The Palapa Standard

As we ducked our heads, at least me, to exit the plane onto the outdoor stair our view was filled with a wonderful blue sky pocked with little puffy white clouds. No rain in sight, we thought it might. As it turns out it had rained the week prior, all day every day, so the Cozumelans were as happy to see the sun as we were.

To the hotel, a fairly easy trip. The island is like a flat pancake with low jungle surrounded by some of the best scuba and snorkeling reefs in the world. The west side of the island has very calm waters so the reefs are large and very close to shore.

Our first priority was to get into and then out of our room. Off to the beach and more importantly the palapa that awaited. What is a palapa? Think of an eight foot wide umbrella made with local thatch with a tree trunk as a post. These had little tables around the trunk, with blue ceramic tile tops that we assumed were for our XX to sit on. We tested and confirmed this assumption many times.

So this brings up the name of this post, The Palapa Standard. We decided that an essential element to choosing a hotel was if they had palapas. Our first trip, where they had palapas, helped us to see the unrelized value. Palapas allows you to be in the sun or out of the sun and essentially stay on the beach and enjoy the view all day.

Our view was to Palaya del Carmen and Tulum, just far enough away so they appeared as a tiny line on the horizon there but not there. At night the glow off the clouds gave away their true location.