Topes Y Cenotes - Tulum, Mexico, Part 12 - Fun Night!

After an exciting day at Cenote Cristal, we relaxed around the resort for the afternoon. It was fairly overcast and not necessarily the perfect day for sunning.  So we went back to the room in mid-afternoon to find that leaving a tip for the housekeeping staff provided with us towel art!

Sorry - I'm not allowed to post the picture, but trust me, it was cute!


DH was feeling good today, and this boy was ready to eat some food, so he ordered some room service consisting of a fruit plate and chicken fingers. 

We decided that this would be a good day to see how the ocean snorkeling was (will be discussed further in a separate post!)  Snorkeling was fun but exhausting, so afterwards we went back to the room and amused ourselves that afternoon by doing things such as comparing the size of DH's toe to the size of a Coronita bottle, and making head-pinching images.  Ahh... overcast days while on vacation.

Not long after that we headed out for dinner, this time to the Asian themed restaurant called Himitsu.  Like all of the other themed restaurants on the resort, we found that the food didn't always necessarily follow the "theme."  I had a beef dish that was supposed to be "Asian beef," but it was basically just beef cuts in a thin gravy. I can't even remember what DH ordered.  Like most of the food that we ate that week, it was only "eh."

But surprise, surprise!!! DH finished a meal and didn't feel like he was dying!! Were we seriously going to be able to spend an evening outside of our room????  I was worried about getting my hopes up, but secretly thrilled that we might actually be able to stay up past 9 p.m.!


We ordered some drinks and spent some time wandering around the resort, since there wasn't much going on since most people were still eating dinner.  During our stroll, we stumbled upon this ridiculously large chess board, which DH promptly began playing.

I have no idea how to play chess, so it was a one-man game

We walked into the lobby area to check out the lobby bar and started talking to a family from Colorado who knew a lot about Pittsburgh.  This was the first night that we were able to spend some time talking to other people and we were having a grand old time.  Around 9 p.m., we decided to head back to the courtyard area to see what the evening's entertainment was going to be.  We were a little disappointed to find out that it was a juggler/comedian doing a show targeted towards children, but there was no way that we were going to back to our room, and thankfully the comedian was somewhat entertaining.  

I took a video which completely drained my camera of it's battery, which is why there are very few pictures of this night.  And of course, Blogger is telling me that there is a problem with my video, which means that I have to upload it to YouTube instead. Sorry.  I tried, I promise.  

If you would like to see it, go here. 

After the balloon guy, they held the Dreams Tulum version of American Idol.  There were some really good, and some really bad singers, but overall it was very entertaining.  The "judges" were also guests at the resort, and the winner won a three-day, two-night stay at Dreams Tulum for one.  Sort of a crappy prize if you were never planning on returning, considering that you'd probably want to stay for more than two nights and would probably want to bring someone else (somehow the resort is still winning big with this "prize.")  Oh well, it was fun to watch. 

Taken by the father of the bride

We hung out at the bar for a few more hours after that, and befriended a bride whose wedding had just been that evening.  We talked with the father and step-mother for awhile, watching the bride do shots with her mother. They were all thoroughly entertaining.  Around midnight when everyone started clearing out, the bride and groom decided to get into the pool in their wedding clothes. It was very cool, but I didn't want to seem like a weird stalker talking pictures, so no photographic evidence. 

So, we started the long walk back to our room, sort of sad that our fun night was almost over, disappointed that people didn't stay as late as we wanted them to, and hopeful that this night was a turning point for DH's illness.   

We were still full of energy though (LOTS of sleep the past coupe of days!) so when we got back to the room, we played with the bade while waiting for DH's latest room service order - two plates of french fries and four bottles of water.

Coming Up...

Was DH's lack of sickness really too good to be true?  And with only one full day left, what can we do to go out with a bang!?!?!

Topes Y Cenotes - Tulum, Mexico Part 11 - Cenote Cristal

We stumbled upon Cenote Cristal completely by accident.  We were looking for a cenote called Escondido, since my notes on my printed map said "good snorkeling" and that's what we were after.  Remember my pre-vacation post about the cenotes? The first picture on that post is from Cenote Escondido.  It's beautiful, and I definitely wanted to check it out.


Apparently I had also looked into Cristal, since there's a picture of it at the very bottom of that post, but it must not have been enough to convince me that we should go there.


Anyway, we're driving along and we quickly noticed that things weren't very well signed on the Mexican rural roads, and although we looked as hard as we could, we didn't see any signs for Cenote Escondido.  (I think I saw it when we were leaving Cristal, but I can't say for sure.)

Rural Mexican highway

(Some tips about driving on the roads of Mexico will be forthcoming in a separate post, but THIS post is about our first cenote!)

We had passed the sign for Cenote Cristal three times by this point, since we were driving back and forth looking for Escondido, so in frustration and the desire to stop driving and DO something, we finally decided to just go there.  Cristal was on my list of cenotes in the Tulum area, but I didn't have any notes about it, which meant that it probably wasn't particularly interesting for snorkeling.  But we were so tired of driving around, and it was overcast and looked like it might start to rain any minute, so we wanted to get moving.

So, we pulled into the parking lot for Cenote Cristal, and for the first time, we felt like we were stepping out of our comfort zone as stereotypical all-inclusive tourists who never leave the resort.

First of all, here is the sign from the road.

This was one of the best signs we saw on this entire stretch of highway, believe it or not.

We walked up to a Mexican man laying in a hammock on a platform with a roof.  Next to him, a fire was burning and putting off a stinky, harsh smoke. (We realize later that this smoke was to keep the mosquitos away.)

My notes had indicated that this particular cenote was $50 pesos per person, but we were pleased when he told us it was only $40 pesos.  So we paid and he pointed us back a long, rocky path.


We saw a sign for the banos, and DH had to use one, so we walked back that trail to find this:

Heeeelarious

You walk up the stairs and pee in a toilet which drops down into that area right next to the stairs.  After that fun experience, we continued walking back the main path until we came to what we would call from then on "the pond."

The Pond

We walked around the perimeter to explore the entire thing and realized that it was rather quite small.  However, we were only the people there and thus rather excited about the prospect of swimming, especially once the mosquitoes started biting us.  (We were in jungle at this point, after all, but you're not supposed to wear sunscreen or bug spray before going into the cenotes because it's bad for the wildlife and fish living there.)

At this point we were a little disappointed.  I had seen so many pictures of crystal clear, bright blue water and this was really just some dude's pond that we paid $40 pesos to swim in.  But as you can't really tell from the sky in the picture above, it was really quite overcast on this particular day, and apparently you need direct sunlight to get the aqua-blue effect that you usually see in cenote pictures.  In fact, below is a picture of Cenote Cristal from todotulum.com that was on my original cenotes post.

It didn't quite like that on this particular day, but oh well.  We hopped in anyway.

Or, more accurately, I hopped in.  DH is not so fond of cold water, and thus took his sweet old time stepping into the water while I experimenting with our waterproof camera.

Shaking water droplets off of the lens is key to not getting blurry pictures like this one here

The water really was crystal clear...

But I quickly realized that our waterproof camera had a really slow shutter speed (that's what you get for $100, right?)  So, it was challenging to capture the cute little darting fish, thus resulting in some blurry fish photos like the one above.

This was one of those experiences that is hard to put into words, and it's difficult to capture even with a camera.  Under the water the plant life was an electric green, and tiny little colorfish would swim right up to you with no fear.  I had never seen water so clear in my life, and even though it was tiny, Cenote Cristal was a cool experience that I'm glad I had.

Everyone looks hot with snorkel gear on

There were all of these really cool bird nests hanging from the trees, but instead of just making traditional nests, these were almost like bird houses built out of twigs and straw-like material.  The birds were very active, swooping down by the water and then up to their houses.

I'm sad that we weren't able to get more photos of fish that weren't blurry, and I wish it had been sunny so that the water would have looked blue like it does in all of the amazing pictures of cenotes.  But we enjoyed ourselves, and for our first cenote experience, this was a good one.  It was amazing to have the entire place to ourselves.

Just as we were getting out of the water and drying off, it started to rain.  So we took this final video to attempt to help us remember Cenote Cristal, and DH the educator even gives us a little lesson about the difference between ponds and cenotes.

Coming up: The one - AND ONLY - night that DH felt healthy enough to hang out past 10 p.m.  We called it "fun night!"

Topes Y Cenotes - Tulum, Mexico, Part 10 - A Quiet Afternoon

After we got home from the Mexican ruins we were totally and utterly exhausted.  And it was only 11:30 a.m.  We ate lunch and since it was too late in the day to get chairs by the pool, we decided to hit up the beach, where there were always a plethora of available beach chairs.

The breeze on the beach was much nicer so we didn't sweat nearly as much as we did by the pool.  The views were always waaaay better.

Dave spent some time reading, and I attempting to read but was constantly distracted by my desire to be incredibly nosy and watch all of the interactions at the snorkeling hut.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this year already or not, but I was terribly disappointed by the snorkeling hut at Dreams Tulum. It's a third party vendor and not actually associated with the resort.  Snorkeling is one of the activities that is supposed to be included in your "all-inclusive" vacation.  But it is not.  You have to pay five dollars just to snorkel on your own around the shoreline.  It was $50 USD for a boat ride out to a reef, and $40 to go to a cenote.  Totally not worth it (as you will hear later on in my cenote post.)

That night we decided to try out the Italian restaurant, Portofino.  I ordered a pasta dish as an appetizer, and chicken as my main entree.  The past was good although a little bland, and the chicken - as always - was pretty chewy.  I didn't love this meal, but our waiter was great and we left him a nice tip.  This was also the sickest night of the week for DH.  And this meal is why I think it was dairy that left him feeling so ill.

DH started with a cheese appetizer dish.  He also ordered the chicken, which had cheese in it (I didn't eat that), and then topped off the meal with a tiramisu cheescake dessert (I took a small taste - it was yummy.)

This not a picture of cheescake. Obviously. 

After dinner we spent some time wandering around the resort. This was the first time that we had ventured over to the "new" side of the resort.  I was like, "Ooooh.... this is where we could have been staying." 

It really was a lot nicer.  Like, a LOT nicer.  I was jealous, but at the same time glad that we didn't spend the extra money.  I was extremely torn over the "nice room versus save money" debate after seeing this side of the resort. 

The is the lobby, which I believe is newer and was part of the renovations.  As you can see in the picture, there were guest rooms on either side of the lobby, which I thought was a little strange at first, but in retrospect decided was a great idea - these rooms were right next to the lobby bar!!! We had to walk a mile to get to any of the bars from our room.  If we were in one of these rooms we wouldn't even have to go outside!!!

We took a few pictures around the grand entrance to the lobby (which was really under utilized for how nice it was), including this one of the two of us. It's one of the only pictures of both of us together that wasn't taken with my left hand, which is a rare thing for us!

Then DH's sickness kicked in again (remember? cheese ravioli and cheescake???) and we had to call it a night before it was even dark outside.  I stayed all dressed up for a solid hour sitting in the room hoping he would feel better enough to go back out, but sadly that was not to be.   "There's always tomorrow, right?" I could only cross my fingers and hope....


Coming Up....
We finally get the "cenotes" part of the Topes Y Cenotes experience, also known as "swimming in a Mexican man's pond."

Topes y Cenotes - Tulum, Mexico Part 9 - Beach at the ruins

The beach that was located below the guard tower of the Mayan ruins was so beautiful that it deserved its own post.  And even though I showed you a sneak peak of it in the last post, it's worth seeing again.  It was one of my favorite parts of our trips.

You're walking along a path, up a slight hill, and there's jungle all around you so although you welcome the shade, it's really muggy.  You see light up ahead and you can start to hear the ocean.  And then all of a sudden you crest the hill and come out of the trees and you see this.

Totally breathtaking, and this picture absolutely does not do it justice. I will probably say that a million times in these posts, if I haven't already.

The beach itself is actually relatively small, and was already fairly filled with people considering that it was still early.  By the time we got to this point, we were so hot and so thirsty that we were literally shaking with excitement about the prospect of getting to swim in that beautiful blue ocean.

The stairs - which don't look so bad in the picture above - were some of the steepest, scariest stairs I have ever encountered.  Only in Mexico.... 

I can't even imagine what this place is like later in the day when all of the tourist buses hit it.  As I mentioned earlier, we were there fairly early because we wanted to beat the huge crowds that arrive around 10 a.m. from Cancun.  There were only a handful of people on the beach, but it was so small that if there were another 30 or people there, there wouldn't be room on the beach to put your stuff.  It was teeny tiny.

My splotchy, overheated face.

But we didn't mind.  We were in awe.

It was awesome to just bob along in the water and look at the coastline.  We made jokes to each other about the poor suckers who didn't bring their swimsuits and thus had to seethe with jealousy while watching us from above.  Have I mentioned how hot it was there?  It was the first time in my life that I have completely sweated through a shirt.  I HATE sweating.  It's the reason that I exercise at home, because I like to wear nothing more than a sports bra so that any sweat I might produce dries quickly.  If I was that sweaty at the ruins - and I am not a generally sweaty person - then I can only imagine what other people felt like.

I could have stayed in that water all day.  The water was so warm and I loved the setting.  But we were parched.  Even though I knew in advance that it would be hot and that we needed to pack bottles of water, we only packed two.  DH was dehydrated already from his illness so he chugged those two bottles within the first 30 minutes, and I only took about two sips so that I could let him have it.

That meant that by the time we were dried off from swimming and walking up those ridiculously steep and scary stairs, I was weak with heat exhaustion.  I was dizzy and so thirsty that I thought I was going to throw up.  We high-tailed it out of there, made the eight-tenths of a kilometer walk (I just love that I think about things in both miles and kilometers now - I feel so "wordly") back to parking lot and shopping area and decided that we were going to suck it up and buy an over-priced bottle of water at the gift shop.  I had heard that they were ridiculously overpriced, and maybe they were if you paid US dollars, but we had pesos and got a medium sized bottle of water for $15 pesos, which is approximately $1.19.  Super cheap for a tourist in our minds, since we're used to paying $3 or more at at theme park for a small bottle of water.

But, just know that there is NO WHERE to buy water in or near the ruins.  You have to walk back to the shopping area and once you leave the ruins, you can't get back in.  So, buy or bring PLENTY of water before you pay your entrance fee or you will seriously regret it like we did.

I will end this post with a story, and one of my favorite pictures from the week.

When we were walking through the shopping area, a man holding an iguana saw me holding my camera and walked up to.  He basically just handed me the iguana, assuring me that it wouldn't bite.  I was so confused.  Then he grabbed my camera and offered to take our picture.  Ummm.. ok, but this feels like a scam. Or perhaps like my camera was just stolen.  Oh well, I do have his iguana after all.

So, as expected the man who now possessed our camera posed us next to each other, held up my camera, and said, "I take your picture for $5 dolla."  I let out a "Ha!" and said, "Noo...." And he took the picture.

"$5 dolla." He said. "I'll give you 2 dollars," I said.  "OK.. four dolla," he said, while taking a second picture.  I tightened my grip on the iguana and said "2 dollars."  I flashed him a pretty smile and grabbed my camera as he took back his iguana.  I pulled 2 ones out of my pocket* and thanked him profusely.  He persisted for a moment and then took his 2 dollars and left.

This picture was SOOOOO worth 2 dollars.  I look GREAT with an iguana, don't you think???

* A New Hartman Travelers tip: 
In touristy places, I highly recommend carrying only small bills and putting them in your pocket separately.  Do you know what I mean?  Basically, if you're taking ten one dollar bills, fold each bill in half or into quarters or however you want to do it, and then place them in your pocket loosely.  This way, when you're trying to negotiate a price, you're not pulling out a wad of money.  If you do that, you've just lost the negotiation, because now they know how much you have.  When I was paying the iguana man, I pulled out one loose bill and gave it to him, and then acted like I was digging around in my pocket for the second one.  It was super wrinkled and I think he was convinced that was all that I had.  It made it really easy to get rid of him without either of us having to get nasty.

Topes Y Cenotes - Tulum, Mexico, Part 8 - Tulum Mayan Ruins

On day 4 we woke up with a mission - leave the resort today.  Woo hoo!!! What I've been waiting for all week!

I was itching to get out and do something adventurous and exciting and DH finally seemed to be feeling a little better.  It was on this day that he instituted what would become his standard breakfast - watermelon and bread.  He figured keeping it simple was the best way to play it safe.

Man, was I excited to finally be going to the Tulum ruins!  We put on our swimsuits, packed a bag with towels and waters, I pulled out one of the many maps that I had printed, we got a bell boy to bring our car, and we hit the Mexican highway.

As you know, I had done a ton of reading and research prior to this trip.  In advance, I had decided a couple of things:
1. We were going to visit the ruins on our own, NOT through an excursion offered by the resort
2. We were going to decline on hiring a tour guide - although probably very interesting and informative, we wanted to explore on our own
3. We were going to bring our bathing suits and take advantage of the beautiful section of beach that I had read so much about
4. We were going to get there early to try to beat the heat

We were relatively successful in all of those goals.  I was THRILLED that I had decided that we were not going to go to the ruins through a resort excursion - we learned from some people later in the week that they charged $100 a person for the excursion!  Seriously!?!?  We drove about 5 minutes down the road, paid $3 USD to park, and then paid $102 pesos ($8.57) total for both entrance fees.  I am not kidding.  They are RIPPING YOU OFF if you pay $200 to go to this site.  I'm sure the tour guide is an added fee, but if we wanted to listen to a tour guide, we could just follow one of the groups around (the groups were so big the guides would never know.)  We could have hired our own personal tour guide for just the two of us for the $188.43 USD that we saved by doing this on our own.  

Best decision I have ever made - EVER. Hands down. There's no way you can even argue with me on this one - try it. I dare you. You'll fail.  See?

One last thing about our drive to the Tulum ruins.... Signs in Mexico are only so-so.  Some of the resorts were well-marked with large signs, but a lot of them weren't.  Likewise, as we were driving into Tulum to find the ruins, we noticed that the signage got a little sketchier. We were the signs that said "ruinas," but I quickly realized they were heading towards the Coba ruins, which were in this direction.   There weren't reallysigns for things that were on the other side of the road.  I knew that we were getting really close to the Tulum ruins, so I turned around and tried to read some of the signs that the other direction of traffic was seeing, and I saw the sign for the Tulum ruins!  So we did a sort of scary u-turn and finally arrived at the Tulums ruins parking lot.

We decided to exchange money at this point in the trip, since the exchange rate at the booth there was the best that we had seen so far.  We also decided not to hire a guide or pay for the shuttle that would take you to the main entrance.  The walk was fairly reasonable - maybe about a 1/4 of a mile or so, perhaps a little more, and there were a lot of people walking, so we figured it would be ok.  The sun was just starting to peek through the clouds at this point and we could tell that it was going to get really hot, so we hurried on in through the main entrance.

Anyway, the rest of this post will be mostly pictures, with a caption here and there.  There's not a whole much to say about the ruins - they were cool, but it was hot out, so we sort of rushed through them.  Still, I am absolutely glad that we went and if I can ever convince DH to go back to Mexico, I'd like to visit some more ruins, either the Coba ones (where you can climb a pyramid) or the Chichen Itza ruins (where there is a cave cenote that they lower you into!)

Here are some pictures from the Tulum ruins.

 Apparently Mayan's were very small people... 

What's that??? You thought I was done showing iguanas?? Oh please..

 

 Pitt pride, baby!

The coastline - more about the beach here in the next post

The ruins were fairly well preserved, although I was surprised at how many sections didn't have any complete buildings at all.  This section...

... for example, was mostly just grass with the lowest levels of the foundation showing.  So, we could see where buildings used to be, but it wasn't much to look at.

But other sections were really well preserved.

I could show many more pictures of Mayan ruins, but I know that since they're mostly just pictures of old buildings, there might not be a lot of universal interest.

We're really glad that we went to the ruins, but based on the heat and how exhausted we were just from an hour and a half or so of walking around in the sun, we decided to pass on visiting any other ruins in the remaining days of our trip.

Coming up.... 
My Mayan ruins posts are not over yet! No sir! I showed you a few pictures of the water, but just wait until you see the beach!!!

Topes Y Cenotes - Tulum, Mexico, Part 7 - Iguana-thon

The other particularly remarkable thing that happened on our third (second full) day in Tulum, was that we really started getting a sense of just how many iguanas there were around here.  During our search for the doctor's office we not only saw our first turtle...

... but we also saw more iguanas than we could have ever imagined.  It was on this day that I finally realized that photographing every single iguana that I saw would probably be ridiculous.

But I did it anyway.

There were large, beach-side iguanas...

And little guys that we almost stepped on!

There were iguanas in the grass...

And iguanas with no fear, sunbathing on the sidewalks. 

There were romantic iguanas...

... and big, mean bully iguanas (they puff out their throats to scare away enemies.) 

Where's the iguana?!?!?

Would you believe that those pictures above are just a tiny sampling of the iguanas that we encountered?  And this was still on the resort!!!  If you were walking around and you heard a rustling sound, all you needed to do was stop and looking around for a second and you would probably spot on iguana.

Here are a few facts about iguanas:

When they're young, they're green, and as they age they start turning that darker gray/brown/black color.  Most iguanas found in Mexico are called Black Iguanas.  In the picture below, you can see a young green iguana who's tail is just starting to turn colors.

Iguana going through puberty

As a means of survival, adult iguanas can completely shed their tail if a predator grabs on to it.  However, the tail will never grow back as long as the original tail.

All of the iguanas that we encountered seemed totally harmless, but apparently if you start feeding them, they will start to become bolder and will try to seek out food.  But otherwise, they pretty much just eat leaves.

I'm going to end this iguana-thon with a picture of the biggest, grand-daddiest of all the iguanas that we encountered the entire week.  He reminded me of a crocodile.

Look at the size of that thing!! And those spikes!!!

Coming Up... 
Tired of looking at pictures of iguanas?  Man, that's too bad.  Because many more iguana pictures are coming up.  Including an absolute gem, my all-time favorite picture of an iguana ever, complete with a story about how I had to haggle to get my camera back from a Mexican man.  And why are we still on the resort? Get OUT already!!!