Day 5 - Tulum

Today we slept in a bit and had breakfast at our hotel - La Zebra.  The food was really good!

french toast

huevos rancheros

world cup armadillo mascot taking a walk on the beach!

 From there we got our things together and headed to Akumal Bay for some snorkeling.  Upon arriving in the small beach town of Akumal, we were surprised to see so many tourists.  This place is really becoming discovered.  We found parking and bee-lined it to the beach, starting on the left side of Akumal Bay.  We saw some cool stuff - a school of large bone fish(!), a sting ray, a huge box fish, several turtles and even a small school of squid!  We hung out with them for a bit, but they didn't seem keen on making friends.  They changed color several times and one even spread out his tentacles toward us, as if to say "Come at me!  You'll see what happens!"

After about 20 minutes, a guy in a kayak came after us and told us the area we were swimming in was restricted to tours only, and that if we weren't with a tour, we had to stay within a designated area.  Unfortunately, that area was mostly sea grass :(.  We saw more turtles, though.  Figuring we wouldn't see much else, we headed back to the car for the next half of our adventure - Turtle Beach.  When we were there several years back, the beach was absolutely deserted.  We were two of four people on the entire half-mile stretch of beach.  The place is also a turtle sanctuary, though it's not currently turtle season.  

We were hoping for the same isolation we enjoyed last time, but it seems our luck has run out.  There were quite a few people on the beach, so we decided to check out the cenote that is also on the property.  Bad luck again.  There was a line of about 20 people ahead of us to get in and they said we would have to wait, as they only allow a certain amount of people in at a time.  So we hiked back to the beach, hoping to find a quiet spot among the tourists, but as soon as we picked a spot and jumped in the water, a lifeguard ran over and told us we couldn't swim on that end of the beach due to rip tides.  He told us the only swimming we could do was much further down the beach, and then you could only go in just over waist deep.  BUMMER.  Since we were both quite hungry and feeling a bit defeated, we gave up on Turtle Beach and started the search for El Pollo Bronco for lunch.

Pollo Bronco logo over the chicken grill

Super yummy.

We had planned to rent some bikes and explore the main beach road in Tulum, but got hung up relaxing by the beach for the rest of the afternoon, which wasn't so bad :).  We then got ready and headed out for dinner at Posada Margherita.  We visited this place last time and the food was amazing.  Turns out they still have the same exact menu, and everything was excellent again.  

Andrew got the lobster covered in house made pasta

Tomorrow is centoe snorkeling!