Tulum Skin Care, Knick-Knacks, Snacks, and more
This will be my final post about our Tulum vacation (I still miss it!). I’ve already written about the delicious meals we ate on our trip. Now I’m here to share the souvenirs and other goodies that we brought home.
First up: Mexican beauty products!
Our hotel kindly provided us with natural insect repellent, though we didn’t end up needing to use it. Fortunately, the ocean breeze helped keep mosquitoes away. And the couple of times that we visited non-breezy areas, we tended to be in the water, away from those motherfuckers. So I brought the two bottles of repellent home and have tried it out a couple times. The mosquitoes aren’t too bad here yet, but I do think it helped keep them away from me. We’ll see how it performs once we get deeper into swampy mosquito season.
On our shopping excursion to the Tulum town center, I spotted a beauty store called La Madre Tierra. Upon entering, I was thrilled to find that it was air conditioned. The store was SUPER cute and smelled amazing, packed with locally-made products featuring natural ingredients. I picked out a depigmenting and regenerating face mask and a bar of activated charcoal soap. I wish I had bought more things there!
The shop offers maybe six to eight formulas of this unique type of mask. The key ingredients in the mask that I selected are tepezcohuite (a local plant with skin regenerating properties), banana, and bergamot. The mask comes in a brown pellet form that looks rather unfortunate, but contains enough product for four uses. You slice off a quarter of the pellet, mix it with water to create a paste, then apply to your face and let it sit based on the timing written inside the scroll. Then you rinse. I haven’t tried the mask yet, but can’t wait to see how it works!
The Cancun airport has a lot of colorful shops where you can spend more money on your way out of Mexico. While wandering the terminal as we waited to board our flight, I checked out a Bloomish kiosk selling beauty products. The brand name sounded familiar—I had noticed a Bloomish store along the drive to the airport. I ended up picking out two sheet masks (charcoal and cool face) and a really cute bar of avocado soap. Their soaps are all adorable! I was quite tempted to spend a lot of money there.
The Knick-Knacks
I love a knick-knack. It’s so fun to collect little doo-dads on our travels! While wandering the main drag in Tulum, we found a large shop filled to the brim with cute, brightly colored souvenirs. A lot of the shops in town were kinda the same, but this place had offerings that were a little more upscale. We bought a bunch of items there to add to our home decor:
The cat figurine is meant to sit on the edge of a shelf with a leg dangling down, like so:
The Circle K Snacks
As we neared the end of our time in downtown Tulum, we decided to check out the snacks at a Circle K. Thankfully, the place was heavily air conditioned…I had hit my heat limit during our wandering. We always like to buy local chip flavors when traveling, so we picked out a few bags, as well as a couple of sweet treats for me. The chocolate treats were perfect sweet snacks (I do love a marshmallow filling!). The chorizo and chipotle chips didn’t taste very good, but the Adobadas ones were tasty. We still have to try the other two flavors.
The Airport Treats
We had plenty of airport shop browsing time before our flight, so I bought some additional edible goodies to bring home. I got two bags of Mexican coffee (that price tag you see is in pesos, not USD), a bag of caramel candies, a variety pack of mini Mexican chocolates, and a bag of spicy, chewy candies. I’ve already gone through the Cafe Ajal coffe and liked it; the dark roast is good as well. We’ve been enjoying the chocolates, but the caramels are so-so; they come with a papery layer on the top and bottom that imparts an odd texture to the candy. We haven’t opened the spicy chewies yet, but they look promising!
That’s a wrap on my Tulum vacation blog posts! Thanks for following along, and enjoy the rest of your June!