Intimate, elegant, private and small
No, I'm not talking about an Italian restaurant or a hotel. It's a lovely ruin, called Muyil. It's 20 minutes south of Tulum, where the noise of tourism recedes and there is just the long straight two lane highway through the jungle with a few Mayan hamlets along the way.
Muyil, was once a bustling city and it apparently lasted until the Spanish arrived, a trading town with access to the Caribbean through canals and it has some lovely buildings still standing, that were still in good shape when our buddy, Michel peissel, stumbled on it in his misadventures that he writes about so beautifully in The Lost World of Quintana Roo.
Anyway its small 'castles' and chapels really are elegant. It has a class that Coba which is probably less than fifty mikes away as the crow flies, and is much bigger and more famous, totally lacks.
And, except for the local caretakers and official staff, we had it to ourselves. The local village of Muyil takes TLC of it, they have made beautiful white paths that circle the trees and they have created beautiful benches to sit and admire the buildings. And after a group of three europeans left shortly after we came. no one else is there. There are three different temple complexes there and many other small buildings, and they have great lines, great stair like silhouettes and chapel-like peaks.
Today was our day for getting lucky and finding small corners of the Mayan Riviera that are still calm natural gorgeous and with local flavor.
Why did we have to have luck to find these? well, if you are not familiar with the Mayan Riviera, its increasingly like this. My conference is at the Fairmont Mayakoba, and its one of the fifty mega hotels along the coast that have replaced the local small beach hotels that themselves replaced the informal palapas, and it has covered acres and acres of the coastline with manicured golf cart paths and hideous luxury. To get to the main highway you'd have to call a taxi! To get to the beach you have to ride in a golf cart, with fawning attendants and fawning courtesy from people I'd much rather have talk to me with the natural friendliness of Mayans just being themselves. All this artificial luxury, and overmanicuring of nature, is something that I personally find unpleasant! When you zoom along the four lane highway, all you see are the giant fake gateways to these big corporate funded monstrosities, with names like The Royal Tulum, Esencia, The Barcelo, the Dolphenium, the Tulum Liverpool.
So where does a normal person go? We found out that the two towns we have liked staying in, Puerto Morelos and Playa del Carmen, are some of the few places left that locals can go to, where simple cafes serve to you at cheap plastic tables with your toes in the sand, and we wanted something like this, with a little more country feel.
With the help of the web, (during a lecture about gynecological surgery), I was able to research some of these. By law, all beaches in Mexico are open to the public, but, no one has to let you there by a road. But there are just a few that have not yet sold out to the big corporations.
Today was our search for those pieces of the coast that are not yet multinationaled and where a local person would not be too clearly excluded from showing up to enjoy the beach or the sunset, and where you could know that you were in Mexico, especially in Mayan Mexico, and with a peacefulness and a feeling of connection with nature that we ourselves would enjoy. And we were looking for a place to spend tomorrow night.
Our search first took us to the coast south of Tulum, where we read inspiring accounts of hotels "off the grid" on solar energy. We had this vision of isolated little places along a deserted coast with local flavor. Not so! What we found down there was a crowded shabby chic with little hotels packed neck and neck with a clientele like you'd see in backpacker ghettos in Bangkok. It felt like Monkey Forest road in Ubud, except not in Bali! There wasn't a single Mayan thing about it, except some of the hotel names!
So next we found: Tankah. We liked this bay because 1) it's part of Michael Peissel's journey, it was one of the few inhabited coves along the coast in 1953, and 2) we've found a really nice place to stay, the five bedroom Tankah Inn, we will be the only guests due to off season. We want to write about this later after we have explored it
And then as the sun was setting and we made our way homewards, searching carefully for one of the few other public beaches, turning down every possible lane, we found it! In the middle of LaLa land, north of Xel-ha "eco-resort" (Ha! is right) and "X-plor" Eco adventure park(barf me out) and just south of the Royal Tulum and the Elysium or whatever it's called, we found it! Xpuha Bay, where Michel made his first landfall! And what a beauty! Soft sand palms and locals AND the property is a holdout, the two brothers are descendants of the very families that took care of our fearless adventurer in 1957! I'm sure they could get millions for this land! They rent it to long term campers and small restaurant beach clubs, and local folks come to eat and build sand castles, and local fishermen still push off fishing from the sands, every night!
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