Papaya Playa

Life doesn't get much better than travelling and hanging out at beautiful beaches. Tulum was great but could have been better. I'm a little impulsive some days and screw things up a bit. With any luck, others will learn from my mistakes like picking up stranges object on tropical beaches after dark.

When I got off the bus in Tulum, a man was passing out pamphlets for Papaya Playa at the station. Fine. Into the cab. The place looked alright. There was a cabana available right on the beach for 300 pesos. I signed up for 7 nights only to find out very soon after that I could and should have done so much better. I was just too excited about the beach.

This is the cabana I had, basically a tree fort on the sand. I hadn't even bothered to check inside. The great location was enough. It was the shabbiest cabana they had. Maintenance at this place was almost non-existent. Two of those skinny logs were missing but they sent a maintenance guy to hammer a few more in for me. Papaya Playa is the sort of place where not much gets done unless a guests brings it up because these people just don't pay attention.


I doubt my bed sheets had been cleaned since the last guest or even after I left. They were covered in sand. I never saw any laundry being gathered. Maybe that sort of thing isn't done much in the low end backpacker end of Tulum. I was at a restaurant down the road a mile for lunch and eavesdropped on a couple of guests complaining to the manager that they'd just arrived the night before and found their sheets black with filth. My mosquito net was dark with old dead bugs. Kind of a moldy place.

I liked it better in the morning when the sunlight came pouring through the gaps of the logs. I convinced myself that I hadn't done too badly. By the middle of the week, I was cursing the place loudly. My cabana was closest to the damn bar and restaurant and we were the only place on the beach that had loud tasteless music blasting until lights went out. So much for the peaceful sound of gentle Carribean waves. How about trying to sleep with crappy monotonous club music pounding away with all the bass those speakers could deliver? As the hour got later, the music got louder. I walked out one night to glare at them. They had zero customers.



Compared to Papaya Playa, every other place seemed clean and serene. They seemed to be going for a dirty party hole atmosphere and it didn't always bring out the best in the guests. I was woken up after 6 hours of sleep by some retired Slovakians standing in a big group right outside my cabana talking at the top of their lungs.

"Hey, it's 6 o'clock in the morning!"

A snide old hag with Marge Simpson hair said it all. "Oh, is it?" In fact I was wrong. Make that 5:30. This wasn't a matter of forgetting their manners. They didn't have any. A shady looking old creep drained the last of a vodka bottle.

One of the most frustrating nights was when the power went down for a short while. It could have been so great, nothing but soft waves and moonlight, but their damn stereo had backup power. There were no lights for reading but, boys, we had loud low end music to spare.

Papaya Playa isn't located on the best stretch of beach either. It's a small part of the shoreline separated from the rest by coral cliffs so a whim to wander further means a trip down the road, not a welcome proposition after dark.

hermit crab

I´m staying in Tulum for at least a week at Papaya Playa. Electricity from a generator for only 5 hours a day. Even the coolers at the local store are stuffed with ice. No internet of any kind.


Had a scare last night. Picked up a curious round thing off the sand outside my cabana last night. It bit my thumb, drew blood and ran off. I could see another one moving slowly in the dark, a bit lighter colored than the first and thought it might be a small coiled snake. I can be a quick learner so I didn´t pick this one up. Went to the desk. The night manager and I checked it out together. It was a big hermit crab, non-poisonous but very strong. It clamped down with a steel grip on my key.


The little things that happen to you just when you´re getting ready for bed. In my excitement to determine whether or not I´d been fatally wounded and had poison tearing up my bloodstream, I lost my key. Turned out that the night manager had it all the time. He´s almost as absent-minded as I am. I thought I must have left it in my room and there are no spares at this place. No problem. I broke in so easily without having to kick down the walls. Flick. The latch for the window popped free. I was in. I knew it wasn´t a high-security structure. That´s the charm. It´s right on the beach and the early morning sun pours between the logs. Any security is just an illusion. Two logs were missing when I took it, leaving a gap big enough for a skinny person to just crawl through. I could almost do it but my rib cage was just a tad too wide. They replaced the logs.