Fri. Feb. 11. After driving down a decent road to the main beach and hotel area near Tulum, the road became very rough for our next 10 miles or so. We barely reached speeds of 8 KPH. We saw jungle on both sides, with glimpses of pristine beach now and then.
We were in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere, a Mexican national park, named a world heritage site by UNESCO. It is a 1.3 million acre wilderness area with miles of remote uninhabited beaches. The entrance to the main area was a stone archway and a little farther along was an interpretative center. It had a lookout tower with beautiful views of jungle (wherein resided monkeys, many snakes,exotic birds—we saw some birds, but not the others) lagoons (with crocodiles), the end of the peninsula, and beaches (see photos). The tower structure was limited to only two people at a time, for good reason, swaying like a Disney ride, but real.
From the center, they
launched small boat tours, and there was a little museum on the flora and fauna of the jungle and lagoons. Without Roger and Kathy we would never have found the overgrown pathway to the incredible white beach, where we were the only ones except for three women who had to dress quickly when they saw us (no photos available).
We walked, swam and hung out on the beach for a while, then headed back through the jungle to the car for the rough ride back to town, with six of us piled on top of each other. Within the wilderness area was a restaurant, which we were amazed to find, in a gorgeous location. Looking out on the jungle and beach, we ate another great shrimp dish (we learned more ways to fix shrimp than we could imagine.)
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