Tulum: Day One

I spent a lot of time on Reddit and TripAdvisor. I read Lonely Planet Caribbean cover to cover. Where would I go, I wondered, for the week between Christmas and New Year’s?

Not that I’m *required* to go somewhere, mind you, but it seemed a shame to waste a week of not working. I had an idea that I would do some basic, simple yoga, possibly overcome my lethargic aversion to it and start a routine, and catch up on some writing, but I didn’t want to do it somewhere cold. I wanted to do it where I would feel encouraged to go outside—so somewhere warm. Yes, Burbank is warm. But I already know I won’t do yoga or catch up on writing in Burbank, because I don’t know why, I just don’t. And I didn’t want to get involved in dramatically different time zones this trip. It’s a long way to the Pacific from the East Coast, and a long way back to LAX from Europe.

But as I dug around online and through my guidebook, it dawned on me that Barbados and Jamaica and Trinidad all had the same problem. I would be so engaged in seeing the country that I would just do my usual—race around and learn about the destination. That’s not yoga. That’s not catching up on writing. That’s something I’m very, very good at, but I do it all the time. And the idea was to do something new—focus on myself and minimize distractions.

In the end, I said fuck it and used points to get a one-way trip from Dulles, near my mother’s house, to Cancun. I booked an AirBnB condo in nearby Tulum, and off I went the day after Christmas.

I nearly switched to Jamaica or Sint Maarten at the last minute, after reading some Reddit threads about how ridiculously expensive Tulum is, how wildly overgrown and overtouristed it is, how full of ridiculous digital nomads (whatever that is, I just call it remote work), and how the cartels shake down businesses for cash, thus adding to overhead. But it turns out my tolerance for dysfunction is fairly high and my interest in the easy answer is at least at the same level, so I stuck to my plan. I already know how to get the ADO bus from Cancun Airport, and I certainly don’t need to spend my time shopping for Mexican souvenirs or learning what a taco looks like. And the flight was not just direct from Dulles, but the Cancun flight on New Year’s Day is direct to Los Angeles. And it’s not like Sint Maarten isn’t expensive, and it’s not like I have the time or energy to sort out budget Jamaica right now.

All that is a longwinded way of saying I’m in Tulum, I have a yoga class tomorrow morning, and I went on a food walking tour tonight. The tour was marvelous, and I am uncomfortably stuffed full of local treats. The 21,000 steps I walked today are not denting this “too many tacos” feeling, which is simultaneously both awful and divine.

The food tour involved tacos, tamales, enlote, tostadas, pastor, and some kind of local Popsicles. We also checked out a local fruit market, the town square, and some murals. The guide confirmed what I’d read about cartels, but he said it’s better than it was 5-6 years ago. He also mentioned the Mexican “Inter-Oceanic” coast-to-coast freight railway was finished three weeks ago! The idea is this is an opportunity for Mexico given the Panama Canal is in a drought, and the number of ships through per day is heavily reduced (we covered this when I was in Panama, remember?). We’ll see!

How did you think people carried tamales?