Saturday, April 16, 2011

Tulum

We left the Caye past the welcome sign that should read 'can't be arsed' and sped our way back to Belize city, where we found Nancy safe. The next morning we were off early to try and miss some of the heat and having said 'Goodbye' to our host Alex at the hotel we headed north towards the Belize/Mexico border. The road was good albeit a bit of a squeeze at times. The sugar beet harvest was in full swing and there were lots of trucks carrying the raw beet to the processing plant. Final stop by the blue waters of the Belize coast to check where we were before arriving at the border near Chetumal. We had made sure that we had no Belize money left and were very surprised when immigration charged us 17 USD for our exit permit! Getting Nancy exported was no problem and soon we were crossing the river and into Mexico. As our clearance into Mexico was for 6 months and we hadn't checked out when we entered Guatemala we just showed our paperwork and were quickly on our way. We stopped for lunch and were grateful that prices had become more realistic (about £4 instead of £20 in Belize) It was getting really hot by this time
so we rushed north getting little benefit from Nancy's air con to Tulum on good roads. We stayed that night in the Hotel Tulum which had 2 fans but no a/c about 2 miles from the ruins and the next day we caught a taxi to get there at opening time (so we thought but more of that later) Tulum ruins are in a amazing position overlooking the Caribbean. They are quite small but were important to the Maya as a trading settlement. They are surrounded by huge thick walls. Here are some pictures:- It got a bit crowded as the morning wore on so we said our farewells to the locals and headed off to Chichen Itza

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