Tulum

After visiting Chichen Itza we didn’t really pause for breath but hopped straight onto the next bus to the small coastal town of Tulum. This trip around Mexico is pretty hectic – our route from Mexico City to Cancun can be done in a month, but there is a lot to see on the way!

Which of course is why we’re visiting Tulum. This is our first stop on the Mexican section of the Atlantic Ocean - effectively entering the Caribbean. Somewhat typical of this part of the world, Tulum is blessed with vivid green-blue waters and startling white beaches, and so consequently it’s also cursed with plenty of tourists! Perhaps that’s a little unfair – most of the people staying in Tulum town clearly travel independently. But along the coastline northwards towards Playa Del Carmen and Cancun there are plenty of big resorts which are of course designed for package tours. So you see tourists by the busload wandering around Tulum’s Maya complexes in carefully shepherded groups.

We only had a day in Tulum, but we managed to visit two lovely sites. Ok, it involved lots of rapid walking (over 17km by the time we collapsed for the evening), but it was definitely worth the effort. The first complex we visited was Coba, which was a little out of town, but easily reached by an hour long public bus trip. The nice thing about Coba is its jungle setting. A little like Ta Thom of Angkor in Cambodia, this is a place where the lush jungle is trying really hard to reclaim the ancient ruins. Trees grow on top of temple walls, vines hang randomly around, and you have to peer through the shrubbery to make out sections of ruins surrounding you. OK, the site itself is nowhere near as complex as Palenque or Chichen Itza, but it’s a lot of fun to visit nonetheless. Especially as it has two lovely pyramids in beautiful disrepair – you can even climb to the top of one for stunning panoramic views over the jungle and surrounding lakes.

We were very intrigued by the other people who climbed this pyramid. As we had very little for time we made a rapid ascent, caught our breaths and then walked quickly back down again. Actually my descent was more of a rapid trot, as I wanted to get to the ground much faster than Gary so I could take some photos of him coming down! See below for the resulting pictures of course. The interesting thing was that everyone else took ages to walk up and even longer coming down. Most of them seemed to be descending on their bottoms, a step at a time! OK, the steps were a little uneven, but we’ve seen much, much worse. The Great Wall at Simatai, Macha Picchu, Pisac… We were very perplexed at their trouble! On the other hand, as I literally ran down the slope most people stopped and stared at me – perhaps we were the odd ones!

Another good reason for visiting Coba is to have a quick look at the lakes near the site. Why? Crocodiles! We may have failed to see crocs in their natural habitat in Australia, but we saw two of them here – one swimming sleekly along the bank, and the other right under the pier near the ruins. He was beautifully menacing – big teeth and very evil eyes…

After our rapid visit to Coba, we hopped back on the bus to Tulum, and then walked the 3km or so from the town centre to the coast where there is yet another beautiful Maya complex. These ruins (also called Tulum) aren’t as extensive as most of the ones we’ve previously visited, but they also have one of the best locations – right on the cliff top overlooking white beaches and turquoise-blue waves. Beautiful. Even better, they are infested by really big iguanas – we had a great day for lizard spotting! The lazy creatures were completely unperturbed by the humans wandering around, and happily basked in the sun on the cliff tops. Well, the view was magnificent so who can blame them!

Anyway, after the hectic few days we’ve just had we think we deserve a well earned break. So we will now move to a small island just off the coast of Playa Del Carmen – Isla Cozumel. Although I think our time lazing on the beach might be limited, as apparently this is one of the best places in the world to go scuba diving. We’ll let you know if it can match our dive with the sharks in Tahiti in a few days time!