Tulum: A Fantastic Beach Destination
Long post ahead!
On May 29 we headed to Tulum, located in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, for a wonderful weeklong vacation. We had such a truly fabulous time! We took a three-hour flight from Dulles to Cancun, then got picked up at the airport by a driver that our hotel had arranged for us. The drive to our accommodations, Mezzanine Hotel in Tulum, took about an hour and forty-five minutes with a little traffic. So, not a terribly long trip to get to this:
Day One
Mezzanine Hotel is a boutique beachfront hotel with nine rooms located inside Parque Nacional Tulum. The park entrance is monitored by the National Guard, which inspects cars entering the park and prohibits plastic bottles—so make sure to bring a refillable bottle. There is a park entry fee of 61 pesos (which our hotel deducted from our bill) and you have to wear a wristband to show that you’ve paid your fee. Park entry is open to all during the day, but after 5pm you have to have a hotel or dinner reservation to enter. Note that pets are not allowed inside the park.
Mezzanine Hotel is super cute! We were greeted immediately upon arrival, offered a delicious welcome smoothie, and asked about our preferences for treats like coffee, tea, and aromatherapy scents for our room.
Our suite wasn’t ready yet, so we sat on the deck of Mezzanine Restaurant, sweating in the heat. Mexico was experiencing a heat wave during our visit, and it took awhile for me to get accustomed to it. However, the ocean breeze helped immensely! The restaurant’s deck has an incredible view, which was a welcome heat distraction:
Once our suite was ready, the concierge gave us a tour of the space and we settled in. Our suite turned out to be the best one in the hotel! We had a private deck with a plunge pool and full ocean view:
I rested in the room and then we got ready to head downstairs for our first dinner at the hotel’s Thai restaurant. My first night’s outfit felt totally perfect for a dinner in Mexico:
For my first cocktail of the vacation I chose a spicy margarita, which came with mezcal instead of tequila. Delicious, fresh, and totally hit the spot!
Side note: we had a lot of really great food and drinks on our vacation, so I think I will do a separate post with photos. I don’t want to make this post overly long, which I know it is going to be anyway. 😛 I went with my usual Thai food order: pad thai with tofu, which was served in a banana leaf vessel. Everything we had for dinner that first night was incredible! As was this v-shaped atmospheric phenomenon that materialized when the sun was beginning to set (our view faced east, so we didn’t see the actual sunset):
After dinner, we did a bit of stargazing on the deck and then decided to go to bed after a long day of travel.
Day Two
One of my favorite things about our hotel was that every morning, they delivered a basket of coffee and tea (whatever you prefer) to a table outside our room around 6:30am. For some reason, we naturally woke up early every day of our trip, and I looked forward to the coffee basket each morning. What an absolute delight to be able to sip coffee on our deck while watching the sun rise:
The restaurant opens for breakfast at 8am, so John went for a beach walk while I enjoyed my coffee. Then we ate a wonderful first breakfast (me: avocado toast: John: oats with yogurt and fruit) on the restaurant patio. Afterward, we went out to explore a bit of the beach near the hotel.
We really just wanted to relax on our first full day of vacation rather than plan some kind of excursion. So that’s exactly how we spent our day. We did, however, talk to the concierge and planned an excursion for the next day. And we enjoyed some time in our plunge pool, which was nicely shaded each afternoon:
I can’t not mention this, because it is something I will never forget: later in the afternoon, while I was showering before dinner, John informed me that Tr*mp had been convicted of his first criminal trial in New York. !!!! Due to the timing of the trial, I figured we would hear the verdict while on vacation. I was VERY pleasantly surprised by the outcome! Obviously we had to cheers to his conviction at dinner that night. 🙂
For dinner, we headed to Mi Amor Hotel, a sister hotel to Mezzanine that’s located just a short walk down the park street. We ordered several vegetarian small plates to share; everything was beautiful and tasty but it was too much food for the two of us. We were pretty stuffed, but had a really nice time. After dinner, we returned to our hotel and stargazed from our deck before going to bed.
Day Three
Coffee and sunrise again. I could do this every day.
For our first excursion of the trip, the hotel concierge had arranged for a driver to pick us up at 9am. The driver arrived promptly and drove us about 40 minutes to Cenote Sac Actun, which the concierge had recommended. Sac Actun is located inside Dos Ojos, a cenotes park that contains numerous individual cenotes, many of which are interconnected. Each cenote inside the park has its own entrance and entry fee.
So….what IS a cenote? Basically, it’s a freshwater-filled sinkhole. Cenotes almost exclusively exist on the Yucatán Peninsula, though there are some similar natural features around the globe. The current estimated number of cenotes in the Yucatán is 10,000! They are literally all over the place there; you see signs for cenotes all along the drive from Cancun to Tulum.
We arrived at the Sac Actun entrance, paid our entry fee, and were given the required life jackets. We had brought our own snorkeling equipement and waterproof phone cases, so we didn’t need to rent any of that gear. We got to go down to the cenote entrance and test out the water temperature to see how comfortable we would feel in it. The water was such a beautiful turquoise!
They had wetsuits available for folks who want some insulation in the cold water, so I donned one for the first time in my life:
Four other Americans were in our tour group as well, and once we were all settled with our gear, our guide took us down to the cenote. I love being an early bird for this type of activity, because you beat the crowds. It was fantastic to be basically the only tour group in the cave for the majority of our time there!
The water was indeed cold, which actually felt really refreshing after sweating outside while gearing up. Our guide first took us into a cavern with a hole in the top and sun shining down onto a tree root inside:
We paused here so our tour guide could take photos of each couple posing:
From there, we swam back the way we came and then entered the labyrinthine cave. I was grateful for the life jacket; I’m not a great swimmer, so it helped immensely. I would have been exhausted at the end of the tour had I not had flotation assistance.
Here’s a selfie I took about ten minutes into our tour…we cannot stop laughing at it. I was trying to manage swimming in a wetsuit and life jacket while dealing with the snorkel (which I didn’t end up using), mask, and phone case around my neck. It was a lot to handle and my face pretty much says it all, lol.
I did finally get a handle on it all, minus the snorkel. I wished I had left that damn thing in the car.
Our tour guide gave us some history of the cenote and pointed out some interesting features as we floated along. He pointed out a bat nestled in a crevice, and it was so cute! We also heard and saw some other bats flying around throughout the tour.
Our guide shined his flashlight on this stalactite that looked like butter melting down from the ceiling:
This room was beautiful:
The stalactite growth is so incredible:
Strangely, I didn’t get creeped out during the Sac Actun cave tour. It only felt unsettling when I put my mask on and looked under the water. John was able to get some decent underwater photos…in this one you can kind of see how deep it is under us….*shudders*.
I did NOT want to think about what was under us while we were swimming around in the cave. People actually go scuba diving down there!!! NO THANK YOU.
Our guide also took photos of each couple in this photo opp spot:
Near the end of the tour, he told us he was going to take us into a secret spot because the tide was favorable (GULP). We swam into a smaller room, having to watch our heads so as not to knock into the stalactites framing the entrance. When we got inside, he had us gather in a circle and hold hands. Then he turned his flashlight off. We were left in utter pitch black for a minute. You rarely encounter that type of darkness. It was quite cool rather than creepy…only because it was temporary. Our guide also turned on a blue filter on his flashlight, then red:
Demonic…and I loved it. Our tour came to an end after about an hour and fifteen minutes, and I was grateful because I had been shivering in my wetsuit for the last third or so of the tour. Exiting the cenote into the hot, humid air actually felt nice (briefly).
What a fucking cool, unique experience that was! I highly recommend Sac Actun if you don’t mind swimming in cold water in a cave for an extended period of time.
After exiting the cenote, we returned our gear, tipped our guide, used the restroom, and hopped back in the car, where our driver had been waiting. He drove us back out the dirt road to our second and final stop within the park, Cenote Nicte-Ha.
Nicte-Ha is a beautiful, open-air cenote with crystal clear water and plentiful greenery both inside the water and surrounding it. We paid our entry fee, got our life jackets, and hopped on into the water.
The water was cold, but not as cold as Sac Actun. No wetsuit needed here!
There was a platform from which you could jump into the water—about a 10-foot drop. I went to the platform and considered jumping, but chickened out. I was honestly just impressed with myself for even considering it. John, however, made the leap twice!
We had the place mostly to ourselves, though another couple came by for a few minutes. We chatted with them and then enjoyed the peace and quiet after they left.
Our driver was kind enough to photograph us floating in the water before we got cold and decided to call it:
Worn out after our cenote adventure, we arrived safe and sound back at the hotel and went to the restaurant for a well-deserved snack. Then it was time for a well-deserved nap.
For dinner that evening, we walked a few doors down to Hotel Diamante K to eat at Casa Maria Mexican Restaurant. We had checked out the menu while passing by on the way to Mi Amor; when we saw that they had pizza, we knew we had to go sometime. Upon arrival, we were thrilled to discover that their outdoor seating was right on the beach! Where else can you kick your flip flops off and dine with your toes in the sand?
The cocktails were fantastic, and the food was also very tasty. John got a ceviche and we split a pepperoni pizza, which TOTALLY hit the spot after an adventurous day.
The setting was so perfect that we lingered for a couple drinks, watched the horizon turn colors at sunset, and stargazed from our seats. An ideal ending to a very fun vacation day.
Day Four
On Saturday, we decided to take a rest day at our hotel, since we had done an excursion the day before. We ate breakfast at the hotel, lounged around, read, started working on Murdle: Volume 1, walked around on the beach, and floated in the warm ocean.
Ocean time!
Housekeeping left us a very cute folded heart blanket on the bed that afternoon:
For dinner that evening, we went to Kogure Japanese Restaurant at PocNa Hotel, a short walk down the beach from our hotel. John got gyoza to start, and we each got a poke bowl (mine was veggie). Our meal was fine, but nothing special. For example, the tofu in my bowl was just plain cubes, not salted or seasoned with anything. It was our least favorite meal of the trip, but if that’s the worst meal we had, we were still eating quite well.
After dinner, we strolled back to our hotel, had a drink and shared a tasty Thai ice cream for dessert.
Day Five
Coffee and sunrise. Never got old.
Our plan for the morning was to walk up the beach to the Tulum Ruins and arrive around opening time. The ruins were about a mile from our hotel, and we didn’t have time to eat hotel breakfast before going. We slathered sunscreen all over ourselves and packed a backpack with bottles of ice water, then set out for the beach.
I was grateful for a bit of cloud cover on the walk, as it was already warm and humid outside. We took our shoes off and walked with our feet in the water, which definitely helped.
We put our shoes back on to walk upstairs to this lighthouse, which appears to have a cafe, gift shop, and restrooms coming soon. None of these facilities are operational just yet.
From there it was a short walk to the ruins entrance. We bought our tickets and headed on in to the archaeological site. What an impressive sight to behold. The Maya built these structures more than a thousand years ago!
Walking around the site was super hot; although it’s situated atop a bluff, you don’t get the ocean breeze unless you’re right by the edge. I was happy that all I wore was a bikini with denim shorts and a linen top to protect my skin from the sun. Plus a hat for more sun protection.
I thought this was a cool shot:
What a beautiful location the Maya chose to build their village!
A truly beautiful view:
I loved this view of the whole site, looking inland toward the jungle:
The Maya constructed this building atop a cenote:
By the time we left, about an hour and a half after the ruins opened, the place had begun to fill up with tour groups. I was glad that we went to see the ruins because it was a unique experience, but I was totally over being in the heat. I do not enjoy being covered in sunscreen and sweating my ass off on top of it.
Walking back to the hotel with our feet in the ocean felt amazing after being up on the hot bluff. On the way back, I had to have John take a pic of me by this Tulum sign:
We took it easy for the rest of the day and returned to Casa Maria for dinner, since we had enjoyed the setting so much the first time. Round two did not disappoint! The sunset colors were so beautiful, and we got to experience a stunning rose gold hour:
Day Six
Our second to last full day in Tulum. We woke up to the exciting news that Mexico had elected its first female president (and she’s Jewish) in its election the day prior! How cool to be in the country on such a momentous occasion!
We did another day of rest and relaxation at the hotel in the morning, starting with (of course) sunrise coffee and then hotel breakfast.
In the afternoon, we asked the concierge to call us a taxi, which we took to the Tulum town center so we could explore and do some souvenir shopping. Again, it was super hot away from the ocean breeze, so I was a little miserable. But we popped into some shops and then found a super cute local beauty store called La Madre Tierra that was, mercifully, air conditioned. I bought a couple items there and am sad that I didn’t buy more.
We needed to get a mineral sunscreen for the excursion we had planned for the next day, so we found this one by local brand Maya Solar at a pharmacy.
One shop in particular had a ton of cute souvenirs that we liked, and we ended up buying a whole bunch of things there. After hitting up an ATM for more pesos, I had hit my heat limit. We spotted a Circle K (also air conditioned…what a relief) and went inside to investigate their snacks. We ended up buying a whole bunch of treats there. Then we grabbed a taxi and headed back to the hotel.
We went down to the hotel’s small pool to cool off and ended up chatting with another couple there and getting 2-for-1 happy hour margaritas. It was nice to meet other folks at our hotel, and the woman had actually stayed there multiple times. It’s always a good sign when a business has repeat customers!
For dinner that night, we ate at Mezzanine. I wore this new Beyond Yoga dress…their material is SO soft!!
We had another fantastic Thai meal, of course. Literally everything we ate there was so good!
Day Seven
Final full day in Tulum. Boooooo. But we had chatted with the concierge the day prior about some potential activities and settled on taking a taxi to Yal-Ku Park, a lagoon in Akumal that connects with the ocean and has good snorkeling. We always like going to places when they first open so we can beat the crowds, so we didn’t have time for hotel breakfast. Our taxi drove us about 40 minutes to the park, for which we had bought entry tickets online the day before.
We chose standard tickets, which allow you to explore the lagoon on your own. Those tickets do not permit you to swim past the lagoon into the ocean without a tour guide, which requires a different type of ticket. And the lifeguards will blow the whistle if you start to venture past the border without a guide—we heard whistles blown on folks a couple times.
We got outfitted with life jackets (well, for me, anyway) and rented a locker to keep our things while we snorkeled. Then we rinsed off in the outdoor showers—required for all visitors—and headed to the lagoon with our snorkeling gear. This time I just used my mask and not the snorkel, and I had an easier time.
The lagoon is so beautiful!
We didn’t see many fish for the first half of our time swimming around the lagoon. But once we got closer to border that the lagoon shares with the ocean, we started seeing quite a few. It was so cool!
I didn’t love all the seaweed in the lagoon, but I got used to it after awhile and learned to enjoy floating in the refreshing water:
Also, I got a better handle on taking selfies using my waterproof phone pouch:
The swim back to the entry dock was a little tough for me; I think the tide must have been going out. But we made it back, after spending about an hour and a half in the water. The place had begun to get a little crowded by then, so of course we were happy that we had gone early.
We asked the front desk to call a taxi for us, and took a photo by the entry sign while we waited for the car.
Yal-Ku was yet another unique adventure! How often do you get to swim in a lagoon that’s partly freshwater and saltwater?! We were so glad that we picked this place as our final excursion of the vacation.
John practiced his Spanish with our taxi driver on the way back to the hotel, and we ended up making arrangements with him to drive us to the Cancun airport the next morning.
For our final dinner in Tulum, I wore this cute dress that I got from Target last summer:
We ate at Mezzanine again, and I got the same pad thai with tofu that I ate the first night. Everything was so good, as always! To bring the trip full circle, I kicked off our final dinner with the same spicy margarita that I ordered as my first vacation cocktail:
Cheers to our last dinner in Tulum!
The sunset colors were so pretty during dinner:
After dinner, we headed up to the room to pack and get ourselves ready for our trip home. SAD.
Day Eight
Our flight out of Cancun was at 11:15am, so we had our taxi driver pick us up at 7:30am to ensure we would have enough time to get to the airport. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to eat hotel breakfast that morning, so I had saved half my pad thai from dinner to eat as breakfast. Cold pad thai is actually a tasty breakfast, IMO!
Here’s our final sunrise of the trip:
The taxi driver came right on time, and we loaded our luggage and said our goodbyes to the hotel staff. The drive back to Cancun went smoothly, with very little traffic. I did some more souvenir and snack shopping at the Cancun airport; the terminal we were flying out of actually had a ton of fun stuff. Then it was time to board our flight, which took just under three hours to return to Dulles.
Overall, we had a very fun and successful trip! We loved our hotel so much and would absolutely return. I think it helped that we visited in the off-season, so nothing was super busy. We made dinner reservations a couple times, but we really didn’t need them. In the high season (winter), I can see advance reservations being necessary.
I did have a couple minor quibbles. One thing about our hotel location is that I felt slightly trapped in the national park without a car. We had considered renting a car, but scrapped the idea and decided just to hire drivers and taxis. I would have preferred not to have to rely on the hotel to arrange transportation for us every time we wanted to go somewhere, but that’s because we really like our independence while traveling. It would have been nice to have been able to just hop in a rental car and go somewhere whenever we wanted, but not having one certainly wasn’t a dealbreaker.
Minor quibble number two is that our hotel doesn’t have a self-serve filtered water bottle filling station. Tap water is not safe to drink in Mexico. It was very hot during our trip and we drink a lot of water, so I felt like we were always going down to the restaurant to ask a staff member to fill our bottles with filtered water. Again, I don’t like having to depend on other people for things like that…but also not a dealbreaker.
Thank you for reading this extremely long blog post! Have you ever visited Tulum? If so, where did you stay and did you like it as much as we liked Mezzanine?