Day 4 - Akumal
After another lazy morning, we
thought it was time to get a grip and explore some nearby beaches.
We were told that you could
pick up a Collectivo from the end of the road that would take you on a 30 minute
journey to Akumal which had a lovely beach.
The minivan turned up
immediately but as we slid open the door, we found no seats available. As there
was no headroom to stand, we tried to squeeze in and sit on the floor, on our
knees. This is not an easy task for a very VERY inflexible Glenn.
We bumped along for a bit until
a lady got off and vacated a seat. We (me and another passenger) helped Glenn
to his feet so he could be more comfortable. Believe me, manners aside, it was
better that he took the seat rather than me.
Another 10 minutes and another
seat became available. By this time my ankles were numb and I had the imprint
of the bus floor pattern on my legs.
We arrived at our destination
and set off in the direction we thought would lead us to the beach, it didn’t!
after about 15 minutes of walking in the blazing sunshine, we stopped at a shop
for water and was told it was totally in the other direction.
Retracing our steps (becoming a
bit of a habit) we finally found ourselves at a lovely, not too overcrowded bay
with fishing boats and palm trees you could seek some shade from. After a
‘welcome to Akumal’ beer, we found some shade, donned our masks and hit the
water.
We had heard there was a chance
of seeing turtle grazing on the seagrass and to our delight, Glenn spotted one
within about 2 minutes of entering the water.
The turtle wasn’t so skittish
as others had been so we hung around watching it at a respectable distance for
quite some time. Only disturbed when another turtle came hurtling in my
direction and I had to practically climb over Glenn to get out of its way.
A few other snorkelers came
along and we were afraid that we were crowding the poor fella so headed off to
see what else we could find. This turned out to be a big Barracuda! I signalled
to Glenn who came over and we both spent some time at a VERY respectable
distance watching it before we headed off.
Our final spots were a Puffa
fish and a Stingray! Brilliant! Who needs to pay all of that money to scuba
when you have all of this for free?
We left the water feeling very
upbeat, we were finally starting to like Mexico. Just a shame we didn’t have
Glenn’s GoPro which we would be sure to bring with us next time.
The rest of the day was spent
reading and spotting turtles coming up for air, we must have counted about 5!
We didn’t want to leave it too
late to make the journey home as we didn’t know what time things stopped
running. Around 5pm, we headed back up to the highway where there were waiting
Connectivo’s and were quickly ushered onto a bus with available seats. We
waited for it to fill up before we headed back to Del Carmen.
We arrived back at the resort
and decided to stay out and head straight for dinner. The restaurant from the
previous night had a sister restaurant, a bit closer so as we both wanted to
try Mexican food again we headed there.
Glenn really enjoyed his dish
but I didn’t enjoy mine, a bit greasy and the beans were very over cooked and gluey.
We should have gone back to the original place!
Not fancying any of the
over-crowded bars full of brash Americans, we picked up some supplies and
headed back to our apartment for the night.
Day 5 – Tulum
Today’s adventure would be
another collectivo to another beach called Tulum. This one had ancient ruins
located just off the beach.
Opting not to sit on the floor
of the overcrammed bus, we stood with our heads and shoulders bent for a while
before two seats became available. As we are the last stop out of town, we were
to lean that the buses would always be full.
We arrived and for a change,
headed in the right direction towards the beach. We had been walking 20 minutes
with no sign of the road ending, so stopped at a nearby restaurant to enquire.
It turns out that we had
another 3k to walk! We ordered a ‘welcome to not quite there yet’ Tulum beer
and waited to see if Collectivo’s were passing and watched nearby travellers
thumbing a lift, without much success.
We finished our beers and
hailed a taxi and after some negotiation got in and headed to the beach. Again,
very pretty and much longer than Akumal. We found some shade, went for a dip
and then a long walk along the beach to dry off and see if we could find the
ruins.
We eventually found them way
off in the distance and has we didn’t have our camera with us, we opted to head
back to our spot where we spent the afternoon reading and taking the occasional
dip
Another collectivo home, we
showered and went in search of an Argentinian restaurant with good reviews. A
bigger schelp which took us passed the original Mexican restaurant. Weirdly,
despite all the fancy hotels here, the pavements are very bad, cracked with
holes and very slippery making it much harder work.
We arrived at a very empty
restaurant. Given the walk, we decided to give it a go anyway, took our seats
and ordered our steaks.
The restaurant started to fill
up and we were quickly given our meals. It was pretty good, but not brilliant!
We got talking to the Argentinian waitress who told us that the meat was
actually from the US. She also gave us some tips on other beaches we might want
to explore.
Finishing our meal and not
fancying the long walk home, we treated ourselves to a taxi to take us.
Day 6 – Akumal Again
Once again it was another lazy
morning catching up with E-Mail’s/Facebook and getting up to date with our
blog, you may have noticed we are firing them out now. Around midday Shell prepared some food for
the beach and we headed to the mini-bus stop.
We didn’t have to wait long for
the bus, but once again it was full so we had to stand bent almost double with
no air-conditioning present. Riding
along for a bit a seat came free for Shell, however when more seats came
available I let the women take them as it appears that the locals aren’t so
chivalrous!
It was a very hot, sweaty and
uncomfortable ride down the road (about 25km) and we were glad to get off. We then had a short walk to the beach where
we stopped at the bar/restaurant to rehydrate after sweating so much on the
mini-bus ride.
When we felt refreshed enough
we made our way down the beach to see if we could find a shady spot, we couldn’t
so we figured we would go snorkelling and hopefully we would find some when we
came out.
Both feeling really excited
about what we would see this time and with a fully charged Go-Pro to hopefully
capture some nice turtle action we donned our masks and snorkel’s and headed
into the sea. Once immersed we found
that as there was a bit of a wind and a few waves the silt was kicked up and
our visibility was very poor.
We swam around for a while
seeing nothing but a few fish so we headed out further hoping that the water
would become a bit clearer. The water
was still pretty murky so unless we passed directly overhead of a turtle we
were not going to spot them. After ½ hour of spotting nothing of note we headed
back to shore a little disappointed and why I have no photos of turtle action
for the blog L
On a positive note, after we
got out of the water a shady palm tree had become free so we set ourselves up
underneath it (sounds terrible doesn’t it!!).
For the rest of the afternoon, we spent reading and enjoying Shell’s ham
and tomato sandwiches until we felt it was time to go home.
As the colectivo’s were waiting
for passengers at the top of the road we got a seat each and the journey back was
far more pleasant. Once we were dropped off, we headed for the supermarket as
we thought as we were in Mexico and we had a kitchen at our apartment, that I
would cook up my now famous Chile instead of going out to eat. So, we picked up the ingredients I needed
(along with more wine and beer) and then schlepped it back to the apartment.
In the early evening, I cooked
up my chili whilst Shell showered and then played some music from artists that
would be playing Boomtown in the summer, we then relaxed until we felt
hungry. Once again (if I say it myself) the
chilli turned out pretty well, despite not quite having the ingredients I usually
used and we washed it down with red wine.
For the rest of the evening we
watched a special forces recruitment series that Shell had downloaded on her
Ipad, before turning in for the night.
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