Aesthetics without substance, travel devoid of soul

Why didn't I know Tulum would be like this?

N.B. Sorry in advance if you have a trip planned to Tulum.

People tell me I would have loved Tulum in 2007, 2009, 2011, or maybe even in 2012, when “it was beginning to show signs of sliding.” But I did not go to Tulum in any of those years; I went to Tulum in 2024, and it has indeed, fully slid into a weird late-capitalist nightmare, dominated by the intersection of aesthetics-without-substance and a land grab for every ounce of monetizable real estate. 

Let me give you some context: we ended up in Tulum because Jacob was going to be in Mexico in the week leading up to the kids’ school break. We were looking for an easy beach to get to, a short flight away, something kid-amenable outside the confines of a resort. While Cancun is infamous for it’s cheesy all-inclusive resorts, the presence of Señor Frogs, and debaucherous spring break vibes, Tulum is supposedly it’s antidote, a 90-minute drive from the airport. 

The film Jacob was meant to shoot, had to, at the last minute, be put on hold due to regional narco violence, but we had the tickets, and the seemingly well-priced Airbnb. We could, we figured, get in some beach time during deep mid-winter, eat some good, cheap tacos, and read some books. Ada had a countdown chart to Mexico, and even before we had actually booked any flights or accommodations, had gone on a public campaign to her friends and teachers, about going to Mexico. You see where this is going. 

The particular type of dystopia that confronted us is this: the entry to Tulum is one long highway lacking in functional signage, but littered with preposterous resort* entrances, billboards, and the occasional peek into the treetops where you can see destination zip-lining, water parks, and zoos, designed for all the visitors to said resorts. The billboards advertise all manor of typical warm weather tourist traps: beach clubs, cenotes, eating atop a rotating “Tulum Tower,” zoos, jungle ‘experiences’, water parks, etc. There are a few Starbucks and gas stations, an Office Max, some auto body shops, but the predominant feeling is that you’re driving down a corridor that’s like a theme park without a broader container. 

Our airbnb was a fenced-in modernist house made entirely of a beautiful but still dusty plastered-over-concrete, with big walls of windows and a photogenic checkerboard pool. A house made of concrete and glass feels like a parable with a moral involved, and the moral is that this kind of house is made for Instagram and not for living. 

The kids were undeterred that the pool was very petite and not that clean, and that the concrete slabs were chipping to reveal that the plaster covering was only a few millimeters thick and the output of poor and/or hasty craftsmanship. The omnipresence of concrete made you feel perpetually dusty; dusty feet, dusty skin, dusty lungs. The water pressure in the various sinks and showers were what you could describe as a trickle. If you closed your eyes, you might imagine you were in the jungle getting showered on by a withering waterfall. The kitchen lacked some core amenities, like sponges, dish soap, a drying rack, and basic cookware, suggesting that the people who’ve stayed there in the past were largely not dealing with groceries and or dishes. On the plus side, the natural light was abundant, the beds were comfortable, and it was spacious. There was a large painting of a single ear in the downstairs bathroom and Julian loves Vincent Van Gogh so that also scored points.

It photographs well!

Outside the gates were another story altogether. We were in the middle of what I can only describe as mansions built by management companies on the worst-potholed dirt roads I’ve been on in my life. It was not a neighborhood, it was a real estate expansion. There were construction sites left and right, working on buildings that referenced godliness in their titles (i.e. Stay with us at Adhonai!), but without basic infrastructure, like roads or sidewalks or streetlights in front of them. There was debris and dust everywhere, not to mention garbage. There was So. Much. Garbage. 

Most people who come to Tulum are probably not staying in this particular catastrophe; they’re probably staying in the “hotel zone,” the many miles strip of boutique beach clubs along the very beautiful beachfront. This is where the famous open-fire cooking if now-dated Hartwood restaurant is, and the supposedly fine dining that we didn’t eat at. To get to a Thai restaurant one evening in said beach zone, our friends had to display their reservation receipt to machine-gunned guards at the entry to this gated beach zone. If you stay on this beach zone and never leave this beach zone, Tulum is perhaps great? I am not one to judge.

We did want to visit the beach, so tried to find where we could park, as a group not staying at one of the many beach clubs. The answer is there’s one tiny central strip, the most shallow area of the sandy beach, with no real parking. The one time we drove through, and saw actual locals hanging on this section of the beach, the police were also there towing cars away. Where you *can* enter the beach is by making a reservation at the beach clubs, of which there are all manor of tier and amenity. Do you want a covered cabana? A treehouse-like bed perched in an architecturally sculptural nest above the sand? Would you also like an infinity pool? What photo ops are you interested in? What content are you trying to create? 

This comes at the price of somewhere between $70-$250 per day, per person, which is a per diem payment for holding your spot that you must spend at the associated beach club restaurant on drinks and food. Across the street from the beach clubs, at any one of an abundance of beach clubs, you can go to a Farmacia, which advertises their inventory of standard medications, along with Ozempic and Human Growth Hormone, should you be in the market. 

On principle, we refused to pay upwards of $300+ to go to a (PUBLIC!!!!!) beach for the day, plus additional fees for parking near the beach. We did end up going to one of these clubs one day, after negotiating it with our Airbnb, who was able to set up a reservation for us and waive the fees. Our kids spent most of the time in the infinity pool oblivious to the fact that they were intercepting peoples’ selfies, all of whom only entered the pool to get their shot, then exited, presumably because they had more content to make. Ada wanted to know “what those bathing suits with the string up the butt” are, and why women would wear these, so we also had a long and edifying conversation about thongs. 

The beach club we were at had its own DJ, but so did the beach club next door and the beach club another door down, and when you walked along the admittedly very pristine beach, completely cleaned of the sargassum (an algae) that’s been plaguing Tulum’s beaches for years now, you were often listening to competing and clashing soundtracks all at once. I had a guava margarita that was both delicious AND $23, and a grilled octopus tostada around the same price point. The kids each had a $9 coconut, that neither finished, because it wasn’t as good as they expected. 

Aside from the overpriced beach, we visited some ruins, swam in cenotes, ate lots of mango from the vendors on the street, and really tried to find any good food that wasn’t egregiously priced. By egregious I mean: more expensive than fine dining in New York, which, because you’re in Mexico, feels it should not be the case. 

On the last day, we went to the one destination I *would* recommend if you do find yourself in Tulum, which was a chill beachside campsite in the Sian Ka’an nature preserve. Because it is a preserved area, it is not subject to the same rampant level of of commercial exploitation, though the beach does receive the litter from the beaches up-current that have drifted down to the nature preserve. After passing the entry gate, we drove a few kilometers down a bumpy road to the entrance, where we were greeted by a handful of hammocks, an empty parking lot, and a broken-down, lime green VW bus. I was baffled by the lack of entry fee, the lack of  per diem, and that nobody was charging us for sun cover having been conditioned to expect that everything would come with a hefty price tag at this point. We had a leisurely day on an uncrowded beach, the kids largely entertaining themselves, treasure hunting, the chill we’d been looking for.

As we drove back to our Airbnb to do the final packup, we resignedly went to an sourdough pizzeria on the hotel strip called Checkpoint Ciao, and had Negronis and legitimately delicious-if-pricey pizza. We were the only ones there at 5:30 p.m. and in order to park in the lot next to the restaurant, the parking lot attendant, who was bathed in a halo of palo santo, google translated his request for a generous tip and showed it to me on his phone. It was truly time to leave.

The question I keep asking myself is: why didn’t I know Tulum was like this? I’ve certainly heard descriptions of it having “peaked” at an earlier era, that it was “over,” but people have also said the same of plenty of other places I’ve visited. I’ve watched dozens and dozens of other people go to Tulum, post their vacation pics from Tulum, absent any critique. It makes me think deeply about how the primary lens of talking about travel (or any experiences) is through the lens of recommendations (this newsletter included). To photograph around the cruft. To get the shot. To exploit without question. To espouse accolades on this restaurant. That hotel. This vintage shop. This safari. That boat ride. This beautiful cocktail. To not reveal that what’s behind any of that might be a giant disappointment, given that travel is very expensive and very luxurious. You’re want to frame the time and money you’ve exchanged for your regular life as worthwhile and recommendation-worthy, perhaps primarily in service of self-deception.

Writer and essayist David Foster Wallace, once wrote in Consider the Lobster:

To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful:

As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.

Based on what I’d seen and heard, I made standard-issue assumptions that like other beachy-and-touristy places I’ve visited— elsewhere in Mexico, Portugal, Hawaii, Cape Cod, etc., that natural beauty was still going to be abundant, reasonably accessible, that partaking in the bougie parts of the town were largely optional, that we could exist outside of beach-club world. I thought, fundamentally, it’d be a nice place. But Tulum or the Tulum I saw, had no “unspoiledness” left to be had, because of the decades of imposition by everyone else, and also by me.

72 hours after returning home, I’ve reached past denial, grief, and anger to a self-critical amusement that this was mostly a very costly learning experience, and that in any number of years, this trip will be more memorable for what it wasn’t than many others are. Jacob and I have a running joke about a catastrophically bad trip to Leipzig, Germany, where we ended up walking back to our hotel along desolate unlit sidewalks of the outskirts of this industrial city, half-terrified and very confused, after accidentally walking into some kind of neo-Nazi party. For fifteen years running, when we use the phrase, “going to Leipzig,” it elicits a knowing understanding that makes us both laugh of travel catastrophe, unmet potential, and being in a dark, absurd situation. Now I am sure the phrase “going to Tulum,” will also enter the lexicon, and we’ll both know, it’s exactly what we never want to do again**. 

Recommendations, please: Now that that’s over, where is actually worth traveling to if we’re prioritizing good, cheap food, natural beauty, sparse presence of influencers, and a minimal pay-for-every-little-thing-you-do transactional experience without being extremely logistically complex to go to? And where should I absolutely avoid?

*I am not into resorts, but can recognize this is a completely sensible choice for some people and some scenarios. I also think when you opt for a resort (which I have admittedly never been to), you’re consciously opting into a version of ease. There will be clean pools, and the food will be right there, and you can put your kid in a kids’ club for the week, and there will be amenities. It may be completely transactional, but you’ve chosen this on purpose—perhaps so the adults can actually chill, or because you’re with extended family and it satisfies all the requirements. The goal of a resort is not traveling, it’s vacating, and when vacating, maybe you don’t want to deal with parking the rental car and dragging your kids around town to find the one pork taco they will actually eat. 

**Despite everything, our kids absolutely loved it. 

Recommendations:

• To read: Daughter by Claudia Dey: about the complex dynamics between family members—fathers and daughters, sisters and step-parents, half siblings and full siblings. Dey explores how power, communication, and family bonders interplay in fascinating ways.

• To read: Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder: a mother believes she’s turning into a dog, in all its carnal and visceral forms. Has she gone mad? Is this born of resentment? Who is she, beyond a mother? Sped through this one in all its wonderful glory.

• For audiobooks: many people commented that a great source for audiobooks (esp to download) is Libro.fm. I was able to get a bunch of their sale books (including many new releases) for just a few bucks and put on Yoto cards before our trip, which was amazing. Thanks to all who recommended.

• To wear: My kids wore these flip flops all around Tulum and they didn’t require any breaking in, the fabric is soft between toes, and they’re foamy and supportive enough.

• To listen: A conversation with Baba on the podast, This is Uncomfortable. Host Reema Khrais interviews her father, who grew up in Gaza, and was a nurse at a now-destroyed hospital. A beautiful dialogue.

• To listen: The 3-part Richard Feynman series on Freakonomics, which dives into the life of this famous physicist. My dad was a huge Feynman fan when I was a kid and would recount tales from his books regularly, so even though he wasn’t a flawless individual, love the overarching message of approaching the world with curiosity and humanity. (The Curious Mr. Feynman, The Brilliant Mr. Feynman, The Vanishing Mr. Feynman).

• To wear: Fentessa bathing suits (for women). Recommended by my friend Kalli, and now my go-to.

Till next time!