Day 2 - Dec 25 - Christmas Day

Our first morning in Tulum, I woke up early and couldn’t resist running out to explore our hotel grounds and the beach! Our hotel for the first three nights, Zazil Kin, was located on Boca Paila - the last one before the Tulum Ruins. The hotel lobby opened up into a restaurant and sandy beach sprinkled with palm trees and the cutest little beach bungalows! We opted to stay in the hotel with a room with AC, but the AC was broken our entire stay. It got pretty humid at night and the bathroom smelled but we didn’t mind too much as we didn’t spend a lot of time in the room.

Christmas morning we spent exploring the Tulum Ruins. The Mayans built an ancient walled city right on the cliffs overlooking the Caribbean, and the city was similar in size to Seville, Spain so the Spaniards were surely impressed when their ships sailed up the coast. We had the place almost but not quite to ourselves, which makes everything sweeter.

After exploring the ruins for a few hours we were very hungry so we went in to town in search of some cheap tacos. We enjoyed Antojitos La Chiapaneca, a hole-in-the-wall taco spot at the far end of Tulum Pueblo. I got 3 tacos with a coke. Delicious, but the best tacos are still the ones we had in Montreal, Canada, funny enough.

We lounged beach side at our hotel for a couple hours, with a couple cervezas and enjoyed the fresh ocean breeze. Then we visited AZULIK hotel for cocktails before dinner. The treetop bar, Kin Toh wasn’t open yet so we decided to get margaritas and guac at their cafe restaurant, Cenote. The waiter prepared our order of guacamole right in front of us, and it was soooo good! Then we wandered around the hotel and found a secret back door into Kin Toh and ordered one more round of mezcal margs. The drinks were okay, but not the most impressive. The treehouse bar was pretty cool but the group in front of us took so long snapping their pictures we were almost late to our dinner reservations! Don’t worry, I got the shot. 

A note about driving on Boca Paila: We thought this road was very stressful to drive down. There is a lot of car traffic, bike traffic, and pedestrians packed onto a narrow two lane road with speed humps when you least expect them. Free parking by Azulik, but farther down we had to pay $7 for a spot close enough to walk to our dinner reservation.

We ate Christmas Dinner at Cenzontle Jardin Secreto and my dish was pretty good, but we do not recommend going there because Drew fell ill after dinner.