Two Tulums

Even Miami, not one my favorite cities list, has hostels or budget hotels in South Beach.  Part of what makes the public beach areas of Tulum (Sante Fe and El Paraiso) so great is that they have some jungle realness.  There is no development on those beaches.  Further south with the fancy resorts that all of wealthy Brooklyn goes to, the resort development is meant to resemble ecotouristic jungle buildings. That part of the beach is technically public too, but there is no entry from the main road so it is basically private…

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Why I Am Ok Leaving Beautiful Bacalar, Hint: Finland

If you have read my post about hostel culture, you will know that sometimes your itinerary will change rapidly because another traveler has inspired you. In the case of Bacalar, I had heard people in Tulum talking about it for days.  Atop of the Tulum archaeological zone ruins, surrounded by tourists, I accidentally overheard a tour guide explain to some older US people that the Mayans were meant to accept Jesus Christ from the conquistadores because otherwise how else could they have possibly developed a lunar calendar?  I decided I needed to wake up seeing Bacalar the next day.

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Hostels

I’ve spent the last four days at the Hostel Che Tulum.  One new friend who has stayed at hostels all over Latin America said she thought this was the best hostel in all of Latin America.  I was just about to write how there is a chill morning vibe, which is true, but it’s 8:50am and they turned on the music for the day.  From this point forward, there will be music until at least midnight.   They got the chill music vibe thing going on right now…

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Why I'm Doing This

I've been repairing computers since I was around 11 years old.  After we got our first 386DX 25MHz IBM-Compatible PC when I was in the fourth grade, I quickly became at one with the machine.  Cousin Jeff and I would talk about computers at family gatherings.  I never thought it was weird to be talking to an adult about such complicated topics when I was 9 or 10.  I was mostly concerned that he would find me annoying (or that other people around us would).  Dad also inspired me to study computer science.  When Cousin Mark let us "borrow" some DOS games and I wondered if we could copy the data on the floppy disks so we could eventually return these games, Dad asked a coworker how one would go about doing that.  I woke up one morning to a note on the kitchen counter, right next to my brown lunch bag…

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