Doin’ Time at the Ruins of Tulum

*All travel expenses for this trip were paid by Princess Cruises, but all opinions are my own

During my recent (and first) big-ship cruise aboard the Crown Princess, my pal Samantha and I took every opportunity to disembark and go on a shore excursion to see how Princess arranges for its passengers to experience the ship’s ports of call.

Our third shore excursion was to the Mayan ruins at Tulum, on Mexico’s east coast Yucatán Peninsula.

*For all our shore excursions, while still onboard the ship, we were given small white tickets with the tour’s name, code number and port, as well as what to bring and where/when to meet the tour.

Excursion: Tulum, Lost Civilization of the Mayans
Price:             $79
Length:         About 8 hours

The Crown Princess website’s tour description:

Board the modern, fast ferry for the approximately 45-minute transfer to the mainland town of Playa del Carmen. Meet your guide and board your air-conditioned transportation for a one-hour, narrated scenic drive to the ruins of Tulum. One of the most significant archaeological finds in the Yucatan Peninsula, the ancient city is magnificently sited overlooking the Caribbean Sea. On arrival, your guide will give a 30-minute narrated tour to provide the basic history of the site. Then enjoy approximately 90 minutes on your own to explore…this Mayan metropolis.  After exploring the ruins, return to Playa del Carmen where you will have free time…prior to your return ferry ride to the ship in Cozumel.

My experience:
I look back at the moment it all could have been different.  Samantha and I filed into the Princess Theater to meet our tour group…and learned that we were two of 400 passengers going to Tulum that day.  It was 7:15 AM, and we could have gone back to bed.

What we didn’t yet know is that the Crown Princess had just docked in Cozumel alongside another 3000+ passenger ship which was also releasing  a few hundred people bound for Tulum.  It was safe to say that we had landed in the belly of the beast.

The seas were viciously choppy that day, and upon boarding the nearby speed ferry, we were seated downstairs and indoors. After only a few minutes turbulent minutes, poor Samantha was getting very seasick, so we headed up to the crowded top deck, where she could at least get some air.

There was a Chinese tour within our cruise on the CP, and that entire group was upstairs on the ferry; one young woman, wearing an ivory lace cocktail dress and kitten-heel pumps to tramp across an archeological site, came and stood beside Samantha and delicately threw up, repeatedly, into a blue plastic bag.  Her husband, a stoic and much older man in faux-military fatigues, mirrored aviator glasses and a Louis Vuitton belt, turned away from her.

What seemed like a long time later, as we all mercifully disembarked the Vomit Ferry, a cheerful idiot from Montreal called out across the boat to his clearly ill wife, “Bet you spewed a dozen times there, sweetie!  Y’ready for the bus ride now?”

My heart sank, and Samantha grew very quiet.

Beginning at the dock in Playa del Carmen, we were herded into line behind already-running buses;  to avoid the potent diesel fumes, we ducked our heads into our shirts and prayed for boarding.  Vendors descended on us all as sitting targets, and soon several folks around us were wearing cheap straw hats that said “Playa del Carmen” across their colorful bands.  One woman, who’d just purchased and put on one of these jaunty chapeaus, asked her fianceé:  “So, what’s the name of this town, anyway?”

Aboard the bus, our Sun & Fun tour guide, Tito, would soon shift his (kind but uninspired) narrative focus from ancient Mayan legends to modern Mayan handicrafts.  Specifically, those available at a huge Mayan-collective handicraft superstore on the highway, a concrete behemoth I would normally have driven past without a glance.  All of our tour buses parked at this place at once, and we descended upon it for use of the restrooms and a commerce frenzy.  I’ve never seen people so excited about tchotkes and knock-off Oreos.

By the time we arrived at Tulum a half-hour later, it was a good 90 degrees in the shade and we had to pee again. However, we were immediately squeezed into yet another line and sent on a forced march.  Nothing would stop the human train; had we taken a minute to duck in to the bathrooms, we would have lost our group and been on our own to pay our entrance fee.

The official site of the ruins is huge and spread out, with few trees to relieve the relentless sun.  There were gabillions of human beings in every direction, all jostling for photography space and a look at the helpful placards that explain the original purpose of each major building.  The structures themselves are mostly in good shape, but probably because you can’t get close enough to touch them. Big seafoam-green iguanas scurried and posed in every nook and cranny.   The gorgeous beach was, just as I’d remembered it, a swath of dazzling turquoise water and powder-white sand…blanketed with wall-to-wall people.

Tito stayed with us for 15 minutes, holding forth about the great scientific books of the Mayans being reportedly held hostage in the archival bowels of the world’s museums, as well as by a fearful Vatican.  He lamented a universe of knowledge lost, and I secretly joined him; on this tour I had hoped to learn what the Mayans at Tulum might have been like, but alas, it was not to be. (I’m grateful for Wikipedia’s entry on Tulum, and will soon go in search of a book on the subject.)

After wandering unescorted through the hordes for a few minutes, Samantha hit the wall along with her bladder, and I can’t say I blame her.  Bidding the hard-won ruins farewell, we found a reasonably clean restroom and hiked back to the marketplace to find some lunch.  After turning down fervently presented opportunities to pose with tricked-out Mayan warriors, pet a leashed iguana the size of a housecat, purchase t-shirts, silver necklaces, hats and much more, we finally decided to take our driver’s suggestion of the restaurant right next to the parking lot; and now, I can no longer say I’ve never had a tortilla that tastes like Wonder Bread.

When we returned to our bus for shade, water and a bag of chips, we learned that the woman across the aisle, formerly of Playa del Carmen hat fame, had been busy driving a hard bargain on a hot pink t-shirt dress that read “Tulum” in tiny rhinestones.  The vendor had quoted her 200, but she was determined not to be swindled…and offered 100 dollars, instead.  We can only imagine that this lucky gentleman, who had surely meant 200 pesos (about $16 US), will still be telling this story to his great-grandchildren.

From Tulum, we returned to Playa del Carmen for about 45 minutes’ worth of free time.  I’d last been here in December 2001 with Adam, his mom and stepdad, when it was a small beach town dotted with a few family resorts and several two-story dive shacks where you could snorkel and then treat yourself to tacos with handmade tortillas and a glass bottle of Coke made with real sugar.  It’s now booming with high-rise resorts, condos and near-endless souvenir shopping.  All that seemed the same was the soft sand, cute little birds and great shell hunting along the shore.

The ferry ride back to Cozumel (where reportedly, there’s an all-day party going on at the Fat Tuesdays in port) was infinitely more calm.  Just in case, though, a young Mexican folk singer had come aboard to soothe our nerves. Silence save the rush of the waves would have done it for me, but for 45 minutes this fellow treated us to strumming and heartfelt John Denver and Jimmy Buffett covers with, often, his own versions of the lyrics.

My take:
Clearly, I was in some sort of reverie when I booked this excursion.  I willingly overlooked the almost two hours of group travel time each way, just because I hadn’t actually seen Tulum’s ruins in any detail on a trip to the Yucatán back in 2001.  Now all I can think is that  I was on a “bucket list” mission and saw this tour as a low-hanging fruit of opportunity.

We talked to other Princess passengers on other buses who had more thorough, personally engaging tour guides, loved shopping for obsidian objects (a material sacred to the Mayans for its tendency to turn from black to gold in the sun), and found joy in the bustling commercial scene along Playa del Carmen’s 5th Avenue.

But everyone we spoke to agreed that while both the beach and the site complex are beautiful, unless a couple thousand tourists suddenly vanished from the scene, the experience of visiting here would remain exhausting and overwhelming.  Even if we hadn’t come with a group tour, many, many other people did; there was little room to enjoy quiet, private moments on the shore or in front of these ancient buildings.  I have to laugh at some of my own human-free photos, which I had to snap machine-gun fast.

I can come to only one conclusion:  Despite my love of travel and exploration-based education, I feel that what would really bring Tulum alive is a well-made HD documentary with engaging narration…and a front row seat on your own couch.

See also:
Mexico’s Yucatán: Tulum
Mexico’s Yucatán: Chichen Itza
All Aboard the Crown Princess, Pt. 1
All Aboard the Crown Princess, Pt. 2
Turtles, Hell and Rum Cake: Grand Cayman
The Highs and Lows of Roatán

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