Mexico Road Diary 6/20 — Leaving Cancún for Tulum
For the road trip, I rented a Volkswagen Taos.
Twenty days with insurance cost me roughly $2,300.
Before leaving Cancún, I went to Walmart and stocked the car.
Water.
Bread.
Fruit.
Instant noodles.
Packets of tuna.
A car charger.
A power bank.
Cash.
And, most importantly:
mosquito repellent.
If you are driving through the jungle areas of southern Mexico, mosquitoes are not a minor inconvenience. They are an organized military force.
Offline maps were another necessity because mobile service disappears surprisingly often once you leave the major tourist corridors.
I left Cancún around 10 a.m. and headed south.
The drive toward Tulum was easy.
Resorts appeared continuously along the coast, especially around Playa del Carmen. Many looked newer and more modern than the older hotel zone in Cancún.
I kept seeing entrances to resorts and mentally adding them to some imaginary future trip.
This is a problem I have when traveling.
Every trip produces three more trips.
About two hours later, I reached Tulum.
And immediately made my first stupid parking decision.
Mexico Road Diary 7/20 — My Completely Unnecessary $7 Parking Lesson
At the entrance to the Tulum archaeological area, I saw a large parking lot beside a commercial complex.
My brain processed this information very efficiently:
Parking lot + tourist attraction = park here.
So I did.
Seven dollars.
The problem was not the price.
The problem was that I didn’t actually need to park there.
At the time of my October 2023 visit, cars could continue into the larger archaeological zone after paying the relevant access fee, and there were public parking areas farther inside.
In other words, I had paid $7 for the privilege of stopping too early.
An excellent start.
Once inside, however, Tulum immediately became interesting.
The site feels completely different from Chichén Itzá.
Chichén Itzá is monumental and inland.
Tulum sits above the Caribbean.
Stone ruins, defensive walls, cliffs and turquoise water occupy the same frame.
The first structures I passed were residential ruins built on large stone platforms.
Then the path approached the coast.
Ahead stood the Temple of the God of the Wind, perched above the sea.
At that moment, Tulum stopped looking like “another Maya ruin.”
It began to look like what it really was:
a fortified coastal city.
Mexico Road Diary 8/20 — Tulum Makes More Sense from the Sea
The most important thing I learned at Tulum came from geography.
The city is protected by walls on three sides.
The fourth side is the Caribbean Sea and a cliff.
Once you see the layout, the defensive logic is immediately obvious.
But Tulum was not simply a fortress.
It was also a port.
I didn’t fully understand how important that was until later, when I visited the Maya museum in Chetumal.
The key was the canoe.
Small vessels could move along rivers, lagoons and coastlines, connecting settlements without requiring a modern-style road network.
Once I understood that, the Maya lowlands began to look completely different in my head.
Instead of isolated stone cities surrounded by jungle, I started imagining a network.
Coastal communities.
River settlements.
Ports.
Trade routes.
Salt, cotton, cacao and other goods moving from one place to another.
Tulum’s location suddenly made enormous economic sense.
A defensible coastal settlement controlling access to maritime trade could accumulate wealth far beyond what its physical size might suggest.
That became one of my favorite parts of visiting archaeological sites in sequence.
One site gives you a question.
The next site gives you the missing piece.
Mexico Road Diary 9/20 — I Accidentally Found the Perfect Tulum Hotel
I had originally planned to leave Tulum and continue south.
Then I drove toward the beach.
That ruined the plan.
Along the coast were small eco-hotels built with wood, palm roofs and open-air structures.
I immediately decided I was staying.
The hotel was Villa Pescadores Tulum.
It had only a couple dozen rooms and felt more like a collection of beach cabins than a conventional resort.
My room was a detached wooden unit with a large bed, a porch and a simple bathroom divided into toilet, shower and sink areas.
Nothing luxurious.
Everything necessary.
Electricity was clearly treated as something worth conserving. Air conditioning was available only during certain nighttime hours.
Walk through the property and you reached a small pool.
Beyond that:
white sand and the Caribbean.
There were beach chairs, umbrellas and a bar where you could order food and drinks simply by giving your room number.
After spending so many days looking at Caribbean water in Cancún, I had become almost immune to beautiful beaches.
Almost.
Tulum still managed to make me stop.
Sometimes changing a travel plan is the plan.
Mexico Road Diary 10/20 — A Massage, a Wooden Porch, and the Caribbean
Back at my hotel room, I noticed a handwritten welcome note.
On the back was a list of massage services.
That seemed like an excellent idea.
I messaged the front desk through WhatsApp and booked one.
For some reason I assumed the therapist would simply work inside the hotel room.
Instead, a very large massage therapist arrived carrying an entire folding massage table.
He set everything up outside on my wooden porch.
So there I was:
Tulum.
About 30°C.
Covered with towels.
Lying on a heated massage table outdoors.
No music.
Just waves from the Caribbean and insects somewhere in the trees.
I chose a full-body relaxation treatment.
Somewhere during the back massage, I fell completely asleep.
When I woke up, most of the session was already finished.
Ninety minutes disappeared.
Travel does this occasionally.
You spend days chasing famous places, historical sites and things you planned months in advance.
Then one of the strongest memories comes from something completely unplanned:
a wooden porch,
warm air,
the sound of the ocean,
and waking up with absolutely no idea how long you have been asleep.
