Hiking Tulum Mexico

[cchu518]

So I grew up in Brooklyn, NYC and my wife is from the Berkshires in MA. We are huge nature lovers and do photography and "herping" as a hobby. We've done everything from climb 2 miles straight up an inactive volcano in Costa Rica whose trail was washed out from a landslide just because we had heard rumors there were venomous Fer De Lance on top of the crater to doing 20 mile a day hikes in Arizona's Sonoran Desert trying to find wildlife and nature to photograph. We do plenty of stuff in NJ too where we live.

For our annual vacation we picked Tulum, Mexico. It was a perfect vacation spot with eco lodge's on the beach and Biospheres. My wife is an Auditor for one of the Big 4's and I work with CEO's from my office in NYC. So when we go on vacation we try to go find awesome nature spots.

View from our room

The bungalow right behind the beach entrance was ours

Swimming with Ripley's turtles in Akamal

Attacked by a ghost crab

Sunset

 

[cchu518]

Sea Fan Corral

A winged Ant or Termite built his on leaf

Gecko sleeping under a palapa in a monkey reserve that we hiked between 8pm and midnight. Our guide was really cool about letting us run around in the dark

Caught this little guy sleeping, had to wake him up to say hello and smile for the camera

Cat eyed snake, the guide who was a naturalist and bird specialist found this one, he practically fought my wife over a spot to photograph her as he had never gone on a herp hunt ever.

Black carnivorous preferring crickets, mean little army of crickets

Monkey preserve as the sun was setting into the night

Lizard showing perfect camo at the Coba Mayan Ruins

 

[cchu518]

The Mayans were fascinated with blood sacrifice as part of their culture

 

[cchu518]

The frigates were my fave, like little jet fighters

These were at the Sian Kaan Biosphere basically a giant mangrove that we kayaked for over 6 hours

There was an inlet that connected the ocean with the fresh water lagoons and lakes of the biosphere

 

[bpiatt]

What an awesome trip, thanks for sharing the pictures. The pic of the croc is amazing, how close were you to him?

 

[cchu518]

What an awesome trip, thanks for sharing the pictures. The pic of the croc is amazing, how close were you to him?

Thanks we were pretty far maybe 200 feet. Cameras used were a Lumix waterproof TS25 and a Canon T2i with 18-55mm standard and 55-300mm macro zoom lenses. Itching to get a 18-270 macro if we can drum up the cash for it. My wife took maybe half the photos so have to give her credit where due!

If you like gators we've been down in the Everglades and have been much closer. It was a little sad. The gators down there are practically tame. We've been as close to 4 feet from one. Tourists apparently feed them so they are calm and expectant of food when you drive along the waterways - they creep up next to you and wait for handouts. We saw one dude who tossed a whole bucket of KFC at a particular gator which he shouldn't have done.

 

[bpiatt]

Ive never been to the everglades but definitely want to. A friend of mine took one of the airboat tours and said it was awesome. You and your wife did an excellent job on the pictures, definitely a trip to remember. Was the area you stayed in pretty safe from all the gang violence?

 

[cchu518]

Despite what the newspapers report there is zero gang violence in most of Mexico where tourists visit. Zero in Tulum and Playa de Carmen. Tulum is basically a hippy town that has been taken over by runway models and designers in winter. Being around NY'ers its the last thing I want being from NY. But the beach is pristine and so is the biosphere, everything runs on solar and there is no AC, just strong breezes coming off the ocean. To find a better beach you would need to be in one of the empty beaches of Puerto Rico or Fiji. I've been to a lot of places and none have been as nice and empty as the one I was on. Tulum where we were at had maybe 7 miles of beach and beach front hotels, the zone is not allowed to build hotels larger than two stories, in addition at any given time there were maybe 500 people total on the 7 miles of beach. But to your original question, even Cancun has no violence. If you map where that incident happened earlier in the year in Cancun, it was so remote from the tourist areas that you would not have even noticed it.

We slept with our bedroom doors wide open, and our naturalist guide took us everywhere. I'm also Chinese but speak some Spanish, it goes a long way just chatting with the locals in Spanish.

Ive never been to the everglades but definitely want to. A friend of mine took one of the airboat tours and said it was awesome. You and your wife did an excellent job on the pictures, definitely a trip to remember. Was the area you stayed in pretty safe from all the gang violence?

 

[baldtaco-II]

Likes this

. What is this, eagle?

 

[cchu518]

Harris' Hawk!

 

[baldtaco-II]

Thanks.

 

[Bigfattyt]

We went to Telum years ago when we were down in Cancun.

It was pretty neat, right up against the ocean like that.

When facing that temple, there was a nice little cove beach down and to the left.

Probably one of my most enjoyable vacations. I think I preferred it to Hawaii.

 

[sicily02]

Wow, awesome pics. I bet that was a great vacation.


Bryan