There is still a lost world here...

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life” ― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Quintana Roo is the state in the Yucatan, Mexico known more for its mega resort towns of Cancun, Cozumel and Playa del Carmen.  Most visitors coming to this part of the Yucatan go to these towns on the Mayan Riviera.  Here there are gigantic resorts with everything you need not to feel you are actually in Mexico, safe from all the hazards of a foreign land.

But not far from these busy tourist towns is another world.  A world of empty white sand beaches, villages where the only vehicles are golf carts, great Mayan ruins deep in the jungle with no tourist groups, and long coral reefs with amazing snorkeling and diving.  There are small hotels where the activity of the day is lounging in a hammock and staring out to see (cold beer in hand, of course).  You only have to look for them.  And with the internet and a good guidebook, that's not difficult at all.

We are actually here because Amy has a medical conference near the city of Playa del Carmen.  The conference is in one of those mega resorts, but we are staying not far away in Puerto Morelos, a town on the Mayan Riviera that has, somehow, avoided the huge development of the rest of the coast.  But when Amy is not at her meetings, we will be going to other places nearby seeing if it's actually true that, even in this crowded part of the Yucatan, you can still 'get away from it all'.

We will be searching for places we have recently read about in an amazing book, "The Lost World of Quintana Roo", by Michel Piessel.  Mr. Piessel was an explorer, artist, linguist…just an all around amazing person.  In 1957, at the age of 21, Mr. Piessel was planning on a trip with friends down the coast of Quintana Roo to explore for undiscovered Mayan ruins.  His plan was to go down the coast mostly by boat, hopefully seeing the ruins from shore.  What really happened is that Mr. Piessel was abandoned in a small village across the straight from Cozumel and WALKED BY HIMSELF all the way to Belize.  Helped occasionally by locals, somehow avoiding robbers, malaria and dysentery, Mr  Piessel along the way discovered 14 never before seen Mayan ruins (except by the locals, of course).  Where there are now millions of people, 55 years ago there were very few people there and only very small villages.  There were no hotels; he slept in small buildings in the hammock he carried all the way. But he made it, somehow, to Belize and wrote about it a few years later.  By the time he returned for further study of the ruins in three years, Mexico was already planning on this being a major tourist area and hotels were being built in Cozumel.

A lot of the coastline, especially south of Tulum, is pretty much how Piessel saw it.  There are very few roads and mostly small villages.  Some of the smaller roads can be a bit treacherous and impassable after a big storm. The jungle is so thick in places that you literally cannot see 4 feet in front of you. The government of Mexico has protected a large part of this area by creating the Sian Ka'an Preserve, an area along the coast that consists of pristeen beaches, thick jungle, beautiful lagoons and mysterious Mayan ruins. 

We will be starting our adventure on Isla Holbox, a narrow island off the northeast corner of the Yucatan. You get there by a 40 minute ferry ride and then get around by walking or in one of the many electric golf carts. The streets are paved with white sand and our hotel will be right on the beach.