Back in Tulum

I spent all of Friday travelling, from Livingston, through all of Belize, into Mexico, and up to Tulum. It was a very long day! At 7am I got the boat from Livingston to Punta Gorda in Belize. There I had to wait almost 2 hours for the next bus. The chicken bus took 6 1/2 hours to get to Belize City. From Belize City there was a nice Mexican bus going overnight to Cancun stopping in Tulum, but that was only leaving 3 hours later, so I had to wait again. Luckily I met a nice American mother and son at the bus station, so that I had someone to talk to and the wait felt shorter. After another 7 1/2 hour bus ride, including 3 stops, at the 2 border points and to pay for the bus tickets, I finally arrived in Tulum at 3 in the morning. I went looking for a hostel and finally got the last bed in one. I was able to lie down and sleep in a bed at last just before 4am!

The next day, I went to the beach and spent the whole afternoon lying in the sun, realxing and reading. It was the perfect thing to do after such an exhausting travelling day!

The night I spent in the hostel bar where I met some nice people and we had some beers together and told each other travelling stories. When the bar closed, 2 of us went to a bar across the street for another drink, but then we soon went to bed.

One reason I had come back to Tulum to spend my last few days was that I still had not been to a cenote. The cenotes are large holes in the ground filled with groundwater and usually leading to underwater caves (not sure how accurate this descripton is...). I found a couple more people that wanted to go visit one and we rented some snorkelling gear and got a taxi to the place. We went to one of the lesser known cenote, so that for most of the time we were all alone there. It was located in the forest and was very quiet and natural. Snorkelling we saw the rocks under water and many small fish swimming around us. It was a really nice activity for such a cloudy day when going to the beach was not an option.

Cenote Escondido

When we got back to the cenote we were all hungry, so we went and got some very good Mexican food.

Chilaquiles

Afterwards I had to go shopping since I wanted to get some more souvenirs and presents to take home. When it was time for dinner, I went to look for food with the English girl I went to the cenote with and we ended up with some really good street food. Wandering around a bit after eating, it was really busy in town and we even discovered a small funfare. Back in the hostel, we sat in the outside bar and had a few drinks.

Fun fair in Tulum

I had planned to go to the beach this morning, but it was too cloudy and cold for that. So I stayed in the hostel writing my blog and then hanging out in a hammock for probably the last time. I then went for another great Mexican lunch with 2 hostel friends, after which I got on a bus to Cancun, my last destination.