Next stop on the Yucatan tour was Coba. It was fun to hire a bike taxi to zip us around the ruins. With how warm it was it was nice not to be hoofing it through the woods.

It was relatively quiet through most of the Coba ruins, but that’s only because most people don’t do anything except go straight for the pyramid. And while it’s fun to take the kids to these places, being around this many people isn’t really our thing any more. You’d have to get here pretty early in the morning to avoid it, and we clearly did not.

Surprisingly, right down the road are a few cenotes with hardly anyone at them. Choo-Ha was kind of cool, and a lot different than the other cenotes we’d been too. The only entrance was a small hole with a stairway down through it.

There were only two lights in the cave which left lots of dark spaces. Lowe was not digging that part too much, and decided to hitch a ride on my back.

Right around the corner from there is another one, called Multum-Ha. Another big cave, but with deeper more wide open water.

The cenotes were a definite highlight of the road trip, and an awesome way for these water kids to get a break from just traipsing around ruins all day.

From Coba we continued on down to Tulum, where we planned to visit the ruins before calling it a night up the road in Playa. Wow. I hate to be that old guy that says, “Back when I was here…” but holy cow, Tulum is a freaking zoo now. From a dirt road town in 2002 when we rented a house here for a couple of weeks, to a full blown tourist hub. We drove by two Starbucks and a Dominos pizza within two blocks and already my mood had soured. Granted, I was tired, and I’d probably just had enough for one day anyway, so it might not be entirely the fault of Tulum. We parked half a mile from the ruins at some sort of mall, waited in the long line for tickets, and found out that the price had just gone up for the “night show.” Ugh, forget it. We skipped Tulum, got back in the car, drove straight to the hotel, swam in the people-free rooftop pool, and called it a night.

In the morning we drove up to Puerto Morelos, which was much more our speed. Hung out there for a couple hours, contemplated what to do the rest of the day, and then decided to just head for home. Three days away and we were all ready to be back on the boat.

Turns out it was a good thing we got home when we did. We got back to the boat and everyone knew there was a bit of weather on the way, but it was still beautiful out. We were hanging out with some friends and the kids were off running around with their friends, when all at once the weather switch was flipped. Within seconds the wall of wind hit and the color changed. I ran off to gather up the kids and sprint home just as the rain started to pound down and Ali closed up the boat. For the next few hours the wind rarely dipped below 35 knots.

Within five minutes boats were dragging in unison across the bay. We could see people onboard a ketch running around on deck, but before they could do anything they were aground and in the mangroves. Another boat dragged right into another and got tangled up—probably lucky he did as the other guy’s anchor managed to hold. Another, which had already been grounded in a previous storm finally blew off, but immediately grounded up on the next sandbar. And a catamaran went flying by with an anchor chain skipping along the bottom. We felt the worst for this guy. For the next two hours or more he fought to keep from going aground. He’d motor into the wind, only to be blown back again, over and over. Eventually he lost the battle, and grounded in the mangroves as well.

Our dock neighbors spring lines were too long so their bow was bouncing off the dock. It’s not easy to back a boat up in this sort of weather.

We were fine. We already had every line on the boat tied off to six different posts, and it helped that we were pointed right into the wind and waves as well. Our biggest concern was the tall ship that had arrived just ahead of the storm. He was blasting the engines, turning the whole bay brown as he kicked up the sand. If he had dragged he could have wiped out a lot of boats.

Fortunately, the next day, all the boats were saved. The monohull busted the mast in half, but otherwise was dragged off and hauled into a marina. The catamaran pulled off easily at high tide. And everyone else got free and settled again with little damage.