February 22nd-24th
After we got back from the eclipse Wednesday night, we decided that the beach was, in fact, the place we wanted to spend the weekend. However, Progreso wasn't the right solution to our problem; Tulum turned out to be the answer. We bought our tickets Thursday afternoon and took off Friday evening. Four hours later, we arrived; we wandered around, looking for a hotel, but decided to pay a little more per person (just Brandon and myself) and get a cabana on the beach.
We jumped in a taxi for the 10 minute drive, finding ourselves faced with many different options. The one we finally chose turned out to be the cheapest, which is absurd as it was $50 AMERICAN per night. What makes it even more absurd is the cabana (pronounced ka-bah-nyuh) had NO electricity, NO running water, and the only source of light came from the single candle we were provided with.
This didn't matter though, as we weren't planning on spending much time in it. We arrived at 10:30 at night and, as soon as I set up my hammock, we took off for the beach. The moon was impossibly bright, even more so than at Progreso, a factor we attributed to the lack of light pollution. We wandered around, me with my tripod and camera stopping every so often to take time exposures on the brightly lit beach... It was amazing.
The wind was strong, and the tide was on its way in; the sounds of both roared in the otherwise quiet night. Welllll, I say 'otherwise', but the ocean and the wind made so much noise that I don't know if it was a quiet night; we had to yell if we were more than 10 feet from each other. Nonetheless, it was spectacular, and we wandered around for hours taking pictures and congratulating ourselves on the great idea to leave Merida for the weekend.
Sleep came fairly easy, and we awoke at 7:45 to the already warm day. We ate at the small restaurant next to the cabanas, and set off for the ruins. This was my second trip to the ruins; my first was a month ago on a day trip to Tulum from Playa Del Carmen. It was amazing then, but I only saw the small stretch of beach at the ruins, not the full on, hard core white-sand-blue-water gorgeous beach that IS Tulum.
We walked through the ruins fairly quickly, as I had seen them already and Brandon wasn't as interested as he thought they would be. We sat at the top of a small cliff for a while, looking out onto the marvelously blue Caribbean, grinning like madmen, until we decided to go back and get our swim on. We took a short detour to the tourist center, where a million shops sold the same things for TONS of money; out of curiosity, I asked how much a dress was... I had purchased one similar to it as a gift at Uxmal, but this one turned out to be more than twice as much! Everything was expensive in Tulum, even the cheap stuff!
A short lunch consisting of Pringles and bottled water and honey roasted peanuts (we brought some food and water, not wanting to spend too much money; good thing, as we spent it all on the cabana and had little left) left us hungry, but ready to go. We grabbed goggles, towels and sunscreen, and took off for the beach.
Being a Saturday, we thought it would be crowded; the reality was that it was nearly empty. We went straight away to the water, which felt like a swimming pool, it was simply glorious... We swam out as far as we could; I made it about 600 meters (this is what the lifeguard told me afterward) before I turned back. It was exhausting, it was amazing, it was SO BEAUTIFUL!!! I miss it already, to be sure.
We went back to the cabana, collapsing in exhaustion from the early morning, the 5 mile excursion to and from the ruins, and the swim; all thrown together in the torch-like heat of the day made for an incredibly easy nap. We slept for an hour, Brandon in his "Princess bed" (small bed with a bug net draped from the ceiling) and me in my hammock, before we got ready for the night.
This meant getting dressed, changing from our bathing suits back to shorts, and then going to dinner. We ate what we could afford, and went back down to the beach. We watched the sun set, expecting the moon to be up, but it... wasn't. It seemed very odd to us, the sun being down and the moon nowhere to be found, because we knew it was nearly full the night before. However, the lack of light pollution combined with the lack of ambient lunar glow made for one spectacular view; I saw more stars that night than I ever had before. We saw constellations clearer than I could ever have believed; they looked like they had been drawn on the sky with light... It was truly stunning. We played around with a flashlight and my camera, drawing in the air, hanging out, when we saw the moon turning the clouds red on the horizon. Again, we took pictures, but called it an early night so that we could wake up at five the next morning for the sunrise.
Stumbling out of a hammock at five: not something that comes easily. I slept fitfully, and my eyes were sore from lack of sleep; still, we wanted to see it. Sadly, the horizon was lined with clouds, and we didn't get to see the magical burst of light that comes when the sun first clears the vanishing point in the distance... But it was still magnificent. I love Tulum. I wandered back and passed out once it was over, sleeping til eight, and we checked out at around noon. We caught a taxi with a Canadian couple whom had been staying in the cabana next to us, and talked with them for a while... They turned out to be traveling to Merida, and we exchanged information... Hopefully we'll be able to meet up with them, they were pretty cool people.
Our bus wasn't leaving for an hour or so, so we walked around the actual city of Tulum.
I'm not a fan. It's nothing but vendors and nightclubs, much like every other tourist spot in Mexico; thankfully, we stayed at the cabanas, far away from the bustle of the city life.
We made it back to the house around 8:30, had some dinner, and studied. I'm gonna crash now, as I'm exhausted and I have to be up at 6:30 to get to class by 8 tomorrow.
Adios!