the Sea
(Punta Yuyum and Zamach) and the view is lovely. By this point you’ve
been in the Biosphere for a bit and most of the land is completely
unsettled. There is no electricity or water (this far along the spit
there are no cenotes and any would probably be contaminated by salt) so
it would be very difficult to live there. So it would seem. We did see
a couple mansion type complexes; one of which was in the process of
being built.Unfortunately, down here, a deserted or “unspoilt” beach means unspolit by development. They are, however, completely innundated with garbage. Anything plastic; shoes, bottles, bags, chairs, etc. will break down to smaller pieces (though some are completely intact) and cover the beach area. The boys, unsurprisingly, were in their element, with more garbage than they could imagine in immediate proximity. The girls, Jamie and I stripped down to our naked selves and frolicked in the waves. We found a beach that was very flat and shallow but with many waves. As the point of the trip was to see if this road might be of interest to Jamie for bike-riding, we had brought no snorkeling items but I was still quite surprised to see some sort of ray dashing away from me - they simply FLY through the water!
So very many times I wished the camera was working and we might go back another day to play again and take pictures. We did, however, decide that this area (the Yucatan penninsula) is not an area in which Jamie is able to find challenging or desirable rides. Meaning, we most likely will not be building a palapa here. We’d LOVE to come back and spend a few months next winter; perhaps even head down to Belize and Guatemala, but we’ll see.
The girls have been playing with the daughter of Don Pepe, the owner of the RV park. They are having
a BLAST as Sammy (the daughter) is four and squarely between Ellen and
Sissy in age. Usually it is the boys who drag friends home and the
girls try to hang out with them. Sammy has a large playarea completely
fenced in with netting, swings, slides; everything a kid could want.
After seeing the playarea and the private pool, the boys started
reconsidering their stance on not wanting to stay here. Today we head to Cancun, to see the “pretty” area, to try to fix the camera and get Jamie a cable for his MP3 player. One thing we’ve found, from visiting so many beaches in the area, is that our favorite is still the beach right next to PaaMul. The deserted turtle sanctuary cove with the “flour” sand.
Ok, looking through the pictures to post, I’ll give a little explanation. There are a couple for the fabric whores (you know who you are), one of Ellen with her implements of consumption (why this child NEEDS to eat with a corkscrew, peeling knife and can opener (yes, these are the implements she uses) is beyond me. One of the aftermath of a guyaba and avocado explosion and one of the kids at our favorite restaurant. They LOVE the tamarind (brown), jimica (dark red) and horchata (white) drinks there.
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