Off the Gringo Grid

At last I knew what Sian Ka’an looks like, after years of wondering about this prime chunk of terra incognita. It looks peaceful, and very wet. Think Everglades, but throw in a healthy stretch of barrier reef, ruins from the Maya heyday early in the last millennium, five kinds of cats (jaguar, puma, ocelot, margay and jaguarundi) and 345 types of birds. Few roads intrude, and those that do are sketchy at best. Boats are the preferred mode of transport, and water-based activities are the main attractions for tourists. There’s snorkeling, diving, bird-watching and naturalist tours, and the fly-fishing here is considered world-class for bonefish, tarpon and especially permit. But for all that, Sian Ka’an struck me as a subtle place, perhaps better suited for being than for a whole lot of doing.

And that was the perspective of another guest at CESiaK, a young woman with a busy life in Manhattan who was making her second retreat to the lodge in a year but still hadn’t taken a day trip on the lagoon or swum a cenote. Long morning runs and ocean swims primed her for hours of reading and sunbathing on an all-but-deserted beach and dining at the lodge’s restaurant, the only one accessible without a car. Freedom from decision-making was to her a big part of CESiaK’s appeal. It’s the kind of place where guests quickly become familiar with one another and the amiable staff, and the mood is more cozy camp than mind-your-own-business hotel.

The camp motif is carried out explicitly in the accommodations, 15 spacious safari-style tents pitched on platforms atop the dunes among sea grapes and palms, with exposure to sea breezes and views. The elemental, organic effect goes beyond the atmospheric. Ablution facilities are communal and environment-friendly, with composting toilets and rainwater showers and taps; wind and solar energy fuel the lights and appliances. Boyd isn’t just trying to go by the book on eco-tourism, he’s trying to help rewrite it in order to show neighboring property owners how sustainable technologies can work in this fragile environment. (He’s not kidding around: If you want to go swimming in a canal through the marsh during one of CESiaK’s daily boat tours — never mind about the 15-foot crocs, they’re shy — forget about applying sunscreen beforehand, as it’s a potential pollutant.) CESiaK’s anti-commercial ethos and primo location inside a rarefied reserve have been its strongest selling points since it opened two years ago.

The unpaved road that runs the 30 miles down the skinny peninsula linking Tulum beach to the fishing village of Punta Allen is famously potholed, and it was impassable when we were there in the early aftermath of October’s hurricane Wilma, which merely buffeted this area while it hammered Cancún mercilessly. But we had to take a day trip to Punta Allen, not simply to satisfy our natural curiosity about the town at the end of the road and the fruits of its lobster catch, but because Boyd had called it “the soul of the reserve,” the bellwether of Sian Ka’an’s ability to balance environmental protections with the needs of a resident community that makes its living from the environment.

Commandante Macduff and I circled inland through Tulum Pueblo, a lively town of 10,000 that’s a stop on the backpacker trail, and steered south on the highway. Fifteen minutes down the road we came to Muyil, an archaeological site that’s the off-the-beaten-track alternative to Cobá, Chichén Itzá and Tulum. The spectral beauty of the place — a campus of restored pyramids, temples and palaces fringed by dense forest — was enhanced by solitude; we shared the grounds with exactly two other sightseers, young lovers strolling hand in hand.

From there we plunged deeper into Sian Ka’an, taking a water taxi across Ascensión Bay, one of two huge bays in the reserve. As the skiff pulled into Punta Allen, we passed a trio of young men stripping bark from branches to use in building a home. I took it as a sign that we had arrived in a place that hadn’t lost touch with tradition.

Our water-taxi driver escorted us down the sandy lanes of the town past modest, weather-beaten homes made of cinder block and wood. He took us to a simple restaurant in a palapa by the sea that was part of his tourism co-op, where we drank frosty beers and ate grilled lobster that came out of a freezer — all the live ones had taken off for deeper waters because of the recent storms. With the road closed and the lobsters out of reach, there wasn’t much work to be had, which explained the Saturday-afternoon vibe that permeated the town that Thursday. A group of men drifted from a storefront cantina to the soccer field for a short game and then to another bar, laughing all the way. Bouncy Mexican dance music blasting from a home stereo enhanced the holiday feeling, and I felt like I was in a good place to be, with not a lot to do but dig the ambience. Mañana would be another day — but this one was pretty good, too.

As we polished off the lobster tails, we chatted with a snorkeling and fly-fishing guide named Victor Barrera who said that the town of 500 receives around 2,000 tourists a year and is eager for more — but not if it means interference by outside interests. “You can find Punta Allen like a virgin,” he said proudly.

When it was time to leave, we had to wait for a team of men to unload from the boat a delivery of many, many cases of cerveza. “El elixir de la vida!” one of them shouted, and I took that as a good sign, too.

The next day we left CESiaK and drove a few miles back up the road to Cabañas La Conchita, a friendly little hotel in Tulum’s beach town. It’s along a healthy strip of boutique hotels — some with good restaurants — that has caught on in recent years with a cosmopolitan clientele (split roughly fifty-fifty between Europeans and North Americans) for all the right reasons: It’s got uncrowded beaches, the building styles are authentically Mexican, and there’s a low-key hip factor. Just as Playa del Carmen has long been a refuge from Cancún for the type of traveler who’s not seeking lots of stimulation, Tulum is further down the laid-back trail than Playa.

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