Let’s Go to Mexico
What do you say? Let’s ride the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula from Cancun (Mexico) to Placencia (Belize) visiting some islets of the Caribbean at road?
I warn you that the flight is approximately 15 hours and we haven’t booked a room anywhere! I do not want any whining! Fasten your seatbelts because we are about to land!
The plane was approaching the airport of Cancun and I was already at the window with my camera in hand. Beneath lies the dense jungles of the peninsula and in the middle of nowhere the airport. Outside the stifling tropical heat and the officer from the rental car office welcomes us. Yes, I might haven’t booked a room but I planned for a vehicle. He has the papers ready as we agreed and written permission to pass the vehicle to the borders of neighboring Belize.
And here we drive on Riviera Maya, this beautiful evening as the sun sets and paints the sky with incredible shades of orange and purple.
We are heading 60 kilometers south of Cancun in Playa del Carmen to find a room. Halfway the police stops our vehicle because we had a speed of 100 kilometers while the limit is 80. With 20 euro we hope they can forget the incident, otherwise we won’t get away easily. I give the 20 euro and 15 minutes later, we arrive at Playa.
Playa Del Carmen is a tourist town but without the monstrous hotels of Cancun. Every now and then in the endless beach there are small beach bars with bassinets instead of seats, beautiful hotels and of course hammocks. The upper road –the 5th avenue- is a pedestrian road with tourist shops, small bars, restaurants, taquerias, colorful with a lot of music. I let my husband and my son who sleeps in the back seat to the car and I get the map with the 3-4 hotels which I marked with “Maya Brick” hotel first in the list.
It was maybe the music, the lights, the mariachi who stopped me to tell me a song or the tourists who walk upside down the road along with the 20 hours of no sleep that made me pass about 3 times outside of the hotel without seeing it. So I went to the second hotel in the list the “Rosa Mirador” hotel. It was good, clean with air condition and cheap (36 euros for a 3bed room).
The staff is gathered in the lobby watching mundial. Of course they do not speak English. So I recall my Spanish being proud for doing it successfully. We leave our staff in the room and we walk outside to check out Playa and find something to eat. We end up in an Italian for a pizza –it’s not time for experiments- and just before we are about to fall asleep on our plates, we head for our room and as soon as we reach it we pass out in our beds instantly.
Playa Del Carmen
It’s still too early in the morning when I wake up looking for the alarm clock. Wait! There is no alarm clock, no job, no Greece, I am in MEXICO!!! YAHOO!!! I’m running to the window to see the sun rising and giving a golden color to the Caribbean sea. I am grabbing my camera and getting out to see Playa without waking up the others.
The 5th avenue is empty and nothing gives a clue for last night’s mess. Only a few stores serving breakfast are open with their employees moving tables outside and throwing water to the road. I head to the beach for my first photos. It’s empty as well, with the endless white sand getting interrupted once every while from traces of tires and the tall palm trees looking gold from the sunlight.
My husband and my son meet me and we decide to go for breakfast at “Maya Brick hotel” which is pretty near and couldn’t find last night. Fresh fruit juices and omelette is exactly what we needed. My son devoured the chocolate pancakes while swearing that chocolate has a different taste in Mexico. Suddenly I realize that the battery of my camera is out and the camera is not working. I cannot believe my luck. We have to move to Cancun in order to fix it. I had other plans for today but they have to be postponed…I don’t go anywhere without my camera.
So we are driving towards Cancun, asking every now and then for directions. Finally we arrive at Plaza las Americas with the commercial stores. However the type of battery that I need doesn’t exist there! I am ready to burst to tears while explaining to an assistant there that it’s our first day in Mexico and I cannot use my camera. He tells me to wait him for 5 minutes and he runs away. When he returns he has a battery that suits to my camera. I tell him I love you amigo something that makes him start laughing loudly. I offer him a coffee and his launch but the only thing he wants is when I move back to Greece to tell everyone that Mexicans are cool and superb. So they are!!
Cancun
Because of the change in our schedule we decided to explore the famous Cancun and go for a dive as well.
Cancun is divided into two parts:
The first part is the Cancun centro, a small town with short building, squares filled with trees and big shopping malls where you can find anything ( like a battery for your camera for example). The roads have flower, fish and fruit names – I learned them well while I was looking for a new battery this morning. How sweet is to live in the corner of barracuda and mango street!
There are hotels and restaurants too, a lot more cheaper than the ones of Cancun island, which is the second part of the town.
A narrow strip of land with a length of 23km and just 500m width full of luxurious hotels, where every hotel is more luxurious than the previous one, with more complicated architecture. Their originality is remarkable so their prices. The mad reconstruction only began 35 years ago, so the fishing village of 120!! inhabitants was transformed into an incredible HOTEL zone that includes the most luxurious hotels in the Caribbean. It’s the place where the Americans go when they have spring break having fun in the local clubs and discos that play music until the morning. Looking at it from above it looks like the number 7 and is connected with the city of Cancun with a bridge at each end. So within a large enclosed lagoon and surrounded outside by the ocean, an endless white beach is created, the apotheosis of turquoise as I say. To rejoice this sea you must either live in one of the hotels or to search to find the unique access as we did.
The view of the sea is breathtaking and without much delay, I jumped into. I tried to imagine the sea 30 years ago, when the place had only a few inhabitants. A strip of land between the lagoon and the ocean, covered with white sand and palm trees instead of the monstrous buildings. Everything changes eventually and not all the times to get better.
We took the road back home again, driving the 23 km of Avenida Kukulcan while the place in the middle of the road was filled with overgrown trees and adorned with statues of the Mayan era.
I noticed that several hotels were like bombed, and I remembered the hurricane that hit the place last year. Still struggling to find their pace and hoping that they won’t be in the next hurricane’s way…
We left Cancun behind us and entered the coastal highway of Riviera Maya passing by modern beachfront hotels in Playa del Carmen, like yesterday. Now we were careful because we didn’t want the police to stop us again. Over the median at one point there was a vehicle inverted half hanging from a billboard and the worst … human corpses hanging from the windows and windshield. We reduced speed quickly to see what was happening and I could not believe it, but it was just a blunt warning about what would happen if you drive fast with your car. We went to a dirt road leading to the beach where it was estimated that Playa Maroma was located, one of the most beautiful beaches. The road came to a barrier and a security guard told us to leave the car and continue on foot. The beach was deserted, with tall palm trees that went back and forth from the strong wind while the sea was spectacular but rough enough so we couldn’t swim… We went back and got the same dirt road which was crossing a plantation of bananas. This time the road was full of pickup trucks which were gathering the tired workers of the plantation.
Back to Playa Del Carmen we went for launch at a bar-restaurant near the beach which had swing instead of seats –a choice of my son, who didn’t stop going back and forth while he was eating. The afternoon rolled away with games at the sea and the night we went for a drink at the “Blue Parrot” beach bar…
I choose to stay in Playa del Carmen because it had more friendly-budget hotels and did not think we would like it so much because it seemed very touristy for our tastes…
I would recommend to anyone who chooses to travel the region to stay here. Unless you have a thick wallet, and you want a swimming pool and a jacuzzi and special treatment from a local, then Cancun is what you need.
Playa Del Carmen is friendlier, more low profile, in a more convenient location in order to visit the nearby landscapes. And I have not to forget the wonderful beach, the relaxed atmosphere and the cheap taquerias with the delicious authentic Mexican tacos. We must have been walking upside down the 5th avenue and the parallel streets hundreds of times, looking at the souvenir shops, stopping every now and then in order to hear the mariachi with their amazing voices. Tomorrow morning we were leaving from Playa del Carmen and we were looking for a new place to accommodate us…
Xelha eco park
We said farewell, -temporary- to Playa del Carmen early in the morning and headed south. The 307 highway has 2 lanes in each direction and large plates notifying you for the existence of a Theme park or a famous cenote. Cenote are small green or turquoise lakes in the middle of the jungle and the route is as enjoyable as the swimming in those lakes. The most famous cenote have hanging ropes at the nearby trees so you can hang like Tarzan before you dive in the lake which is fed by groundwater. There are over 2000 cenote in Yucatan Peninsula.
We chose the eco park Xelha for today as it was Sunday and in the weekends there is a great discount but it is more crowded too.
At the entrance of the park we had to leave our sunscreens back because it is not allowed anything that can harm the park and it’s inhabitants but you can buy there ecological lotion if you want.
They led us to the reception where there are lockers to leave cameras, bags etc so you can go for swimming and you can go whenever you want with your number to ask the key from the receptionist. Throughout the park there are comfortable chairs, loungers and hammocks of course.
Six restaurants to choose to eat lunch, two of them with live music, bathrooms, showers and rooms to change.
We went to the train with the thatched roof and it took us to the top of the river which is fed by underground springs. There we were given masks and large coils and told us either to sit and let the stream drift us in the park lagoon either to dive with masks and watch what happens beneath the water while we would be getting carried away by the stream. The river flows through a wooded mangrove area where sometime you have to bend or manipulate your coil – so dense is the vegetation. We ended up in the big lagoon where the river meets the sea water. It was like a huge aquarium with crystal clear waters and offers unforgettable encounters with the underwater world. The park offers scuba, sea-trek, swimming with dolphins, but these are extra and cost more.
But there are many other activities included in the entry, such as to take the train that crosses the park, to bicycle on the tracks inside the jungle where you can stop to dive and take a breath or just to walk and see the indescribable beauty of nature. After so much fatigue, a stop at the island of hammock was necessary. My husband was amazed by the dolphins and their weird tricks that attracted the visitors. I pulled out of the water my son just when he was about to turn into a fish and reminded them that we had no room for the night. So we left the park with a little disappointment and drove to Tulum.
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