Mahahual

Mahahual is about two and a half hours South of Tulum. Often spoken of as a beach paradise untouched by commercial tourism I would say it's more of a beach very much touched by commercial tourism. The beach itself is okay, but definitely far from one of my favourites, and the fact that cruise ships stop monthly just down the coast means this (sometimes) sleepy town is always ready to make a quick buck. Though there is some good food and drink to be found it's not the best either. Don't believe the hype of the lonely planet.

Getting There

The trip down to Mahahual from Tulum takes about 2 and a half hours. We’d got an ADO bus but because it’s a less popular route it was actually only a mini bus doing the trip.

Where we stayed

We stayed at Hostel El Jardin, it was clean and had air-con. There's a few other options in town though this seems to be the most popular.

Journal

The trip down to Mahahual from Tulum takes about 2 and a half hours. We’d got an ADO bus but because it’s a less popular route it was actually only a mini bus doing the trip. I’m not sure if that would mean it would easily get booked up but that didn’t appear to be the case. We left our hostel after another very tasty breakfast and walked up to the bus station to catch our 8:55 bus. Because we don’t understand much Spanish and the chances of misunderstanding if quite high Kate and I have developed a hi-tech method of finding our which bus we should be getting on. Basically, we take turns to go and show the bus conductors our tickets (at about a rate of once every 30 seconds) until we are shown a bus. At which point we take it in turns to ask the bus driver where is going, and do we have the right ticket. Then we thank everyone profusely… well I do that while Kate finds her seat and falls asleep.

Coming in to Mahahual I was expecting a kind of desert island paradise sort of beach. Very chilled and layed back and Bob Marley playing on repeat, and lastly a reef just of shore for some awesome snorkelling. What I actually found was more of a sleepy beach town, with a reasonable amount of development, and an okay beach, and a few Bob Marley songs playing every now and then. I was happy that Bob Marley wasn’t being overplayed, but was now more curious about why the Lonely Planet had raved so much about the place.

It turned out that Mahahual is close enough to some of the nearby ports where the large cruise ships come in. This apparently means that 11 days of every month the place in heaving, the rest of the time the place is quiet. Bearing in mind we were still visiting at the end of the shoulder season (pretty much everywhere was quiet in Mexico). We were there for 2 nights and the cruise ships were due to arrive the next night. We’d timed it well. This also means that even though Mahahual is small and sleepy it also seems set out to bring in the punters. Lots of beach bars, and people renting kayaks etc. but not as much soul as I expected.

We checked in to our room at hostel el jardin and found the room very nice, though not quite as good as our first room. That said the air-con worked a treat and we were soon making use of the wifi with the aircon on full blast. We quickly found that the wifi was good but could only really be accessed from outside the room.

After we had dropped our stuff we decided to head to the beach. We didn’t have any real plans in Mahahual, mainly just to find out what the fuss was about. We wondered down to the beach in search of a place for lunch. Kate had found a place called Nohoch Kay in the guide book which apparently did good sea food so we went to check that out. It turned out to be a beach shack slightly recessed from the beach and really didn’t look like much. But we gave it a try and we’re glad we didn’t I have octopus tacos and they were great!

Afterwards we headed to one of the beach bars that didn’t seem to be charging for us to use their sun loungers (though we did have to get a drink). We went to sunset bar, which was good, we both got frozen Margaritas though it wasn’t quite to my taste. The only down side to sunset bar was the toilets. They are out the back and when we were there they were heavily frequented by very large wasps! They are fine if you just walk calmly through but nevertheless it’s quite unsettling.

We spent a couple of hours at the beach relaxing and also asked a couple of questions about getting to the Banco Chinchorro (apparently the largest reef in the Northern Hemisphere). Only a few of the dive shops actually have a licence to go and some of the dive shops without a licence told us that you didn’t need to go on a 2 hour boat ride to see the reef as there was a reef just buy the beach. You still have to pay $100USD to get there though – even for snorkling. We didn’t think it was worth the price especially because Kate hadn’t dived before. We thought we might hire a Kayak and see what we could see.

For dinner we walked down the beach to an Italian Resturant called Luna de Plata. We’d both had enough of Mexican already and wanted something a little easier on the stomach. Fresh pasta it had to be. While expensive it was definitely worth the chance. We also got a couple of glasses of Tinto wine, a think a beer would have been a better choice! On the way back we stopped off at the local ice cream parlour, it was a great end to the night!

Day 2

The next day, and our only full day in Mahahual was set aside as a beach day. Kate wasn’t feeling great so a relaxing day at the beach sounded like a good plan. We walked down the beach looking for a good place for breakfast and found a place next to sunset bar on the right (it was a hotel) with a private bit of beach and some very nice staff. We got breakfast there and ended up staying for lunch and setting up on the loungers there. The food and beer was good and I would recommend it.

After lunch and Kate was feeling a bit better we asked around about hiring a kayak. We found varying prices everything from 500 pesos for an our all the way down to 200 pesos for a double kayak for 90 minutes. We kayaked out to where the boats were taking people for snorkling assuming we’d see something cool. We saw absolutely nothing! Just a load of sea grass! We were glad we didn’t pay to go out in the boat. I’m sure there is something awesome stuff to see diving but there is nothing easily accessible off the beach. We played around on the kayak for a bit and then paddled back in.

On the way back to the hostel I stepped on something on the ground. At first I thought it might have been glass but it began to cramp almost immiedately which made me think it was more likely a sting. Possibly a wasp sting, or an ant bite, there didn’t appear to be anything left in the wound. I hobbled back to the hostel and put it under hot water which often helps with certain types of stings, it died down quickly but it became quite itchy over the next couple of days and turned in to a lump. Not sure what it was but it appears to be pretty much gone and nothing left in there. I will wear my flip flops more often from now on!

As had become the usual, Kate had checked out all the local resturants and had decided we would go to Fernandos 100% Agave for dinner. This was probably our favourite place in Mahahual. To start they gave us a taster of their mango margeritas, it was delicious and we immediately ordered one each. When they came out they were massive, well worth 50 pesos! I got the paella and I think Kate got something fishy too. Both were really tasty and the Paella was probably big enough to share. While we were eating we were entertained bby a very curious, and very cute kitting. It sat next to both Kate and myself hoping for some food. It appeared to be very under nourished, and it was very calm and collected. So eventually we caved. After we finished they gave us a really nice coffee liquer, maybe thinking we’d get some of that too but we were just too full, so we gave them a nice tip and headed home.

Kate making a friend during dinner

And that was us done with Mahahual. I’m sure there’s a lot more to do around the area, but we guessed it was probably more ruins and more cenotes. All very exciting but we didn’t want to do that everyday!

Having breakfast before getting the bus back to Tulum