Yucatan, Mexico – April 2007
Dogrose
Mexico wasn’t a plan, more of a spontaneous opportunity.
We were sitting around in LA, checking out flights to Belize city when I wandered into a forum on traveling to Belize.
I hadn’t really thought about getting the bus through Mexico, as we are on a bit of a time limit (if you can call 3 months a time limit), but as soon as I started to read, I knew this was the way to go.
Flying is such a sterile way to travel. You get on at one end and off at the other, seeing nothing of the world that passes beneath your feet.
So first stop Cancun (via Phoenix).
We got the shuttle bus rather than a taxi from the airport, as it was cheaper and we figured we’d get to see more of the city along the way. All of the people, except us, disembarked along the hotel zone, which was full of white, sterile looking, modern hotels, bars and at least one shopping mall, definitely not our style, too much like Ibiza, but with a little more architectural imagination.
Usually when we travel we like to spend the first night in an upmarket hotel and downgrade from there, but as we only planned to stay a couple of nights we figured that we could take whatever the budget accommodation had to throw at us.
WRONG!
Guidebook quote:
Casa de Huespedes Punta Allen is a good option. Friendly service, hanging plants and continental breakfast compliment the clean accommodations. Rooms in front are larger and have small balconies which let in lots of light. A great little hotel on a quiet street.
Ok so the book is two years old and a lot can change in that time but in reality the place sucks.
Yes it is on a reasonably quiet little back street (although over the noise of the air con you wouldn’t hear anything else anyway) and yes it did have a sunny little balcony, but you had to go out of the room to get to it and the windows that 
looked on to it that weren’t boarded up were so dirty that they didn’t let in any light. The Venetian blinds were broken and grimy, the sockets were hanging from the walls with bare wires on show and when I flicked the light switch in the bathroom it went with a bang!
The air con did work, which was good as none of the windows opened, but it only seemed capable of cooling the wall opposite and never quite reached the bed or the parts of the room we actually used. I hate air con anyway and would much prefer a fan.
The room was very run down and badly maintained. Still it was only US$45 a night, was surprisingly clean, so long as you didn’t look at the ceiling and the windows, and the staff were very friendly.
Although we were pretty shattered after our early morning flight, we dragged ourselves out to eat. It was only 5pm and a lot of places hadn’t really got started for the evening rush.
There is certainly no shortage of restaurants in downtown Cancun, all serving local dishes to local people, and we chose an eatery with a nice young waitress who spoke enough English to explain to us that the prices on the menus were actually in pesos and not dollars, although the signs were too similar for comfort! US$65 for a burrito?!!!
I ordered a beef and cheese burrito and, although I didn’t want anything too spicy, was quite disappointed at how bland it was. Not even a hint of chilli!
Then I tried the nachos which came with two dips, one red, one green. I correctly assumed the red to be chilli and the other one I mistakenly took to be guacamole. Ouch!
After a hot and restless night, not made any more pleasant by downing several Margaritas in the restaurant the night before (well it was happy hour), we sauntered down to the restaurant of the hotel in search of breakfast. Although, it turns out, they don’t actually serve breakfast at this time of the year (another mistake in the guide book), the chef was good enough though to rustle us up an omelet, fried chicken, hash browns and rice.
Feeling full and reasonably content with the world we decided to check out the other hotel that was on our short list, the Hotel y Spa El Rey del Caribe. It’s an eco-friendly, green oasis in the heart of steamy downtown Cancun, everything the book said it was. We moved el pronto!
It was almost twice the price of the Punta Allen but it had clean, comfortable rooms and came with breakfast, free internet access and a kitchenette (not that I planed on doing any cooking).
We didn’t really do a lot in the three days we spent in Cancun, other than catch up on our emails and eat and drink plenty of Margaritas. Kelvin had not been too well since we got there, he went down with a stomach bug the night before we actually flew out of LA, which I found a little ironic, as when I went down with the same bug the night we flew into LA he showed me no mercy. Ahh revenge is so sweet!
By Thursday he was back on his feet again and we thought it was time to do a little exploring as we hadn’t planned on staying around Cancun for longer than a couple of nights (three as it happens) so we headed for El Rey at the end of Zona Hotelera. A small site with an interesting mix of Mayan ruins and lizards. Turns out that the lizards were taken there by the Mayas as a food supply. Yum!
I’m not going into details about EL Rey, as there’s plenty of info on the net for those who are interested.
Walking along the main strip that night, we ran the gauntlet of time share touts. It doesn’t matter where you go in the world there is always some one trying to sell you time share. We’ve been to two presentations so far, once in Portugal, which we we were conned into and which ended losing us the last day of our holiday, and once in Bali so that the guy could get his US$25 commission and we could get revenge!
In Mexico though, their commission must be huge as the tout started off by offering us US$100 cash to go to the presentation and by the time we got the end of the strip it had risen to US$350 – in Bali all we got was a T-shirt! We were tempted but not enough to face another night in Cancun.
Turns out that they usually try to grab you at the airport, so if you do travel here and you hear the words ‘Mayan Palace
Resort’ run like hell (unless you need the money).
Needless to say we didn’t stick to our plans again, and instead of getting the bus the next morning to Chetumal, we broke our journey at Tulum and spent a couple of days at the beach.
A laid back, sunny little town with wide streets and a feeling that the hippies had arrived sometime in the 70s and never left. Such a welcome change after Cancun.
We stumbled off the coach and into a very convenient bar/restaurant/hotel called Charlie’s.
I have to mention at this point that I am really impressed with the standard of coach travel in Mexico. Ok, so we have only traveled with ADO (pronounced aye dee oh) who run a three tier system. But as their cheapest tickets were not much more than their second class rivals they seemed the most logical choice and, as was proven to us 2 days later on trying to leave Tulum, a lot more reliable. It had only taken 2 1/2 hours to get there at a cost of US$14 each, which, compared to coach travel in England, is excellent value.
Where was I? Oh yes, Charlie’s. A great place to sit over breakfast and watch the world go by. Which is what we did.
We perused though our guide book, trying to decide which hotel to head for while munching our way through a filling fruit salad, with yogurt, honey and granola.
The zona hotelera is a VERY long, shady lane that runs parallel with the beach. The hotels are mostly clusters of beach cabana’s, varying in price and amenities, a little way along the lane is a cluster of hotels that form a mini village. Electricity in a lot of these hotels is in the form of generators which tends to be rationed to a few hours in the morning and again in the evening, apart from one or two places that have solar powered gennies that run for 24hours.
It was one of the solar powered hotels in the mini village that we decided on, as, unlike most tourists in that area, we didn’t have our own car so didn’t want to be too far down the strip.
The hotel ‘Posada del sol’ sounded a nice place to rest up for a couple of days and wash Canun out of our hair.
We agreed on $40 pesos with the first taxi driver in the queue outside the bus station, bundled our bags into the boot and we were off.
It was only when we noticed a little cluster of dwellings flash by that we realized that we had just sailed through the mini village, when we raised our objections to the taxi driver, he grunted that the Posada del sol was closed and they had moved further down the strip. That was when we realised just how long the strip was.
Eventually he pulled up outside a place that looked more like somebody’s home than a hotel. Indeed that’s just what it was and the woman in the garden look somewhat confused when I asked in my terrible Spanish if they had any rooms.
So, still not realising what was going on, he took us to another place a little further back up the strip. It was obviously not for us as all the guests we’re either meditating or doing yoga and when we inquired about rooms the guy looked us up and down and replied in a holier than thou voice ‘I don’t think so’!
So eventually we found space at the Cabanas Tulum. Not really what we were looking for, but a great spot right on the beach. We thought we’d give the taxi driver a generous tip for driving us around so Kelvin held out $100 peso note. That’s when we realised we’d been scammed! The driver looked at it and then at us and growled ‘What’s this?’ and unashamedly demanded $200 pesos for his time. Of course the posada del sol was open all the time.
It wasn’t going to break the bank so, after a few harsh words, we paid up and and sulked for 5 minutes.
We changed into our swim wear and walked along the white sandy beach that seemed to stretch away into infinity, lined with coconut trees and dotted with fallen coconuts and tourists, it was bliss!
The Tulum cabanas was one of the first hotels in the area and although the rooms were comfortable enough they were pretty basic on the inside a rather shabby on the outside.
We got friendly with a lovely American woman called Beth and her Niece Laura who were staying in the next cabana to us. She told me that when she was there ten years ago the area was pretty much undiscovered. Just our hotel and a couple of others existed then and we formed the conclusion the the owner had maybe paid for the hotel a long time ago and didn’t see the need in spending too much on it anymore.
After two nights in Tulum it was time to hit the road again. Beth and Laura were good enough to give us a lift into town and we all descended on Charlie’s for breakfast. One of the joys of traveling in this manner is that you meet some wonderful people along the way. So in the hope that they may read this someday – Muchas gracias Beth and Laura.
Last stop Chetumal:
The bus to Chetumal from Tulum was supposed to leave at 10.15. It wasn’t ADO but Mayan, and it was late. At 11.30 Kelvin decided to find out what was going on and was assured by the ticket seller that it could arrive at any minute. At 12.00 we inquired again and was told that we had missed it and that we would have to wait for the next one at 12.45. We knew this was a lie as there was another British couple waiting for the same bus and they had been there 20 minutes before us. Nothing for it but to head back into into Charlie’s for lunch.
The next bus was 10 minutes early. We missed it!
Still every cloud has a silver lining, we bought another set of tickets this time for ADO which was leaving 10 minutes later. It was dead on time and we traveled in comfort!
Chetumal is the capital city of Quintana roo and the gateway to Belize. It has wide, easy to cross streets and a businesslike feel. Nowhere ever seems crowded and most of the people seem friendly enough.
We stayed at a newish hotel that even the taxi driver hadn’t heard of, called Hotel Palm Real. It’s the cheapest place so far and one of the best. Big modern rooms with cable tv, air-con and a wireless network.
It was Sunday evening and we decide to explore by taking a stroll along the waterfront to the modern looking pier. It was
family night by the look of it and the plaza was full of stalls selling strange looking foods and various knick-knacks. The atmosphere was wonderful and relaxed, smiling faces, giggling children and the heady aromas of food sizzling on barbecues.
We wandered around trying to pluck up courage to try some of the delicacies, but not knowing what any of them were called, we had an interesting conversation with a man about his dog, interesting in the sense that neither of us could understand each other, and finally we found ourselves sitting at a stall eating burritos, mainly to get away from the man and his dog who was obviously trying to tap us for money (the man that was, not the dog).
After that there was no stopping us, we tried Mexican hot dogs, which were frankfurters in batter and then wrapped in bread, we tried crisp pancake tubes filled with melted cheese, and last but not least, large cylindrical white concoctions on sticks which I mistakenly thought were ice creams and turned out to be corn on the cob, coated in sour cream, rolled in parmesan and drizzled with a piquant chilli sauce. I was in heaven.
We were only going to spend a couple of nights in Chetumal (you’ve heard this before right?) Just long enough to have a look around and visit the Museo de la Cultura Maya before getting the bus across the border. Only the museum is closed on Mondays and it seemed a shame to miss it so we stayed for another night and made firm resolutions to leave on Wednesday.
The museum was definitely worth the wait. It’s a modern building, with a well thought out display of Mayan culture set out on three levels.
The upper level is the world of gods, the middle the world of humans and the lower is Xibalaba, the underworld.
The explanations are in Spanish and English with interesting and informative displays explaining Mayan spiritual beliefs, astronomy, agricultural practices and counting.
In the centre of the courtyard is a small replica of a modern Mayan homestead and several rooms around the perimeter house some very interesting art shows.
So our last night in Mexico, and, after toying with the idea to maybe, just maybe, have another 24 hours to visit the Cenote at Bacalar we decided enough is enough and what the hell, we can always travel back to LA this way instead!
