Mexico- Tulum

Mexico- Tulum

Most people know I have a goal to see 100 countries in my lifetime. Since Brazil is in the Southern Hemisphere, we get 5 weeks off at Christmas for summer break and I thought this would be a good time to go on a big trip - 32 days through 7 countries in Central America! I had never traveled that long at one time before and wasn't sure how it was going to go. I have been on 3 other guided group trip where we all did the same things everyday and those worked out ok. This trip was with Intrepid and there were a lot of free days where I could rest if I needed. I'm always scared that I'm going to have a Lupus "episode" which is super embarrassing, but I figured if I took really good care of myself, I'd be ok.

School got out Friday and I had a 2:30 am flight to cancun.  I got a shared taxi to take me to the hotel in playa del Carmen where I was meeting my group. There are 13 of us plus our guide Adrian.

Australians - Daniel, Nicole, Cameron

Brits - James

Canadians- Jesse, Ryan, Marilyn

Americans- me, Pedro, Tim, Sage

Greek- Mia

Slovakian- Martina

We took a very nice bus about an hour long to Tulum. I sat with Martina who is from Slovakia and traveling alone. We got to our new hotel and Adrian explained our touring options. I started walking to the ruins and ran into Jesse and a mother son pair Marilyn and Ryan - all three are Canadian.  We saw some wildlife while at the ruins -two snakes all twisted around each other mating,  Coaties, and lizards. We all had a nice lunch of tacos together then went our separate ways.

I was never able to get a good pic of a coatie - this is Martina's picture. We have these guys in Brazil too. 

The others went for dinner later and Martina and I stayed behind and talked to the local staff. She has been traveling through Mexico by herself for a few weeks and will be traveling long after I'm done. Martina and I will become friends on this trip and I will be impressed with her amazingly frugal bargain shopping and excellent minimalist packing skills. Although she has a greater fear of snakes, scorpions, crocodiles, and pirates than I do, She and I are pretty good at risk assessment and identifying possible dangers everywhere and we always wear our seat belts (if we have them). We love praise and worship music and are also big Dolly Parton fans and joyfully sang along to Jolene when it was our turn to pick a song.

There weren't enough people signed up for the tour I wanted to do the next day so I walked about an hour to the other Amansara  hotel and hung out at the beach and read. It was secluded, quiet, and perfect.

We meet every night around 7 to go over plans for the next day and go to dinner together if we want. I had a super yummy bean and chicken burrito. Everyone seems pretty cool so far :)

I took pictures of different Christmas trees on the trip and saw lots of variety.

this one was made of sticks laid horizontally.