Tulum: Day Five

I awoke to an overwhelming sewage stench in my “luxury” Tulum condo. I’d noticed a faint whiff a few times and chalked it up to poor sewers and drainage, but why did it get so bad in the last hours? I threw a towel over the shower drain and closed the bathroom door. I wish I’d done that before I went to bed last night, but I’d been halfway to sleeping when I’d first caught a whiff of it.

“Maybe it’ll go away.” It hadn’t. It never does. It waxes and wanes but the only way to get rid of it is for a building to be built properly, and for sewers to be built properly.

I shrugged and went out to breakfast. Tulum’s infrastructure was rough from the start, and was now utterly overwhelmed by rampant development, but wafting sewer gas isn’t something I’ve only smelled in Mexico. I’d stayed at a hotel in Milan with this problem too, and many other spots in the world. I’m glad for building standards in the USA. Government intervention at its finest, unless you also count food safety. Which I do.

I wanted to go to Vintage Café to try their breakfast, but they didn’t open until 8, and I needed to get out of my AirBnB early so I could stash my bag and get to my morning appointment ahead of the bus to Cancun. I went back to Rossini’s, where I’d gone the first day and had stern words with the server about the difference between drip coffee and americano. Their espresso machine was working today.

I got through breakfast quickly and went back to the apartment. I took one last look around. Laptop charger, check. Toothbrush, check. Emptied the last of my almond milk. Better pack that leftover apple, in case I get hungry. I rolled my bag into the hall, locked the door, and placed the keys back in the lockbox as instructed by the host. I pushed the down button for the elevator—a novelty since I’d never taken the elevator down before, only up, and when coming up the three flights, one was required to push the down button in the lobby. Because who knows. And once I got in the elevator, I didn’t know what button to push. The floors were labeled P1, P2, A, B, and C. My place was on the 3rd floor, inexplicably named B on the elevator panel. I tried the A button, but that was wrong. I decided to get off the elevator anyway to look around, and the door closed on me. Man, those doors do not mess around! I definitely prefer the kind that bounce back if they close on you.

I found my way out of the elevator and building in time, and headed up the nearby walk street to start my 27-minute walk to the centro. I knew how to do it along paved roads by now. Most of them even had sidewalks. I made good time, and found the hostel I’d booked on Bounce. That’s one of the many apps in the world which are like AirBnB for luggage. I wanted to leave my bag near the bus station because I did not want to walk 27 minutes back to the apartment after my appointment, then 27 minutes back to the bus station.

The hostel receptionist locked away my roller bag, and I walked 12 minutes to my appointment. Which was a two-hour educational session about the local honey bee.

An older French guy showed me his bee hives and left the bees crawl on my hand. It was hard to not pull my hand away, even though I’d been assured this type of bee has no stinger. The bees seemed nice enough, but I’m just conditioned to not want bees on my hand.

Once the French guy had shown me the guard bees, the tiny bees that wax themselves in every night, and one queen, he gave me a platter of different honeys and some wooden tasting spoons. I was given two small containers of honey to take home. We’ll see what the Mexican version of TSA has to say, and US Agriculture.

I finished early, and so walked the length of the town and back, checking out the souvenir shops and the New Year’s display, and finally getting lunch before retrieving my bag and boarding the ADO bus for Cancun Airport.

My flight to LAX would be leaving Cancun on New Year’s Day at 7:41 a.m. I’d booked the airport hotel thinking I didn’t want to try to get a taxi or shuttle bus at 5 a.m. on New Year’s Day. The taxi syndicate has Uber shut out of the airport business here, mostly by use of violence, so I opted for the airport hotel since I could walk to the terminals.

The bus left me at T2. I asked the information desk clerk how to walk to the hotel, and he gave me good directions. I headed over to the hotel and checked in.

“Good news, we have a special New Year’s dinner tonight,” said the clerk. “Only $65 US.”

“Only,” I said, laughing. “Will you have other food, or only that?”

“We’ll have club sandwiches.”

And that is how I learned to walk to T3, where I bought a takeaway salad to have later for dinner. And I followed a path through the woods from T2 to T3 once I had gone back to T2 to look for better food options.

I finished out my day by a doughnut-shaped pool at the airport hotel, lying on a lounge chair after a swim. A girl could get used to this relaxing stuff.