Long time no see, as they say. It’s been what, two, maybe three years since I’ve written and posted a blog post here. With the big gap I’ve had in posting, it was hard at first to gain back access to this blog not to mention I am still struggling to login to my travel Instagram. At first, I thought I was never going to be able to get back into this account and started creating a new WordPress site, but of course WordPress has updated and became a little too confusing. After a few tries over the last month I was able to get in and I’m excited to get back to sharing my travel stories, advice, and recommendations with you all again!
If you follow me on my main Instagram, since my travel one is not working, you probably noticed that I was enjoying the warm Mexico weather and spending a lot of time by the pool. On my trip I had some people reach out wanting to know what I did or where I went, for those people I wanted to write a recap of what we booked, where we explored, where we ate, etc. I’m planning on writing a few more in-depth posts (and hopefully the spelling has gotten better this time around) for those wanting more information. (Watch out for a post from a trip I took this time last year, 2021, to St. Thomas!) Again, I want to say thank you to those who have stuck around, even with this big gap in posting, and thank you to my new travelers coming over and checking out my blog. I love sharing my experiences and advice with you all and it would not be possible without support!
Without further ado let’s get into it!
You’re probably wondering why Mexico? Well towards the end of 2021, my boyfriend and I were looking to get away but with covid it definitely isn’t as easy as it use to be. We researched the heck out of covid requirements for various countries but it was too hard to make a decision – because there are so many cool places to see! Early 2022, we finally made a decision, any guesses? Mexico? Nope! We were going to Denmark! Flights were cheap and we thought, Hey, why not? 24 hours into purchasing the flights we started researching what we could do – turns out there was a lockdown 
Not exactly what you want to hear when you leave in 12 days. So, we had 24 hours to make a choice of: do we go, do we buy a connecting flight to someplace else, or do we cancel? With a hour left before our full refund expired we decided to cancel and rebook flights to someplace else – this time…. yes, Mexico!
The last time I traveled to Mexico was when I was 8 years old; even then my family was only there because we had an excursion on shore from the cruise ship we were traveling on. So, I really hadn’t spent much time in the country. My boyfriend on the other hand has visited Mexico many times – he has family near Veracruz.
Next on our list was to find a place to stay. With ‘tropical beach vacation’ in mind we decided on Tulum and started looking into places to stay. Originally we had looked at all-inclusive hotels but, decided against them because we weren’t ready to drop $1200-$2000 each right away. One thing to note is that most all-inclusive hotels have a shuttle service that takes you from the airport to the hotel but, always double check. Our second option was booking an Airbnb, which turned out to be the best option (in my opinion) because we had our own private pool and a kitchen space. If you think about it, a room with a private pool at all-inclusive hotel is around $600, if not more a night. The Airbnb was about $57/night (I’m saying ‘about’ because that is what is currently listed and could change on the dates of travel you look at). Because we booked the Airbnb we decided to also rent a car, this was about $150 for 6 days.
Day 1: Let the adventure begin
With our flights, Airbnb, and car all booked we were set! (we really didn’t do too much planning). We left out of Chicago O’hare Airport early in the morning and arrived in Cancun around 3pm. Cancun’s airport was unlike anything I’ve experienced before. It’s a pretty small airport for the amount of traffic it receives, at least what I thought. When we got our baggage and stepped out of the airport we were immediately met with a swarm of people. Walking out I had people to the left and right of me trying to get my attention so, I turned to my boyfriend and he looked just as confused as me – we didn’t know where we were going. Eventually, we asked someone about the taxi service we booked; we found out that we had to call them to notify the shuttle driver to come pick us up.
Tip: Double check your phone carrier before leaving the US to see what International plans they offer or if you already have a plan. I unfortunately did not so, when I landed I texted my mom off my boyfriends’ phone and added on the international plan. But, I still barley had service, my phone never worked, and I got 100mb of data to use, which is not a lot.
Once our shuttle came over it was less than a 10 minute drive to the rental car service. After 30 minutes of paperwork and all that jazz … we got our car! Tulum here we come! (drive down is 1 hour and 30 mins). We checked into our Airbnb around 5pm and unpacked our bags and swam in our pool. Eventually we got hungry and headed out to look for a place to eat. For more details on where to eat and where NOT to eat check out my post ‘Best eats in Tulum’.
Day 2: Let’s go to the beach, beach, let’s go get away
Vacation time means sleeping in, at least in my book. We woke up at 10am and had a pretty chill morning by the pool. During our Airbnb stay, we noticed that with the wall by our private pool it created shade which in turn made the pool pretty cold. Since the weather wasn’t too warm we decided to head to the public pool to soak up the sun. At noon we jumped out of the pool, took a shower, got dressed, and heading to the strip. The strip is the busiest part of Tulum where you can find all the small shops and tourist stores/restaurants. We got lunch/brunch (I don’t know) and decided to plan out our day. Shout out to the restaurant for handing us two free spicy margs – I’m not a huge fan but, I had ordered a mojito and I think that thought I wanted to drink, drink. After lunch our plan was to head to Playa Paraiso and spend the day enjoying the sun – something laid back.
Be aware this beach is PACKED. There’s only a thin road to access it and along the road is a bunch of hotels and restaurants so it’s very hard to find parking (especially free parking). We almost had a free spot but, was told by someone else that cars were getting towed – we decided to park somewhere else because we didn’t want to risk it. We ended up paying 200MXP ($10) for a spot right near the entrance. I guess that the good thing about our paid parking spot was that it was enclosed and off the main road. As you can see in the photo above there were a lot of bikes – this could be an option too if you want to rent a bike and bike to the beach. After walking along the beach we found a good spot to unpack and lay down. On the beach there are people walking up and down selling mangos and other fruits which you can purchase. My boyfriend bought a mango with chamoy for about 100MXP ($5) – just want to give you an idea of the prices in Tulum, MX. We headed back to our Airbnb after spending 3 hours at the beach and on our way we picked up tacos at a restaurant on the strip. We spent the rest of the night chilling in the hot tub.
Day 3: 1 down, 6 more to go
Waking up at 10am again was not in our plan – we really thought we’d wake up early, get some food and head off to Chichen Itzá, which was a 2 hour and 10 min drive (be aware of the time change.) Instead we headed out to the strip for lunch after getting ready and then we had to make a decision because it was getting late in the day – and of course we said “f*** it let’s just go!” After lunch we hoped in the car and started on the long drive. I say long for one reason, there wasn’t much. The drive from Tulum to Chichen Itzá is a straight shot and you go through 3 small towns, other than that there’s not a ton to see. I will say that if you plan your day good you could stop at the small towns and explore the shops. When we were driving past I noticed a lot of the same items that we saw on the Tulum strip – but here it was probably cheaper (plus you help support smaller towns’ tourism). And if you do decided to rent a car and drive to Chichen Itzá or anywhere in Mexico be aware of people that look official who will try to pull you to the side of road. We had this happen to us. My boyfriend pulled over because they were official people of something; they didn’t look like officers or police or anything but looked like some survey or town officials. They had asked my boyfriend where we were headed and once they heard Chichen Itzá they told us that they could give us better tickets and that the line would be too long to get in at time we were going to get there. Welp, we said no thank you and went on our merry way.
Getting to Chichen Itzá is a bit confusing because the entrance is hard to find. The Mayan ruins are located in a middle of a main road and then another smaller road – basically like a circle around the ruins. Because of this, we had initially went down the right road (which we didn’t know at the time) but once we couldn’t find the entrance so, we went back around and headed down the back road. This time we were met by people in orange vests and brown shirts. We were led down a road that had entrances to 3 different hotels. At the end of the road there were 4 men sitting at the table with an umbrella. This is where we bought our entrance ticket. Looking back I think this was the best option we chose. Not only did we get an entrance ticket but we got a shuttle to the park, which saved us walking a lot, and we received free dinner afterwards. This added up to be 800MXP/each ($40). For those interested, there was a upgraded package with entrance tickets for a nearby cenote for 1000MXP/each ($50).
I recommend also getting a tour guide for Chichen Itzá (it is one the the 7 wonders of the world, so it should be a must!). I wish we would have done that because there wasn’t much information on the ruins or the history of Chichen Itzá. When you walk around the ruins there are many vendors selling stuff – like an absurd amount and they are mostly all selling the same items. My boyfriend loves window shopping and checking out every… single…. tiny thing so that’s what we did. I can bet we stopped at every single table. The archaeological site closed at 4:30pm and this was the time we headed out. We got picked up from the shuttle service which took us to our car.
Then we got our food tickets and headed into the small town to get dinner. There wasn’t much option as to what we could eat but, aye it was free (basically). Afterwards with our stuffed tummies we jumped back on the road and headed home. Like I mentioned before, if you plan your day well you won’t be stuck driving 2 hours in the dark. And yes I mean dark, dark. Driving back it was pretty scary, saying that as the passenger in the car. The roads don’t have any lines and there are no street lights making it really hard to drive on at night. There was also a check point we had to pass through, which we didn’t pass through on the way there. Our car wasn’t stopped but, we defiantly could have been and that would’ve been a little scary. Once back at our airbnb we ended at the hot tub (see a pattern here?).
Day 4: Time to chill
On our fourth day we really didn’t do much. We stayed at the Airbnb, enjoyed the sun, swam, and had a few drinks. Of course, we went out to get food.
Day 5: Just like the L.A. strip
Another day to sleep in – and that’s just what we did. We woke up around 10am and headed to the strip to grab brunch. Both of us decided on trying Mexican Chinese food – maybe not the best brunch but we were missing Panda Express. In the end it was a bad idea and we should’ve stuck with Pepe’s Best Tacos.
After eating we spent the rest of the day at the strip. If you are heading to Tulum make sure to carve out a day for the strip. We stopped at almost every store and for drinks and snacks; this ended up taking almost the whole day. Also prepare to bargain for those prices since the main strip is swarmed with tourists and that means crazy prices.
Walking down the strip we stopped at a restaurant for an afternoon drink. This is when I tasted the best sangria of my life! Sadly, as I’m writing this I can’t seem to remember the name of the restaurant we drank at. I tired to be a detective, you know, figure out how I could find this name so, I went on Google Maps and was searching online for an hour only to realize that the Google Street View was from like 2014… and there was no restaurant in that location during that time. So, long story short, if I do happen to remember the name I’ll insert it [here] (yes there, where it says ‘here’). Any who, we ended the night by stopping by an Argentina torta stand on the way home. You’ll see later that we LOVED this place and I can’t recommend it enough! With our food in hand we headed home, ate our delicious food and spent the rest of the night, you guessed it, chilling in the hot tub.
Day 5: Let’s make it GRAND!
We planned this day the night before – and if you plan at stopping at these places I suggest that you do too! We knew when we booked our trip to Tulum we wanted to check out the Grand Cenote, which is very famous in the area. This is one of the most famous cenotes that you can check out and because of this there a lot of tourists. The night before we looked at a few blogs and websites to see how much the entrance fee was and how it all worked. Well everything we saw didn’t turn out how I thought; you can’t always be prepared. We woke up a little before 8am; the drive to Grand Cenote was about 8 minutes. When we arrived at the entrance, which is right of the main road, there were already about 5-8 cars in the lot. Buying our tickets, which included the life vests, entrance fee, and snorkel gear was 500MXP/each ($25). When we had looked this up we thought it was going to be 180MXP($9) and it turned out to be wayyyy more. One thing to note is when you pick up the snorkel gear you have to give them your ID to hold, you do get this back though. We did also end up paying for a locker which was 30MXP, I believe. We spent about 2 1/2 hours swimming and exploring. By the time we walked out the park was starting to get packed. So, if you plan on heading to the Grand Cenote I recommend 1) getting there early 2) carving at least 2 hours out of your day and lastly 3) might want to pack water shoes because there are rocks at the bottom (it is a cave!).
After drying off and changing back into our clothes we hopped in our car and headed to the Tulum Ruins. This was also a quick drive, probably less than 15 minutes. Now beware, when you turn the corner to head down the road there are at least 20 some people that we come up to your car and direct you to a parking spot – this is another touristy place. Looking back, parking wasn’t crazy expensive probably around $5USD. When we exited the car and walked up to the stand to pay that’s when we were met by another person trying to sell us on a package for the Ruins. We ended up just saying that we would wait in line at the entrance to the ruins and pay for just the entrance fee; this was going to be 80MXP versus the package he was selling us which was $500MXP for quicker admission, guide, and a boat ride to the back of the ruins. This would have ben defiantly worth it but, we just didn’t want to spend that much money. Once we paid for parking we started walking to the entrance – this is a long walk! Before we got too far we noticed a restaurant so we stopped for lunch.
Once we finished eating we started heading down the long road to the entrance – this will be easy to find since there are groups of people walking in the same direction. Coming to the entrance we noticed the long line of people waiting to purchase tickets; this line took about 20-30 minutes before we got far enough in that we heard someone ask, “Does anyone want a tour guide?” This is when we raised our hands and ended up skipping the line. Because we got a tour guide we ended up paying 180MXP each instead of the general entrance fee of 80MXP. This turned out to be a really good option because we learned a lot about the ruins we otherwise would not have.
At the ruins we ended up spending 3-4hours walking around and seeing the different buildings they had. There were also lots of signs that gave some history of the ruins and we read almost every one! After exploring the ruins we picked up food – yup!, at the torta place and headed back to our Airbnb early to pack our bags and get a good nights rest because we had to wake up early for our flight.
Now, if you’re a fan of travel stories do I got a story to tell! Catch my next post where I share with you How I Missed My First Ever Flight!
go explore le monde 