My first big photography trip of the year was a Femme Nue photography retreat in Tulum, México. Due to the timing of flights I had to drive to the airport (at 2 am) and leave my car in long term parking. I changed planes in Salt Lake City and then flew on to Cancún. Passport control there is now automated which made it fairly easy to enter. I finally made it to my hotel in late afternoon.
I traveled to México a few days before the retreat to give myself time to acclimate. I stayed at a nice hotel fairly close to the airport, and mostly hung out there. I did make one Uber trip into the Hotel Zone to have lunch at a hole-in-the-wall seafood restaurant favored by locals, El Galeón del Caribe. After a few days we gathered at a local hotel to board our bus and head to Tulum. We had a nice welcome lunch at a restaurant on the beach, La Zebra. After our lunch we headed over to the villa(s), Yum Kaax Botique Villa and Ambre Epices Jungle Hotel and Spa, where we would be having our retreat. They were actually two villas joined together which could be rented as separate spaces or one big space, so it represented significant space for us to shoot in. They were designed in the style of Moroccan Riads and included some swimming pools on the top floor on one side and a large pool area on the ground and a few smaller pool/spas spread around. The only downside was lots of stairs and lots of going up and down because the upper areas didn’t really connect together above. But that was a minor inconvenience, and it gave me some much needed exercise and steadied my footing. I had a nice room overlooking the main pool area that had a couple of hanging chairs that came in to good use during my photoshoots.
The retreat, while fairly short consisting of 3 full days and 2 partial days, was a relatively large affair. We had 9 models and there were 11 photographers. I had shot with all but two of the models before, and I managed to book some time with all of them. We had Vivian Cove and Eva Luna from the US, Sienna Hayes, Muirina Fae, Kate Snig, and Ali Clare from Canada, xKes from the UK, Nausicaa Yami, an Italian model living in the UK, and Shira Nuballet from Spain. As a result of the scale and number of days I ended up shooting more hours per day than I normally would have.
The group was very nice and very harmonious. I knew a number of photographers and models from previous events, but there were also many new people there as well. We generally shared some nice lunches and dinners together. It all ended too quickly. We had a farewell lunch, again at La Zebra, then we all dispersed. A few stayed in the area, a few of the models headed to Humberto’s to hang out for a few days, the rest of us were delivered to Cancún, some going immediately to the airport and a few others of us went to hotels before eventually heading home. A big win for me was that I didn’t get sick on this trip, which differed from a number of recent trips.
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