Tulum

We said a fond farewell to David and Peter and a warm hello to Zoe and Crystal, sisters from Australia, and Ann, a United Canadian Church Minister from Canada. Gregg will behave! We also bade farewell to Cancun – by this morning it had stopped raining and the sky even had some blue in it so we walked to the beach by the Caribbean Sea and the place became almost bearable. We set off for the archaeological site of Tulum which is about an hour down the coast from Cancun. Tulum was protected on one side by steep sea cliffs and on the landward side by a wall that averaged about three to 5 metres in height. The wall also was about 8 metres thick and 400 metres long on the side parallel to the sea. This massive wall would have taken an enormous amount of energy and time, which shows how important defense was to the Maya when they constructed the site here.
Once again we were told that the site was a ceremonial centre and the majority of people lived outside the walls but one of our travelling companions, Phil and Gregg had quite a different theory. This is that the site was an exclusive Mayan holiday resort with small villas set in the grounds and large shopping malls on hilltop sites that caught sunlight at solstices and equinoxes enabling late night shopping. The beach served as a stopping-off point for cruise canoes and the starting point for day trips out to the coral reef so that the Maya people could swim with dolphins and get in touch with their inner sea mammal.
We drove through jungle and sporadic scrub and saw houses that looked like something from Ye Olde Medieval Theme Parke – except these were lived in, they had wooden walls, no windows and thatched roofs. We drove on to Chetumal, a town right on the border with Belize. It is not a very attractive town but it does have an authentic Mexican feel with small clapboard houses painted in bright colours dotted around the town which seems full of huge shops selling very cheap clothing, shoes and household items.
Tomorrow we drive through Belize and into Guatemala.