Last Day

Cool and rainy today, so we will not go to the beach. We met more great people, this time here at the Posada this morning. A couple who are in the process of building their home in the jungle - very cool. They plan on working on sustainable gardening in the area, and have very good ideas about the production of good soil - which is scarce in this part of Mexico. Beautiful project. I hope we hook-up sometime in the future, it would be fantastic.

Funny thing, they know the musicians that Tim met yesterday - also very good people. We went to see them play last night, and were very impressed... great musicians! It turns out that Tulum has a very active community of excellent world class musicians, and when they are not on tour they come here to their beach houses. Sweet! The band we saw is called Casa Verde, a collective of traveling musicians. The singer, Isabelle, is very talented and her voice is warm and velvety - in a very latin kind of way. We got our hands on one of their recordings, and downloaded it at once. We will go to see them play again tonight, a flamenco gig on the beach - should be fun. We have a lot of pesos left... so we will treat ourselves to a great dinner on the beach too - raising our glasses to the end of our great adventure.

We are all packed now, the only clothes in the dresser are the ones we will be wearing to travel home. Raina (who we met this morning) has first pick on what we are leaving behind. These guys leave a number of items here in Tulum as they travel back and forth to supervise the upcoming building of their home, and it feel good to know that it will be put to good use.

I must say that Tulum was a beautiful surprise to me. I have been here before, and many years ago when the only attraction was the archeological site. As with the rest of the so called 'Riviera Maya', it has developed very fast and the main street is filled with vendors, restaurants and bars. The beach side, before the entrance of the reserve, is filled with eco-resorts which are for the most part - very pricy. So over the years when I came here, I must say that I had developed a negative bias about Tulum. A beautiful part of the planet which had become a 'made for tourists' attraction.

But this time around, our hotel is downtown (as opposed to the beach), and I had the opportunity to discover the vibrant community which makes this place so special. As I said, many excellent musicians live here - and so there is good live music every single night. The vibe is very friendly and welcoming, and that part of Tulum was a delightful discovery. We have friends here now, and suddenly the town has a face and a soul.

So it is with great delight that we will be joining the good people that we met here, spend our last evening in very good company, and end this day with a big smile on our face. Serene and happy.