Wanderings: Finding "Old Tulum"

It had been ten years since I'd stayed in Tulum. When my visiting friend Paul suggested we drive over and spend a couple of nights there before he headed to Cancun to fly north, I wasn't sure what to expect. Tulum has changed a great deal over the years, and I was not sure I'd like it.

I am not terribly interested in fancy vacation hotels, and my budget does not allow for frequent expenditures of this sort. I enjoy myself, better appreciate a place and find I meet more interesting people when the accommodations are simple. I was afraid that this would be hard to find in modern-day Tulum.

I needn't have feared. Although fancy and expensive resorts have spread like a fungus down the Tulum beach, pockets of "Old Tulum" still exist.

By "Old Tulum" I mean what I remember Tulum to be when I first visited years ago. Of course "Old Tulum" means something very different to local residents who remember the place before tourism became the basis of the local economy. But my memories of Tulum are of a quiet, casual place, where most visitors carried backpacks and slept in hammocks strung between palm trees or in rustic Mayan-style cabañas. The cabaña we rented years ago had no electricity and a "path to the bath." When we checked in we paid about twenty dollars, if I am not mistaken, and were handed matches and candles. It was an idyllic spot.



It can be idyllic still. Using the internet, Paul found a rustic rental identical to my memories of the "hippie-in-a-hammock" days. We were right on the beach, used candles at night, and the bathhouse was twenty steps down a palm-lined, white sand pathway. It was just about perfect.

The most noticeable difference now was that to both sides of us, naked Europeans were paying hundreds of dollars per night to lounge on queen-sized platform beds placed on the sand, and to have their umbrellas adjusted, pillows fluffed and drinks served by armies of attendants while they languidly ignored everyone around them. These tourists were entertaining. What I found even more delightful was the fact that we were paying a small fraction of the cost to enjoy the same world-class beach, warm, crystalline water and beautiful weather.



Certainly we lived differently from the package tourists; our accommodations (picture above) were just a notch or two above camping. We kept our drinks and snacks in an ice chest. There was no maid service and showers were cool. But we had a fantastic time and I would not have traded our place for one of the others.

One thing that time has improved in Tulum is the choice of restaurants. Some are very expensive, but good, reasonably priced meals are still to be found in the area. The thin-crust pizzas at OM, on the beach, are delicious. Back on the highway, El Camello, located on the east side of the road on the southern outskirts of Tulum, provides generous servings of economically-priced, delicious seafood. The mixed ceviche at El Camello is hard to beat for price and portion size.

And there were other nice details, like the young man where we stayed who would climb like a monkey up a nearby palm, knock down some coconuts, whack off the ends with a machete, and present them, straw inserted and ready to enjoy, for a few pesos.

But the best thing about Tulum is the beach. Miles of fabulous, pristine, uncrowded beach. No large hotel developments have been constructed along the beach south of the archaeological zone, and I hope the situation stays that way. It would be a great loss if Tulum ever develops in the way of Cancun...and if the last of the rustic old-style beach accommodations is some day closed down.

The "Beach Onions" Mystery

"What a strange thing. It's an onion!" I heard my friend Victor call out in Spanish, as we walked along the beach.

On a late December afternoon we were walking along the Yucatan's northern fringe at water's edge, kicking at chunks of coral and scanning the tide line for something interesting, when suddenly we stumbled upon this object.

As soon as I'd processed the day's "language learning moment," realizing that my friend was not talking about a certain strong-tasting edible root, but rather in general about plant bulbs (of which onions are just one example), I bent over to take a look.

Although it did resemble an edible onion in color and texture, obviously this bulb was something different. It still had the remains of green leaves at its top, and some threads of root remained attached to the base. As we walked further, we found quantities of these uprooted plants, strewn among shells and seaweed clumps along the shore.

Victor commented that they looked a lot like the wild lilies that grow near the coast. He in the past had pointed out these plants growing here and there near beach access roads and in dunes along the Yucatan coast, although I've never seen them in flower.

But what we kept wondering was, "how did these bulbs get here?" It was pretty obvious that they'd floated awhile and then washed up on this spot. Did someone dump them? Why did they dig them up in the first place?

As we speculated, we decided to collect a few, so as we beach combed we selected those in better condition and piled them where they would be visible and easily found as we returned to the car. Some were rotted and badly damaged, but we gathered about a dozen good ones for a little experiment.

The bulbs were planted in my garden a few days later, and within two weeks had begun to sprout new leaves. They did greatly resemble the wild lily plants commonly seen along beach areas around here.

As they grew, what was surprising to me was the size of these plants. After about six months, the leaves have reached a length of more than a meter (40 inches). Then they began to flower in late June, exactly six months after being put into good soil. The blossoms confirmed that these are the local plants we suspected they were.

 And what a fantastic thing the blooming of these plants is. It is not a flashy flower, in fact it is so spindly that from a distance it might easily be missed. Its six swordlike petals have a look reminiscent of orchids to my eyes. The stamens and anthers, with bright orange pollen at their ends, lend the flower a spidery, delicate elegance. This sizable bloom measures about 23 centimeters (9 inches) across. The stalk which supports this flower has had at least eight buds, which seem to bloom one at a time, consecutively. A flower lasts a day or two, with a new blossom opening as its predecessor wilts.

As for the "Beach Onions" mystery, I believe that coastal erosion is the reason that these bulbs are washing up on the shore. It seems to be an indigenous plant, common along the coasts, and this area of the Yucatán coast north of Mérida has some serious problems with erosion of beaches. I am guessing as beaches recede and dunes wash out, that some of these plants might manage to survive by floating to new habitat. However I imagine, from seeing the many damaged and rotted bulbs along the beach that day, and from the slim chance that a bulb would be tossed high enough up a beach to root and thrive, that the majority do not survive.

If my readers have other theories or information, or can help with identifying this plant, I'd appreciate comments.

The Coast

One of the things that most attracts me to Yucatán is that there still are long stretches of beach that look and feel just as they must have when only Mayan people were here, living in small villages along this coast, fishing and producing salt for trade long before the arrival of Spanish conquistadores on the Peninsula. In other words, there are areas still with no houses, no powerlines and very few people. When you are there you feel the sun and wind and see just birds, waves, miles of light-tan sand, and not much else. Occasionally you might encounter a family that appears magically as they quietly walk up an unseen trail through the dunes, or a skiff full of fishermen, or a boy on a horse. But just occasionally.

The ocean and beaches have always had a powerful allure to my family. When I was born our home was a log cabin on an Alaska beach, and with the exception of a few shorter periods of time, I have lived my entire life very close to the sea. I can't imagine living any other way. When I am away from a coast for very long I feel its absence and long to be near it.



As a small child, I viewed the beach as a barrier, a very real limit beyond which it was difficult to cross. We would wade carefully in, splash and swim in the waves at waters' edge, but could not venture farther. We cast in fishing lines, intruding just a little deeper into this mysterious space, waiting for something to take the bait on our hooks. I remember always trying to imagine the creatures out there, but it was difficult to clearly picture that other world just beyond reach. In my childhood days before technology made high-quality underwater films and television programming relatively easy to produce, the deep, dark underwater world did truly seem as vast and mysterious as outer space.

As I grew I learned to swim and dive, operate small boats and handle a kayak, and began to view the beach as an open entryway to a vast, three-dimensional world rather than a barrier and a mystery.



Back in the mid-sixties, we took vacations along Florida's Gulf Coast, primarily on Sanibel and Captiva Islands. Lazy hikes down the long, pristine stretches of beach, swimming, surf fishing and collecting huge bags of shells along the edges of the warm Gulf waters are my fondest memories of childhood family vacations. There were at the time still a few old families around there living off the sea; that culture was still alive.

Unfortunately, when I go to those places now, changes caused by the intervening decades of development make a nostalgic visit difficult. Big hotels, condominiums and the presence of lots more people have changed the very nature of the places. The beaches themselves, as you stand and gaze out to sea, look the same, but to your back the congestion, commercialization and crowds make everything else different. The tranquility and old ways are pretty much gone, replaced by timeshare condo and vacation culture, which utilizes the beaches and water mostly as a backdrop against which to seek pleasure, and appreciates little of the important things that the environment has to offer.

A trip along large stretches of the Yucatán Peninsula Gulf Coast can be almost like a time-machine journey. Two-lane highways and sand roads predominate. There are sections of coast with no roads at all. Villages, still largely authentic Mayan fishing ports, here and there sprinkled with modest vacation homes, still exist. Most of these places offer rustic seafood restaurants, but there are large chunks of the coast where tourism is modest and hotel rooms are scarce.

In the places where there are rooms, they are often basic, as are the prices. This is great for those of us who are happy in simple quarters and have little interest in "luxury vacations," viewing the real luxury simply as access to big stretches of quiet, unspoiled coast. Things are changing, though. More development is happening. Highways to the coast have been modernized. On the outskirts of my favorite small coastal village an American contractor has bought a long strip of beach, stretched barbed wire and "for sale" signs across beach access trails, and is constructing enormous, million-dollar beach houses. These will probably never be permanent residences for anyone; more likely just occasional vacation getaways for the privileged few with little connection to the environment or local people.

Change is coming here, but I hope it happens slowly. I don't write in any great detail about my very favorite places because what I enjoy about them is destroyed when they become popular. Some things are better left alone.