Travel Diaries: Mexico

Mexico was a dream. The staffs working at the resorts weren’t lying when they said they live in paradise!

2 weeks ago, Ananta and I went to Mexico for a week. We flew to Cancun International Airport. The flight was about 3 hours from Minneapolis/St. Paul International airport which I thought was fairly short compared to a lot of flights I have taken within United States. We had an absolutely amazing time in Mexico. We explored as much as we could but also had a pretty relaxed time. We were very jet-lagged from our trip to Nepal and beach was the perfect place to recover from those time difference. Here are some of the highlights from our trip.

As usual I am going to divide this post into different section so click below to jump into a particular section or just scroll away if you want to go through everything.

Playa Del Carmen  |  Riveria Maya  |  Chichen Itza  |  Valladolid  |  Tulum  |  Cancun

Playa Del Carmen

We stayed in Playa Del Carmen for a day solely because we had a slight confusion over our departure date. Now when I look at it, I think that was one of the best things that happened during our trip to Mexico. I love this city. It has the right amount of  city with the right amount of beach town feel. It has a nice pedestrian only street with lots of shopping and places to eat and within few walking blocks, a nice beach. We stayed at Be Hotel. It is conveniently located close to the walking street, 5th Avenida. We even had a unexpected night out. We stayed up till 4am dancing! The only place that I remember is Mandala and Coco Bongo.

Mojitos before noon.

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Riveria Maya

For the rest of the trip, we stayed in Riveria Maya at Blue Diamond Hotel. Our hotel was not quite a big all-inclusive resort. It is considered a small scale luxury resort but all the services were inclusive. Another thing to mention, this is an adults only resort. Our room is called the jungle view room with lots of greenery (see below) and a lagoon.

One thing we never considered while booking our accommodation was how the beach of the resort was. We noticed that most of the beaches of other hotels either had way too much sea weed or didn’t have an actual nice sand beach to walk around. We were lucky to have a proper beach that was much cleaner that rest of the areas of the beach. The staffs removed it every morning before the residents came to the beach. The best part of staying at this resort has to be dining with a 9 ft crocodile that the staffs lovingly named Esmeralda. Oh yes and also watching spider monkeys walking in their two hind limbs outside our room. Very weird, I tell you!

Sunrises and sunsets by the beach

Raw honey shots in the forest after Mayan ritual Temazcal

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Chichen Itza

We went to Chichen Itza for a day trip.  It was about 2 hours drive from our hotel on a car but I believe we reached earlier than we expected. We left early morning, so there was no traffic. I highly suggest going as early as possible when there are less people. It is much more peaceful and you get good pictures 🙂 Another thing to note, if you are driving, make sure to have your tanks full. There are parts on the highway where there are no gas station. Make sure to take some loose change to pay toll.

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Valladolid

We stopped by Valladolid on our way back from Chichen Itza. It is a cute little city with Spanish inspired houses.

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Tulum

Tulum was my other favorite place in Mexico. This is a proper beach town with a many little boutiques and cafe along the way. We didn’t get to spend too long here but I knew I loved it here just by driving through.

Cenotes Samuya, regretted not taking a good camera!

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Cancun

Cancun by far was my least favorite place. Although the water was beautiful, I can’t say much about the beach. The water was pretty rough and it gets pretty deep within short distance. And it was crowded. This place is good for party goers but if you really want peaceful time, I wouldn’t recommend Cancun.

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Overall I am in love with Mexico. I have absolutely no idea why we never thought of going to Mexico until now. Honestly, I can’t think of any beach in USA (except for the ones in Florida) that compares to what I saw in Mexico. Each one of them was just beautiful. It could very well be because we went to the Caribbean side of the country. I do think it is a good idea to rent a car to go around versus waiting for tour companies to take you around. But I have to warn that you need be very aware of your surrounding while driving. Driving is quite rough and not disciplined like in USA. I also think for two of us, all-inclusive was not necessary. As a matter of fact, we both regretted doing an all-inclusive package. The restaurants in 5th Avenida in Playa Del Carmen were very good. We could only make it to 3 (El Diez, Sushi club, La No 20) but all of them were good and pretty cheap I must say.

Finally few things that I learnt in this trip:

Spanish words –  Retorno, Puerto, Mateo etc. Also Pharmacie Similares does not mean pharmacy!

Coffee – People of Mexico don’t like coffee so much. I didn’t see a single coffee shop!!!

Driving –  I need good practice to be able to drive.

Time –  10 minutes can mean 30 minutes sometimes 🙂

Have you been to Mexico? What are some of your favorite cities?