Akumal, Mexico - January 25, 2014

Yesterday was a chill day – we read and hung out, then walked into town for dinner. We tried a place that Nori, a woman from Japan who is staying in an apartment here at Villa Clarita told us about, El Capitan. We split the medium Caribbean style ceviche. It was full of fresh fruits, as well as the mixed seafood, and had a coconut flavored sauce. It was very good! Today, the sun was shining and looked like it was going to be a great day, so we gathered our things and headed to the colectivo stand for Akumal. According to TripAdvisor.com, snorkeling with the turtles is the #3 top rated activities to do while in Akumal! http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g499445-d1550349-Reviews-Turtle_Snorkeling_in_Akumal-Akumal_Yucatan_Peninsula.html

Akumal is known as “the Place of the Turtles” in the Mayan language. The town was officially founded in 1958 as a diving destination. It is also the habitat for the endangered green turtles. We went to the free, public beach area and found a shady spot under a palm tree to park our towels, then hit the water. There are areas roped off as a “swim area” where we spotted about 10 green turtles, a couple stingrays and some reef fish.

We have our own snorkel gear, so we could go out on our own, but there were loads of people renting gear and guides to take them out to see the turtles. It was something neither of us would have liked – being in a group of 10-20 people, wearing life jackets, and snorkeling so close together that they were stirring up the sand on the bottom. Not fun. Our way was better!!!

My camera is not waterproof, and I did not want to spend $30 US to rent a camera for 2 hours, so I took a picture of the postcard I bought! We did decide that I need to look into buying a waterproof digital camera for future trips. These are similar to the turtles we saw, however, the water was not this clear because there were so many people snorkeling.
We spent time walking on the beach, grabbed some lunch (which was much more expensive than in town Tulum!), and walking on the beach some more.

There were some very industrious sand sculpture makers on the beach. They made quite the sea creature display!As the clouds formed around 3 pm, we decided to bid farewell to the beach and catch the colectivo back to Tulum. It was $60 pesos per person ($4.50 USD) for the 30km trip (each way) – VERY reasonable!

Another good day in paradise!