What’s in a name?

I figured before I even write about the town I should write about the pronunciation – otherwise you may get funny looks when you pronounce it like you see it.

It’s pronounced too-loom, the double oo’s are said quickly.

Now we got that out of the way…

Tulum ruins and the ocean

A tale of two places

Tulum is the town on the side of highway 307 as you continue south from Cancun after Playa del Carmen. If you continue on this road you will reach Chetumal and then the border of Belize. In fact, it’s not that far from here, 200km or so.

Tulum town is close to the beach but it is not right on the ocean. So this means you have to make a decision. Do you want to be on the ocean or would you like to stay in town. Each has it’s advantages but the selection of places to eat (and the prices of said places) swayed me towards town.

Getting around

This would probably be an ideal place to rent a car as the beach is about 5km from here and 2 centotes are also about 5km in the other direction. But I decided to take a bike instead. A bike works well but remember that is gets very hot here so take plenty of water.

There must be hundreds of nice restaurants in Tulum. I almost think there are more places to eat than people. Since Tulum is quite laid back, it’s a nice walk down the main street to check out the menus and decide what you want for dinner.

Tulum Ruins

I cycled out to the archeological site and it is for sure worth checking out. There are lots of people trying to sell you “made in China” trinkets on the way in, but if you are on a bike they tend to move out of the way before you run them over 🙂 Well, at least that has been my experience. I have never injured a tout yet 😉

Usually you can go swimming at the beach down below the ruins. However, since it is turtle hatching season it is closed off. You can however cycle a bit further down and use the public beach there. There are also a selection of hotels down that road that would be happy to have your business for lunch and I had a really nice meal by the ocean.

One of the draws to Playa Del Carmen was that it is easy to take the ferry across to Cozumel. In my mind I had images of small boats making the short crossing like things I had been on in Thailand. I was totally wrong.

So as you can see in this picture there is pretty much no social distancing going on here. Granted – it’s outside – but most people are not really making an effort to separate from others. There are signs held by officials telling people to keep 1.5m apart but nobody seems to take any notice of them.

The ferry company provides hand sanitizer on board and masks are required on the pier and on board the ship. The crossing takes about 35 minutes and it’s a very calm and relaxing ride – you do not feel the movement of the boat at all, at least when the water is calm.

Once you get off the ferry you are approached by taxi drivers and people trying to rent you a car / bike / puppy / etc but this ends fairy quickly if you just keep walking. Unlike Playa Del Carmen the touristy area of Cozumel is not very big and you quickly end up in more local areas with nicely painted buildings. The town is not that big so walking is easy but you can also rent a bike or moped if you wanted to get around the island.

The town becomes very quiet in the evening with little restaurants and pubs around the ferry area serving food. If you are not staying on Cozumel, make sure to check the time of the last ferry or you may, in fact, be staying on Cozumel. The ferry pier you see in this picture is for cruise ships which don’t happen this year due to COVID-19.

What to do on Cozumel?

If you want to do something more exciting that walking around then diving and snorkelling are the things to do over on the island. I bought a package back at Playa to do some snorkelling, but you could easily wonder into a dive shop over on the island too.

This area has the second largest coral reef in the world. The first one, of course being the Great Barrier Reef in Australia off the coast of Queensland.

When you snorkel here you can see many fish, turtles, some colourful coral (although the coral here suffers the same as many parts of the world that are over touristed), and sting rays.

Fish were surprisingly easy to find. In many cases schools of fish would swim around me. Of course the tour came with a photographer (they seem to be all over the place in Mexico) who charged me 300 peso for the photos.

The cruise included beer (Corona), water, and a small snack. We also had some time anchored by the beach to do some swimming. All in all it was a fantastic day over on Cozumel.

Rio Secreto (or the Secret River in English) is about 10km South of Playa del Carmen on the way to Tulum. They offer a few different packages from a basic tour of the cave to a more overall tour of the history behind it to a complete day where you go into deeper parts of the cave.

So those that know me know that it’s not a shock when I tell people I like caves. I like all nature, but caves are just super cool. They are nice and cool in the summer and warm in the winter and they provide a habitat to numerous types of birds, fish, and other animal life. Not only that but they were formed a long time ago.

Turns out the Mayans though they were pretty cool too. They believed that the Gods of the underworld were down there somewhere and they burned an offering before they would enter for protection.

Packages

So before I talk about the cave itself undoubtedly somebody will come across this page when they are confused about that Rio Secreto is offering. Like all tourist things in this area they seem to sell a confusion about of packaging instead of just charging in admission.

The cheapest package gives you a tour of the wet cave and some food. For people short on time this is probably the best options.

The Plus package gives you the above plus a bit of a bike ride, a walk though a dry cave, but the best part – you get to rappel down into another cave. This package cost $20US more in December 2020 and I thought it was well worth it. The whole thing takes about 5 hours.

The top level packages goes deeper into the cave and you also get to ride mountain bikes inside the cave. I cannot comment on this as I did not do it.

The bike ride was on pretty cheap (read old and needing work) equipment – but it is a short part of the whole experience. Perhaps my only complaint would be that they need better bikes. The rappel however is just fantastic. It’s about 15m straight down. If you have never done it before, there is a personal at the bottom that controls who fast you release the rope so he won’t let you fall too far.

The tour provides you with life jackets, helmets with head lamps, and a wet suit. The water is fairly cool so the wet suit is a good idea. There are plenty opportunities to just float around in the water and there is a section where you all turn off your lights and you can see what it would be like to discover the cave without a headlamp.

You are prohibited from taking a phone or a camera so the pictures above are taken by a professional photographer. The only downside to this is to get access to the photos you either pay $25US for one or $99US for all of them which I find to be a bit steep.