Before we embarked on our journey home, we knew we should get a hotel reservation in Tulum. It's the most touristy place we'd be staying, and since the end of the Mayan calendar was fast approaching on December 21, we figured it would be a zoo on December 19. Fortunately, we were able to book the last available room at Secret Garden Hotel, the place we'd stayed at the beginning of our trip. Relief! We did not pre-book any other hotels for our return journey as we thought we'd be okay walking in off the street in the less touristy cities, and that did prove to be the case.
The day before departure, we bought all our bus tickets for the return leg of the trip from San Cristobal to Palenque to Campeche to Merida to Tulum at the ADO satellite station in San Cristobal, conveniently located quite close to the Hotel Diego de Mazariegos, where we'd spent the last three nights. The clerk spoke no English, but since I'd transformed into my Mexican persona of Emilia (according to Barry), it was no problema, and it was nice to have it all taken care of at one time.
They had made a lot of progress on the road paving work around the Maya head statue since our last time in town.
We didn't take photos that night as we ate at the same place as before -- the Pizzaria Palenque. We ordered the same pizza as our first visit -- why mess with a good thing? This time we splurged on a large instead of a medium as we were really hungry.
Stay tuned as we continue traveling home through Mexico to Belize. I'm reposting this map of our travel journey since it's the same route in reverse this time. Tomorrow we head back to the charming city on the Golfo de Mexico, Campeche.