Landing at 9pm into Cancun the first thing to hit us was the humid heat! Quite a thwack and a shock after temperate Madrid. Clammy and tired we bundled ourselves into a taxi to our new home in Puerto Morelos for the next three nights to acclimatise.
Puerto Morelos is on the Caribbean coastline, part of the ‘Mayan Riviera’. A stretch of coastline that includes Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum – all places that have been inundated with tourists, travellers, party-goers, spring-breakers, spiritual-nomads and some crazies.
We’d chosen Puerto Morelos as it had the most fishing village vibe to it still and was thankfully, actually, chilled. With no preplanning for Mexico here we would get used to sweating constantly again and plan our next moves, all while doing very little.
Our plan was to leave the Caribbean coastline quickly to seek out more authentic Mexico – nothing felt quite real yet, so we decided to venture more inland. On our way we passed by Tulum for the afternoon and then stayed in a remote dome room in the jungle for two nights in Marcario Gomez.
This place and the neighbouring villages will be the overflow of Tulum soon, so to deal with the bursting capacity of town. As a result people are building, many trucks spewed along these smaller artillery roads with piles of concrete xxxxxx and breeze block. It’s coming.
We met a Londoner called Alex over breakfast, who had just moved his whole family to the area two months ago. In that time he had bought land, had started building his family’s new home and had bought them all Mexican passports. He spoke no Spanish, had drawn architectural drawings himself for the builders to work off and said he had found his community here. Delighted with the lack of building control, the cheap labour and government’s plan to reduce fuel to 10p a litre, Alex seemingly had not thought much about the impact of Tulum’s growth on the local community or nature. Alex then said the leaders of the world had it in for the middle classes, the covid 19 vaccine had increased the number of people with health issues in the world and that the Earth had never been healthier….
Moving swiftly away from our breakfast compadre we went to a AZULIK, a ‘natural’ design museum that pulled us to this area.
You are instantly immersed in an instagram haven which is breathtaking and beautiful. The museum consists of undulating curves of hand finished concrete, waves of bent bamboo and sways of luscious vegetation. It is magical, serene and playful. An incredible feat that in high season must be brimming with the elite of Tulum’s community. We were glad to come during low season as the space is definitely worth a visit. Though the website/designers chat of sustainable/blah blah blah, is definitely disputable. Nonetheless the place is inspiring and got Pippa’s creative juices churning.
The next day we went to Coba, our first Mayan ruin. Biking around the complex on bikes, felt a bike like an Indian Jones-type theme park in which you stumble on ruins in the jungle. As these ruines were uncovered relatively recently the stela carvings are mainly eroded which is a shame. We were off to some bigger ruins further inland so this was a good taster of Mayan culture but we’ll mention interesting snippets later on.
Jungle adventuring is sweaty work, luckily in the Yucatán peninsular there are hundred of cenotes – freshwater sinkholes perfect for dipping! These holes were considered by the Mayans as portals to the underworld and home to the water gods.
This was our first one and it was stunningly refreshing after our sweaty jungle adventures.
Lush.
