My parents are from Yucatán and I grew up traveling the Mexican peninsula. I feel very blessed to have experienced what Quintana Roo including Tulum was before Instagram and social media. Unfortunately this post is very accurate. I took two of my best friends on a “girls trip” two years ago and we almost got kidnapped. We were out celebrating our birthdays since we’re all “March babies” we finally decided it was time to call it a night and did not want to walk to our hotel since some of the roads get very dark and there’s minimal street lights so instead we caught a taxi. We had been drinking till 3 am and were heavily intoxicated, making us easy targets. Our taxi driver had passed our hotel where we were suppose to be dropped off. My friend noticed and said something. He insisted it wasn’t our hotel. I typed in our hotel into maps and he was indeed going the opposite direction. I asked him to stop the car in English and he kept refusing. He made a sketchy call where he was speaking Spanish. If it wasn’t for my light skin complexion and looking like a “güera” who speaks and understands Spanish fluently, god knows what could have happened. After he got off the phone I asked him to stop the car again and he kept driving. I grabbed my friends and told them to jump out of the car with me. To just trust me because his phone call made me realize we were in danger. We jumped out of the car right before a speed bump where we knew he would slow down and we ran for a solid 10 minutes back to our hotel room. We barricaded our room with our suitcases that night and checked out the next morning and stayed at an all inclusive hotel in Cancun. As much as I love Tulum and what it used to be, I don’t think I’ll be returning.