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Well, good morning, adventurers, and welcome to another absolutely lovely day here in Tulum. So, last time you guys saw us, we were staying in this super expensive, crazy luxury eco lodge out on the beach. We decided to give it all up for this little cute Volkswagen van that is 100% not luxury in any way. No, it is not. Is RV camping in the middle of Mexico safe? We don't know. Will we survive the Mexican roadways? Again, to be determined. But, we've got the cutest van in the world and a sunny disposition and a sunny day. So, what's the worst that can happen? Let the adorable Mexican camper van road trip begin. Or, I guess I should say begin.
It was in gear. I forgot I put it in first. In neutral. Starting. I swear to god. clutch in. All right, according to this pinpoint here, the van should be parked just around this corner. Oh, there she is. Woo, so cute. It's so orange and little. Oh, yeah. Do we know what year this Volkswagen '70 something. Like '76, maybe? looking not too bad for '70 something. Let's just say she's got a lot of character. Yes, she's perfectly rough around the edges and she's going to fit in very nicely here in Mexico.
All right, first look at the inside. Ooh. I love it. The dash is old and original. The tinier the van, the bigger the steering wheel is you need, for some reason. Yep. And oh my gosh, look at this shifter. It's like ridiculously long. let me get down here. Check it out. Oh, and it's loose as a goose. Loose as a goose. Ha, just as expected. Driving through tiny towns in Mexico with a loose shifter. It's going to be fun. It's going to be exciting, right?
Yeah. All right, we have officially fawned over her for long enough. We're burning daylight and I guess that means I have to drive now, huh? Yep. You know, we could try to camp right here, but I'm pretty sure it's quite illegal here in Mexico. We'll give you guys a look around in here later. I assure you it is just as quirky on the inside as it is on the outside, but we need to go get supplies. There's a grocery store in town and we're thinking after this, it might be a lot of local stuff. So, stock up on some goods and get to a beach. Oh, yeah, definitely going to hit the beach, but first things first, you got to drive this thing. Oh, man. All right, first you got to give it get it started. The guy said to just
give it a little gas. You don't have to hold the clutch in. Little gas. There you go. Okay. Perfect. Okay. All right, step one, started. You got it. It wouldn't be so bad, except that this city's a little busy with motorbikes, pedestrians, dogs, cats, all of it. Whatever you do, give those big buses the right of way. Yes. All right, y'all, let's roll. Honestly, like after driving Ruby, this is not so bad. Huge potholes. Oh my gosh. Well, you look adorable as heck driving this thing.
I'm doing it, at least, right? I feel like I'm pretty proud of myself right now. You're doing great, kid. Thanks. So, then I forgot to switch into second, but it's fine. Go, guy, please. Me, man. This is one situation where I don't want anybody to be nice and try to let me go. I just want to stop and let everybody else do their thing. But, the stop signs are so much tinier here than in the states. Yeah. We just randomly drove by a little like fruit and veggie stand. I think we're going to stock up on some fresh fruits and veggies for the trip. We'll eat out a lot, but we also want to cook in the van a couple times. Probably actually
more affordable to eat at a taco stand as than to buy all this stuff, but that's part of the van life, right? Like living, eating, doing it all in there. Exactly. We got a some fruits and veggies to get us through our first night. It's cool that here in Mexico, you can come to adorable little places like these or they have big old supermarkets like this. It's basically a Walmart, Costco, I don't know. Well, it's called the Chedraui. I'm not even sure if that's how you pronounce it. Who knows? And I have yet to see any cheddar in here. I think we can rectify that.
Yeah, we probably can. In any place in Mexico, this place will have cheddar. Okay, we have our cooler filled with provisions that should at least last us the night, but can we make it to our spot we're going to stay at? I don't know, you guys. I'm having a tough time over here. Yeah, this thing is uh not the smoothest shifting, probably the worst shifting we've ever experienced in a vehicle. I mean, it just wiggles around like this and you get confused about where third and first and I don't know. And then there's the biggest speed bumps that I've ever seen in our my entire life. I don't even think I'm in a gear at the moment.
Nope. Yep, there you go. So, there is a road that goes from Tulum all the way up to Cancun. That is what we're driving now and we are driving at a brisk 70 km/h. That is the fastest you can go because if you go any faster than that, the oil will spill out of the engine and we have had that happen before when we took a rig like this out in Canada. We went too fast and the oil shot out of the engine. So, that is a very true thing. That will happen. There aren't too many spots where you can just camp overnight for free, um but we found one that shouldn't cost too much that we still should be on the ocean, at least, or close to it. We'll see. So, we had to go through several security gates and uh we ended up making
it to this very nice area with all these really nice hotels and colorful houses and stuff. According to the guy who rented us this rig, there's some free overnight camping spots, using the term free very loosely. I don't think you're supposed to camp there, but apparently you can camp there and no one cares. You can see here we're just following the water and curving around and at the end of this should be the spot. We've got to go over 1 million speed bumps. Yeah, we probably went over 100 already and we've only driven like 30 km. But, yeah, at the end of this should be free parking and ocean and a pathway that leads to a beautiful lake.
Well, this is a pretty cool first stop, huh? Yeah, check this out. So, apparently, yeah, this is a spot that you can kind of stay and uh theoretically should not be hassled by the multiple security guards that we saw on the way in. Do we trust it? I don't know. Do we want to get that knock here in the middle of the night? really want to, but Not really. I don't think they're going to throw us in Mexican jail for it. I don't think so. All we're doing is sleeping in a dumb van. Yeah. We might chance it. Stay tuned. At least, we're going to take in the lovely views for a bit. So, right where we're parked, that's right at the top of this rocky shoreline that wraps around and then goes into
this lake. It's very beautiful from up above. We did have kind of a weird moment. There's a you know, a bunch of houses back here and one of the ladies came out with a camera and just pointed at me and went like this. I don't know I figured maybe I was just in her shot, but also maybe she wanted us to get the hell out of here. But, I guess the verdict is theoretically we're okay to be here cuz we really want to spend the night here cuz it's such a cool spot, but I don't want someone calling the policia on us. Yeah, I don't want to try to deal with the Mexican police in the middle of the night, especially when I can't reverse in that thing.
They're just going to laugh me out of Mexico. Okay, so that's where we're staying. This is the house right next to it that we were worried someone is in, but they must not be cuz it's for sale. So, I'm assuming that means everyone's out and we're going to be all alone here for the night. will work out. Maybe we won't get the terrifying knock on the door in the middle of the night. If anybody's coming, I think it's going to be that lady to just scold you for getting in her photo. Y'all, we finally found a public restroom to use and uh while we might not be able to get our bodies very clean on this trip, we're going to make sure our mouths get clean. We used to travel with a regular old toothbrush and y'all,
that thing would get so nasty and we always felt like it was doing way more harm than good. But, I'm happy to say that we've thrown those nasty brushes away and upgraded to the Suri electronic toothbrush and it has completely changed the way that we brush. So, we wanted to give them a huge thanks for partnering with us on this video. It comes in this awesome little travel case that actually doubles as a charger and it's super small, so it fits right in our suitcases. Plus, it has this handy little UV light built right in, so you just put your toothbrush in, press the button, and it gets clean. I mean, come on, that's pretty freaking awesome, right? Look, you can see the little light in there.
With my old toothbrush, I pushed so hard for so many years that my dentist told me that my gums had actually receded. But with Suri, it has a built-in pressure sensor, so you can't brush too hard even if you tried. And one charge lasts for a whole month, so you can charge it up before your trip and just focus on having some fresh and squeaky clean fun. You can snag a Suri toothbrush of your own, just scan the QR code or head to trysuri.com and use my code to get an extra 15% off. Oh, yeah. Much, much better. So, let's give you a look around the whale, which I think is what they call this thing. Yeah, that was called the whale?
I don't know why. At the moment, it's more like a beached whale. Be- because it's Cuz it's on the beach. Over the years, we've actually stayed in a few other VW vans like this. This one is probably the most rough around the edges. It is quite original. That means that you're going to find a lot of rust in a lot of spots. Over the passenger seat, there's a strip of duct tape and I started poking it and a bunch of rust fell out of it. The curtains have a nice little tinge of mildew on them. But uh you know, being so close to the ocean, that's bound to happen. Some of this luon stuff is peeling off and has definitely seen better days. The floor is just this weird uh vinyl stuff that
they put down. But uh it's nice and waterproof, so that's good. I love that the strip where it meets the door is just coming up, so they just put a bunch of screws in it. There is a light in here. Oh, and he's got a like a little USB thing down there. right here. I don't think we'll use any powered anything at night because I just know in the morning we'll wake up and this thing will not start. Yeah. But they do have the classic pop-top. That's pretty freaking sweet to be able to stand up in here. That is true. And we do have a bed up there.
We're trying to decide if we use that bed or this bed. Yeah, what do you think? I don't know. It's supposed to be chilly tonight and he said he would recommend not using the pop-top because of that. Stay tuned. We'll see what we do. Yeah. Let's see what she's got in the backside. It's It's a bunch of storage. There's no storage really up in the front, so this is all of our bedding for the evening. He said it's going to be one of the coldest nights that they've had in like 40 years, so he gave us three blankets. The low tonight you guys is like 60, maybe 58. That's what he meant by the coldest? We do not do well in very tight cramped spaces.
That's why we usually stick to RV life, but we like trying this out, you know, cuz it's a fun experience. We did stay in one of these once up somewhere in like the New England area and it was well below freezing. I don't know if you remember that. We had to buy electric blankets to sleep under so that we didn't die. It was awful. I am very, very happy for once to be taking this out in a warm climate. Connor doing a selfie. I'm trying. My dad keeps asking where I am and we're just progressively in weirder and weirder places, so if you're having a beer in a backwards front seat at the beach, that's got to be a pretty good photo to get, right?
We got a couple brewskis. We're chilling at the beach. All right. Living that beach life in Mexico. Man, this is very, very cool. So, this is the point in the evening where we start to really regret this idea we have of cooking in the van. Okay, trying to figure it out. Does that look like a portable gas stove? Sure does. Set it? Butane propano. That'll do. We got a pan. I've never really used one of these before, so open that. Can goes in here. Am I doing this right? Think I got it. Did I do it? Did you do it? a bunch of propane. Okay. not squirting anymore. It's official. I have made fire. I don't know what I was
doing wrong, but somehow I got it to stay on. Yeah, now make me dinner. What? You made the fire, now make me dinner. I thought you were the one making the dinner. Oh. I'll film it. How about that? Not too bad for two idiots in a van, huh? No, classic camper van dinner. I must admit for a second there, we were both very skeptical that we were going to be able to cook anything and we thought we were going to have to get out of here and go get some food, but we made it work. It worked. It smells good. I think it's going to taste good. Yeah, not too bad.
We are starting to get mosquito bites though. We just realized we had our doors open for so long. There might be skeeters in here, so it might be tough sleeping. But for now, it's yummy dinner, the soothing sound of the ocean, my favorite feller, Aw, that's me. and hanging out in a weird old camper van. And hopefully we don't see any lights out of that window cuz I mean someone's pulling up to rain on our parade. Oh, no. Well, y'all, the time has come. We've made quite a bit of a mess in here. We're going to get that cleaned up and then we are going to not sleep up here because I think it's a little too cold for that. So, we're going to sleep
down here, which means we have to move all that crap somewhere else. It looks like somebody's going to come here and do this to me. This does look like a horror movie. It does. All right, bed made. This is about as good as I'm willing to do. Yeah, this will do. I guess we'll see y'all tomorrow. Goodnight. Oh, good morning, y'all. Good morning. Not a bad night. Well, first off, there is like a bar right at the hinge on this couch bed thing and it hurts.
My hips, you guys, they are just on fire from laying on this thing. Nobody messed with us, but at about 6:30, 7:00 a.m. for sunrise, I guess, a bunch of kids showed up on motorbikes. And just stood here and talked as loud as they possibly could. Ow. Got to get up and do some uh yoga on the beach, huh? Where on the jagged rocks? Okay, good point. I've hit my head 50 times on everything in here. You guys, if you don't bonk it here, you bonk it here. And I did that in the middle of the night when I got up to pee. Sat right up and went bonk. All right, now we got to get all this sorted over with some coffee and some breakfast.
All right, first day in the van, success, I'd say. I would say a wild success, y'all. For our first night, we really just wanted to get Oh god, these potholes. Anyway, for our first night, we really just wanted to get used to driving on the roads here in Mexico. We wanted to get used to driving this rig, camping in the middle of nowhere. But now, we are going to head straight into the wilderness, into the jungle. Well, I guess 60 km an hour is too slow for everyone else in Mexico cuz they are flying past us. I think technically that's the speed limit, but I don't know. That's the speed limit for us for sure. Well, we have made it to Coba, which is this tiny little town, which is right on the edge of this lake. But we are actually going to head past the lake
because there should be a pretty sweet cenote down here somewhere. Well, I saw a sign for some cenotes and uh we're going down a dirt road. We are probably in the middle of nowhere. Seems like it's right though. I'm pretty sure we were supposed to pay for these cenotes back there, but no one was at that booth at the start of this road. Hey, you. What are you doing? Such a little scaredy dog. When we meet dogs like this in other countries, we just want to take them home and give them the best life cuz you know he would be the a great house dog.
Yeah. There he goes. He got what he wanted. He's gone. We have arrived to our first cenote of the trip, y'all. It has been years since we've been in one of these. This one is called Chuha, which is just fun to say. It's so simple, too. Look, it's just a hole. That's it. With a staircase that goes down into it. god. Little scary, but I just heard a splash, so sounds like there should be water down in here. Let's go. And she was never heard from again. Hi. Well, this is pretty dang fantastic, y'all. Check out that water. Woo. It is crystal freaking clear and this cave is huge. There's so many stalactites, stalagmites, everything. You can see in
the center how they built the staircase that goes all the way up to the tiny little entrance. There's just something magical about these cenotes, huh? Yes, and I'm very happy that this one doesn't have bats living in it cuz we've been in some where the bats are like swooping at you the whole time. And there are some fish, but they seem to be very tiny. Let me get in. Yeah, although the lighting makes it look like a horror movie. I'm like from the descent. I'm one of those creatures. I'm probably as pale as they are. If you've never seen The Descent, check that out if you LIKE HORROR MOVIES. WHO WAS THE FIRST PERSON BRAVE ENOUGH TO just drop in here and plop in this
water? Who thanks? They probably never made it back out. Well, and we thank them for their sacrifice. I didn't see any bones down there, but Step right there. Right here? Yeah. Like a polar vortex. Somebody turn the AC on. There's a hole up there and there's cold air blasting right here. Well, we spent entirely too much time at that cenote and uh it's almost 5:00 and 5:00 is the latest time we can check in to the place we were going to stay with the van tonight. So, Yeah, we definitely don't want to be caught out this far from a city in the dark.
Yeah, with nowhere to stay. So, uh we're going to book it to our campsite. Well, we've been driving down this lonesome road with not another soul on it for a long, long time, straight into the jungle, and eventually we found some semblance of civilization, and we see signs for Punta Laguna. So, I think that we're here. We made it to Punta Laguna. It turns out there is camping here. We can do it. He's giving us a discount, um and there's also a restaurant. He said it closes in probably half an hour. So, the plan is park, eat, camp. We should see monkeys and probably hear them because there are howler monkeys in the woods. So, if we didn't sleep well last night, we're definitely not sleeping
well tonight. Everywhere we go, a little puppy comes running up to us. They're so sweet. Well, we kind of randomly scored with this restaurant. They have two dishes, so they don't even bring a menu. I think this is the pollo pibil, which is uh cooked in the orange juice. And I can't remember what she said this was. She pulled it up on the internet to show us, but it's pork. It looks like some red sauce in there. It looks pretty darn good. Mhm. It's not like you get the flavor of orange juice or anything, but it is quite flavorful. Lots of spices and stuff on there. The chicken is super juicy, pretty much exactly what I needed.
Oh, yeah. These little puppies really want some. Oh, didn't realize you got two over there now. Hey, buddy. They are so sweet. These are my favorite that I've met so far on this trip. They just come up and rub their little head on you. What's up, buddy? Where you going? So, as we left the restaurant, the guy who we talked to at the booth was waiting for us cuz I think they're about to close the entrance. When you come to Mexico, just know this, the ATM gives you 500s, individual 500s. No one will give you change. Nobody has change. wants exact change. Yes, they do. And he wanted exact change, and we were like 10 pesos short. He's like, "Oh, no, you got to have 10 pesos." But, we made it work.
We're just under the jungle canopy now. It is very moody and mysterious. The guy did not tell us where to park or anything. So, we're just going to drive until it seems like we should park. Y'all, this road is rough, man. This is not a Volkswagen-friendly road. Anyway, all he said is by 8:00 a.m. we need to be back at the parking lot. This is Allison's new thing for photos. She just does that, and I snap away. We usually get a pretty good one. I'm not really good at posing, so I figure if I just dance, and we get a still from it, it looks okay. Speaking of looking okay, not too bad, huh? Wow. We now have it all to ourselves.
And officially one of my favorite spots that we've ever been to in Mexico. The mosquitoes are out and about, so I'm I know. Don't stop moving. You can't stop. Yeah, that's actually the real reason why she was moving. I think this calls for a nice little uh sunsetty time lapse, and then GTFO. Yeah. These bats, man, they're really big, and they get really close to you here. You guys, we're in for the night, and uh We have made a horrible mistake.
We were just standing outside getting ready for bed, and then we heard the most horrifying sound off in the jungle. I think it's the freaking monkeys, but it sounds like the sounds like a chupacabra or something. They've locked us in for the night. The gate is like chained up there. If you didn't know that what that was, if you came out here just being like, "Oh, what a lovely lake. I'll stay here for the night." This is what nightmares are made of. Hearing that in the woods? Well, we survived the night. We didn't get eaten by howler monkeys. We didn't get taken away by any creature in the jungle. Yeah, fairly peaceful night overall once we once the monkeys stopped
screaming in the trees, but uh boy, is that bed not comfortable. Anywhere I turned, I was like hitting something or bonking something, and then the bar was in my back no matter how low or high up on the bed I went. But, our guy up there wanted us to move the van by 8:00 a.m., and that is uh now. So, we got to do that before we get in trouble. We decided to take a little stroll through the forest, see if we can find some of these infamous spider monkeys. Is that what we were hearing last night? No, we were hearing howler monkeys, but there are also spider monkeys. Well, I hear a lot of stuff. can see one right up there. Check him out. He's climbing above us.
Oh, we got you now, sucker. You're coming home with me. You guys, I just heard a little trickle coming from the treetops, and it was the monkey just taking a big old piss. And then he dropped a deuce right after right where I was just standing. Well, I think maybe it's a warning to you. It might be the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life. It's a mom with a little baby latched onto her like a little purse or something. Look at that little face. It's so cute. fake, y'all. They have this lookout tower, and I thought it was just to get a better view of the lake and the jungle, but you can get a better view of the monkeys. They like right next to it. That made me very happy. That was cool.
They're so cute. That made this whole scary trip worth it. P.S. This is where we camped last night. This is where those monkeys have been going across. So, So, we were hoping that they'd be in the trees right when we woke up, but eventually they came around. Yeah. We passed another VW, and we had a nice little moment where we slowed down and waved to each other. I probably forget when you're in the VW, got to do the peace sign, I guess, for the V. Well, the bus started to make a weird clanking sound while we were driving, and I looked back, and I'm pretty sure that our back tire here was wobbling a bit, so it must have got knocked a little loose on some of those speed bumps and potholes and things. All right, we're
back on the road. We are good to go. Yeah, we magically turned our van into a little car. Our host insisted he come and help us, which is very nice of him. And we're in his car right now. He's in the van up there. Yeah, so we're going to go get coffee, and he's going to troubleshoot for us. Yeah, but we watched him drive away, and it really looks like that back tire is very wobbly, so Really wobbly. So, we thought it was a loose tire. He is saying it's more of a catastrophic issue that he cannot fix right now. So, it looks like our van trip has come to an end. Uh yeah, that's kind of our only option is to just abandon the whale. did offer to take it and get it fixed.
It's a Sunday though, so nothing's open. He said we could take his car, but we felt too bad for that. So, We're just going to call it done. I think I desperately need a shower anyway. Maybe this will be the last time we ever take out one of these vans. They're so fun and worth it for a couple days, I promise. I think just only a couple days. It seems like by the third is where we're where we really run into trouble. All right, bye forever. We're going to a hotel. Screw you. Well, good morning, y'all. Morning. Sadly, we are leaving Tulum. It's actually bright and early.
Uh we bought tickets for the 8:00 a.m. bus cuz it was the soonest we could leave, and that leaves in about 5 minutes. So, we are running to the bus station. We're running. Nothing like ending the trip in a state of panic. Yeah, of course the trip didn't go exactly as planned, but uh at this point we when stuff like that happens, we're just like, "Yeah, of course, duh." Cuz seems to happen to us all the time, so whatever. We made the most of it. We are actually off back to the U.S. of A. We've got a bunch of stuff we've been planning kind of since the beginning of the year that we are going to try to make come to fruition, huh?
Yes. But, for now we got to go get on this bus, y'all. Okay, goodbye, ventures. We'll see you on the road.
