A long journey from Caye Caulker, involving a ferry, a border crossing and multiple busses, landed us at Lake Bacalar in Mexico. We arrived in the evening and for some reason almost all the accommodation was booked.  The best we could get was a small tent on a slope.  Excellent… but hey it was cheap.  Needless to say we did not get a lot of sleep.  Not the best introduction to Mexico.  However, when we woke up and climbed out, the Lake really was beautiful.  So we went for a swim before heading up to Tulum.

Tulum is fantastic, any trip to the Yucatan should definitely include a stay here. We stayed Tubo Tulum Hostel, which was a pretty funny place to stay, they had remodelled concrete tubes into rooms.  They also had a bunch of puppies at the hostel so we loved that!

You can get really cheap food in Tulum and we got our first introduction to tacos al pastor. These delicious morsels are made with marinated pork that is cooked in kind of a Turkish style on a big metal rod over a flame.  We pretty much ate these every day.

We rented bicycles in Tulum and spent a day cycling to a few different cenotes. These are basically sink holes, that create caves that you can swim in.  The first one we visited was Grand Cenote and snorkelling in there was pretty amazing.  The rock formations under the water were creepy and beautiful and there were a lot of fresh water turtles.  There were also a lot of bats in the caves.  The next cenote we stopped at was a lot smaller and we spent our time jumping into it from the ledge.

After exploring the cenotes we cycled to Tulum Ruins. These ancient ruins were spectacular, their location is incredible, right on a cliff overlooking the beach.  We really loved the time we spent exploring here.  There were also iguanas everywhere you looked, basking in the sun.  Andrew was in his element.

The beach at Tulum is also beautiful and the water is perfect for swimming. We really enjoyed our time simply lazing on the beach with a bottle of corona in our hands.

After a fantastic time in Tulum it was time to pack up and head further North into Mexico.

Here is a breakdown of our costs for 3 days:

Budget = US$258 (NZ$360)

Accommodation – US$82.50

Activities – US$43

Food/Drink – US$78

Travel (incl. Taxis) – US$103.50

Miscellaneous – US$8

Total spent – US$325 (NZ$454)

So we were US$67 (NZ$94) over budget. It is difficult to see where we could have cut costs, we did quite a lot of travel in 3 days, which could not be helped.