On our last day in Mexico, we decided to set out for a little adventure. Just me, Mike, our Dodge Accent and the open road.
Well, “road” may be overstating it. We decided to attempt the drive to Punta Allen, a tiny (even tinier than Tulum) fishing village about 45 kilometers south of Tulum. I say “attempt” because every guide book or travel article I had read said you needed a 4 wheel drive vehicle, preferably a Jeep, to make it. The only route to Punta Allen involves driving down a dirt road through the Sian Kaan Biosphere, a World Heritage Site famous for it’s gigantic lagoon and jungle. Considering we were driving a teensy Dodge Accent that wasn’t exactly outfitted for extreme conditions, we knew there was a good chance that we might be getting into some trouble.
Thankfully, guide books are full of crap and mostly designed to trick you into paying for unnecessary tours. We were golden. And we only got stopped by the Federalis once!
We stopped at the Sian Kaan visitors center. It was too windy that day to see any real sea life (the lagoon is populated by dolphins and manatees!), but the view from the top was amazing.




I tried to find out if there was ANY chance of seeing manatees without actually going on a boat. There wasn’t.

So we took a picture on the dock, skipped the boat tour (which saved us $100 and mike vomiting over the side of the dingy.)
And we took off on our adventure.

It was a perilous journey. But our brave little Dodge Accent made it through the dirt road.
We drove and drove and drove.

We braved the threat of dangerous creatures.

And we only ran into the Federalis twice!

And then we got hungry. At the Sian Kaan visitor’s center, the guide told us about a little fishing bungalow called Sol Caribe on the way to Punta Allen that had really good food- so we stopped.
There was nobody there.
So we started to walk back to the car. Then a short American guy shouted at us from the beach and asked us what we were doing. We told him that somebody had told us to eat there but that the place must not be open so we were leaving, but he shook his head and told us that he was the owner and they were open, but nobody else was there. Then he asked us what we wanted to eat.
We were a little sketched out to say the least, but Mike asked for a menu anyway. The guy laughed and said there was no menu- just tell him what we wanted to eat. I asked what they had on hand and he told me they had gotten some really good shrimp that morning. I was still confused, but he seemed so excited to see people that we decided to split a plate of shrimp. What the hell, right? It was pretty. So we wandered around the empty beach while he made us food.


Mike found a quality walking stick.

When we got back, the owner offered me a margarita and I decided that he was good people.

Um, if you can’t tell by the look on my face, the margarita was really, really strong. Like, I got nervous hearing him make it. It was delicious though.)
Later that day I realized that we had basically set ourselves up to be killed in some horror movie universe- we wandered into an abandoned beach shack, some strange guy offered to feed us and then tried to get me drunk. Really, the day should have ended with our bodies being thrown off a boat out in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere.
Thankfully though, that didn’t happen. Instead of killing us, he brought us some awesome food:

Alive and full, we set off to Punta Allen. It was indeed a VERY small town. But great for wandering and photo-taking.





hehe.
After some wanderings, we headed back. We stopped at some tide pools, looked at crabs, I peed on the side of the road (thank you mr. margarita) and we stopped on another beach to take a 2 hour nap. And then we saw THE GREATEST AD IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD:

I have nothing more to say about that, other than it was the perfect end to a fabulous day.