When in Tulum: Drink Beers and Take Pictures
Just before the holidays our pals Dano and Kim took a visit down to our spot here in Playa del Carmen. After some good dinners, a bunch of beers and talking about the region, Tulum came up. Tulum always comes up.
We work most days, so while we were on lock down having a Mac-Off, they headed south to Tulum. If you don't know Tulum from a visit, the Internet or a drunken match of Trivial Pursuit Edición Mexicano, then what you need to know can all be learned from looking at these photos that Dano took.
When you're done consuming this gallery, head over to his site to see the rest. You should also follow him on Instagram for more photos like these.
About Dano Pendygrasse:
With almost 20 years experience in action sports, both editorial and commercial, and experienced in underwater photography, Dano truly can shoot anything. He has spent time as a photo editor for an international magazine, a divemaster in the tropics, and a staff photographer for the largest snowboard magazines and brands in the world.
He currently resides in Vancouver where he shoots the people, the city, and everything else.
Marriage: Now on Video!
Around sunset on May 22nd, 2013 the lady and I pulled the trigger on a couple, "I dos!" and kissed in public in front of a whole bunch of our friends and family. While all this was going on, one of our dearest friends, Tom Nugent, was there to capture it all on video.
It's hard to imagine we could be any happier with the way it turned out. The colours, location and the human beings in it all create a special video for us, that almost feels more like a short film. So go on, press play, we hope you enjoy it.
If you do, check out more of Tom's work on his website, Facebook and Instagram.
Love & Lace Wedding Decor
If you liked the look, feel and decor of the wedding, Katy is now running a decor business called, "Love & Lace" in the Mayan Riviera (Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Tulum and other areas). If you're having a wedding down here, or know someone that is, contact us here and Katy will get back to you right away.
To see more photos of the wedding and the decor, visit Lucky Girl Photography's website, where they have two posts: One here, the second here.
More Info
- The song is, "A Song For Zula" by Phosphorescent.
- The wedding took place at The Beach Hotel in Tulum, where we all stayed.
- Shot and edited by: Tom Nugent.
The staff at The Beach Hotel, their sister hotel, Cabañas Tulum as well as the restaurant El Bistro were like family the entire time. They were completely accommodating, attentive and put up with a lot of Canadians drinking a lot of beer and rum. I think maybe at some point, the hotel itself deserves an entire review post. If you go to Tulum, stay there, say hi for Mikee and Katy, or maybe we'll see you there. We stop by to say hi and have a beer on most weekends and stay there whenever we spend the night in Tulum.
Phosphorescent and a Beach by Where We Live
Matthew Houck creates some pretty fine music under the name Phosphorescent. If you haven't heard him before, this song from his upcoming album is a good place to start, although not necessarily an indication of the sounds you'll hear on his others. It's calmer in a way. Not that his other songs are in the soundtrack to Girls Gone Wild, this one just has a certain kind of calmness to it. Maybe it's the repetitive background sounds and echoed vocals. I don't really know so much about the thesaurus researched music writing you get elsewhere. I'm a simple man.
If you too can appreciate simplicity, you'll appreciate Song for Zula.
“It sounds really cheesy, but I went down there with a guitar and got a little hut on the beach in Tulum, on the Yucatan Peninsula.”
I don't know if Song for Zula was one of the ones written down here, but I can see this one going perfectly with late afternoons and evenings on the calm beaches of Tulum. If you haven't visited yourself, it's hard to get a grasp on how special of a place Tulum is right now.
The beach, the sea, the independent hotels and restaurants are all part of a small community with a perfect balance between rustic and refined. Restaurants have a relaxed, homemade feel, with a quality of food and drink you'd expect from accomplished chefs or bartenders in big cities. The beaches aren't busy like the towns to the north and the main street that runs parallel to the beach is barely lit, or not at all. Food is cooked in stone ovens and on charcoal grills. Alcohol is served all day long and the sun is almost always out. Even when it's not, the rain is still refreshing as everyone grabs their drinks and food to run under the nearest palapa, or out into the ocean where rain doesn't matter.
Whatever Houck got up to while down in Tulum was undoubtedly a good process for being productve, since it's stocked in abundance down there, and this song shows it.
Quote above was taken from Free People.
Just Some Photos: Tulum, a Beach and Town
This weekend was a nice and slow pace. One day, a walk about Playa del Carmen to get some errands done. It was capped off by a Sunday trip to Tulum for food on the beach and drinks up the Sunset Lounge at Mateo's. At sunset and after happy hour had done its work, we decided the best course of action was to stay the night and visit our friends at Hartwood.
Waking up in Tulum, especially in a Jameson daze, unsure where you are for a moment, makes for a nice surprise in the morning. In Tulum, you wake up a few feet from the sand and sea. We walked the beach, grabbed coffee and some fruit on a beach patio then headed back home to end the stretched out weekend on a Monday morning.
