Hola! I am sunburnt as all hell and I think I gained at least 10 pounds bc TACOS but I’m back in (cold, rainy and dreary) Chicago after an extended weekend in Tulum, Mexico!
I’ll spare you toooo much of a backstory, but I had a really bad day last month and of course, my first thought at the hint of literally any problem ever is “can this be solved by booking a flight?”
(The answer is usually “no,” but I’m not about to let that stop me.)
I hopped over to Skyscanner and booked a roundtrip flight to one of the cheapest warm destinations I could find, which happened to be Cancun. I didn’t really have any desire to go to Cancun in particular, so I started looking for easily-accessible destinations around Cancun I could visit instead. One of my yoga friends suggested Tulum to me, and that was that.
My flight left ORD for CUN last Wednesday morning, and then took a bus from Cancun down to Tulum, where I stayed for the next three nights.
I decided to take this trip solo and I was a little nervous about it, but for a different reason that you might expect. If you don’t remember, I traveled alone for the first time last October, and it was such an amazing experience that I was actually worried it had set the bar too high! I was genuinely afraid every solo trip in the future would be a letdown because my first solo trip to Germany was that good.
However, my solo trip to Tulum was just as fun as that first solo trip to Berlin, so all future fears have been dissuaded. I’ve decided I’m just a fun person in general, so no matter where I go, it’s gonna be fun. Cool? Cool.
My bus to Tulum got in Wednesday afternoon, and I checked into my hostel. I stayed in Hostel Che for the first two nights of my trip, and Hostel Lum for the last night. Tulum itself is pretty spread out. The “town” itself is a few miles inland from the coast, and consists of one main street and a few dozen side streets. It’s incredibly tiny! Most tourists opt to stay in the resorts and hotels along the beach strip, which is the street that runs adjacent to the gulf. However, I am not “most tourists” — but rather, a “budget traveler” (aka: broke piece of shit) so I opted to stay in the pueblo, which is remarkably cheap compared to the coastal resorts.
I dumped my stuff in the hostel and took a really quick nap before I went out to explore. I grabbed shrimp tacos at Don Cafeto and walked around the shops along Avenue Tulum, the main street in town, before heading back to my hostel and grabbing a drink at the bar.
One of my coworkers — also named Randi S. — was coincidentally in town as well, so the two of us along with her fiancé Seth met up for margaritas at La Siesta. Afterward, I stopped for tacos at Los Fabulosos before I went back to the hostel at about 1 a.m. to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up and grabbed coffee at Ki’bok, where I ended up chatting with a Midwest native named Travis for a little bit. He’s been coming to Tulum every winter for the past decade-plus, so it was fascinating to hear about how much the city has been changing throughout that time, and also to get his suggestions for places to go. He was nice enough to give me a ride down to Playa Paraiso, and I joined him for several mojitos and conversation at his resort before I decided to wander around the beach on my own for a bit. I spent some time reading in a hammock and napping on the beach before I packed up and grabbed tacos at Taqueria Don Beto.
Then, I went to check out the Mayan Ruins!
This was probably the coolest part of my trip. I went in the late afternoon and the ruins were fairly empty, and there was a really nice (ie: STRONG) wind that offset the heat from the sun. (I was SO sunburnt at this point.) The ruins were incredibly affordable — something like $2 USD. I’d been looking at photos online before my trip and my expectations were completely exceeded. I just wish I’d judged the time a little better because I only had an hour to explore and take photos before the ruins closed for the day.
After the ruins, I checked out some of the shops at Centro Artesanal before taking a cab back to the pueblo.
After I checked out the ruins, I took a cab back to the pueblo. I stopped for a paleta (strawberry and guava!) at Flor De Michoacan and then vegetarian tacos and tostadas at Antojitos La Chiapaneca… where I ran into Travis again. (Seriously — this town is incredibly tiny!)
Then I went back to the hostel bar (I’m sure if you ctrl+f “hostel bar” on my blog there will be SO MANY REFERENCES) for drinks and conversation. We closed down the hostel bar and then went bar and club hopping around the pueblo until we closed down the pueblo… and then went back to the hostel to drink and hang out some more by the pool and in the hammocks.
…I didn’t get to sleep until 7 a.m.
The next morning, I checked out of Hostel Che and made my way to Hostel Lum for my final night. When I booked my lodging, I was torn between the two hostels. They were about the same price, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted a party hostel (Che) or a relaxing low-key hostel with quiet hours (Lum). I decided to book both figuring I could either close down my vacation relaxing before going back to work (in retrospect… LOL!) or by just going back to the bar at Che for my final night — which I ended up doing.
I got a good two hours of sleep before packing my stuff up, checking out and dropping my bag off at Lum. Then I wandered around town some more before grabbing breakfast tacos at Taqueria Honorio and coffee at Ki’bok again. I then hopped in a cab and headed to Gran Cenote.
Aside from the ruins, I was also most looking forward to the cenotes in the area. Cenotes are sinkholes or caves that have filled with rainwater and formed natural pools, and are pretty common around Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. There are _so_ many that I wanted to check out, but for the sake of time, I made it out to the closest (Gran Cenote) for an hour.
I’m not much of a swimmer (read: I CANNOT SWIM) but I forced myself to jump into the water for the experience and I don’t regret it a bit.
Because the cenotes are, well, water — and my iPhone doesn’t like water — I don’t have a lot of photos from the experience. I took a few photos of Gran Cenote from the platform in the middle of it and a girl I met named Carly was nice enough to take a few photos of me on her phone and send them to me later, but unfortunately, I barely have any photos of Gran Cenote, which is kind of a bummer!
I ended up snorkeling around for a while. I got to swim through a literal cave (there were stalactites and bats!) from one pool to another and the water in the cenotes is so clear you can see all the fish and turtles and other wildlife. It was absolutely stunning.
Afterward, I laid out in the sun for a bit to dry off before hopping back in a cab and heading to the south part of the beach strip, since I’d checked out the north part the day before. The south area of the strip is filled with a lot of resorts and hotels and high-end restaurants and shops, but is also still laid back and casual. Pretty much all of Tulum is laid back and casual, tbh.
(Lukewarm take: Instagram influencers in this beach town look pretty ridiculous in their sky-high wedges, full-face makeup and beaded tassel earrings. Nobody dresses like that here.)
Speaking of influencers, I grabbed an acai bowl at Raw Love (which was totally worth the hype) and some gelato at Origami before walking up and down the coast some more, exploring the shops in the area and taking a cab back to the pueblo.
I took a quick nap, then showered and got ready. I grabbed tacos at Antojitos La Chiapaneca again (they were really good, and so cheap at 10 pesos each!) before heading… you guessed it, back to the hostel bar!
At this point I was staying in Lum, the chill hostel I’d booked, and while it was really beautiful and relaxing, I wasn’t really feeling an 11 p.m. quiet hour. Like I mentioned earlier, I booked both thinking I might want to mellow out my last night before I returned to Chicago for work… but nope! I wanted to keep partying. I think if I could do one thing differently on this trip, I would have just stayed at Che the entire time, but luckily, the pueblo was small enough that the two hostels were only a few blocks apart.
I basically repeated the night before again — closing down the hostel bar, going bar hopping with new friends I met at the hostel, then returning to Che once the bars closed to hang out and drink until the morning. This time, I got absolutely no sleep. I hung out until about 8 a.m., then went to Lum to shower, change, grab my stuff and check out. I probably got a grand total of eight hours of sleep during my entire Tulum visit, no joke! Absolutely worth it.
Once I checked out of Lum (you know, after the whole two hours I actually spent at the hostel), I sat down for a quick breakfast of yogurt, fruit and coffee at Babel Cafe before I caught my bus back to Cancun to leave.
Phew.
I was really paranoid I was going to end up getting sick on this trip (I didn’t drink the water or anything, but still!) but luckily, everything was totally fine. I’d packed a little travel container full of various medications and didn’t once need any of them. I might have just consumed enough tequila to kill off literally anything that could have manifested in my body, but who knows?
I was also so excited that I had the chance to speak Spanish so much! I’ve spoken to this before, but I took Spanish classes all throughout middle/high school and college — even graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree which required a foreign language concentration. I’ve also been taking Spanish night classes for the past year or so, so it was really cool to actually be able to practice my Spanish with native speakers in a foreign country. While I did mostly speak English for extended conversations with my hostel friends/ others I met, I almost exclusively spoke Spanish with the locals: Ordering food, visiting attractions, talking to cab drivers, etc. It was SO COOL to be able to do that! I almost fell out of my chair the first time I ordered food completely in Spanish, and the server didn’t automatically roll his or her eyes and switch to English. Not only that, but I was rarely asked to repeat myself and everyone seemed to understand me. I cannot over-exaggerate how accomplished this made me feel, and now I’m even more determined to keep practicing my Spanish until I make it to fluency. (I’m at about a low intermediate level right now.)
I know I mentioned earlier that I usually book flights to solve problems and that doesn’t always work, but in this case, I think it definitely helped a bunch. After some personal stuff happened last month, I needed a little bit of a shift in perspective, and this trip definitely gave me that. I had the opportunity to let a few things go and get some closure that I didn’t know I needed.
I feel like someone hit the “reset” button on some aspects of my life while I was in Mexico, and I’m so grateful for that.
Anyway! You guys know me, and you know that I’m never satisfied unless I have a trip planned. Off to go pick my next destination and book a flight! Happy travels!
