ODO: 318,695
Berne woke up today feeling significantly better, so it was time to move out of this hotel. We didn’t want to just dump him back into the high heat and humidity of the jungle, so we found a different hotel that was located at a cenote. This turned out to be a great idea. Being a large tourist destination, it was always very busy, but if you were staying at the hotel there were three hours a day that were just for us. Twice we visited and had the entire place to ourselves. Once it monsooned on us, which was really cool. The water poured through the hole above us, and we could swim in and out of the down pour.
We started the day with another private cenote swim. It never gets old. Hoping for not too hot of a day we finally made it to Chichen Itza. Through a Google glitch, we ended up at the wrong entrance to the park. It turned into a happy accident because we were able to buy tickets and park in the shade with no crowds at all. Then we were shuttled to the actual entrance to explore. The sun was relentless, we aggressively sweat through our clothes while we walked around. The state of preservation of the ruins is incredible. The politeness of the other tourists was more incredible. We wandered around until we couldn’t take the sun anymore which was about an hour. After so much jungle time we headed back out to the Gulf again. Our first attempt was foiled by a hand painted sign that said “Must Have Guide” so we detoured back into cattle country and tried a different road out to the Gulf. We arrived in the sleepy town of El Cuyo just as they were fumigating the town for mosquitos. Yes, the entire town. They made several laps with a pickup spraying some anti mosquito “fog” out of the bed. We still found tons of mosquitos, so either it didn’t work, or it kept the area from being a mosquito hellscape.
One quick breakfast down, we put our feet int he Gulf and headed towards Cancun. Neither of us had ever been and we wanted to see what all the hype was about. We drove along the backs of endless giant resorts until we got to the edge of town. And then we drove some more. We landed on a small spit of completely empty beach, just 20 minutes outside the uber crowded, mega tourist destination of Cancun! We couldn’t believe it. We got settled in, the sun went down and then the bugs came out….which was fine, it was dark out and the spit split the ocean from a lagoon so we were expecting bugs. What we weren’t expecting was to be woken up in the middle of the night by the smell of the lagoon. The wind had shifter from off the ocean to off the lagoon, and it smelled BAD. We lay awake confused and covering our faces for a solid ten minutes before the wind changed again and we could go back to sleep.
We woke up to Berne’s window covered in mosquitos. Not a promising start. Our hope was we would be able to stay here for at least a few days because it was so lovely here. We gave it another hour or so, thinking/hoping the heat would drive the mosquitos away, and it did! First order of business, swim in the ocean. It was the perfect temperature, no waves and no rip tides. We got out to take some pictures, and noticed the dreaded tiny sand bugs were starting to come out. We got back in the ocean hoping more sun would drive them away as well, but we were not so lucky. They swarmed us when we got back out so it was time to move on. Tropical Storm Debby was causing havoc with traffic on our way to Playa Del Carmen, dropping a ton of rain and partially flooding the roads. We decided to hotel because we couldn’t find decent camping in the area. After we toured the parking situation at several hotels, we found somewhere we could park and checked in. The hard task complete, we went out on the town for dinner, followed by drinks in a bar playing the Olympics.
Our next morning and afternoon were spent working in air conditioned comfort because we had a big evening planned: Ferry over to Cozumel to eat at the Original Lobster House. We were given this recommendation when we visited Cozumel a month ago, but never managed to wrangle all the cats to make it there. It was a cozy little place with several fish tanks and a gentleman playing the saxophone. They offer you bug spray when they seat you because they are open to outside, and we definitely needed it. As we were unsure if either of us actually liked lobster, we ordered a few different things to share, our standard restaurant move. Turns out dinner was delicious, well worth the trip. We caught the last ferry back to the mainland, and it had entertainment! There was a guy who led our section of the boat through some spirited versions of several Spanish songs. Our walk back from the ferry terminal took us past more live music, which we stopped to enjoy before heading to bed.
We left Playa del Carmen heading south to Tulum, our last set of ruins in Mexico. We stopped at a a few campgrounds along the way, but all were busts. Why are we having so much trouble finding places to camp in this area? Well, it’s a VERY touristy area (Tulum is growing very fast) and the few campgrounds that exist like to charge almost as much as an air conditioned room, so we feel it makes more sense to stay in the air conditioning. We tried to do our “final hour” trick at Tulum, but they stop letting people in 90min before close, so we were turned away. But we managed to find, of all things, a brisket place that was super tasty. After enjoying a solid meal, we retired to our air conditioning.
Tulum round two was more successful, we made it inside! But it was hot….oppressively hot…so hot our sweat was sweating. As we suffered our way around the ruins we got to see lizards chasing each other. At this point KoKo was in a bad way. Berne dragged both of us the rest of the way back to cold water, and shade, and finally the truck. We had one errand to run before we left the area: find a refill for Berne’s prescription. We found it, and because America hates healthy people, we paid $0.10/day in Mexico instead of the $0.75/day we normally pay in America with health insurance. End rant. Time to head more south to Bacalar, a quite lake town full of hippies. We (FINALLY) found a little campground on the lake and immediately went for an evening swim. Being a lake in Mexico, the water was not at all refreshing. In fact it was more like a moderately warm bath, and did nothing to help us cool down before bed.
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