EditorDeb

Where is Deb now??

I am behind on posts, but that’s okay. When I get home, I’ll be able to add things I didn’t have time to do on the trip…like the Grand Cenote and Tulum. For tonight, I’m just doing a simple post on my new digs. I posted a picture on facebook of where I’m staying and I got a question as to what was on the bed. As a frequent traveler to Mexico, I’ve gotten used (and almost expect) towel art on the beds and in the bathrooms. This isn’t the norm for hotels north of the border other than maybe making the end of a toilet roll into a point as opposed to leaving it straight. Mexicans take their towel art seriously and are very good at it.

But let’s get back to the beginning of this post. Here is where I got off the bus and had about a quarter mile traipse to the taxi area to take me to my new digs.

Let me give you a little history of the morning when I thought I would have a leisurely breakfast and have plenty of time to catch a bus to the mystery destination. I was going through shops and taking my time, then stopped at the ADO bus station in Tulum to purchase my ticket to ____. I was informed it left in 10 minutes, otherwise I would have to wait for another two hours. Sh**!!! I should have researched this beforehand. So I rush back to my hotel which is about three blocks away to grab my stuff and get the heck out of there. Luckily, I had packed pretty much everything up so it was just a matter of stuffing some minor stuff into the suitcase and throwing my keys at the desk clerk and running out the door. I get there right at the time the bus is supposed to be there, but of course, it’s not there and doesn’t appear until 20 minutes later. In the meantime, I’m sweating buckets in the million degree heat for running three blocks there and back and must look like a crazy woman. My bus finally appears and it’s only me and another guy who gets on board. This is not an ADO bus..it’s a Mayab bus. Mayab buses are definitely not as upscale as ADO buses. They may not have chickens sitting next to you, but the other guy who got on board with me stuffed basketfulls of produce in the luggage department, so it’s not far off. No movies on this bus and the air conditioning consists of open windows. I sat next to a Guatemalen guy who kept looking at me like I must be sick or something because I was so freaking hot from running the six blocks and kept wiping my face off with a cloth. He probably thought I had some ebola virus or something that I caught in some Mexican village somewhere and was totally contagious. I think he was very glad when I got off the bus.

So…let’s get back to those new digs!

It’s really nice having a condo as opposed to a hotel room because of the convenience of having a fridge, microwave, dinner and silver ware, etc. This was a last-minute choice on-line and I lucked out. It’s pretty much like a little home and I told the person I made the arrangements with that I’m not moving out. She thinks I’m kidding. Okay…I am. But, seriously, this would be a very comfortable place to spend a long time. It’s very clean and completely equipped.

Now we get to the towel art. Here’s the swan art on the bed…

Toilet paper art…

Wash cloth and hand towel art…

Kleenex art…

Kitchen hand towel art…

Spare toilet paper roll art…

I’ll have to say, they outdid themselves. I’ve never seen it to this extent and I have to hand it to them.

Onto other aspects of the property, this is what you see when you step out the door…it’s on the second floor of a two unit property. The first floor property has two double beds.

This is what the building looks like. Very nice.

They also have a condo unit right next door. The grounds are extremely well-kept.

This view is a few steps away to the left…

And to the right…

Lots of ~~fossilized rocks~~ dead coral (thanks, Lisa) on this beach…

I wonder how many thousands of years this lighter has been floating around…haha!

Like I said…it’s convenient having a fridge and the conveniences. Here’s what’s for breakfast tomorrow…

And the owner has provided some pretty nice wine glasses…sweet.

So…does anyone know where I’m staying??

August 6, 2012 | Categories: Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Let’s go to Coba…

I know everyone knows I’m staying in Tulum right now and expects a report on that. I’m going to put that off for awhile because I have mixed feelings and want to sort those out. In the meantime, I will post my experience at Coba today.

Okay, so I bought this map of the Yucatan when Border’s was going out of business a couple years ago. It cost me about a dollar and I couldn’t pass it up.

Before I go on with the rest of my post, I want to mention that I decided to rent a car while staying in Tulum. I knew I wanted to do some exploring but have heard some bad stories about renting a car…but I went ahead and did it. I was referred to a place in Tulum by the person who owned the hotel where I was staying so I felt better about that. It cost $35.00 USD a day which included insurance, so that didn’t seem bad to me.

I was kind of nervous about driving a car in Mexico considering all the crazy cab drivers. But to tell you the truth I’m kind of a confident (sometimes kind of crazy) driver myself (having lived on the east coast), so I thought I’d give it a whirl. Here’s my new wheels…

A Hyundai! Whoo-hoo…I own a 2009 Hyundai Elantra! This is what the inside looked like. A standard transmission…and I forgot to take pictures of the torn upholstery.

While driving down the road, I thought I’d take a look at the odometer. I thought maybe it had tenths or hundreths of the mile at the end, but I timed it and this is the actual number. If that’s the case, then my 2009 Elantra (with only 19,500 miles on it right now) should last the rest of my lifetime.

After getting used to the extremely loose gear shift, I was feeling pretty good. I think this car has had its share of topes. Speaking of which, one of the biggest warnings I would give to people is to watch out for the…

The road bumps. That’s right…they are EVERYWHERE! Just when you least expect it, one will appear out of nowhere. That’s why no vehicle in Mexico has any suspension. The topes. They can look like this…

Or like this…

Or they can be about four feet wide and about a foot tall. Those are usually on main thoroughfares and I didn’t want to stop traffic to take a picture of one of those.

Okay…on to Coba. Coba has one of the few natural lakes in the Yucatan which i did not know about.

Here’s the layout of the Coba ruins…

So I went in and starting taking pictures…

After I took this one, I started getting a beeping noise every time I wanted to take another picture. My camera told me that the memory card was full. WHAT??? It only had about 20 pictures on it and I didn’t bring the new 16 GB card with me because I didn’t think I’d be taking that many pictures! I went back down to the souvenir shops and found a place that sold me a 4 GB card for 300 pesos. Bleah!! This is one of those times when you eat your stupidity for the sake of getting photos. Live and learn. But I’m glad I did…you’ll see why.

So, at the beginning of the ruins, there’s an area where they will rent you a bicycle or will transport you with a trike to the ruins. After I purchased the expensive memory card, I went back in and said “posh” to the bikes/trikes. After a million miles later, I wish I had opted for the bikes/trikes. After hiking about 20 minutes from the entrance, I got to this…

And then after another 20 minutes, I got to this…

So now I’m thinking, “Is this really worth all this walking???” Then I get to this and I think, “Well, this is a little better.”

And again after another 10 minutes (and a prayerful thank you for a refreshment booth), I finally got to this…

And I’m thinking, “Oh, my God…you really CAN climb it!” Then, as I got closer, I thought, “Yikes…do I really want to?” It’s a million degrees out here and that is WAY up there!

So, I tell myself…”You came all this way…you talked about climbing ruins. This is it.”

So I did it. I had to stop about three times to rest on the way up, but a bunch of people who were younger than me had to do the same thing, so that made me feel better.

Here’s the view from the top. The one benefit was that there was a really nice breeze up there.

I was really hoping there would be some kind of restroom up there so I could fix my hair for a nice picture…but, alas, not…this was all they had…

Which is why I look pretty sorry after trekking up those rocks…

I went down backwards the whole way…that way I didn’t have to look down and I held on to the rope. It also helped that I was a tomboy when I was young…my three older brothers would have given me sh** if I hadn’t done this. A lot of women went down on their butts one step at a time. It is an intimidating sight to look down.

After I got down, my legs were so weak, I had to sit and rest. When I finally got up to walk, they were still shaky, so I had to take a trike ride back. My one wimpish part of the deal.

By the way, I’ve heard that they will be not allowing people to climb this ruin soon, so if you want to do it, you should do it pretty quickly.

So I went to the main restaurant there afterwards because I hadn’t even had breakfast before the big climb. The chicken tacos were so-so…

But this definitely hit the spot…

August 5, 2012 | Categories: Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Next stop…Playa del Carmen!

Having decided to leave PoMo on Thursday, I woke up thinking I would post to my blog first thing and then leave. Well, as I mentioned in my last post, the wifi in my room was considerably less than dependable, so I ended up going out for breakfast instead. I went back to Pelicanos because I knew they had Huevos Motulenos…my favorite Mexican breakfast as many of you already know. They also served a complimentary dish of fruit.

Hell would freeze over before I would ever have a Coke for breakfast when I’m home…I always have a couple cups of coffee when I get up. But I almost never get coffee when I’m in Mexico because it’s so darn hot! In fact, I had TWO Cokes this morning because there was hardly any breeze and, well, it was so darn hot! Here are the Huevos Motulenos. I’ve had them here before and they are very good.

While I was walking to the restaurant, I saw these flowers in front of one of the shops in town. I don’t know what they are but they are so pretty.

Finished breakfast, got packed up and it was off to the bus. It’s about a two-mile cab ride to the bus pick-up area. The cab driver dropped me off on the highway, then I had to cross the highway to the other side, buy my ticket to Playa del Carmen because you have to stop there to get another bus to Tulum. Then I crossed back over the highway and waited for the bus. The wait turned out to be about 30 seconds as I saw him coming down the road…perfect timing!

Buses in Mexico are awesome. The United States could learn a few things from Mexico about public transportation within the country regarding these buses. They are very cheap (my fare to Playa del Carmen was 26 pesos which is somewhere around two American bucks), extremely comfortable and air conditioned…and they play movies. This is a horrible picture, but I’m posting it to show what they’re like. They have curtains on all the windows so that you can pull them shut if you don’t want to see outside.

This bus was playing the movie, “Date Night,” with Steve Carell which was dubbed in Spanish. It’s so funny to see an American movie dubbed in Spanish because it usually doesn’t sound anything like the real actor. I had never seen this movie before, but I was laughing along with everyone else even though I didn’t understand a damn word.

So, here’s the bus station in Playa del Carmen. While I was on the bus, I decided to just stay the night in Playa. I have reservations on the 3^rd and 4^th at a place in Tulum, and I thought that maybe they would have a vacancy tonight as well. But I knew I would be able to find a place in Playa because it’s a much larger town and they have a lot more hotels.

The big touristy area in Playa is a strip of stores, restaurants and hotels that runs about 10 blocks. It is full of souvenir shops, restaurants, high-end stores, bars, fast-food restaurants, drug stores, real estate offices, tour guides, etc. You don’t want to know the number of times I heard, “Hey, lady…come in my shop!” I’m not a Playa fan. It is too big, too glitzy, too over-priced and too slick. But I didn’t want to take the chance that my hotel in Tulum didn’t have a vacancy tonight, so I decided to find a place to stay.

While walking down the strip, I spied this place with a vacancy sign out front. It’s the Hotel Lunata.

I walked in and found this wonderful oasis. This picture doesn’t do it justice because it was truly a lush garden and you didn’t feel like you were anywhere near a big city.

Complete with the resident cat…

I decided to go for it because it was really cute! Look at that beamed ceiling! And the inlay of river rock on the tile floor…

And all the wood…

And is this the cutest bathroom you’ve ever seen or what?? Look at that wood sink counter!

This is just outside my doorway…

I looked in the little refrigerator in the room and instantly thought, “Sweet!!!”

Then I saw the sign on top of the fridge. Darn it.

It’s a good thing this little trinket was glued to the shelf because I would have taken it. Haha…I kid, I kid.

It also had a tiny balcony where you could see what was going on on the strip. Here’s my view to the right…

And to the left…

The one bad thing about the place was that I couldn’t connect to the internet in my room. So, since I didn’t have internet access in the morning to do a post in PoMo, I needed to find a restaurant that had wifi so I could do some work. I found one very close to the hotel and just had to order their cheese stuffed poblano pepper. It was VERY good.

And here are my friendly waiters, Ricardo and Hugo, who endured me sitting there for a couple of hours while I blogged and checked e-mails. Hugo looks a bit serious, but he was a very nice guy.