Unconquered Maya
Mexico is very short on trains and, probably as a consequence, does a great job with buses. So at 8am this morning I was on a very flash bus heading South to Tulum.
My destination was the Mayan ruins that have become the town’s big draw card. The ruins, before being ruins, were the Mayans’ major seaport and their way of controlling the coastal trade. The temples that stand proud of the cliffs not only acted as a calendar but as a lighthouse showing the way through the bounding reefs.

The Spanish invaders never worked out how to navigate the reefs and so this little bit of the Mayan Empire remained free. It didn’t do them much good as European diseases so badly ravaged the population that the fortress was abandoned within 50 years of the Spanish arrival. It was hidden by the jungle until the last years of the 1800s. Then in the last years of the 1990s someone realized the tourist possibilities of Mayan ruins against the backdrop of the Caribbean Sea, so it was cleaned up and they started charging for entrance.

The ruins do make for a remarkably beautiful sight. There’s not a lot to them but they are almost perfect for a social media selfie. They are also heaving with tourists, so getting a photo without other people taking selfies was a challenge. And this isn’t high season…
After the ruins I embarked upon another challenge. To get the coach back I needed to get from the ruins to the centre of the town. I had thought to get a taxi but had been warned by someone I met that they were notorious for ripping tourists off. Instead I got a colectivo – like a little private mini-bus which swoops in a picks you up from the roadside. I think I still got slightly ripped off but instead of the feared $70 taxi fare I paid $3 (I think a local would have paid $2).

After bit time in air-conditioned coolness back in Playa del Carmen, I had a machete de pastoral in a local hole-in-the-wall restaurant and finished up with watching the world go by over a margarita in my local.
Tomorrow is my first day of school which I’m looking forward to with some excitement.