Day 20-21 Xpu-Ha and Tulum
Trip Start
Jun 26, 2007
1
49
60
Trip End
Ongoing
Xpuha,
Mexico
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Back in Mexico, after an easy border crossing most notable for the Belizian immigration officer trying his posh English accent when in conversation with me and my fellow British passengers. We were a bit disappointed that our trek leader got the departure tax completely wrong for leaving Belize, with it only being 40 Belizian Dollars and not the 64 Dollars quoted by Jennie. Money that could have gone towards a good night out in Caye Caulker, however I am sure that 24 belizian dollars will be well spent in Mexico.
While driving through Mexico, we get pulled over by the military for a random check. An inconvenience but we had nothing to hide except our Watermelon which has illegally crossed over four border crossings. Thankfully 10 minutes later, we were back on our bus and raring to go.
Nearing our final destination, we stopped at a supermarket for 20 minutes allowing people to change money at the bank, buy alcohol or visit an internet cafe. However when Mike never turned up after 20 minutes, we once again saw the impatient side of our trek leader, Jennie even though we knew he had walked 10-15 minutes down the road to get to a bank that exchanged travellers cheques. Why we are in such a rush is beyond me, but the group realise her heart isn't really in this trip but is on her forthcoming trip to Cuba. Anyway we end up driving down the road towards the bank and picked Mike up before making the short trip to Xpu-Ha.
We arrived at the sandy beach just as the sun was setting, but frustratingly we never got a chance to see it set as we had to unload the van and set up camp in our beach Palapas.
Beach Group Photos
Despite it's glorious surroundings we probably stumbled across our worse bathroom facilities, with it cold salty water showers and a toilet cubicle so small you had trouble closing the door. But at least it had toilet paper. That evening we went out for a pizza in a nearby town before coming back to the beach for a few beers, listened to some music, debated on how much we should tip our tour leader and watched the shooting stars in the brightly star-lit sky.Day 20 It was a relatively early start as we arrived at Tulum Ruins for 8am in the morning in order to miss the hoardes of tourists that show up around 10am. I can't say alot for Tulum ruins as we walked around for a whole 20 minutes before retiring at a beach, playing catch in the Caribbean Sea for our remaining time. However in hind sight and looking back at photos it is definitely a picturesque site with the ocean backdrop, athough this is our 5th Mayan Site of our trip, the group is definitely archaelogically burnt out.
Following the ruins tour was our additional activity 'the hidden world'. Costing us 350 Pesos we were treated to snorkelling in two caves. Surprisingly the water is very clear and you can see up to 6 or 7 metres down into numerous passages and home to a few catfish. Otherwise they isn't too much aquatic wildlife to admire but plenty of stalagmites, stalactitites to navigate around and the thick columns were 'mites' and 'tites' meet.
That evening we had a barbeque, and while Jenny was cooking we were all made to fill in the end of trip evaluation form, although I wasn't impressed that she (Jenny) sent this Irish girl travelling independently away after we invited her to join us.
Cave Snorkeling
Lets say she never came back. For the rest of the night we got the playing cards out and played the drinking game 'Ring of Fire' and by the end most of us were very drunk. Although I do remember some notable dares involving sucking peoples toes or licking their armpits and some terrible sinigng of our bus song (Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart). But I will let the photos do the talking.Day 21 - Final day and it wasn't easy getting up today. The party that started at 10pm last night is still going on 50 metres from our palapas with its repetative 'boom, boom,' bass beat. Our duties today was to tidy up and for the first time in 21 days the bus got a clean. We left the campsite shortly after 1pm before finally arriving in Cancun after 3pm. Jennie made a quick exit as well as Seung Young who had a flight to New York to catch.
So on our last night, only 6 of us went out for dinner, but the original plan of going out soon disappeared as the majority of the group had an early start the following morning. I ordered Fajitas and I swear I will not eat anymore flour tortillas for at least a year and not surprisingly no one ordered the fried black beans. Back in the hotel we exchanged photos before retiring to a comfortable bed for a few hours sleep.
4 of us were awake at 4.30am, to catch the bus at 5am. At the airport I said my final farewell to a group that were good fun. More will be mentioned in the following blog but for now I am conserving my energy for a long 36 hour trip to Auckland, New Zealand.
