We drove down to Punta Allen last week, it is at the tip of the Sian Kian preserve south of Tulum. Everyone always wants to know about the road, so here's the update. The road is definitely better, it's been graded in places and as you can see, they are still working on it. We had to wait about 15 minutes for this scraper to get done and let us by. It's still pretty bad with potholes and washboard in one stretch. Still, big improvement from years past and really big improvement since the hurricanes 2 years ago.

It took us about an hour and a half in our jeep with some stops to get the 40 or so miles to Punta Allen. I love the town, it's what all these Caribbean towns used to be like even when we first started coming here. Sand streets, relaxed life, people sitting around in the heat of the day.

We picked up a couple of beers here, sat around and talked, walked on the beach a little, enjoyed the day.

That kind of relaxation is sounding pretty good right now. We are in the throes of packing up Tortuga to head out on Friday. My dentist trips are over for now, all is wonderful. Plus, we got a call that all the paperwork on the house in Mérida is ready and we need to get over there to pay for the fideicomiso and meet with the Notario. It's all moving fast now. They want to close in 2 weeks but we won't be back in the US by then so I'm hoping to stall it for a month.

Anyway, back to our road trip. I took this pic of an old pier in Punta Allen. I just love the colors of the Caribbean, it's not unique, there were equally beautiful colors in the waters around Palau when we were there. But, if you add in the powder white sand and the relaxed feel... there's just nothing like it.

On the way back we stopped a couple times to walk along the beach. This is what a "wild" Caribbean beach looks like, beautiful and untamed not manicured and swept. There are more waves here too because the reef is farther out and not continuous.

Unfortunately, this is the view in the other direction. Plastic is the bane of the Earth's oceans. This probably came off boats or from towns far from here. Every beach collects mounds of plastic that washes ashore, they remove it early in the morning at the resorts so you never see it. It's there though and there is a lot of it. It's on the reefs, trapped by the coral and swept by the currents across the oceans. It drowns turtles and kills seabirds and it never rots and never goes away. It's so sad that we have done this to such beauty.