Tulum Adds A Bit of History to Yucatán’s Playground
By MARLA JO FISHER
The Spanish explorers were astounded by what they saw: a huge fortress looming over the turquoise Caribbean Sea, painted red, white and blue.
Today, 500 years after the Spanish conquistadors first sailed past, the Mayan ruins at Tulum have worn down to the gray limestone, but they still inspire awe and questions about the people who built them.
We almost skipped visiting Tulum, after some fellow travelers told me the ruins were small and not as impressive as those in other Mayan cities.
After all, it was a hot, hot, humid day and the prospect of tramping around ruins was a lot less appealing than lying under a palapa on our hotel beach in the tiny town of Akumal, and bathing in the warm Caribbean.
But I was ashamed to go home and admit to friends that I’d been too lazy to go to one of the most picturesque and visited tourist sites in all of Mexico, only a few miles away. So, we packed up our rental car and drove down the Mayan Riviera from our hotel.
And I’m glad we did.
When we arrived, at about 11 a.m., the air was thick with moisture and the sun was beating down on us like a physical assault. I was sincerely sorry I hadn’t heeded guidebook advice and gone first thing in the morning, when it was still cool. We paid about $5 to drive into the large parking lot, noticing several tour buses also parked.
Although it hasn’t been that long since Hurricane Wilma in 2005decimated Cancún to the north, there’s no damage here that I can see.
This is one of the most popular destinations for tours from cruise ships, and also for people visiting from all-inclusive hotels in Cancún, a two-hour drive north on Highway 307.
That perhaps explains why we were approached instantly by an extremely handsome huckster, who wanted to sell us a guide, or a timeshare, or something. I don’t know exactly what, because I told him “no thanks” repeatedly, until he finally went away, casting me resentful looks that made me feel guilty for refusing his spiel.
I have traveled all over Mexico but I have never seen so many hucksters as I saw in Cancún and the Riviera Maya. It seemed like you could hardly sit down for a minute without one plopping down at your table uninvited, acting like a long lost friend, and then launching into a pitch for a tour to a theme park, a snorkeling trip or you name it.
I fell in love with the Yucatán and plan to return, but that’s in spite of the endless pitchmen, not because of them.
Earlier that week, at the airport, I’d even seen one massaging the neck of a female tourist who seemed ignorant of the fact that he was about to hit her up to go to a timeshare presentation. I couldn’t help wondering why, even on vacation, you would let a total stranger massage you at a rental car counter, and figured she deserved to buy a timeshare.
In any event, we wandered past a small recently built concrete bunker complex of souvenir shops, trying to figure out exactly how to get to the ruins.
To our surprise, we looked up and saw a 90-foot pole on which were perched four men in brightly colored clothes. It turned out they were Papantla Flyers, Totonac Indians also known as voladores, who in a dance-like procession swing by ropes from the poles in an ancient fertility ritual. The four men represent earth, fire, water and air. One of their entourage walks around with a hat, collecting tips from the visitors.
We bought tickets at a kiosk to ride a cute trolley bus the three-fourths mile to the ruins, round trip for $2. Many people were walking, but as I already mentioned, we are lazy.
The trolley dropped us off at the ruins’ entrance, where we paid $4.50 for tickets to the archaeological site, after which we walked through a blissfully shady arcade of trees to the entrance. A ticket-taker, smoking a cigarette under a sign that said “No Smoking,” punched our tickets and waved us through.
I was glad I’d bought a bottle of water from a vendor outside, as the noonday heat was oppressive. Tulum means “wall,” and this was a walled city. We walked through a low limestone doorway in the wall, imagining it as the ancient Mayans would have done, and we were in Tulum.
On a Saturday, this small site had plenty of visitors speaking every language known to man, but it didn’t seem as packed as we’d been warned it might be. There was plenty of room to walk around and look at the site.
This is the largest Mayan city built on a coast, and was settled between A.D. 900 and 1200, later than most of the other great cities such as Palenque and Chichén Itzá.
The ancient Mayans had a fascinating and complex culture, with a glittering social life and detailed knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, back when Europe was still in the Dark Ages.
They built a series of extraordinary city-states throughout Mexico, Belize and Guatemala that still stand today, all constructed without using metal tools or the wheel.
Mayan artifacts have been found as far north as the early Anasazi pueblo dwellings in the American Southwest, indicating that their trade routes extended thousands of miles.
It’s unfortunate that Spanish conquerors destroyed nearly all the Mayan books, written in hieroglyphics – as a result, so many things about this culture remain a mystery today.
Tulum’s most imposing building is known as El Castillo (The Castle) and its image is familiar to anyone who’s ever seen advertising for Mexican tourism – it is one of the country’ most recognizable symbols. Experts believe it was a temple, and that it may have also served as a lighthouse or beacon from its perch.
And the ocean breeze wafting from the area around the tower was a welcome relief.
In the past, visitors were allowed to climb the ruins, but now you can only look from the path.
We made a cursory examination of the other buildings, mostly temples and watchtowers, but the moment we stepped away from the ocean breezes the heat returned and we had only one thought: Get to the beach.
Stepping past El Castillo, we found a short walkway leading to a staircase with about 50 steps down to a perfect pocket beach. We were wearing our bathing suits under our clothes, and quickly stripped down and got into the cooling water. Aaah. I wondered if I could just stay in the water all day, instead of walking back in the heat.
After a half-hour or so, we’d cooled off enough. We watched a bank of nearly black clouds move swiftly overhead, seemingly from nowhere. Greatly to our astonishment, it started raining.
We hustled back up the staircase with our clothes and towels, but stayed in our bathing suits as the warm tropical rain gently fell.
We strolled toward the exit with the rain delicious on our skin, getting some stares from people who maybe didn’t think we should be walking around in our bathing suits. But I couldn’t see any reason to get dressed until it stopped raining.
We took the cute little trolley back to the entrance plaza as the rain ended.
We put our clothes back on, brushed off the soft, white, powdery sand, and headed back to the car.
I was curious to see the town of Tulum, which is just south of the ruins, so we drove down Highway 307 until we got there. I’d heard Tulum was a hippie paradise. My best friend spent her honeymoon here, in a sand-floor palapa beach hut with no electricity. The town seemed to be just spread out along the end of the highway. This is literally the end of the road, the end of the heavily promoted Riviera Maya coastal tourist zone, and the start of the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, a wilderness area of very limited development.
Just before we entered the town of Tulum, we were stopped by an Army checkpoint. The soldiers asked us where we were going, and then waved for us to pass. I wondered what they were looking for. Drugs? Other contraband?
There were some cute restaurants and shops, but nothing I’d go out of my way to come back for. It became apparent that the action here is at the beach, not in the town.
Then we turned down a beach road and found Cabañas Copal, one of a string of eco-resorts along the beach. In a heavily forested area, the open-air natural wood lobby of the small resort led into a woodsy restaurant, and then to a sand path that leads to the beach.
Along the short walk, we passed the Mayan spa, with massages and special Mayan treatments. Incense was burning and a mellow-looking fellow in dreadlocks seemed to be painting something. He didn’t look up when we passed.
Then I saw the round thatched huts, made from tree branches. Each individual hut had a tile floor and a bed with mosquito netting, and most had attractive tiled private baths. The one I peeked into had a spectacular ocean view.
Down at the beach below, reached by a short trail, people were lounging on covered daybeds. The ocean surf was pounding yet another lovely beach, this one deserted.
I inquired, and the desk clerk told me the room I peeked into rented for $85 a night. It would be delicious for people seeking privacy, as long as they don’t mind that the beach is clothing-optional.
The waves seemed a bit too extreme, though, for me to bring my small children, even though I saw some kids perched happily in a hot tub overlooking the beach, next to a rustic bar.
There’s no electricity here, but I did see a fire extinguisher, I guess for the candles.
While we were looking around, my friend Laura booked a tour of the nearby Sian Ka’an reserve, which has been protected from development by the Mexican government. This region has developed as an international destination so fast that the reserve was set aside to protect the vanishing wilderness.
This is the kind of seclusion I’d been dreaming about. This was the Tulum of my dreams.
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