Akumal does not have that many restaurants. Because they had karaoke on wednesday nights, we stopped by La Buena Vida for dinner. It’s on Half Moon Bay and there are several dining rooms. One is on the beach itself, which is where we were. There’s also a bar which is covered, but also pretty much outside. There is an indoor dining area on the second floor. One of the coolest tables they have are the treetop tables. There are tables built into the top of the palm trees where they rope up the food / drink to you in a bucket. Pretty cool if you ask me. I’m not often a soda drinker, but when you’re in Mexico, you really need to play it safe and only drink things out of bottles and cans. I wanted apple soda again, but like other places in Mexico which are geared towards tourists, they didn’t have any. I was irked again, but settled on my second favorite choice, Fanta! Again, these are made with real sugar and not corn syrup. That makes them even sweeter than the ones we’re used to. When in any restaurant in Mexico, it seems you get complimentary chips and pico de gallo. This is a custom that I could totally get used to. Everyone in the US should do this too! We went out pretty late, and I couldn’t wait until we got to the restaurant, so I actually ate a real dinner at the condo. So once we got to the restaurant, I didn’t have much room. That’s why I just ordered the lime soup. R got a bowl too. It was basically tortilla soup but not as thick. It was a lighter broth. We both liked this a lot. R got the surf and turf. It was a giant piece of meat along with 3 huge shrimp that had been butterflied. It came with veggies and a potato with sour cream. R had asked for rice instead of the veggies, but they gave her rice along with the veggies. She wasn’t eating the broccoli and cauliflower, so I gobbled them up. After a few days in mexico, and not having eaten any vegetables, my body was craving them. And since they were cooked, they were totally safe to eat! Whoo hoo! Eating on a beach with sand between your toes, while looking at stars in the pitch black sky, is rather luxurious. Oh, and the karaoke was funny too.

Another actual town is Tulum, famous for their Mayan Ruins. These old ass ruins are along the Caribbean coast. The water is beyond stunning. If I lived at a place like this, I’d never leave. But somehow, the mayan civilization just kind of collapsed and disappeared. You know how everything in America is hundreds of years old at most? Well yeah, this stuff is thousands of years old. It’s another concept entirely.
The main strip in Tulum is along the only real highway, and is strewn with restaurants, shops, drug stores, diving places, and taxis. We wanted a snack so we stopped at this Pane, Pizza, E Fantasia place which looked crowded and popular. Well, it didn’t really end up being all that popular, it’s just that the place was so teeny tiny and so inefficiently run, that people had to stand in line for an extremely long time before being waited on. This would so not work in the US at all. But that’s ok. They only exist in Mexico. This place serves coffee, pizza, paninis, and desserts. There’s also free wi-fi, which is kinda awesome.
Since R took the last slice of plain pizza, I was forced to get the other kind, which was a veggie pizza with zucchini and squash. It tasted fine and was super cheap. I wanted apple soda, but they didn’t have it, so I hopped on over to a bodega and got myself a lovely bottle of manzana lift. And you know what? It was glorious.

Along the yucatan peninsula on the riviera maya, there are only a few actual towns. One of them is Puerto Aventuras. It’s a bit more upscale, mostly condos, has a marina, and is pretty gringo. They have one of those swim with the dolphins things in the middle of the town, and it’s all open so you can watch the spectacle. It’s pretty fun. Dolphins are pretty f’in cute.
We wanted a quick bite, and unlike Akumal, there’s actually a good number of places to eat there. We ended up at Wahoo Sports Bar & Grill on the far end of the marina.
Sipping a mexican soda, which is actually made with sugar and not high fructose corn syrup, while watching dolphins, isn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon. One annoyance is that this place is so gringo that they do not have apple soda. Grrr…. don’t they know that the availability of apple soda is one of my most favorite things about mexico?
Complimentary chips and pico de gallo. Dudes, these chips were amazing. Warm, super crunchy, and too good to not be home made. And the pico was just right.
R got the chicken tacos. These were pretty bare bones. Rolled up in those flour tortillas was just plain chicken, and nothing else. And it came with a side of rice and some beans. According to R, this was her favorite meal of the entire trip. Plain ol chicken tacos.
I got the beef enchiladas. I ordered steak enchiladas but it came with ground beef. I didn’t care. I also had a choice of green or red sauce, but they didn’t ask me. And it just came out with red sauce. Had I been asked, I would have picked green. Again, I didn’t care. However gringo this sports bar is, my mexican dish was great. It was made with love and I could tell with every bite. The beans were also very good, and that’s always a good litmus test for how good mexican food is. Service was good and they were very polite to us. Since we were sitting outside and we were in mexico, there were people smoking. But luckily, it didn’t bother us one bit.