Wowsers. I had not realised how much I was missing the beach until we arrived in Tulum, and immediately wished we were able to stay longer than our planned three nights!

Mama’s Home Hostel

After yet another 3-4 hour bus ride, we arrived at the Tulum ADO bus station and armed with clear directions from our hostel – Mama’s Home – on how to walk there, we shouldered our backpacks and headed off. Luckily, it was only about a 15 minute walk and after knocking on the big blue doors to the hostel, we were let in by Barry (an Irish expat living in Tulum whilst between jobs in Dublin), and it literally felt like we had arrived at a home we didn’t know we had!

Within five minutes, we had a locally endorsed list of the best places to eat in Tulum – VERY important – as well as the best daytrips. Everyone, staff and fellow guests included, were all so sociable and friendly – everyone offering their tips and recommendations and happy to have a chat – it was phenomenal!

The hostel itself is painted in all the colours of the rainbow with private and dorm rooms over two stories, and focused around a central communal courtyard where hammocks and deck chairs were there for socialising and just hanging out.

By the time we had chucked our bags in our private room (with ensuite – yew!), some of the staff were heading to the local drinking hole for sundowners and invited us along. We gladly accepted their invite as we were both keen to see the local eating and drinking scene. Plus – cold beers!

Luckily for everyone concerned, Mama’s House is about a two minute walk to one of the most happening strips in town, including a very cool bar called Batey’s which was clearly the place to be. Our newfound friends knew the Bateys staff and we had barely sat down before drinks were arriving at our table.

And let me tell you, when there is a guy out the front chopping up fresh sugarcane to go into your mojito, you know it is going to be good! You can see the dude cutting the sugarcane at Batey in the background of the below photo (with Dave looking chuffed as!) – and yes, he is doing it out the back of a converted VW car!

We stayed for a couple of hours and then everyone split into little groups to grab dinner. By this time, Dave and I were hanging for one of the pizza’s we had already heard so much about (and could smell from the woodfired oven across the road), so we hit up La Siesta. And yay, they served red wine too!

The antipasto platter at Batey’s – best enjoyed with mojitos or cold beer!

I won’t be describing every single meal we ate in Tulum but it was safe to say that we definitely enjoyed the best food of our trip thus far in Tulum – the sheer freshness and availability (ceviche everywhere!) of seafood, combined with some of the Italian fusion we sampled made it an instant winner.

So what did we do in Tulum? With only two full days, we had to plan accordingly to ensure we made the most of our time – and I think all in all, we did a pretty good job!

Tulum Ruins

On our first full morning (and after an amazing breakfast of nutella and banana french toast!), we hired bikes and rode the cruisey 45 minutes to the famous beachside ruins of Tulum.

Bike life!

Tulum ruins

These ruins, although small compared to others we have seen, are postcard-perfect and with the azure blue ocean as a backdrop, it is no wonder they’re one of the top 5 places most tourists visit in Mexico. The number of tourists arriving en mass reiterated this, and we decided to forgot the guided tour just so we were not overcome by sweaty, loud (usually American) tourists – no offence to any of my American friends!

We spent probably about an hour exploring the ruins, and in the intense heat – even that felt like an accomplishment! The best photos included the beautiful water with the white ruins front and centre, not to mention the lush vegetation that abounded.

Akumal

After a quick detour back to the hostel to drop our bikes back and grab some tasty quesadillas from the corner café over the road for lunch, we jumped into a collectivo (public transport – it is shared minivans basically), paid the driver the equivalent of about $2 each and travelled 25km out of Tulum to the resort town of Akumal.

Akumal is a great example of listening to other backpackers on what are the ‘must-do’s – whilst we were sat at the hostel the night before chatting to everyone, this beach came up repeatedly as a fabulous excursion. And I am stoked we listended to them, because our time at Akumal has been a highlight!

Basically Akumal is a pretty calm beach where HUGE sea turtles feast on the sea grass which grows in abundance right off the shore, up to maybe 200 metres off shore. Within five minutes of entering the water with our snorkels on (hired from Mam’s Home), we had spotted our first big, beautiful, majestic sea turtle!

Akumal beach

I wish we had an underwater camera (something I think I will continue wishing everytime we are near the water!), to show how close we managed to get to these beasts. We were within touching distance but obviously we didn’t want to harass them so we just floated a metre or two away and watched in wonder as they just went about their thang.

Just check out these snaps as an example of beach perfection!

Over the next hour or so we just snorkelled in the warm-as-a-bathtub Caribbean sea and saw so many turtles, maybe 20 or so, as well as a couple of little stringrays which weren’t too happy to see us and were kicking up sand as we got closer. The depth of the water where the seagrass grows is probably only about 1.5-2metres deep so not deep at all – and there were loads of kids and families around, so perfectly safe.

The only thing we found quite hilarious (and which we had been pre-warned about) was that the locals set up businesses as you walk towards the beach, and on the beach, with snorkel sets and fins, and (my personal favourite) life jackets and then they proceed to tell you that it is compulsory to use a life jacket, and it will only cost you about $200mexican peso – of course, you don’t HAVE to have a life jacket at all, they just want the money!

They also told us that you weren’t allowed out of the ‘ringed fence’ area unless you book a private guide – something else which is completely untrue (or so I was led to believe). You have to give it to the, they see an opportunity and grab hold of it with both hands!

Regardless, the water was perfect and seeing the turtles so up close and personal was an amazing experience, and I am so glad we got the opportunity. The colour of the water was unlike anything I have seen and the white sand and palm trees really gave us our first ‘beachtime’ of the trip – and we want more! Moral of the story – listen to your fellow travellers – their recommendations are often better than any guidebook!

  Tulum Beach

There are basically two main areas to Tulum – Tulum Town and the Tulum Beach strip. We decided to go with Tulum town based purely on the fact that it was where Mama’s Home was situated, and we wanted to stay there. This was probably against our better judgement initially as we knew we would want to spend significant time chilling on the beach.

As it turns out, staying in town was a blessing as it meant we were close to reasonably priced, amazing restaurants – the beach strip is known for its five star resorts, and comparatively expensive restaurants. Either way, we did spend one glorious day sunning oursveles on Tulum beach and feasting on the DELICIOUS fresh fish tacos…. drooooooll…. my mouth is watering just thinking of them!

We were recommended by the staff to hit up La Eufemia, a funky, local favourite selling mostly fresh tacos, and priced as an absolute bargain. Each fresh fish taco, with all the condiments you could ream of, cost only 30pesos each – the equivalent of less than AU$2… and they were filling – two filled me up!

View from inside La Eufemia’s beach shack

The view inside 

And here is us, chilled out and loving our view of the beautiful blue ocean from underneath a palm tree after feasting on tacos and drinking cold beers… seriously,  what more could a girl ask for?!

The famous fish tacos themselves…. (the photo turned out quite dark so I had to brighten it up, hence the white background!)

Aaaah, and here are our views up and down the beach strip. It actually doesn’t look like there are restaurants and resorts jammed all the way up the coast. I would guess there were maybe 200 over a 5km stretch, and they were literally door to door.

The great thing about being on the beach is you can wander up and down, popping in for a drink or cocktail at one, a taco at another, and spend all day! Equally as good (and what we did), was finding one gem of a spot, and barely moving!

Our three nights, two full days at Tulum were the absolute BEST –  Mama’s House in Tulum has got to be the best friggen hostel in the world. I could not think of one thing they could do better, and would highly recommend ANYONE going to Tulum to stay there – there were so many people from all walks of life and everyone that was there, was social and friendly. The staff, and Jose in particular, should be extremely pleased with themselves – fab job team!

Tulum was our last spot in Mexico, and it was with bittersweet thoughts that we caught the ferry from Mexico to Belize for the next stage in our journey. We had had an absolute blast in Mexico and saw so many spectacular things, but there is still so much more to come!

At Chetumal (Mexico) about to board the ferry to Caye Caulker. Bye Mexico!