Alice and Ken's Mexican Adventure - The Rest of the Story

Akumal

This is an extraordinarily beautiful place! On Thursday we didn’t do much – had a late breakfast at the outside “snack bar”, lay on the beach – Ken in the shade of the palm tree and me in the sun next to the palm tree – until the area was almost all in the shade. Then we finally got around to getting in the water which was actually a bit warmer than the air.

We tried out the snorkels that David had lent us. Ken did a fair amount of snorkeling right in our little bay and saw quite a few big fish. I was less successful – kept getting salt water in my eyes and found it hard to breath only through my mouth – but enjoyed being in the water. People kept shouting “Tortuga!” so there must have been a turtle in the area, but we didn’t see it. Akumal means turtle and the giant turtles do, in fact, lay their eggs on this very beach in the later part of the spring. There are big restrictions on beach use after dark during the nesting time.

For dinner we went to Oscar y Lalo which David and Lisa had recommended. We practically had the place to ourselves – I think a combination of being a little bit of an odd time, the H1N1 flu, and the economy have resulted in somewhat fewer tourists at this time – and thoroughly enjoyed our meal. They were happy to communicate in Spanish and we had yummy Yucatecan specialties. At the end of the meal the restaurant owner – a gringa who said she had recently inherited the restaurant – asked us if we knew wines. She then said she was testing a lot of wines that had been bequeathed to her and wanted our opinion. So we got to taste an unusual but good wine at the end of our meal.

Today we never made it to the beach, but it was a great day. After having to drive north to find a gas station, we drove south to Tulum. The Mayan ruins at Tulum are the only ruins right on the sea. They are also among the youngest of the Mayan cities as they were here when the Spanish arrived. What a bizarre sight the Spanish ships had to be for the Mayans and what a bizarre sight the Mayan city must have been for the Spanish. Because Tulum was built after the peak of the Mayan civilization, there is actually very little embellishment and detail at Tulum, but the setting is fabulous. When you go to the top of the main outlook pyramid you get unbelievable views of the sea. Actually many people pay little attention to the ruins, rather choosing to swim on the beautiful coves below them. These ruins are also the most visited in the peninsula – loads of tours come from Cancun every day. As a result, the grounds are beautifully groomed. It felt like we were seeing the ruins in a golf course!

We had lunch at a café right at the entrance to the ruins. We expected this to be less than wonderful because of its location, but we actually had a lovely lunch. Then we were off to Coba.

The Coba ruins are about 30 miles back on the highway north that we arrived on last Wednesday. Our first surprise was seeing a lake right at the entrance. I guess the maxim that there are NO lakes or rivers in the Yucatan has to be changed to “almost no”.

In spite of seeing many Mayan ruins by now, Coba is surprising in many ways. It is a huge area and spans many, many centuries – from 300 to 1400! Some 50,000 people lived there at the height of its civilization. What most surprised me was its location in a dense forest. At all of the other ruins, the original forest is gone and you walk between pyramids on stone or grass. Here it was easy to imagine what John Lloyd Stevens and Frederick Catherwood saw when they arrived in the 1840’s---destroyed pyramids hiding behind huge stands of trees.

Since this is a huge site, we only had an hour until closing, and we were really tired, we elected to ride on the Mayan tricycle. Our “driver” pedaled the tricycle while we rode in front of him on a bench seat. It was great!

Many areas of Coba look like big hills but are actually un-restored pyramids. The major reconstructed pyramid is 40+ meters high – second only to the 70+ meters high pyramid at Tikal in Guatemala. We also saw two ball courts and outlying buildings.

In this forest grows a tree that is poisonous – causes a severe skin reaction even if only standing near it. Fortunately, the tree with sap which is an antidote is always next to it! Our bicyclist also pointed out a tree that he called the tourist tree – it’s always red and peeling J

After our short but interesting tour of Coba, we did the tourist thing and bought a table cloth. These multi-colored cloths are used in most of the restaurants and should be fun to use on our patio. I’m not the world’s best bargainer so I’m sure we got ripped off, but so be it.

After an unsuccessful detour to find a recommended restaurant we ended up eating once again at the resort’s restaurant. It was a better experience than our first night here – I didn’t even feel like crying! The mood was quieter, they let me speak Spanish, and there was no silly show or silly tourists to deal with. Ahhhhhh!


Last Two Days of Vacation

Well, we came to Akumal with a list of interesting things to do away from the resort. What we did, however, was……

Lie on beach chair, read, fall asleep, go in the water, go back to beach chair, read, fall asleep, go back in the water.

It was WONDERFUL! Our very first night in the restaurant here we ran into waiters who wouldn’t let me speak Spanish and a few ugly Americans, but we never had that experience again. People were generally quiet (except in the snack bar today when a bunch of Canadians saw their hockey team beat the U.S.), no one talked loudly on cell phones, the beach was not crowded, the sand is made from coral and doesn’t get hot, the sand is super fine, our hotel is in the most beautiful spot on the bay, the water is warm, Ken snorkeled and saw sea turtles, there was a breeze almost all the time, the temperature was in the upper 70’s which was delightfully warm but not hot.

We’re trying to figure out a way to stay longer.