On Tuesday, we rolled out of bed, sat on the patio for a bit, and then went to the same cafe we'd gone to Monday morning - it was so tasty the first time, we thought we should go again and try other things off the menu! Note to anyone going to Tulum - at least in the town, many restaurants are cash only, and a lot of ATMs run out of cash by the end of the day! So we definitely hit up the ATM first thing in the morning this time. For day two breakfast, I had mole enchiladas for breakfast and Matt had the yummy dish pictured above. It's called "molletes" and it's basically a roll covered with refried beans, a little bit of cheese, and fresh salsa. Our waitress said she liked it best with avocado and an egg on top, so Matt followed her instructions and the rest of us were jealous of how good it looked all meal. But my enchiladas were delicious too!
After breakfast, we made for Gran Cenote, only a five or ten minute drive from our place. I've seen cenotes described as "sinkholes", which I guess they technically are, but that makes them sound kind of scary...and they're definitely not! We learned that most of the Yucatan peninsula has a base of limestone, which is really porous, and so there's a huge network of underground caves filed with water. I think the network has a total of around 150 miles of connected caves. It's supposed to be one of the coolest places to scuba dive anywhere. Where those caves are accessible from the surface, they're called cenotes, and you can access the underground caves if you have scuba gear. There are tons and tons of cenotes all around Tulum and we made a big list of all the ones we wanted to see - but Gran Cenote was the only one we went to on Tuesday. I wasn't really sure what to expect from a cenote - I read about them online before we went, and I kind of pictured a parking lot and a hole in the ground, with some stairs leading down to it. I'm sure they vary, but Gran Cenote was a lot more developed than that. There was a bathroom, changing rooms, showers, food stand, and picnic tables with paths around the grounds.
It was so beautiful! The water was crystal clear - I can see why diving or snorkelling is so popular at cenotes. We actually didn't snorkel, since we were already planning on doing it Wednesday - we just swam around and looked at turtles and had tiny fish nibble on our feet. Gran Cenote is nice because there are two areas open to the sky connected by an area that has land overhead, but it's high enough that you can swim or snorkel between them.
(more panoramas to click on!)
We even saw some wildlife! Mostly iguanas and turtles, but also a resident peacock who was trying to eat off of everyones' plates. The smaller iguana above made a beeline for an open bag of chips and put on a showe for all of us tourists. We were hoping to see toucans, but it wasn't to be. This post is already kind of long, so I'll post about our (delicious) lunch and seaside sunset later! Adios.
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