27 years later even more hapless

Jeff and I were in Tulum 25 years ago. This is where we stayed. It was even more rustic inside.

Heres the weird thing, it was easier for us to settle in back then

We rented a car in Cancun. Tulum didn’t even have a town much less an airport. We didn’t have cell phones or advance reservations. We had a paper map, a Lonely Planet Guidebook and a bottle of water. We drove until we found a hut we liked and paid in the pesos we had exchanged dollars for in our US bank. This hut I remember cost $30 a night which was overpriced for what it was even then.

Now we are in a beautiful Air BnB but completely confused. We have WIFI in the condo, but on our walk to breakfast we realized that we didn’t have data and got completely lost. Like walking in circles lost.

We stumbled on a great place for breakfast, and paid with credit card. When the waitress said we couldn’t add the tip on we remembered we only had US dollars and Colombian pesos. Jeff had to run to an ATM.

We went to a 7 eleven to get a SIM card for my phone. A SIM card is a tiny microchip thing you can put in some phones which makes it basically a burner phone. Putting the chip in was not easy.

We also realized the Uber thing. Uber is allowed here which is what I had read. But the taxis have a monopoly so don’t allow peopke to drive for Uber. A five mintute taxi ride from the neighborhood we’re in is $20. That is a flat rate. I think the taxi drivers may own the town.

Now we know why everyone suggests renting a car if you are not staying in a resort in Tulum. So guess what we’re doing tomorrow.

But by evening we got our wits about us. We found our favorite kind of tacos.

We found a mini mart where they circumvented the Sunday night dry laws, and found homemade tortillas, and fresh eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast.