Tulum

Breakfast by the beach this morning as the sun rose (7:20 a.m.).

We took a taxi out to the Tulum archaelogical site which is situated up on a cliff looking out to the sea. The centrepiece of the ruins is the castle (El Castillo) and from here we took the wooden steps down to the beach for a lovely swim. 

Tulum was prominent in the 13th century as a seaport along this section of coast (from Honduras to the Yucatán) and was inhabited by about 600 people. 

We had arrived early so we avoided the crowds which started as we were leaving - and we had nice light in the morning too. There were some pretty big iguanas!

Afterwards, we walked out to the main road and a collectivo (local bus) came by which took us to the main town. A very helpful young woman gave us directions in Spanish to the post office - always on my to-do list! This one was in the back streets and was hard to pick - it looked like a little shop with an open counter to the dusty street. Really, I wonder if the mail will get home? An American woman down the street (she's married a Mexican and she was selling American-style clothes from a stall on the street - really, I'm sorry, but that really must be marrying down!?) - anyway, she was really nice and said she hoped we weren't in a hurry for the mail to arrive home ... 

She also told us where we could find a large supermarket - she said we might need to take a taxi,  but it was only 2 kms - we walked it easily and the walk through the 'real' Tulum as opposed to the 'tourist' Tulum was interesting.

We stocked up on water and got some cans of mixed drinks (30 pesos each - $US1.50!! - as opposed to the 160 pesos yesterday for the 2 margueritas we had at the hotel!!!) and some yoghurt for lunch. And we still had that nice blueberry muffin to eat!

We had a lovely afternoon relaxing on the beach. Had a leisurely time getting ready for dinner and walked down the main tourist strip until it started to get dark (about 7 p.m.). Then caught a taxi into Tulum town itself where we had been earlier in the day. I had booked Único restaurant for dinner and it was absolutely fabulous. Restaurant is one floor up above the shops - very smart. We had a table looking over the street. Lots of fun, excellent service, nice and cool with fans plus the breeze. We started with white truffle soufflé which we shared; then seared tuna for My Friend and lobster tortellini for me and then I had the most wonderful chocolate lava cake for dessert with vanilla icecream. They gave us a shot of some local liqueur (a bit like sambucca) - on the house. Great night. Taxi back (150 pesos but worth it to get away from the maddening crowd of our hip strip).