Two over head Street signs.The sign to the left reads Cancun and Playa del Carmen. The right sign reads Bocapaila and Tulum-Centro. There are other signs, and electrical wires.

Tulum

We arrived in Mexico, and instead of spending time in Cancun, we moved right to Tulum. We took the ADO bus stop from inside the airport; we only had to walk a few steps to reach it. These buses, for the most part, are very comfortable, and most that we have ridden in have a bathroom. They played movies on longer bus rides as well. I’ve noticed that they have a schedule, but so far, no bus has been accurate to the time. We usually waited approximately 15 minutes after the bus scheduled to leave for it to arrive. The coach doesn’t make many stops, and you can book your seat. You can tell who were tourists as they were the ones who asked people to move if you were in their assigned seat. Our bus ride to Tulum took us about 3 hours.

Casa Paraiso Tulum

***I’m sorry about the lack of photos on this post. I’m still getting used to taking pictures of the locations we are staying in. ****

I’m thrilled Charo negotiated. We went up own street, and down another. Our driver had never heard of our hotel. We gave him the address, and he didn’t even know the address! The good news was, he was persistent. While he was driving, I was looking at the houses and trying to recognize it off our booking listing, and luckily we ended up having a match. It was a newer building, so that could be why he didn’t know it.

The place we stayed is called Casa Paraiso Tulum. We booked through booking.com, but it felt more like an Airbnb. The owner-occupied a room and he had other levels with rooms that he rented. Our room had a king bed, a double, a sofa, a small table and a small refrigerator. Perfect for a family of 5 on a budget.

The owner speaks some English but felt more comfortable talking with Charo in Spanish. Before arrival, Charo was communicating with the owner’s son, who was fluent in both English and Spanish. Charo spent time talking to the owner on a couple of different occasions, and he explained to Charo where a few things were like the money exchange, and some great places to eat in town like Antojitos Chiapaneca. He even lent Charo and I some snorkelling gear for the time we spent there.

We took a cab to the main strip, had dinner and decided to walk back. It took us approximately 20 minutes, but the sun was going down, and the breeze was great. The other restaurants looked great, as well. We also discovered that our hotel was within walking distance of a supermarket (Super Aki), local buses and a 7-11. Every time we passed the 7 -11, Marco asked if we could stop, undoubtedly for a Slurpee. We did stop into the Super Aki to get some breakfast for the next morning. We wanted to keep it easy, so we decided on yogurt, fruit loops for the kids, and granola for us.

All in all, our experience at Casa Paraiso was a very good one. There weren’t any frills to it, but it suited our needs as we only needed a clean, comfortable spot to sleep. It was close enough to the main strip, and even though we did not go to the beach or the ruins in Tulum, it would have been easy to reach it by taxi or collectivo.

Thanks for reading and happy adventuring.

Find out what we did in Tulum here.

Find out our favourite restaurant in Tulum.

Our next stop was Mahahual.