Tulum Ruins

As we were staying in (or near) Tulum, we could hardly not go and see the ruins, another Mayan site, this time famous for being a walled city right on the coast. Tulum means wall or fence in Mayan, although their original name for it was Zama. This means dawn and is a reference to it being the first city to receive the new dawn.

Most of the structures you can still see today are remnants of the post classic period (between 1200 and 1450) and the city remained occupied at the start of the spanish conquest, but was abandoned around the 16th century. Apparently local Matya people still came to the site to burn incense and pray right up until the late 20th century when the tourist numbers became too much. Quite frankly I can understand them having an issue with this as you will see later on. It was frickin heavin even by 10 in the morning (which we thought was pretty early!). You'll also see what an amazing job Clairy did of getting photos with the minimum of tourists in. She's pretty darn good at it!

There were loads of huge iguanas about the place. Clair couldn't resist snapping a few.


The House of the Cenote (Used to have a big pool of water underneath).


Temple of the Wind (and beautiful caribbean sea).


Here's where the cenote used to be.


Oh hi!


This fella was bouncing around this bush without a care in the world gobbling down the strange fruit.


View of El Castillo (the castle) from the Temple of the Wind.


Temple of the Wind.


Those little chaps on the right were just listed as "Mini Temples" on our guide. Sometimes you realise they don't really have a clue what the purpose of half this stuff was.

Beautiful beach in the middle of the site. It was protected from the public for turtles.


El Castillo from various aspects.






Gorgeous view of the Temple of the Wind from El Castillo. Clair nearly took a few Americans over the edge of the cliff to get this one.


I forgot to smile again.


I then sat down for a bit to rest my sore little pegar and Clair legged it off to photo some other bits.










By this point there were vast coach tour crowds on every bit of every path, crowding over and around all the roped off sections and it was getting pretty hideous. You can see what an amazing job she did of getting shots with no one in when you look at the next few.

"Chip.....is this thing on?"


"Is she like....taking a picture of us?"


The masses kept on coming!


Get me out of here!


Once we had escaped. We came across this spectacle which we orginally saw being set up in Mexico City, but didn't hang around to see what happened. We read about it though, and it is a ceremony/show that comes from some part of Northern Mexico and used to be performed off a very tall wooden pole.

First a little guy with a drum and a high pitched flutey thing climbs on up. He's then followed by 4 other chaps.




"Yeah, we all got mouths to feed you know!" Actually he was very pleasant.


Then the flute and drum reach a crescendo and the 4 chaps chuck themselves off backwards and do a crazy slow motion spiralling bungy jump type affair (without the springyness that is).




Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.


A nice ending to a touristy nightmare (beautiful though it was).