Tulum is a ‘mental hospital with an ocean view’—but it’s as bad as anyone else. Really?

I It makes it just a few steps from the overly high cab ride when no less than half a dozen men lurking in the shadows and where Dave Chappele parodies about Internet porn emerge one after another to offer me something. The drug I might need Heaven if you’re in your 20’s come here to “party” nasty if you’re a grumpy middle-aged man in Mia Tulum’s manicured woods trying to figure out how to enjoy electronic music from The Anden band without the hangover

public property

I expected the whole Tulum six day trip to be like this. For a city that was once more than a chicken shack and a gas station near its impressive ruins, it had to be completely destroyed. What would happen to the glut of Burning Man-style revelers that inspired the booming construction that obscured the stretch of road? Running along the white-sand beaches and driving the prices of everything from hotel rooms to quinoa bowls to LA-levels, I expected to see nothing but frustrated tourists, drug addicts, sunburns. Go blind from one overpriced and over-decorated attraction to the next. I expected to find out what I kept hearing was that everyone hated Tulum like San Francisco, Paris, Venice and Barcelona. Tulum was “over” and the only people still going there were simple woman Unrecorded that it is now Oaxaca and Todos Santos, not Tulum.

Instead, I found a quiet beach. A hotel full of wild styles that are continually but not cliche. Tortilla and salsa making classes hosted by top chefs, refreshing cenotes, world class massages. Cool merchants who invent fun and innovative ways to sell things, handicrafts, and lots of people who don’t hate Tulum.

Roberto Carlos Roman Don/Wikimedia Commons

“I hate $15 smoothie bowls,” says Corinne Tobias, who came for a month and decided to enroll her daughter in school after two weeks and spend six months a year in Tulum. “But I love the doctor. Alice’s school and reaching out to many people from all over the world. I hate telling people this is where we are in the school year. I just said Mexico and hope they don’t ask.”

Tobias has just entered town. Olmo Torres moved to Tulum in 1998 after the cavern’s 180-foot-deep scuba sanctuary. Torres spent weeks training underwater in his native Mexico City. But Angelita disappointed him. “It probably formed during the last Ice Age,” Torres said. There were white misty clouds. Terrifying. How could this happen in this world? That’s when I wanted to understand everything about this place.”

Lost in the underworld, Torres is suffocated and must ascend with the help of a friend’s oxygen tank. when he rises to the surface He changed the bucket and jumped back into the water. at the end of the day He found what he wanted: “This is what I want to do with my life,” he said. “I want to study cenotes.”

Herbert Mayrl/Gran Acuifero Maya Project (GAM)/Handout via REUTERS

Cenotes are a key element that distinguishes Tulum from the dozens of beach towns that line Mexico’s expansive coastline. The city’s careless development puts these freshwater oases at direct risk, as Tulum was developed without a planned sewage treatment network. therefore, it is largely up to each property owner to “Doing the right thing” is a joke, even in hotels that boast that they have installed state-of-the-art wastewater treatment systems. The best of these systems are designed for up to 5-10 users, not dozens of users living in beachside properties. And as a result, human excreta flows out of those systems and directly into underground aquifers. which not only Polluting once-crystal cenotes but the ocean itself when the murky water flows out into the sea “This changes the water quality of the cemetery,” Torres said. “Worst case, Calavera, if you swim in it. You are at risk for ear and eye infections. If you take a sip You may have diarrhea.”

It’s not just that Tulum is filled with annoying tourists. it’s full of shit And thanks to widespread corruption, partly from the sale of drugs to frantic tourists. The only hope that things will get better here is full of cynicism. If the oceans are polluted enough Price and crowd will drive people to more intelligently managed places. Tulum’s uncontrolled growth hit a wall that had to be smashed. And those who make huge profits while the Cenotes suffer will realize that they must quickly settle the city’s actions.

“One way or another The world is showing us that we have to do better,” says Torres, who, despite his troubles with Tulum, loves it. “It’s still a small town. It’s a five minute drive across town. i can ride a bike The water is still really blue.”

Even those who rely on tourism dollars lament the city’s transformation. Brendan Leach is the CEO of Colibri Hotels, which has three gorgeous waterfront properties in Tulum: La Zebra, Mi Amor and Mezzanine. First time in 1996 as a backpacker and sleeping on the beach. At that time it was “A truck stop, a chicken stand, and a taco stand,” he says. He landed a job at the Zamas Hotel, one of the first fine hotels to open by the beach, and spent the next 25 years watching it all change. Be Tulum and Amansala emerged with a marketing campaign that drew celebrities like Jude Law, Sienna Miller and Demi Moore to discover the place early. Derided as “Tuluminati,” Tulum’s beige vibe became a brand ripe for the Instagram age. The furniture store is hours away. “You have things built mostly out of necessity. But it didn’t damage the atmosphere of the forest.”

While Playa del Carmen in the north and Cancun in the north have become overdeveloped areas. Consequently, people continue to migrate to Tulum, Leach says. Beautiful white sandy beaches. Jungles there. Cenote systems that float through wetlands. and the ancient city of the Maya

Ana Galicia/INAH/Handout via REUTERS

Rachel Appel is an American who visited Quintana Roo as a child. Start in Cancun and then explore further south. Until she finally discovered Tulum, which in 2010 was a “beach town with cute restaurants. “I fell in love with it.” She moved back and got a seasonal job with a tour guide company, then in 2015 as a concierge at the hotel. and plans to relocate permanently But even during those five years There are many changes. “Every time I go back It just keeps getting worse. Everyone was there because of the beauty of the place. “I wanted to go back and start a recycling program. But I know that’s not the answer to all the problems I’m facing.”

Instead, Appel decided to go to the School of Journalism in London. And she did her last project, the Tulum Challenge, a radio project that she later turned into a short film: The Dark Side of TulumThis documentary has been viewed over 1 million times on Youtube and has brought renewed awareness of the problems faced by most city visitors. “It’s like Miami 2.0 now when I go there. I don’t feel like I’m in Mexico at all.”

Still, Appel returns regularly. By staying with friends who live far from the beach and techno. In houses with modern rainwater collection systems and septic tanks Eager to connect with people who want Tulum to change for the better.

Among them was Pablo Doma, a Spaniard who first visited Tulum in 1996, when there were just two hotels and no real roads. He moved to Mexico City and returned to Tulum often. Eventually he sold everything he owned and invested in a small piece of land. Two plots in the Yucatan in 2010 where he built five “conservative homes” with adequate wastewater treatment in the forest. Money with only one goal: milking drug-addicted tourists for everything it’s worth.

“They paid $700 to stay in a nice hotel. Cleanse, party for a few days, dinner, then DJ. Then the ayahuasca ceremony, then the cocoa ceremony. You mix these things up with pills and think you can heal yourself?” said Doma. here is the result This is a mental hospital with an ocean view.”

Winston Ross

Still, Doma is happy in Tulum, he says. “I was drinking coffee on the street. I’ve never worn a mask. They never asked me for a single vaccine passport,” he said. “I haven’t been on Beach Road in years.”

Cristobal Diaz, who moved in 2015 with “a broken heart and a piece of land,” says freedom is what draws many people who move to Tulum. “This is pirate country,” he says. Italian people from bad background You can come here and put the pizza oven on and have a good life.”

rapid growth of development “Fast fashion for hotels” is unfortunate and inevitable, he says. “The market eats everything.” But what Diaz loves about Tulum, he still likes: mingling with interesting people from all over. Earth, swimming in the Cenotes, sunbathing under the gentle sun. “It’s still Mexican Disneyland. But with a slight touch of reality. relaxed atmosphere beautiful women and men dancing on the beach,” he said.

Diaz’s friend Wesley Eharrah mourned the passing of her grandparents in Washington, D.C., and moved to Tulum in 2020 after a winter vacation with some friends. The A’Harrah man said, “It was the middle of Covid. And I’m swimming in the Caribbean and splashing acid on the beach.” “People come here to smoke DMT and have sex. Some people use it for a creepy end. Some use it for holistic healing and beauty.” A’Harrah bought a place in the woods where a slide emerges from his bedroom and into a small cave in his front yard. There he started a multidisciplinary art laboratory called Caracol, inviting artists from different media. Let’s mix and work together. “There’s a very creative community here,” A’Harrah said.

Leach, CEO of Calibri Hotels, “doesn’t like the current trend” of Tulum, he says, but he hopes prices will come down and things will improve. are about to come back down again.”

A’Harrah welcomes the idea that Tulum is losing its cool in the busier areas of Costa Rica. “It looks like late 2021 and mid 2022 will have peak volume here,” he said. “This high season is very quiet. Maybe half or a third of the ones we saw last winter. It’s nice to hear people say ‘Tulum is cancelled.’ It’s still easy to have your own world here.”

The poison of irony/Wikimedia Commons

It’s also easy to escape the madness, even on the beach. Mi Amor is a quiet hotel at the northern end of Beach Road, and while La Zebra sits in a more busy area, it’s still a bit of a stretch. The hotel’s seaside cabanas offer a peaceful getaway from the crowds of other tourists. Even more secluded is La Valise Tulum, with its tiny cottages built on the white sand beach leading to its rooms. Beautiful open air dining Then make your way to cabanas and beach chairs on a cool beach at the southern end of the downtown hotel zone. Marriott’s ALOFT Tulum has a beautiful rooftop pool and is an easy walk to the city center. In these places, there are no DJs waking me up at night or drug dealers bothering me, so maybe Tulum hasn’t been completely destroyed yet.