Tulum: Day Four

Today’s professional excursion was titled Mayan Inland Empire, and the gist of it was I got to go with other tourists in a van to the ruins at Coba, to visit a Mayan village, and to stop at a cenote. But it was oh-so-much more complicated than that. In a good way.

The trip didn’t start off so well. After I’d waited outside for a half-hour, the booking agent messaged me on WhatsApp that the driver was waiting. This turned into a kerfluffle and was resolved when the agent realized there had been a mix-up with coordinates. The other two passengers, a married couple originating from both Texas and Venezuela, had been waiting in the van outside the random apartment complex some six blocks from mine and were not delighted. And then we picked up an Annapolis family of six nearby, before driving ba
ck to the beach hotel zone (where they’d picked up the first couple) to get a solo French traveler.

Everyone was a bit grumpy at first, including the guide when we met him (late) at HQ. The only person not-grumpy was the van driver, a taxi driver who’d gotten lucky after the agency had made a series of logistical mistakes that morning. The taxi driver and his van taxi were our limo for the day. He chauffeured us to 7-11, where everyone but me and the French guy bought cheap coffee to improve their moods and awareness. (I am staying in an AirBnB with a kitchenette, so I’d made my own coffee and breakfast before the sun rose.)

We eventually drove on into the rural area outside Tulum, passing roadside stands selling dreamcatchers and Mexican Talavera pottery, and eventually we pulled into a parking lot between a lake and the entrance to the Coba ruins.

“Sometimes we see crocodiles in the lagoon,” said Tzamn, the guide (who said to call him Sam, so we will). We didn’t look for any today. We were hurrying to get through the Coba gates to get ahead of the crowds.

Coba’s main sites are at the entrance and also 2 kilometers on. We rented bicycles for the two kilometers. I chose a rusty pink one-speed beach cruiser.

Coba’s main pyramid has more steps than Chichen Itza’s main pyramid, but that doesn’t matter so much because you’re not allowed to climb either one. That’s fine with me—I climbed a lot of Mexican pyramid-like structures in 2013 when I bussed through Yucatan after my summer in San Miguel de Allende. Anyway, the walk around Coba was great, with all the standard info about sacrifices and ball games. Sam turned out to know Spanish, English, French, Swedish, and Serbian, as well as being a student of history. So he had a lot to tell us in many languages.

The next stop was to hike with Mayans in search of monkeys. Great! We were treated to a Mayan welcome ceremony, then led to look for and find spider monkeys.

Howler monkeys lived in the forest too, but we only saw spider monkeys up in the trees. No howlers.

The Mayans then sent us each over a lagoon on a zip line. Wheeeee! I had never been on a zip line before. It was pretty chill, not terrifying at all because of all the safety gear.

On the other end, we were stuck in canoes and told to paddle to a distant pier. I was put in the front of the boat looking directly at the front-facing Frenchman, and the couple. The two guys were paddling. We started out okay but we started veering away from the pier. “Use your paddle as a rudder,” I said to the guy at the back of the boat.

“What’s a rudder?” And that’s when I realized we were in trouble.

The ride devolved into us going in circles, and then the woman from Venezuela was yelling “Help, help” to the others, all of whom had easily paddled to the pier. She grabbed her husband’s paddle, and the French man offered me his. I jammed my paddle into the water like a rudder and changed our course (I’m mediocre at canoeing but I know how, at least, which made me an expert in this scenario), and the Venezuelan woman got us going in the right direction. We had a few more false starts, a few more trades of paddlers, and eventually after nearly tipping over from too much laughing, we reached the pier.

Next stop was a Mayan family lunch, on an informal animal rescue farm. Which was lovely aside from the compost toilet, but no one got hurt.

And finally, we went to a cenote where the family and couple leapt from a cliff into the cenote below. There was no way I was doing that, so I handled the iPhone duties. Don’t judge me, I already zip lined, which was quite enough for one day.

I never learned any names aside from Sam, and a 21-year-old from Annapolis called Curtis, because the others were calling his name when it was his turn to jump. The family also had a member named Mom, which is the name we all chanted when it was her turn to jump into the cenote. She hesitated a long time.

“I’m going to chant your name backwards until you jump,” I said. “Mom Mom Mom…” and the others all joined me.

We got back to Tulum just before sundown, and all said our goodbyes. I headed upstairs for a few snapshots of the sunset before going to my favorite of the little concentration of nearby restaurants. I’d initially balked at the location I was in, but ultimately, the point had been to do nothing and yoga. I hadn’t done a good job of that today, but I’d done it the other days I’d been in Tulum. Which is a hellhole that’s been destroyed by rampant commercialization and overtourism. But also, it’s okay…I don’t feel like I missed the best days. I am just as intrigued by learning about a town that is growing too fast and can’t really handle it. It’s not pleasant, but it certainly is interesting.