Tulum

Tulum Catches Your Dreams.

Tulum is a long narrow strip of land at the end of the Yucatán. It is a 2 hour drive from Cancun airport, and you have to be careful enroute as the police are corrupt as the day is long. One year we got stopped for no reason. The policeman, enforcer of the law, if you want to call him that, said my husband was not wearing his seatbelt “properly”. He took my husband’s license (on a Friday) and said he would return it in court on Monday…...all the while speaking “no English“. EOS, I offered him $20 and he said “OK… This time“. He spooked me and every time we passed his station, and he was always there, with a bunch of other “policemen“, I got nervous. I stopped wearing any jewelry to Mexico. (Same in Mexico City.) The extent of what I wear is a Fitbit and my gold wedding band. My husband refuses to obey the speed limit and he does 120 km/h when the sign says 80, but we are more or less keeping up with the traffic, and we know money can buy you out of anything here. I do not feel safe here. I met a woman in Mexico City last year. She is Mexican, from Cancun. She is the Guest Relations Manager at the Four Seasons Hotel. Her license plate says CA (Cancun). She was stopped by the police one night because her plate did not say DF (District Federale, which is the tag for Mexico City). The police actually escorted her to the ATM to withdraw money to give to them. She was freaked out. Just another case of extortion in Mexico. BUT we have gone back to Tulum five years in a row. Once you make the turn into the actual strip of Tulum, a tiny little road (if you can call it that) cut through the jungle, it is a different world. One side is the sea with little hotels, and the other is pure jungle with small restaurants inserted here and there. Each year there are more and better ones. Chefs come from Mexico City and some are great. This year a caravan of food trucks popped up. The boutiques all carry the same items more or less. It is difficult to spend money here. Food is very cheap and very excellent. The beach resort area in Tulum is five miles long of pure soft white powdery sand. The sea temperature is a bit chilly, but it is the hard packed bottom where you can walk out and out and out and the water is only up to your thighs. The sea just keeps rolling in, and this year it brought with it an excess of seagrass. The beach workers, of which there were many, try to keep the beach clean, but it is an impossible task. Buy a bobcat.....and not one indigenous to the jungle! Our hotel of choice is BE TULUM. This is our fourth year at this hotel. We did try another hotel once, also a high-end hotel, and it just didn’t make it. Be Tulum is very isolated and at the far end of the strip. It is a special place. It has a great vibe. It seems to have emerged into the “It” place. On Saturday and Sunday, people migrate from all over to spend the day at the beach here.

The beach beds, some of which are sun covered, and sofas and bean bag chairs are all available until about 11 am. Then it becomes whatever is available. The furniture is all covered with a clean fabric that is almost like a giant sarong. On top of that they put fresh towels. Great music plays all day. One day it is Latin. One day it is Israeli. One day it is Arabic. One day it is French. One day it is house. And on Sunday there is a live jazz band with a clarinet and an electric guitar. There is full beach service, but everything is done in a “Mexican minute”. You gear yourself to get used to that. The room at Be Tulum is a mixture of textures, all in the same color scheme. Natural. It is a superb sleeping chamber. There is distressed wood, woven straw, polished concrete, wooden fans, black out drapes, a huge wall of glass doors which turn to screens (where we could walk out onto the beach). The bathroom and dressing room is a big separate area. There’s a rain shower room in concrete with a wooden door and wooden towels shelves and a wooden niche. The W/C is a concrete room with incense burning. There is a huge single sink with faucets at either end. There is a lighted makeup mirror. The amenities are decent. Everything tends to be eco-friendly. They request that toilet paper go into a trashcan which is changed a few times a day. (Same as the boat in the Galapagos.) There are separate trash cans for trash and glass so you know they recycle. There is great closet space. The bedroom, which is part of the one huge room, has a woven cane dropped ceiling. It has a king bed with a quilted fabric headboard, 2 night tables, a sofa large enough for someone to sleep on, a bamboo framed floor mirror, built in wooden bookcases, a great big coffee table with my Nag Champa incense ready to light, and a huge red Mexican rug. Textures are interesting no matter where you look. The bed was super comfortable. The pillows were perfect. The room was cold at night.....so cold that we needed double quilts. Perfect for our needs. In previous years we have tried three other room types. Some had hammocks. Some had huge daybeds. Some had private pools. None of those things are things that we used, but all were magnificent. Oh, did I forget to mention that you are in the middle of the jungle. Really in the jungle. At night, around sunset, they burn tree resin, to clear the place of any insects…and it works. In four years, we have not been bothered by any nasty little critters. The staff has a great desire to accommodate. It just doesn’t always translate well. If this isn’t enough, breakfast is included and it is served until 11 AM, so no rush. The food is delicious. The food is fresh. I had a green shake every morning. Every other morning I also had a red beet shake. There were yogurt bowls with fresh homemade granola. There were açai bowls with fresh fruit. They offered eggs and guacamole and fruit bowls. There was guacamole toast with poached egg and cherry tomatoes. Fresh O.J. Really anything you could think of. There were 6 different kinds of coffee. The staff was very very very accommodating, but remember, everything is done in a Mexican minute. We passed lunch every day but twice. We walked over to Nomade (also owned by Be Tulum). We picked our fish from the variety of fresh fish or lobster that came in that day. The chef prepares it on the grill. That was our food of choice. The food is fabulous. The service is good. The view is perfect. There is also a variety of other foods (ceviche, baby calamari, guacamole) that were top notch. The wine was served cold and the margaritas were perfect. But we must not forget the brownie with the pistachio and the vanilla ice cream. Just warms my heart thinking about it. Across the road from Be Tulum, is their Spa. It is called YAAN. It is a delicious sanctuary. As I was sitting and waiting for the yoga teacher to arrive, I was watching the staff begin to burn the tree resin. It is called COPAL. They burn it in fires in stone pots. There are fans rotating and the leaves are magnificent and the structures are wood and elevated and the paths are stone and the trees reach high and the wind chimes are jingling. The spa offers cleanses, treatments in very comfortable and zen rooms, sauna, steam and hydrotherapy. Their yoga studio sits in the tree tops (photo below). I took one yoga class which was superb. I took another which was good. I tried a massage and I jumped off the table 8 minutes into the treatment. She was awful and had no idea what she was doing. (Had a great massage here last year.)

We will continue to return yearly and each year we increase by one day. Next year will be eight or nine. We love the hippie chic setting and we will return time and again.