Summer

Well in my last travel post, I wrote of my plan to work six months and then take two months off. It wasn't easy. I had to turn down some offers of full time employment in a difficult job market. I ended up finding a contract with an uncertain length (a few months they said). Miraculously, it turned out to last exactly six months. Fate I suppose. So I planned another trip.

This time, however, I knew I wanted some of my time off to be at home in San Francisco. Summertime is a great time to be in the city and I knew I would be missing home no matter where in the world I went. But I also knew that after having wound myself back up into a busy city living pace, I was due for a nice relaxing getaway to help me wind myself back down to a properly relaxed state. As always, I pictured a beach, a hammock, and not much else. I really miss Thong Nai Pan in Thailand (my ideal place for said wind-down), but June just isn't the best season to go there. That's a trip for January.

I have been hearing for several years now about Tulum, Mexico. A tranquil, rustic beach town a couple hours south of Cancun on the warm Caribbean Sea. Flights to Cancun are cheap and prices have dropped in the region because of the down economy and the recent Swine Flu scare.

I had actually just settled on Tulum just a day or so before the Swine Flu news hit. I was ready to cancel the trip, but continued watching the news, hoping the danger would subside. After about a week it became clear that the news media had overreacted and that the flu was no more dangerous than any other seasonal flu. But the damage to public perception had already been done. Occupancy rates dropped to the 20% range and the hospitality industry began to wheel and deal.

Travelling with my girlfriend, Erin, I wanted to keep our budget to about $90 USD per day for the both of us. This meant trying to find reasonable accommodations for about $40. Rates on websites and in guide books indicated this was possible but that most rooms went for much more than that. Word of mouth, however, was telling us that prices were lower now. But we just weren't going to know for sure until we arrived.

We bought two airline tickets. We knew we'd be in the area for about three weeks. Other than that, we'd figure it out as we went, and just hoped our budget would hold up that long.

We packed a couple of backpacks and hopped an overnight flight to Cancun.