Semana Santa: Tulum

We have arrived at the beach!  We spent the weekend in Tres Valles then said goodbye to Lola & Octavio's family and embarked on our 20 hour bus ride to Tulum, Quintana Roo.  The 20 hour bus ride was a little rough, more so for Octavio than for me since he had more trouble sleeping than I did.  We left Sunday at 1:15 and arrived Monday at 10:00ish.  After checking into our rooms we borrowed a couple of bikes from our hotel and took off for the beach.  We're about a 10 minute bike ride to the beach but Tulum is super bike friendly so we just cruised down the bike path until we saw the ocean.  After spending an hour or so at the beach we headed back to our hotel, changed, then set out to explore the town.  We found a really cute little restaurant for dinner then called it a night.  Even though I made sure to put sunscreen on before we even left our hotel I got awkwardly burned, as you'll probably note in later pictures.  Octavio didn't want me to pull out our little map the hotel gave us because it would give us away as tourists.  I told him he couldn't blend in anywhere with his now pink girlfriend!

a cloudy little beach.  Luckily the clouds parted and the sun came through right after we got there.  (well, maybe not entirely lucky since I got burned!)

My shins are a much brighter red than the rest of my legs from the shorts I wore, hence the awkward burn. (you'll see!)

Octavio cruising along.

Stopped for a photo op.

Beach, beach, and more beach. 

Updates

Well we didn't get to go horseback riding yesterday.  The owners daughter got sick so he cancelled all his appointments.  The previous weekend we were also supposed to go but it started pouring early in the day and didn't stop until the next day.  I was all for riding in the rain but apparently most people don't find that fun.  What?  So we just stayed home and kept an eye on Lola.  She was stray bugs and poking her head in boxes so basically business as usual.  It was probably good horseback riding got canceled because although Lola slept soundly that night I couldn't sleep at all!  I was still worried she might have some kind of injury that hadn't presented itself yet so, much to her annoyance, I kept petting her randomly during the night to make sure she was ok.  I'm sure she appreciated the reprieve when we went to the grocery store the next day so she could sleep without anyone poking her!

One exciting thing we did do this weekend though was book our vacation for break.  I found a super cute little hotel in Tulum for only $50 a night.  We'll have to walk to the beach because it's in the town but we walk everywhere here so that's no big deal.  All the rooms are themed and we picked the Santo room, decorated for the famous Mexican wrestler who never took his silver mask off.

http://www.itourmexico.com

it's really cute, you should check it out.  Octavio was skeptical about the $50 a night but now he's as excited as I am.