Vagabond and Beyond: "No peeing on the Iguanas and no sex on the beach!!"

Was raining on our way to the Ruins in Tulum but thankfully stopped once we arrived. The senor at the information desk told us a few guidelines about exploring the ruins and added this beauty of a line "no peeing on the Iguanas and no sex on the beach", he said it in jest, I think! The ruins were pretty decent and the setting along the coast on a cliff top made them more scenic than usual. We saw a few large Iguanas (pictured below) and were able to restrain ourselves! After the ruins we went to the beachside restaurant and had a couple of free drinks and guacamole thanks to the guy working in our hotel that I mentioned in an earlier post. Chilled on the beach for a while and watched pelicans diving for fish. One of the locals that was fishing with snorkeling gear speared a barracuda, picture of his impressive catch below. Chatted to an Aussie couple on beach who have been travelling for 8 months. They had been to Akumal (turtle bay) the day before and snorkeled with turtles which we had heard about already so we decided to give it a shot the next day.

Akumal or turtle bay was deserted, nobody on the whole beach so our plan of bargainning a few boat captains against each other fell through as only one place was open. We thought we agreed a price for him to take us out on the boat etc. but was more expensive than originally thought (I think he might have upped the price) so we rented the equipment for half the cost. The entire cove was very shallow so you could always stand. However, we still rented life jackets in order to float above the coral plus it was about an hours snorkel along most of the reef where the waves were breaking. About 20 mintues in we hit a few problems. First off, the current was strong and with the life jackets on we couldn't swim against it, secondly the water was shallow and the coral broke the water in a lot of parts, thirdly we were told to swim over the dark parts in the water (the coral) about 300 feet out. To sum up our problem was; the current was pushing us right into the razor sharp coral and we were surrounded by the stuff. Sarah's flippers were coming loose to add to the problematic scenario. As I was warning Sarah to float on her back to avoid the coral I had just encountered, another wave came and caught her and she grazed her leg on some coral. Then I got loads of paper like cuts from the coral on my hand going back to her. With the saltwater the cuts ware stinging and the waves continued to push us into more coral so after a panicky 5 or so mintues back to shore we just got out and did what we do best, lay down on the beach for the rest of the day. An American couple we got talking to who went out snorkeling saw no turtles so we didn't miss out but they did see a shark, a fish of the sea we would rather miss out on.

Final day in Tulum we walked to Gran Cenote (another one of those ancient freshwater caverns). I think the walking was more my decision than a group one. I said it was about 3km, after what felt like a 5km walk in the dead heat I folded and we got a taxi the rest of the way. Unfortunately we were about 30 seconds in the taxi before we arrived at our destination and the taxi driver happily took our 20 pesos. Karma won out in the end though as we got a free bus all the way back to Tulum, just a random friendly bus driver who stopped when he saw us walking. As has been commonplace so far on this trip, low season is in full flow as we were first at the Cenote. We ventured into the caves by water but kept our stay short and sweet with the constant presence of bats who were flying in and out of the cave. A fact we learned by observation, fish eat bat poo. So if a bat has rabies and a fish eats bat poo and a fish nibbles at us, do we now have rabies?! Saw a couple of scuba divers going into the cave, the biggest parts of the Cenote is underground. We left soon but not before I got a photo of the odd toilet situtation going on in the Cenotes bathroom (see pic below). My guess is a backup toilet for previous nights dodgy Mexican food... Next up the colonial town of Valladolid.