Tulum, Mexico
September 2010
Louise left for Cancun a day before I did, planning to meet me at the
airport when I arrived the next day. (It’s small. We won’t have any
trouble finding each other………) I spent about an hour walking along the
front of my terminal, from the arrival area to the departure area, with
loads of people offering taxi services, to which I kept replying that I
was waiting for my friend. Finally one guy told me that there were 3
terminals and he suspected she was waiting at a different one. He
offered to help me call her and took me inside the terminal to a bank of
phones. (I didn’t have any pesos and didn’t think about using a charge
card in a phone. Shows how out-of-touch I am!)
We tried both her Danish cell phone which was supposed to work in
Mexico and her US cell phone which was not supposed to work in Mexico.
Neither one worked. So he asked me to give him her full name, which I
did, plus the description that she is tall and blonde – both stand-out
attributes in Mexico.
So he jumped into a car and drove off. To return in about 5 minutes,
with Louise in the car with him! He again offered to help us get a
taxi, but we hadn’t decided where we wanted to go, so tipped him – after
all, he had gone above and beyond in finding her and bringing her to
me. Then we sat at a lunch counter, bought water, and looked at maps.
After a short discussion, we decided to go to Tulum, expecting to go by
bus.
Our little man informed us that the buses didn’t go from Tulum to the
airport except Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays as at this time of year
there aren’t enough tourists to make it worthwhile. We probably could
have taken a taxi to the bus station in Cancun and gotten one there, but
elected to take a taxi instead, which we did.
About 2 hours later, we arrived near Tulum. Our driver asked where
we wanted to go and we told him we hadn’t booked a hotel but were
looking for something peaceful near the water and not too expensive. So
he drove us down this very narrow road and said “If you see something
you like, let me know and I’ll stop.” (Or Spanish words to that
effect…) We did. He did. And he waited while we inquired about rooms
and prices. Which is how we found
Piedra Escondida.
 |
| Beach at Piedra Escondida |
This is their website which has a very nice video showing the
property. For $80 a night, our “Type B” room was a ground-floor room
with two large beds and windows on three sides with screens, but no air
conditioning. However, since we were on the edge of a tropical storm,
we got plenty of air coming off the water, so also plenty of humidity
and a fair quota of salt. Most of the time the sky and beach looked
like this.
We also had our own small deck with a love seat facing the sea and
two Adirondack chairs and a hammock on the side facing the restaurant. I
didn’t take pictures of our room when we first arrived and after the
first night, they folded the bedspreads up and tucked them away. The
towel critters were made from our bath and hand towels. Note that the
pretty headboard is painted on the wall! The décor on the bed critters
is live flowers and leaves.
 |
| Rose's Bed Critter at Piedra Escondida |
 |
| Louise's Bed Critter at Piedra Escondida |
Our first day there, we went into Tulum proper to change some money
at a bank. (Note that Google says there are no banks in Tulum, which is
not true…) To change actual cash from dollars to pesos, they required
identification, plus your plane ticket! I don’t know what you have to
do if you’ve driven down… Fortunately, Louise had both so she was able
to get my money changed for me. I had my passport, but didn’t bring my
plane ticket! She was also able to get her own money from an ATM. So
now we were good to go.
After lunch at what looked like a local lunch stop – 50 pesos set
price sign on the wall, when we said we wanted to eat, they said come
here, took us to the stove and said “This pot is chicken soup. This pot
isn’t…” (Or at least that was what we understood with our limited
Spanish!) We got something good to eat, accompanied by huge chalices of
a fresh fruit drink. (Conversion rate is roughly 12 pesos to the
dollar, so it was a little over $4 each for lunch!)
We had noticed that there was a “Mayan church” shown on the map. The
cab driver described how to get there and that we would see a
children’s play park and the church would be behind it. So we walked
down the appropriate street and saw what looked to me like a backyard
swing set. And behind that was a little plaza with a couple of crosses.
So we figured we were in the right place. The entry of the church was
a covered portico with Ministry of Tourism signs requesting that no
pictures be taken. So we complied. The entry portico had 3 or 4
hammocks plus stone benches along the sides. There was also a
shoe-sized ledge on which there were shoes, plus some shoes directly in
front of the door. So we took off our shoes and went inside.
The walls of the “church” were bare. There were no windows, but
there were benches along both side walls and two doors open to the
outside further along on the side walls. Plus a door opposite the one
we entered which opened into a very dark room. At the door into the
darkness was an older man – barefoot and shirtless – sitting on a pretty
blue chair and holding a stick that at first I took to be a cane. But
on looking more closely, it didn’t look like it could possibly support
any weight.
There was chanting coming from inside the dark room, so we sat on a
side bench to wait for whoever was chanting to finish and come out. He
didn’t. He was like the energizer bunny of chanters. He just kept
going and going. After a while, a young couple with a tiny baby came
out of the dark room and sat on the bench on the opposite wall from us.
And the man kept chanting, and occasionally ringing a bell. Once in a
while were a few Catholic sounding words in Spanish, but mostly I
couldn’t understand what he was saying.
After another while, a man in about his 40s came in, dressed in jeans
with fancy stitching on the pockets, bare feet, and a muscle shirt,
with an improbable (for Mexico) shade of orange hair. He greeted the
old man at the dark door (man inside was still chanting…) and the old
man stood up, handed over his stick and left. So the stick might have
been some sort of badge of office – or way to block people from going in
if they tried… We eventually decided that the chanting stood a good
chance of going on for days and gave up.
While we were putting our
shoes back on – back out in the portico where the old man was reclining
in a hammock and a younger man (possibly a boy, I didn’t take a good
look) was in another hammock talking with him – an older woman came out
with the baby. Louise attempted to ask if the baby was being baptized,
but neither of us knew the right words, so she tried to ask if the baby
was being named that day, but it might be that she actually asked if it
was the baby’s name day. In any case, the answer was yes. We chatted
brokenly some more and found that the baby was named Lucinda and was 2
months old. And having put our shoes back on, went in search of bottled
water to buy and a taxi to take us back to Piedra Escondida.
Once we got back, we changed into our bathing suits and Louise went
into the water, where she found out that, as we had suspected, Piedra
Escondida means hidden stone. The sandy beach was actually brain coral
once you got into the water. It was the same color as the sand, so you
couldn’t see the stones, but could easily find them with your feet. So
although the water was wonderful, the footing was really hard – pun
intended.
The following morning, I got to enjoy the sunrise and the morning
fly-by of frigate birds and pelicans. The first morning, there was a
formation of 3 frigate birds who went by from my right to my left,
disappearing out of sight and then returning from the right again. The
second morning, the fly-by was 3 frigate birds in formation, 3 pelicans,
in formation, followed by 4 more frigate birds. After two good-morning
passes, the birds split up for solitary fishing. But it was amazing to
see them soar into an almost gale-force wind, making good forward
progress against the wind without appearing to move their wings at all!
When the maintenance guys showed up to rake the beach, they saw this:
One of them started digging carefully with a shovel. We asked what
he was doing and he explained that the tracks were from a sea turtle who
had come ashore to lay her eggs! (Note the little red sign in the
second picture. It says “Sea turtle nest. Please be careful.”) He hit
a rock and decided that the turtle had given up on that spot, so he
moved to another location and uncovered a nest of eggs, digging with his
hands once he thought he was down far enough.
Note that some of the eggs are a darker shade. They might be
immature eggs, but I’m not sure. They were also a little dented and
might have been laid in August. Again, my Spanish is not quite up to
speed…
Breakfast was included with our room price and was eaten out under a
pergola unless it rained. First morning we finished breakfast indoors;
second morning they didn’t even bother to set up outdoors. But the rain
was always warm, so you didn’t mind getting wet. (It also helped that
we were just able to walk across the beach in our bare feet for
breakfast and no one said “No shoes, no shirt, no service!”)
We decided to get lunch at a taco stand across the street from our
hotel. While we were there, it rained. (We had rain every day, but the
showers, although intense, were usually short-lived.) So they let a
tarp down from the front of the pergola (which was also tarp-covered) to
keep the rain from blowing in on us.
Aren’t the chairs pretty? After this meal, we checked out of Piedra Escondido and took a taxi to
Valladolid. But that’s another day’s writing…
 |
| Restaurant Rain Shelter |
