Wednesday in Tulum

Brief rewind: I left my weekly gig as host of Open Mic Night at Fergie’s Pub at 3am on Tuesday morning (Monday night, as we call it in the biz) and headed straight for the airport to catch a 6am flight.  Having slept only on my flights and during my layover, I retired very early Tuesday evening (10pm, probably a record of some sort).  Thus I rose very early this morning.

I wake up as the sun is just barely rising, something which never happens to me in regular life and which I find very pleasant.  My business for the day is to rent a bicycle at a nearby location I noticed last evening and ride into the town of Tulum Pueblo, the name given to the real town of Tulum where the locals live, which apparently boasts much cheaper shops and restaurants than this tourist encampment (called Tulum Playa).  Once I see what is available in town I’ll figure out my strategy for buying food and whatever else I might want.  First, I have breakfast and spend a good long time on the internet learning certain Spanish phrases.  By the time I get to the rental spot around 10am there are no bicycles left to rent.  I am not particularly bothered by this setback since my time here has intentionally very little focus.  Instead, I walk further down the road than I ventured last night and stop at a beach past the hotels and restaurants to watch some pelicans fish.  Pelicans are pretty neat.

Later I swim in the ocean and read for hours before returning to the restaurant for several margaritas that I enjoy despite their being pretty terrible, as margaritas go.  While imbibing I plug in my laptop and decide to begin typing these accounts.  Writing such travel journals (or accounts of any true events, really) is always an enjoyable but confusing task as I am torn between indulging my inclination to record everything and the implicit hope that someone might actually read and enjoy what I am writing (which argues for the omission of a good portion of events).  On top of that there is the constant editorial pressure to restrain my often absurd verbosity, which can be a turn off to potential readers as well as myself, and which verbosity is clearly demonstrated in the previous sentence, not to mention the current one.

That said, I only indulge in such travel journals on a small fraction of my actual travels, and always while reminding myself that my own amusement should be the main goal of these endeavors.

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