Day 1 – London to Tulum, MX – 9th Nov 2016 (Wed)

Today we fly from Gatwick to Cancun, but first we have to get from Brixton to the airport itself. I travelled down to London yesterday, attended a leadership workshop and then met Sophie for dinner, a couple of drinks and the start of our adventure.

In the morning on Wednesday 9th of November we start our journey to Mexico. 16 days of sun, sand, food, ruins, and… tacos.

Sophie’s place at the time was in Brixton, and we were packing light for this just over two week trip to Mexico. Hand-luggage only was a choice that we both made to make the whole trip as easy as possible. We thought, because of this that we could just jump on the tube and go to Gatwick. Easy.

However, heavy rains and a crumbling rail infrastructure meant delays, and cancellations. This means that we decide to get a taxi instead of braving the walk down the hill in the rain, we slowly get to the airport through the South London gridlock. But there’s plenty of time to check-in and to sit and call our families before boarding.

The 10-hour flight was OK. Shamefully, British Airways did not feed us enough snacks and they ran out of alcoholic drinks quickly. That might have been the 4 Irish guys behind us, but still. We arrived hungry.

A swift journey through Cancun International airport, we collected our bags (which we had checked for this long flight), changed into suitable clothes for summer, and jumped onto a coach to Playa Del Carmen. Like London, it started to rain. But it was over 20 degrees Celcius so it was fine.

We wandered around a bit to find some snacks and found the town friendly but tacky. We had 45 muggy minutes until the bus to Tulum at 18.30, and we eventually left at 7pm, Mexico style. The coach headed south along the coast. I was determined to stay awake, despite being very tired.

Both Sophie and I fell asleep immediately.

Luckily the bumpy roads as we approached Tulum woke us up, so we didn’t miss our stop. Then we walked to Hotel Casa Sophia. It was beautiful and Juan, our host there was very friendly. We were shattered, and headed straight to bed.

Day 2 – Tulum – 10th Nov 2016 (Thurs)

After a lovely long sleep. Sophie and I woke up at about 7.30am, not too bad for our first jet-lagged day. It was a cloudy, but a warm start to the day. Breakfast at the hotel was simple, and the coffee was great.

Over breakfast we made some plans, we decided to head out on foot to see the beach and the Tulum ruins. The map indicated that the highstreet was close to us, and that the beach was just beyond that. Simple.

Full of excitement for our first day we started to walk to the beach. For ages. We kept walking, and the signs kept saying the beach was this way. But the scale on the map was clearly wrong. By this time it was now very sunny and hot.

As we walked along a relatively main road, we noticed a shaded grove ahead, and they had a coffee machine and a juicer. We were thirsty and tired.

This is where we had our first real adventure with the friendly mexicans. Let’s call this the “Permaculture Juice Man” adventure. He started strong, offering us a “Mega Sex Bomb juice!!”. But only after he’d shown us around the farm.

It seemed pretty normal, and I was just glad to be out of the sun. But we were getting eaten by mosquitoes, and Soph was getting a bit of a bad vibe. So we tried to make our way to the road, and eventually we ordered a drink.

He offered us the Mega Sex Bomb, which turned out to be hand cold-pressed wheat grass, spirulina and orange juice. He made a big deal about the cold-pressed nature of the wheat grass which was being cranked through an old aluminium grinder by an old geezer. We watched in awe.

It took forever to make our drinks. Throughout the ordeal we had to put up with crazy cringewortht innuendos and some terrible stand up “comedy”. Finally we got our drinks, which promised so much and drank them quickly, trying to get away from this place as fast as we could.

By this time we were being eaten alive by midges, so we said our goodbyes and left. We saw some butterflies as we left that were pretty, and we kept on walking towards the coast through the thick jungle either side of us.

We maybe went slightly the wrong way?? As it seemed to take forever to get there, and we had to just keep on walking.

When we finally got there the beach was rather lovely, there was a pelican or two and there were lots of beach huts and a small high street with shops.

We met Alejandro, the dive guy and he recommended a taco bar. So on this recommendation we went, and it was delicious. Eddie had another juice.

Then we got in a taxi over to the Tulum ruins. We were slightly underwhelmed, but there were some amazing lizards, and swimming in the sea was fantastic fun.

Both of us got sun burnt, and we wandered back through the ruins to get a taxi back to the Casa Sofia. The plunge pool in the courtyard was welcome relief to cool off after the sun (over)exposure. Eddie sweated on the balcony and we decided our onward route, did a bit of booking of hotels and stuff.

Faffed about a bit then went out photographing and walking around Tulum town.

Went to a trendy cafe, with an art gallery space. It was lovely, nice and relaxed and there was some bright artwork. I had a coffee, and we checked out their art collection.

Irene who worked there recommended a place to get cocktails, so we went to have mojitos and then moved on for on a hunt for food. It was time to get our first proper Mexican tacos. They came from the highly recommended Chiaparia, right on the high street, it was tasty and cheap, and I tried some of the fiery sauce. The guys running the place were skilled at slicing the meat and the pineapple from the top of the meat and catching it on the taco. It was fun to watch.

The second taco bar specialised in fish, we had tuna ceviche, then two types of taco. Fish and prawn. Loads of sauces. Pretty good and quite cheap too.

Tomorrow we head out of Tulum and to Coba ruins and then an to Valladolid, in the heart of the Yucatan.