Adventures in the Mexican Jungle
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to a resort?”
One of my closest friends loves chaotic travel. She enjoys the thrill of navigating train schedules in foreign languages, bartering for food and gifts at markets, overcoming the inevitable challenges of being in a place where you’re not familiar with a society’s standard operating procedures.
I…don’t. While I’m perfectly content to keep my home life chaotic (see: three high-energy dogs, one busy child), I want my travels to be serene. I like my vacations to be vacation-y, thank you very much, which means wildcard situations stress me. I don’t want to have to figure it out on vacation. I want to be on a beach, listening to the sound of the waves, reading my book (in peace), preferably with a drink in hand.
This desire to be catered to, however, often directly contradicts my general aversion to overly manufactured experiences. When I go somewhere, I want to experience the real-ness of the culture. I like a resort, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t love being somewhat restricted to on-the-reservation restaurants. The experience is inherently limiting. I also don’t love what R. calls “all the assholes you have to deal with at a resort.” If you’ve ever tried to secure a beach chair around the pool at one of these places, you know what he means.
But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing appealing about being “led around like a toddler,” as my chaotic travel friend calls it, because you get to truly relax. All the decisions are made. All the costs are included. All the activities are planned. There’s certainly a time and a place for both types of travel.
For example, when I planned the trip to Cartagena, Colombia, while our real estate agent tried to sell our Austin home, I desperately wished halfway through that I had booked a week at a resort instead. Navigating a brand-new country was less enjoyable when our stress levels were already elevated. A resort would have been better.
Having not learned my lesson even a little, I decided that the first just-us trip R. and I would take following the birth of our daughter would be adventurous. After all, traveling with a small child is part of what makes those less-luxurious trips hard. It’s pushing a rickety stroller on uneven pavement, managing the toddler’s tolerance for temperature changes (Montreal was too cold for long journeys outdoors, Cartagena was scorching), eating at restaurants with a pint-sized tyrant who would prefer to explore the space, rather than sit in her goddamn chair.
But we wouldn’t have to worry about that this time around. My parents offered to watch the Bean for a whole week while R. and I vacationed how we used to: Lots of walking and exploring, lots of eating and drinking, so much sleeping and lounging and reading. Instead of taking the more restful route, however, I decided that this was our big chance to explore new places without having to worry about a nap time (other than our own) torpedoing our plans.
The plan was somewhat straightforward: Fly into Cancun, pick up the rental car, stay the night in an Airbnb, drive to Merida, stay for four days, drive to El Cuyo, stay for three days, drive to the airport, drop off the rental and fly back to Ohio to reunite with the Bean. Maybe not that straightforward. Doesn’t matter. Right away this went off the rails.
Although I purchased “full coverage” insurance for the rental I pre-booked, this didn’t cover lots of insurance things that we needed to actually drive off with the car. It was a total racket, but we couldn’t leave until we paid for additional coverage (and agreed to a $2,500 hold on our credit card). It wasn’t a huge deal, just an unexpected annoyance.
From there, things went pretty smoothly until we needed to make the drive from Merida to El Cuyo. Have you ever heard of El Cuyo? I bet you haven’t, and you’re about to find out why. The basics are that it’s a bit of a hidden gem beach off the coast of the Yucatan state, about midway between Cancun and Merida. Almost 2,000 people live on the island, and it’s known for its amazing food (which I can attest to). It’s not exactly a tourist destination. It’s more of an if-you-know-you-know location for people who live in Mexico.
It takes about three-and-a-half hours to get to El Cuyo from where we were in Merida, but we couldn’t check into our hotel on the beach until 4 pm. We had plenty of time to kill after our checkout in the city. To use some of that up productively, R. planned a spot to Las Coloradas, a place where the sea salt that’s being harvested turns the water an incredible shade of pink. It also happens to be a spot where tons of flamingos hang out.
This was a truly spectacular stop. Although we had to drive through a torrential downpour to get there, the sun was shining brightly when we arrived. We looked at the pink lake for a bit (because really, how long are you supposed to admire stuff like this?) and decided to take the path along a nature preserve to get to the island of El Cuyo.
Now, there are two ways to get from Las Coloradas to El Cuyo. The first is to backtrack and take the “highway.” I’ll get to why that requires serious quotation marks in a second, but the other route is a straight shot through the nature preserve. We chose the preserve. Initially, this seemed like the best idea in the world. We got to see huge flocks of hot-pink flamingos gathered near the edges of the shore. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s hard not to see the world as a magical place when flamingos exist. It was a delight to witness them in the wild.
At one point along this journey, R. made a comment that any novelist should have clocked as foreshadowing: “Can you believe some people choose to take the highway? What suckers.” That was before the road narrowed to a sliver and branches slapped the car on both sides as R. attempted to drive around puddles the size of car-consuming sink holes. Keep in mind that this road was an option on Google maps. Some asshole had to drive one of those mapping vehicles through this mess. But what they probably didn’t have to deal with on that day were the huge puddles making the already soft Earth dangerous to people who were incredibly invested in not losing their rental car to the clutches of the Yucatan mud.
While we were able to push through a few precarious spots, we reached one puddle about 8 kilometers from our destination that R. determined we wouldn’t be able to overcome. He made this decision while standing knee deep in dirty water, so I was inclined to trust him. We had to turn around. The “suckers,” it turned out, were us.
“That was probably inconvenient,” you might be thinking, “but at least the highway provided a nice, easy alternative route.” No! It absolutely did not! And that’s because the “highway” was through the goddamn jungle, and after 90 minutes of trying to push forward along an impossible path, we were going to have to drive through said jungle in the pitch-black darkness the consumes the whole state at approximately 5:38 pm.
And by “we,” I obviously mean R. But it wouldn’t have mattered who was behind the wheel. We realized right away that this route was less than awesome, too. Even without the challenge of darkness, the road was absolutely chockfull of crater-sized potholes and haphazardly placed speed bumps (topes en Español, I learned), which we might have been able to see more accurately if the rental’s headlights shone more than 18 inches in front of us. That’s not to mention the copperhead snakes and other jungle horrors that emerged from the brush on either side of the road. And, oh yeah, R.’s phone was dying.
The trip should have taken less than two hours, but we were both white knuckling it for far longer. Once we reached the island, R. had regained his sense of humor. “You sure you don’t want to go to a resort?” We laughed. “Why would you say that?”
The next few days proved why we made the right choice: pristine water and beaches, kind people, tasty (and inexpensive!) food, sunny days and warm nights. It was a dream spot, and if you have the courage, a must-visit vacation locale. I can’t wait to go back.
That said, I will warn you that daylight will not help you on your drive to and from the island. Our trip back to the airport was just as precarious. Navigating potholes and random speed bumps is just as tricky with the jungle casting random shadows across the road, as it is when everything is dark. It’s not a trip for the faint of heart—even if Google maps doesn’t send you in the wrong direction and you nearly run out of gas, so you have to pay a random person 250 pesos to siphon petrol from a plastic gas can he has in the back of his truck just to get you to the nearest Pemex that is another 57 kilometers away.
So, yeah, maybe next Christmas we go to a resort instead. I wouldn’t trade our memories or adventuring for the world, but goddamn, if this trip didn’t keep me on the edge of my seat every single day. But I also know myself. Next year, I’ll look at the resort options and pass again. The memories from the unbeaten path are just too fun to pass up.
With pleasure,
Bored Aquarian
P.S. What kind of traveler are you? Do you thrive in chaos or prefer a serene experience that keeps the real world at bay for a bit? Let me know in the comments!
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