Tulum or not Tulum

A quick post today. First, greetings to my family in Berkeley, who were all together today for Grammy's funeral, which I unfortunately had to miss. You guys were all over my thoughts today. I was remembering that the last conversation I had with Grammy was about her honeymoon, which was in Mexico. I guess she and granddaddy ran into a boy along the way whom they knew from Texas and he showed them around for a while. So, cosmic coincidences in space and time today, as I write from Mexico.

The Yucatán Peninsula is way different from the typical border towns in Mexico I'd been to before-- this is the Caribbean! The sand is white, the tourists are from all over the world, and the ocean is turquoise and warm. You don't even need a snorkle to see the fish swimming around you in the clear water. We have stayed away from the touristy areas nearby (ahem, Cancun, ahem) and have stuck to smaller places, like Tulum, which is about a 2 hour bus ride south of Cancun.

A quick note about Mexico, by the way. While it has kind of a bad rap in the US, let me just say that in comparison with just about every other Latin American country I've been to, this is about the most orderly, efficient, and clean one of the lot. It's so interesting how relative everything is: some Americans may consider Mexico a bit tawdry from their perspective, but this is a very wealthy, prosperous place in comparison to its neighbors to the south.

Tulum's attractiveness lies in the fact that not only do you have a white sand beach and turquoise waters, you also have amazingly photogenic ruins perched just above it all. Here is a picture of my college friend and travelling buddy Anne in Tulum.

We also went to Chichén Itzá, recently voted one of the new 7 wonders of the world. It did not disappoint. It's really well-preserved, and all the stones are intricately carved with a ton of different friezes. So the structures are super dramatic from afar, but then you look closer and you can see all the details, and the amazing work that went in to building them.

Then we cooled off with a dip in the 60 m deep cenote, which is a natural well in a limestone cave (there are a bunch of them nearby). Many were used for Mayan rituals, and some of them have been dredged recently, and they've come up with a ton of skeletons (they threw people into them to ask the gods for rain) and gold and precious stones. And you can swim in them!

People! Mexico is like paradise, and it's a 4 hour plane ride away from most of you! You cannot pass this place up!