Disney Cruise Line: Cozumel - Tuluum

Our third and final port adventure was going to be the best one, the one I was most looking forward to: Tuluum!

I have been in love with archaeology since I was eight years old so going to this archaeological site that everyone said was extremely beautiful was high on my list of things I was looking forward to on this cruise. Unfortunately it…well it’s beautiful, it really is. But here’s the story of how this port adventure was not worthwhile:

To get to Tuluum you have to take two boats since the Fantasy has to tender–you take the little boat from the Fantasy over to Cozumeal, but then you have to take a ferry over to Mexico to actually get to Tuluum. The tender boat wasn’t bad, but the ferry was packed with people who apparently had never been in a boat where you could feel waves because I’d say 80% of the people on it threw up. So that was awesome. When you got past the retching and the smell, the ride wasn’t so long and then you were on the mainland in yet another tourist trap area, which is to be expected whenever there’s a nice beach. From there we split off with our group and walked a good couple of blocks for probably about ten minutes before boarding a big old bus for our 45 minute trip out to Tuluum. It was early in the morning, but they handed us all bag lunches and told us to save them until after the tour, which was fine.

On the way out our tour guide started giving us some history of the site, most of which was wrong (hello, I am an archaeologist!) and basically spent a good half hour of the trip pushing people to buy his friend’s Mayan calendars which could be customized to include your name in Mayan hieroglyphics. It was severely disappointing to realize that the guy that was going to be touring with us believed in both aliens and his big story about the place was once he had a woman on the tour who knew everything about the place so clearly she had lived there in a past life.

Hooray.

So we get to Tuluum and there’s another tourist trap area where you park and our guide spends twenty minutes with us in a silver store saying he knows the owner and we should buy stuff there. Great start! But then we get going and the site is gorgeous…but there’s no shade. And it is, I am not joking, about 500 degrees. It is quite a hike uphill to get to the major site and by the time we got up there the heat was so oppressive I would say a third of the group had turned back to go to the bus and wait. I was still excited to see the site though, so we pressed on! For those people that tried to seek out the tiny bits of shade that were around you had to fight with these:

Which were all over the place and the tour guide informed us they would absolutely bite you if you go too close. So most of us stayed out in the unbearable sun. Pro tip: if you are going on this tour you absolutely MUST bring an umbrella and maybe one of those spray-fan bottles. We could barely breathe it was so hot and this was in April.

Anyway, we get up to the site and it looks great. It really does. But our tour guide is garbage, doesn’t really know anything about the history and there are zero guides or plaques to tell you the real story. We had brought our bathing suits since one of the world’s most beautiful beaches is supposed to be there and it is there and it is gorgeous…and about ten feet long with a million people on it. Be warned you need to go up and down a BUNCH of tiny, steep stairs to get there and back, so we decided not to bother since it was so crowded. Instead we did one more lap around the sparse archaeological park and then we went back down to the bus, thinking we could chill out in the air conditioner and eat our lunches.

Big mistake.

We get back down and the bus is locked. There are a bunch of other people from our group milling around, also annoyed that we cannot get to anything on the bus (we were told to leave everything on there including our lunches) and so we sit and wait another 45 minutes or so until the driver shows up and lets us on.

There’s a little screen at the front of the bus that tells us that it is 114 degrees on said bus. So it’s not great. We all sit down, open our brown bag lunches…and all the sandwiches have mayo on them. And have now been sitting for 2+ hours in a 114 bus. Very quickly everyone starts yelling not to eat them. Instead of having the bag lunch we were promised, we eat a couple of bagged nuts that were included and that’s it. A hot 45 minute drive back to port, another ferry to Cozumel where thankfully no one threw up, and then a tender back to the Fantasy.

It was super, super disappointing. It was the port adventure I was most looking forward to and the most disappointing. We mentioned it to one of the port adventure people who shrugged and said that they have no control over the port adventure or who runs it once we’re off the boat. Which was extremely disappointing to hear as you would think Disney would vet the people giving the tours, but I guess not? Anyway, I would recommend skipping this one or at least setting your expectations way, way low. Do your own reading beforehand so maybe you can give your own tour and make it worthwhile. And definitely, DEFINITELY remember to bring that spray-fan bottle!

Next up: Castaway Cay (spoilers: IT IS AMAZING AND I WANT TO LIVE THERE)