TULUM BEACH, QUINTANA ROO, MEXICO :: Just a few scenes from Tulum's beach road, a deeply rutted and dangerous street without sidewalks that stretches five miles and takes 30 mins to traverse by car – if you're lucky. It wasn't remotely this bad when we were last here, just five years ago. It's still beautiful, of course, even in my attempts to show how overcrowded and deteriorated it is. Filled with quaint shops and restaurants – where else can you buy glittery club wear while slogging through the jungle's mud? And now they're adding a new international airport right beside the beach, and a $7 billion rail system that will loop around the Yucatan and through Tulum. Unfortunately, I fear things will get much worse around here, before they ever get better.
