Tulum and Wal-mart. An Entertaining Day.

Posted by Christopher

The Mayan ruins at Tulum are spectacularly located right next to the ocean.

We had rented a car out of El Cid marina, to go and explore the nearby Mayan ruin. We got in our car for the day, and took off towards Tulum, an ancient Mayan ruin, and after Tikal being so fun how could Tulum not be? So we drove off, going for about 45 minutes down the highway, passing through several city/towns. One of them was Playa Del Carmen, which we were going to stop at on the way back.

On the way to Tulum.

We got to Tulum eventually, at about 11:30, so naturally everybody was pretty hungry. Mom also pointed out that if we were going to spend any time in Tulum, we should be well fed. Conveniently there was a Subway right outside Tulum, and so we all had a delicious sandwich, then went inside Tulum.

Coming in through the wall around Tulum.

So we went inside the gates of Tulum, only to realize that it was REALLY HOT. It was at least 35-40 degrees inside Tulum, which was not fun. Although, it was actually really awesome, and informative, you couldn’t go into or onto ANY of the structures at all. In fact, you couldn’t even go very near them. Although, it wasn’t by any means bad. Tulum was enclosed in a wall, which was fascinating. Also, it was seaside for trading, also offering amazing vistas, over turquoise water. Sadly we could not enjoy this as much as we could’ve because of the heat. Another really great thing, was that because it was enclosed and buildings were frequent, and the grounds were really well restored, it was much easier to picture real Mayans living life there.

Katie pretending to be an ancient Mayan.

Modern Mayan snake at Tulum.

The ancient city was situated beautifully above the ocean.  I bet the ancient Mayans loved going to the beach.

We next went to the beach at Tulum, which was so full of tourists that we decided not to go swimming, but it looked quite nice. We stayed there for a while because of the beautiful ocean breeze, and just watched other people swim.

Lots of people chose to spend their day at Tulum swimming in the ocean, since it was so hot.

So if your in Mexico and thinking of going to Tulum, go on a cloudy day.

Super huge cat at Tulum.  Or a really small kitten.  You decide.

Finally, we decided to go back to Playa Del Carmen. Tulum was too hot and too crowded with tourists, so we thought that going and cooling off in somewhere air conditioned would be nice. So, we all got a drink from an ancient Mayan pop vendor, and off we went, back in the car.

Mom had mentioned needing groceries, and so we went somewhere that we hadn’t been since Florida to get them. We pulled up at Wal-mart being pretty excited and wondering what Wal-mart would be like after so long of being stuck to small grocery stores. It was pretty cool, meaning both “lacking heat, and being cool”. Mom and Dad needed to shop, and so Alexander, Katie and I, went for a look around. We went to the electronics section where we looked at TV’s, Xbox’s, computers, and everything else electronic.

Then we went to the all the other aisles, being fully enveloped in how they can have everything at such decent prices (again, we haven’t seen any stores like this in eight months). Also, the size of the store was pretty amazing. It was probably the biggest store I’ve seen since getting on the boat.

Finally after doing all our shopping we started to get hungry again. So we went down to the walking street in Playa Del Carmen, where all the tourism goes on. Here, we walked around for about an hour until we found a nice looking restaurant. It was very touristy, and a bit expensive, but it looked like it had good food, and we were just about done looking for restaurants. So we sat down and ordered, waiting to get a tasty meal. Eventually it came, and it was good. I ate for a while until I was well and truly stuffed, and then we began to walk back to the car, and drove back to our boat.

Waiting for dinner, after a long day in the sun.