Within maybe 7 hours of us finishing school a couple of weeks ago, Lettie and I had driven to the Caribbean sea, ordered ourselves a tequila sunrise and were relaxing close to the beach in Tulum. I say ‘close to’ because by this point we were just happy to crash out on the sofa in our hostel and make the most of the free cocktail happy hour that they had going on at the bar.
Before I go any further, I must once again make a small note about my health to those readers who have been informed of my continuous battle with Mexican diseases and whatnot. I am officially off medication and doing much better. And, fingers crossed, this this should be for the last time. I definitely did not postpone starting any antibiotics until after the weekend in order to make the most of free cocktail happy hour.
Aaaaaanyway. I’ve already written about the magic of Tulum, so instead, here is the low down of our trip to Coba, a small town about an hour inland of Tulum. We set off on the hunt for some cenotes in the Tulum area (using our trusty map, thanks Heather). Quite quickly we found two along the main road but decided against these. The first was called the Temple of Doom (did we need a reason to not enter) and the second one looked nice enough until we saw a snake. To start with, the snake was out of said cenote but when we moved closer (yes, I questioned this decision later too) it promptly swam into the cenote. We told the guy (there always seems to be just one guy) and I asked if it was dangerous. He said ‘was it green?’ and we didn’t know if that was a good thing or bad thing but we decided against swimming in it.
So we just drove in a straight line towards the town of Coba where, as it was a Sunday, we had free entry into the ruins. Hooray for having residents’ cards! Unfortunately, despite being very impressive, the ruins at Coba are quite dispersed. Many tourists were cycling to and from the different archeological sites. We opted against this having seen how hot, tired and really rather bothered they were when arriving back and simply wandered around those closest to the entrance. We then sat and had coconuts and strange lychee fruits by the lake which is something I don’t think I’ve done since being in Mexico. Lakes and rivers don’t exist in the Yucatan. There are mangroves, beaches and cenotes (which I guess are technically underground lakes and rivers, if you’re being pedantic) but no real lakes. It was super lovely to sit and think about all the possible crocodiles there might be swimming close to us…
Post crocodile scare (who am I kidding, that would really have made our day exciting), we finally found our cenotes. Between the two of us, Lettie and I have been to a variety of cenotes by now; I think we worked out we’d visited maybe 30? But never such a mismatch of them in close proximity. Cenote numero uno was a quiet underground little cavern which you could paddle about in and jump off relatively tame rocks (not me, obvs). Contrastingly, cenote numero dos was the complete opposite. A sneaky give away of what we were about to experience was the huge yellow coach in the car park. Eurgh. Again, it was an underground cavern but as we descended in I swear it sounded like the entrance to a British public swimming pool. In fact, it reminded me of the public baths in Budapest. It was huge and full of people. There was a giant stairway down with boards for people to jump in from which was fun to watch for a short time but generally quite unbearable. So we moved swiftly onto cenote numero tres which was the furthest underground out of the three and therefore the coldest. But thankfully, much less people.
With our fill of beach, sea, cenotes, lakes and ruins (or sunburn, sand, snakes and sharing a hostel room with loud Spanish chicas) we returned to Mérida. Thankfully we left the Caribbean coast of Quintana Roo before it was hit by a tropical storm. Sadly, this was mine and Lettie’s final adventure together before she leaves Mexico to go on her travels and, ultimately, return to England. It’s been the most amazing year and it’s going to be a very different Mexico without her here!
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