On to Little Stone Ceynote
Trip Start
Jul 01, 2005
1
2
6
Trip End
Jul 28, 2005
Tulum,
Mexico
Saturday, July 2, 2005
Getting to Tulum was easy - finding Little Stone Ceynote was another story. There are no street names and the house numbers don't go in numerical order. Roughly 45 minutes later of asking villagers and wandering later, we found it.
Popped over to Tienda Eddie, the mini-super by the house, to get our first taste of someone who spoke as poor English as we do Spanish. There was a lot of smiling and nodding and hand gestures. Everyone is being super, super nice. We were ravenously hungry after all of the walking in heat with backpacks, so we were pretty much grabbing any food we recognized. This meant that we got back to the house, set our food on the table, and stared at it quizzically. We'd gotten Corn Pops, cookies, tortilla chips, salsa, refried beans, milk, and tortillas.
It was already oppressively hot, so we tried to sleep through the worst of the afternoon heat. Moderate success. Went back to the main drag (the only drag) for supper at Charlie's. The food was mediocre, but the juices and flavored waters were good. Finally located a phone that will take the specific brand of phone card I picked up at the airport and an ATM that works. We decided to walk the whole drag, as that's what the natives seemed to be doing after the heat went down. Got a couple of sarongs that may or may not have been overpriced. Didn't bargain at all, though probably should have. $8 seems a bit high. Had a spot of ice cream and language barrier and came home by way of alleys and dirt roads the dogs, chickens, and children run down indiscriminately. It's the children that make me feel better about the abandoned cars and rubbish. They're all decently fed and happy.
We also think the fellow next door might run/participate in cockfights. There's no other reason to have that many roosters. You know that adage about roosters crowing only at
daybreak? Um, no. They never shut up. He also felt the urge to get on his jury-rigged loudspeaker system this afternoon while we were trying to sleep.
We are getting eaten by mosquitos, despite tons of deet, but Sarah has had many more problems than I have. Not very many people here speak English, even at the bus station (very different than Cancun). It's not as hot as Phoenix, but not very many places are air-conditioned, and it's reaaaaally humid, so we've gotten used to walking around sweating through our clothes. Tulum itself is fairly small, maybe a mile from end to end and pretty rural. A few other gringos in town, but we're kind of the outsiders. Especially as we're not just passing through. There were tourists on the main drag, but once we left the main drag, we were the only foreigners around.
