Biking West 2015 ‐ Tulum

2015-11-08

tl;dr: Mexican shirts are small. Visited Xel-Ha Archeological Site. Look, iguanas!

I spent the morning changing cash and buying a few more groceries for the road.

Think in Mexican shirt sizes. I purchased an extra-large shirt to wear around town. XL is not a common size here, and it feels like a large from back home. But it mostly fits okay.

Most of my day was again spent on the shoulder of the highway. Near the end of the day the traffic finally started to wain. There are many resorts along the highway, and some are just crazy-expensive looking. Of course a kilometer down the road you will find tarp-covered jumbles of lumber where locals apparently live.

I stopped at a 7-11 to buy more water. There is an entire shelf dedicated to tuna.

Other than the resorts, there are two other types of tourist attractions: The "ecological" parks are private-owned and center around a canote, which is a large pool and/or underground river. These are too expensive to just stop in and take a look. The "archeological zones" appear to be state-run, and these are reasonably priced. I visited the Xel-Ha Archeological Site. These are Mayan ruins from over 800 years ago.

By the time I reached Tulum, the Tulum Archeological Site was closed for the day, so I attempted to find a hotel. According to booking.com and Google, there are rooms available in nearly every hotel, and there are a lot of hotels in Tulum. According to reality, every hotel is full, except the truly expensive ones. I found one that showed $40 online, but they wanted $75 without a reservation, so I declined. I considered camping, but the tourists are very thick here and the one road where I could sneak into the jungle is busy with people on foot and bikes and even patrolling police. I did end up in a hotel on the north end of town. The room is okay, and comes with its own lizards and millipedes. I ate dinner at the outdoor restaurant and got bit up by mosquitoes.

Think in Spanish. Nah. I was considering that maybe I should learn Spanish so I could interact with the locals. Then I realized that I wouldn't even interact with the locals if they spoke English. I'm here for the sites, not the culture. I do need to better understand numbers, though.

I only managed around 65 kilometers today.