If you are in the neighborhood, these ruins are worth visiting.  Pack your swimming trunks -- the beach is spectacular and the kind of place where you could spend a fun day with a bunch of random foreign tourists who would otherwise be annoying (and I would have if I had known this beach was at the ruins but showed up in blue jeans). 

 

 

Yes, that temple really does lean that much:

 

Corrected in photoshop:

 

 

 

Shots from the ferry ride:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good-bye from Mexico!

 

Wonderful photos. Some beautiful people, and some other people, too. The color of the water off that beach is enticing.

 

It's snowing here, with a winter storm warning and a prediction of up to 9 inches accumulation by Saturday afternoon. I was sitting at the kitchen table watching cars slide off the curve into the park, but it got boring after a while. A nice chain-reaction pileup might have held my interest, but so far ...

 

 

Incredible shots! Very powerful subjects.

Yes, the water really is that color.  It's hard for us to believe but you can take a disposable camera and get that color.  Unfortunately I had a lot of camera shake issues shooting on that ferry in choppy water with a 180mm telephoto but that goes with the territory.  The light is so much more intense there that it takes a lot of adjustment from us used to taking photos here.  If you are using a flash for fill, you really do need flash sync that goes over 1/250.  You literally run out of f/stops.  Or I suppose you could use a ND filter, although I never needed one until I traveled this far south.  Also because the light is so incredibly intense, you get really nice edge lighting (such as the lady with the baby) by accident in a way that doesn't happen here.  Also the colors are richer because the true hue in materials is reflected and dominates ancillary hues. 

 

I think the mood is a lot different in Mexico partly because there are few prospects for self-improvement like here, which means there are a lot of intelligent "college material" type people working jobs they wouldn't work here.  This means you can run across some really sharp people running rather pedestrian shops and restaurants or selling beer on the ferry.  But at the same time I sense in these tourist areas that there are local gangs taking cuts off of all the shops and vendors.  It's got to be an incredibly frustrating place to live for someone who's intelligent and motivated.               

 

very nice. wow is it overrun now. if you would have went there before 1995 you have almost had the beach to yourself. i guess that's a good thing for the area.

Yeah, it wasn't as crowded in 2000 either.  My very first memory of Tulum is of little Mexican children kicking soccer balls at the ruins, like they are in their backyard.  Oh, and a Subway (restaurant) on the bus from Playa del Carmen.