Jess was awakened by a rooster just before our alarm went off, which she found quite charming. We got up and started trying to decide how to spend the day. Jess wanted to get to the Tulum ruins early (before the bus tours arrived), so Jer made our mini-breakfast (muffins, cookies, mango juice and lemon tea from the basket in our room). After lovely showers (good pressure and plenty of hot water), we got dressed, reorganized our stuff and headed out a bit before 8 am.
On our way to the main street, Avenida Tulum, to catch a taxi to the Tulum ruins, we passed a taco stand, Taqueria Honorio. We each got a cochinita pibil (Mayan pork) taco, topped with onions and avocado sauce (plus Jer added hot sauce). They were delicious, and less than $0.75 each! Thus fortified, we got a taxi from the cab stand to the ruins.
We got to the Tulum ruins a few minutes after they opened, so there were only a few other tourists around, maybe 10 of us. The ruins were pretty small but wonderfully located. Their seaside location meant that the buildings had been severely damaged by hurricanes. Some of them had been rebuilt, and you could see that they would've been quite beautiful when they were painted. The setting was magnificent, set atop a small cliff overlooking the Caribbean. We enjoyed wandering the paths, admiring the views and peeking into the few buildings that are open to visitors (the rest seem to be inhabited by iguanas, one of which was quite the ham). We imposed upon a couple of our fellow tourists to take our picture with el Castillo and the sea in the background.
As we left around 10 am, the tour groups were arriving and we were glad to have arrived early and had the place largely to ourselves. We tried to find a shortcut to the beach that was marked on our map, but instead wound up walking back into town. On the way we stopped at a dive shop to ask about snorkeling, but it was too windy and rough to go out to the reef, and we didn't feel like going into a cenote.
So, we headed back to Posada 06 to rest a bit and freshen up before lunch. After washing our faces and dusting off our shoes, we went the bank to get some pesos, then set off to find a highly-recommended restaurant called Azafran. We found a recommended dive shop (Halocline) and consulted them about snorkeling (they said it was still too windy for reef snorkeling, but recommended Akumal bay) and about Azafran (closed to move to an unknown location). Sigh.
We quickly decided to try the Teetotum Hotel for lunch, as Jess wanted to eat there at some point on our trip. Jer had a mezze platter that was very good (especially the hummus) and delicious guacamole (though the chips that came with it weren't quite as good). Jess had marvelous huevos rancheros, as well as a refreshing mango/ papaya/pineapple licuado (frozen fruit drink). They even gave us mini Chupa Chup lollypops with our change, which was nice.
Our bellies full, we returned to our hotel (with a brief detour into a 7-Eleven to Jarritos red, fizzy fruit punch that Jess dubbed "Hawai-Irn Bru"). Once back in our room, we rinsed off, as Jess fancied a dip in the pool. The receptionist reconfirmed our trip to Coba & Punta Laguna with Manzano's Expeditions for the next day, but said the Akumal Dive Shop was closed, so we couldn't book night snorkeling. Thus informed, Jess headed for the pool. The water was quite cold, but she managed to ease herself in and paddle around for a bit. Given that it's only 4 feet deep and it's decoratively shaped, it's not meant for serious swimming, just for cooling off. While Jess was in the pool, Jer started looking at our first day's pictures (which he had downloaded onto our Asus Eee PC). He continued this from our balcony after coming upstairs, while Jess read a book.
Eventually, Jer convinced Jess that we should go out and walk around. We wandered around, both on and off the main drag, looking for black tea and biodegradable suntan lotion. We found the latter, but they don't seem to sell the former anywhere in Tulum -- the closest we got was chamomile tea, which isn't our thing. We started to get hungry again, so we checked out a few restaurants that Jess had identified as possibilities.
We ended up at Los Pepes, a seafood restaurant off the main drag that didn't seem to get a lot of tourists. When we arrived, the clientele consisted of a few tables of Mexican men, all intently watching the soccer game. Jer noticed that the waiter seemed a bit apprehensive at our arrival, as the menu was in Spanish and didn't have pictures. We didn't have any trouble understanding it and ordering in Spanish, though, so it went well. Jer had delicious mixed seafood ceviche and (more) yummy guacamole, while Jess had great cheese quesadillas with black beans and a not-so-fabulous seafood soup, with refreshing homemade lemonade. We were slighly apprehensive about what our dinner might do to our tummies, but it was too late to change things.
We returned to Posada 06, where Jer looked at more pictures while Jess updated this journal and read her book. Even though it was early, we found ourselves getting sleepy and our feet were pretty achy from all the walking. We had tour scheduled for the next morning, so we decided it would be a good idea to go to sleep early, so we could get more yummy tacos before we left. We were just falling asleep when there was a knock on our door - the receptionist said the tour company had called to confirm our pickup at 8:45am. Thus reassured, we fell asleep.