*grab a snack y’all – this is a long one!*
Guys. If you haven’t visited Tulum yet – YOU NEED TO ASAP. It’s so beautiful, and the vibe everywhere is so relaxing – I loved every minute of it! There’s a ton of natural beauty in Tulum, but also all of the restaurants, beach clubs, and Instagrammable hot spots in the city are also so perfectly decorated!
Ronak and I traveled to Tulum after spending about 3 days in Cancun with our friends at Le Blanc Cancun – also super worth traveling to one day if you get the opportunity! It was a stunning all-inclusive adults-only resort, and the spa vibe was amazing and relaxing. 🙂 We loved spending time with our friends there!
Cancun to Tulum Travel:
Our hotel in Tulum offered a private shuttle transfer from either the airport or other pickup location for a fee, which we had inquired about prior to traveling, and found out it would be approximately $130 one-way for both of us. However, since Ronak and I have been to Cancun a few times now, we knew that the best way to negotiate and set up transfers is when you arrive at the Cancun airport. There’s a plethora of taxi and transfer companies there fighting for your business, so it’s easier to negotiate right then and there in person. We were able to get a company there called Smart Shuttle to pick us up from Cancun on Monday, take us to our hotel in Tulum (about 2 – 2.5 hours away), and then pick us up again from Tulum on Thursday and take us back to the Cancun airport for our flight – all for $160 round-trip for both of us. Same private shuttle that our hotel would’ve provided us but a little more than half the price.
So anytime anyone asks me about this, my number one piece of advice is always – negotiate and book your transfers when you arrive at the Cancun airport! The likelihood of you getting a much better deal is high.
Where we stayed:
We stayed at Mi Amor Tulum – a beautiful adults-only boutique hotel apart of the Colibri Boutique Hotels collection. There are 3 sister hotels in the area that you also have access to for restaurants or pools, if you stay at any one of their properties –
- La Zebra – kid-friendly and has a Mexican-themed restaurant on-site
- El Pez – kid-friendly and has a seafood-themed restaurant on-site
- Mezzanine – adults-only and has a Thai-themed restaurant on-site (this one is a short walk down the road from Mi Amor, so we went for dinner on our last night and the Thai food was SO good!)
Mi Amor is a stunning property with very relaxing vibes. There are only about 20 rooms on-site, so you can imagine that it’s not very crowded at any point in the day, like maybe a regular Cancun resort might be. The service is more personalized since there are less guests, which is nice. This trip was a mini-honeymoon for us since we have not been able to go yet, so we had mentioned that when we were booking all of our Tulum things. Mi Amor was sweet enough to upgrade our room to the pool-plunge room and we loved it!
The hotel also has a daily happy hour from 5:00pm-7:00pm where most of their house margaritas, mojitos, and a couple of their cocktails are buy-one-get-one-free. In Tulum, this is a great deal as drinks can start to get pricey! So we tried to make use of this whenever we could since the drinks were actually good here!
What we did:
Our Tulum leg of the trip was from Monday through Wednesday night (our flight was super early Thursday), so below is a breakdown of what we did throughout the trip each day:
Monday:
- Driver picked us up from Le Blanc Cancun at 2:00pm
- We were told this was around heavy traffic time, so it took us closer to 2.5-3 hours to reach Mi Amor Tulum
- Checked in to Mi Amor – they upgraded us to the pool plunge room and we loved it! However, we needed to wait about 30 minutes for that room to be cleaned – so we just hung out on one of the day beds they have all along the back beach-view area (very relaxing, even though the Tulum beach is not as pretty as Cancun!) They also gave us delish complimentary welcome drinks while we waited.
- Once we got settled into our room, we decided to just hang out and relax for a bit since we were still pretty tired from Cancun the several nights before. I passed out and woke up right in time for dinner 🙂
- Ronak found a cute little spot called Casa Maria Grill right down the street from Mi Amor that we loved! Food was decent, but the vibe was incredible – we got a little table on the sand in the back and they just had small lanterns and candles to light the area (this area of Tulum is pretty dark in general at night btw! they are big on preserving energy, which is great, however I’d suggest making sure you either pack a small flashlight or keep your cell phone flash light on while walking the streets at night!)
- We hung out at Casa Maria for most of the evening after dinner (Ronak got chicken fajitas and I got the tortilla soup – both delish!) with some drinks and then headed back to the hotel since we were still pretty tired 🙂
Tuesday:
- We used Tuesday to explore all of the popular Tulum beach spots
- We got ready and head out of the hotel by about 10:00am – we rented bikes from Mi Amor that cost us 100 pesos to rent for 24 hours
- Since Mi Amor is a little further away from all the Tulum beach spots we wanted to go to, it took us like 30-45 minutes to bike there – we definitely suggest biking, as that’s quicker and easier to navigate through traffic than sitting in a car and not moving much, but I will say – biking gets HOT.
- We started off at Matcha Mama, which if you’ve started your research on Tulum at all – I’m sure you’ve come across Matcha Mama haha
- I think there are multiple locations, but we went to the one in hotel zone
- super cute little spot – very Instagrammable 😉
- we just got smoothies…nothing special, IMO, but still worth going for the photos 🙂
- Next up, we biked over to the infamous ‘Follow That Dream’ sign that’s right down the road in front of Lolita Lolita. I was really surprised to not see a line here, but we were literally the only people there which was nice!
- At this point, I was already dying of heat and slowly peeling my clothes off (I had worn a bathing suit under my outfit thinking we were going to stop at a beach club, but my bathing suit top quickly just became my top for the day lol)
- OH I should note that neither of our phones had any signal at all whatsoever in this area – no idea why, but this was a little frustrating since we didn’t entirely know where the places we wanted to go were (I thought I’d be able to just Google Maps it as we went along, but nope!)
- Thankfully the road is pretty much a straight shot though but since we didn’t want to keep biking further and risk getting lost, we decided to start biking back towards our hotel and just stop at places we thought looked cool
- Next we stopped by and grabbed a couple of beers at Villa Las Estrellas. We hadn’t heard of it before but it looked cute so decided to give it a shot and it was! Views were great, beach club-type vibes. We just had two Coronas but was cute overall. Right next to Tulum Jungle Gym! So you know Ronak had to check that out as well 😉
- By now, we were pretty hungry for lunch and biked past La Malinche and decided to stop there, and I’m so glad we did! It was delish!! Their spicy margs and tacos were so yummy 🙂
- After La Malinche, we checked out Coco Tulum, and did a quick stop at Azulik to check it out
- We were pretty exhausted from the heat at this point, so we decided to bike back to the hotel so we could shower and rest a little before dinner
- Since we were able to get a little rest in, we got ready a early and headed over to the Mulberry Project Popup at La Zebra for drinks! It was super cute and the drinks were BOGO free during their HH 🙂 Elliot was also an amazing bartender and so fun to talk to!
- We did Ilios for dinner this evening and we HIGHLY recommend it!!
- for one, the vibe of this place is incredible – so lively and I loved the bohemian decor!
- the staff is SO nice and friendly, and crazy attentive
- around 9:00pm or 10:00pm, they have an entire fire show with performers who are amazing! After that, the staff hands out a plate to each table (or I think maybe just to all the women?) and they play Greek music and literally everyone in the restaurant gets up and dances together, and then you all get to take turns throwing the plates into this huge wooden box they have – like the cool Greek traditions you see in the movies! It was such a fun experience!
- the only con we had was that they were out of the one thing we were willing to eat for dinner (chicken), but honestly the vibe and other apps/small plates made up for it and we still had a great time 🙂
Wednesday:
- CENOTE DAY! I loved all of our experiences in Tulum, but this one was truly one of my favorites 🙂
- We got ready and started our bike journey over to Gran Cenote around 10:00am, and stopped at Oten Tulum to eat along the way
- I want to say the entrance to Gran Cenote was about 200 pesos per person, and another 50 or 60 pesos for a locker
- *SOME TIPS FOR VISITING CENOTES*
- pack some water shoes like these! we didn’t and definitely regretted it because the rocks in the water are painful to walk on and we saw several people with these shoes that looked a lot more comfortable
- either bring an underwater camera or easily make your iPhone underwater-friendly with a case like this one, so you can take fun photos in the water and not have to keep going back and forth to your locker if you decide to get one!
- try to bring limited stuff with you – the lockers are small. we also saw several people just leaving their bags on the platform near where they were swimming to avoid having to get a locker, so if you get the phone case mentioned above and are able to keep most of your valuables on you, you could easily avoid getting a locker also!
- try to get there earlier in the day to beat the crowds! we went on a Wednesday around noon and it was pretty packed. I don’t think the day of the week matters – it’s always pretty busy it seems!
- After the cenote, we biked back towards our hotel and stopped at a taco spot along the way. I honestly can’t remember the name of it, it was a super hole-in-the-wall spot, but was very delish! This road had TONS of these spots, and I highly recommend just picking one and trying it! Usually hole-in-the-wall places are great 😉
- Ronak found an area nearby for us to go check out after this so we biked over to Totem Restaurant & Lounge and then over to Safari, and everything in this cute, quiet little area was amazing! It was so peaceful and food at Safari was great!
- After a little snack at Safari, we headed back to the hotel to pack our bags since it was our last night, and to get ready for dinner
- On our last night, we had dinner at Mezzanine and HOLY cow y’all – one the best Thai food experiences I’ve had! Still day dream about those drunken noodles from time to time. Highly recommend! And it was a short 5-7 minute walk from Mi Amor, and is also one of the sister hotels, so our concierge also gave us free drink coupons for dinner before we left 🙂
Thursday:
- Our flight was at 10:30am so we had arranged for our transfer to pick us up around 6:00am since it’s usually about a 1.5-2 hours to get from Tulum back to the Cancun airport. But thankfully, at that hour there were barely any traffic, so we got there in just a little over an hour.
- We do recommend getting to the airport at least 2-3 hours before your flight though – the Cancun airport can be pretty busy, and now with all the COVID restrictions in place, the check-in process tends to be a little longer
- *COVID TESTING REQUIREMENTS*
- The US requires anyone coming back in from Mexico to present a negative COVID test taken within 72 hours of departure, regardless of vaccine status. Thankfully Le Blanc provided us with complimentary onsite COVID testing, so we got ours done right before we left on Monday afternoon (around 1:00pm, so our 10:30am departure on Thursday was within that 72 hour departure window).
- However, if your flight gets delayed and bumps your test time out of that 72 hour window, I believe you’d need to get retested again – so just keep that in mind when planning your testing out. We cut it pretty close!
- *PLEASE NOTE*: I am not an official, and these regulations are constantly changing – so PLEASE always check the official CDC website for the latest requirements.
Our Eat, Drink & Be Merry Recommendations:
Eat: Ilios
Drink: Mulberry Project Popup
Be Merry: Visit any of the cenotes!
If you’ve made it this far, I hope you enjoyed reading about our Tulum trip – we DEF did and certainly hope to be visiting again one day! let me know in the comments below if you’ve been to Tulum, or if you are planning your trip there now! 🙂
xo,
gopi
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