70. Transiting Tulum

With SV Sierra Wind safely tucked away in a slip at the marina, Eitan and I packed our bags, preparing to be off the boat for two to three months. Eitan’s parents booked an Airbnb in Playa del Carmen for the holidays and I had a little over a week before I would need to meet them on the Yucatan Peninsula. So, I decided to explore some of the areas around the Yucatan during that time, since I had never seen that part of the world. Getting to Cancun from Loreto was a bit more of an effort than I expected. My options were to spend the night either in Tijuana or La Paz. Being more familiar with La Paz and knowing Uber prices were ridiculously cheap, I booked a hostel there for the night.

Eitan and I headed to the airport. He flew off to northern California for his high school reunion and I waited for my flight to La Paz, scheduled for 6:30 pm that night. As I waited and the flight time approached, I start to get a little nervous, considering there were no more than 6 people in the entire terminal and there was nobody official at the gate. The flight time comes and goes and at 6:45 I start to get really nervous my flight had been canceled and started making some small talk with an American couple who were also on the same flight. Finally, at 7:00 an airline employee calls for boarding and we are walked out to the tarmac to board a partially full flight. I gave a sigh of relief that my trip was still on time, just on “Mexico” time.

It was a short, 45-minute flight to La Paz, and once out of the baggage claim, I was approached by a taxi driver who quoted the trip to the hostel to be $35. This price seemed a bit outrageous considering we had gotten 30-minute Ubers for under $5 when we were there a year ago. I politely declined and tried ordering up an Uber on the app but got cancelation after cancelation. Finally, I caved and paid for the expensive taxi, not seeing any other way of getting to my destination. After arriving at my hostel, I tried to ask around about the mysterious disappearance of Uber in La Paz, but only received some theories about the new presence of cartels and their dislike of the rideshare company.

I stayed overnight in La Paz and luckily happened to meet an Italian woman on the same flight to Mexico City as me the next day. She offered to pay for the taxi to the airport and, in exchange, I got her into the airport lounges where she could eat and drink as much as she wanted during her long layover. My layover was a quick one though and I hopped on my last flight from Mexico City to Cancun. Once in Cancun, I took a 1.5-hour bus ride to Tulum and finally arrived at my destination around 9:30 pm after 27 hours of travel.

For my stay in Tulum, I had chosen a hostel called Mama’s House, where I was greeted by the hostel staff and shown my accommodations for the next few days. Once settling in, I joined a group of about 20 people in the common area, who were all pregaming for the night ahead. After a few free rum punch drinks, I agreed to join them and at 11:00 pm the group departed the hostel. I thought it was a bit funny that our 5-minute walk took us to another hostel, but this one had a raging rooftop party. Since I didn’t have much to eat all day, I stopped along the way and grabbed a quick bite to eat. The hot sauce on the tacos proved a bit too spicy for me and instantly gave me the hiccups which made me appear a bit inebriated to the bouncer, who almost didn’t let me into the party.

My first night in Tulum was comparable to my first fraternity party in college and it was fun to experience that atmosphere again. Young girls danced on the bar as their male counterparts spilled beer on everyone while attempting to fill a beer bong. At one point I got kicked in the back by someone trying to crowd surf and had multiple liquids spilled on me. The place was packed and clearly had no COVID restrictions as the bar handed out free tequila shots then turned around to fill the glasses up again and hand them out once more. I congregated with my similar-aged hostel friends and we reminisced what life was like before our 30s and before COVID. Luckily the bar had an early last call time at 1:00 am and we meandered our way back to our hostel for some much needed shut-eye after a long day.