It’s a long journey from Quito to Mexico, particularly as the cheapest flights take us via Miami and back down to Cancun on the Yucatan Peninsular. With only 3 hours sleep In a Miami hotel. We really do need a few days to recover.
I have a natural aversion to Cancun, this man made sea side city, created purposefully in the 70’s to lure beach and sun-cravers. Mark is happy to be led by me on this last stint of our journey in Mexico, so we decide to head to Tulum which is slightly quieter. I want to revisit places we visited when I was a child growing up here.
Our flight lands in Cancun, and we take a taxi left out of the airport and down south for 60 Kms to Tulum, avoiding Cancun altogether. Tulum is a curious place. Kms and Kms of exquisite white sand and beautiful hotels line this beach, all very quant and carefully constructed, low-lying and sympathetic to nature. Our budget however opts that we stay instead in the village, which is built uncharacterfully around a main road. We head to a lovely breezy hotel/ hostal with a kitchen option. It’s works best for us with fussy little eaters to have DIY meals whereever we can. I was hoping the kIds would love Mexican food, but that is wishful thinking. They find a lot of it too spicy, in spite of the fact that my Mexican friend Nancy from St Margaret’s has had them in training from birth!
We also happen to be next to a lovely hotel with swimming pool. They are happy for us to use the pool, if we spend enough money in the bar/ restaurant. That’s not difficult, we become regular visitors here. It’s hot here and the pool and shade and delicious food are a perfect way to while away time. Millie learns to swim this week. She is adamant and independent and just heads off across the pool. It is difficult to watch her, without wanting to rescue her, and passers by are in awe, but her little head keeps coming up, her little mouth like a beak taking tiny gulps of air.
EL Capitan our neighbouring hotel… Packed with day lunchers, there’s always someone to play with
We make a trip to the Akumal beach to snorkel and while away an afternoon. The waters are turquoise, the sands white. It’s beautiful, the turtles are also plentiful. However once we discover the cenotes here, or sinkholes, the children prefer them to the beach! The waters are cooler and fresher, and they offer better diving / jumping off rocks options, through holes in the ground into these gorgeous under water caves, with fish and clear, clear waters. Our favourite is the Cenote Cavalera, which has a long wooden ladder leading 4 metres down to the water, though the children prefer to jump it. There are also adjoining holes in the ground, a few feet wide, which if you hug your arms into your side, and take a step off the edge, you drop vertically, to the water below, but you can’t see the water as it’s dark. The kids find this quite exciting. Having a shoulder injury has made me very unexcited! There is even a boat attached to the ladder with a rope and oars, so the kids have some swallows and amazons time!. There is no one else here and we have the place to ourselves.
We use the free bicycles at the hostel and spend the week cycling to and fro, Millie being transported in the back of her own red carriage. Even the smallest of journeys seems to lull her to sleep.
On one evening we head back after supper from a beach restaurant, oblivious to the blackening night, with no lights, along a dark road. It’s a bit daunting. I can’t even see Gabriel who is in front of me somewhere in the dark. Along come a couple with headlights – Jemima and I hug onto them and cycle with them, leaving Gabriel and Mark to make their way with the help of the torch on Marks iPhone. I have a 20 min conversation in the total dark with a faceless but charming French man and his girlfriend.
Our hostel happens to be conveniently across the road from an Aurera (large supermarket) so we pick up supplies of amazing fruits and of course labels and names of foods come flooding back….Jicama, Jamaica, cajeta, Twinkie wonders, chamoy, tamarindo, chicharrones, tajin… I feel like an overexcited child! The children are very quickly introduced to my childhood favourite sweets.
So it’s not surprising that on my birthday, after opening my homemade cards, in which cactus, sombreros, and Speedy Gonzalez feature, I open a goodie bag of my favourite nibbles – chicharrones (spicy chilli crisps ), chamoy (a chilli lime, salt sugar, mix which we used to tip into our hands and lick, on the way back from school), obleas (cajeta or dulce de leche and rice paper wafers), tamarind and tiny discs of almond halva. This is followed by a breakfast of huevos rancheros and the day ends with margaritas, an all time favourite. I am in Mexico birthday heaven! It’s good to be back here. It feels like coming home.
The boys sport new hair styles
Our lovely breezy hotel in Tulum
Five Go Round The World 