Cancun, Part 6, Isla Mujeres

Cancun, Mexico, January 2015

Isla Mujeres

The highlight of our trip was our visit to Isla Mujeres. It's an island located some 25-minute ferry ride away from Cancun. There are a few places where you can reach it, namely the Playa Tortugas and Playa Caracol at the Hotel Zone, or Puerto Juárez, if you're staying in downtown. The latter is noticeably cheaper, mind; the ferry from Playa Tortugas or Playa Caracol is $19 for a roundtrip, whereas Puerto Juárez is 146 pesos ($9,80). The ferry company is called Ultramar. The trip can be a bumpy one if the sea is rough and we got wet sitting on the deck. However, there was live music!

Isla Mujeres can be divided roughly to two areas: the more touristy north part and the quieter south. The main attraction to the south is probably MUSA (Museo Subacuático de Arte), an underwater art museum, where you can snorkel or scuba-dive down to see underwater statues. As cool as that sounded, we simply didn't have the time and/or the money to do it this time. So we opted for the north part and its sandy beaches and clear waters.

The beach

More of the beach

We found a spot with two beach chairs and a parasol. 220 pesos ($14,77) for two chairs for the entire day seemed like a bit steep, but what can you do? A Dave Hester -lookalike, even wearing his trademarked YUUUP! - hat took our money, saying he "didn't have the change right now", so he would be right back. Later I had to go and search for the guy to get my change, and I bet this is not an isolated incident. But when in Rome... The beach had a two bars serving it, and even a full kitchen. We ordered some shrimps and tacos to enjoy while at the beach. You can't beat the ambiance!

Swimming

More of the beach...

Isla Mujeres is quite a small island, really, and the touristy part of the north is relatively small with still a decent number of restaurants, bars and hotels. We took the most out of the island on our day trip, visiting a few restaurants to have a nice steak or two and feast on some sea snails. We also simply had to try tequila in Mexico. It's a must. However, we definitely overpaid for them, since the (sea snail) restaurant only offered an expensive for of tequila for 77 pesos each, whereas the cheap bar next to it had an offer of two beers for 40 pesos with two tequilas for free! So if you're not too fussy about the quality, you might want to look out for such offers. We also could buy beers to go and sipped them on the already dark beach, going for moonlight swims every now and then. To quote Marta: "This is the island I've been searching for."

To be continued...

Cancun, Part 5, Beaches

Cancun, Mexico, January 2015

Beaches

The best beaches are supposed to be in the Hotel Zone. It's best to do some research beforehand, though. We simply checked the map and aerial image and went to the closest thing to us that looked like a beach, close to the Puerto Juárez harbour. It did have some exclusive resorts there with private beaches (I suppose we were trespassing), but their quality was very poor to be honest. Lots of seaweed, not very nice sand and so on. That taught us a lesson that proper googling is required for the desired outcome.

We did enjoy a lovely day at the beach in Isla Mujeres, but more about that later on. We didn't really get a good look at the beaches at the Hotel Zone. They are supposed to be extremely nice, but also the waves are said to be very big. The beaches are facing the open sea, so the waves have a clear access to reach the unassuming swimmers. Now this might be a good or a bad thing, depending on your preferences. There are some beaches that are more protected and better-suited for families, however. But don't wander off to the other side: the lagoon between Cancun downtown and the Hotel Zone is inhabited by crocodiles. And not just "those tiny cute ones", but actually the "horrible big ones". There are warning signs all over and a few croc attacks have been reported over the years. Though this is nothing to be overly concerned about, it's still a good thing to keep in mind, when playing golf for example.

Not the best beach in town

Keep in mind that during the spring break the Hotel Zone is filled with American students. Quite literally girls gone wild. During that time it is probably not the best place for families with smaller children. The Hotel Zone is filled with nightclubs, bars and even the odd pub or two to keep the party going 24/7. So if you feel at home in the parties in Sunny Beach or Ibiza, maybe Cancun during the spring break would be right up your alley? Beach, sun, parties and drunk people.

To be continued...

Cancun, Part 4, Getting Around

Cancun, Mexico, January 2015
Getting Around

Cancun has a local bus system that one can use to get around. The routes R-1 and R-2 are basically the ones that most tourists would need, as they go through the Hotel Zone and all the way to the north of Cancun via the centre. There are bus stops, but in the centre the busses seemed to just stop where ever people would flag them down, so we went along with that. The fare to the hotel zone was 10,5 pesos (not sure about the other busses which don't go there, they might be cheaper). You simply pay the driver, nothing mystical about this. Also getting off is as simple as pressing a button. The same as pretty much anywhere else in the world. So don't be afraid of the busses.

As for taxis, first of all, don't count on them speaking English. It might be because we only took taxis in the downtown area, but we only stumbled upon one driver that spoke English. Luckily my Spanish is veeeeery good... Meaning two beginners courses at the university almost ten years ago. You also need to agree upon a price with the driver beforehand, so knowing your numbers in Spanish is definitely needed. The highest price we paid was $4 from the bus station to our hotel (the driver had to stop and check the address on the way), and the lowest was 25 pesos (about $1,70) from the hotel to the Puerto Juárez harbour, which is actually a longer way than the most expensive route we took.

The taxi drivers, as I mentioned before, didn't recognise our hotel's name. And Cancun doesn't really have proper addresses, or at least I'm having a hard time interpreting them ("Av. Lopez Portillo y Torcasita, sm63, mz22 L-11" was our hotel's address for example, and the fish restaurant Ciego, which I promoted earlier, had written down theirs simply as: "Av. Nader esquina con Rubia | a una cuadra de av. uxmal"). Put that on your GPS, will ya?

There was one time at the harbour when the only taxi present refused to takes us to our hotel for the amount of money we offered him and just took off. This was quite late in the evening, but we still decided to start walking back to our hotel (some three kilometres). We tried to catch a taxi on the way, but to our surprise the car (not a taxi) that stopped was a well-groomed middle-aged man, who just wanted to practice his English and give us a lift. Despite all the warnings against hopping on private cars of people you don't know, we decided to go on and accept the offer for a ride. And lo and behold: nothing bad happened! He took us all the way to the hotel, even though it was not even on his way and refused to accept any money from us. His reward ended up being a shy kiss on the cheek (not from me!).

To be continued...

Cancun, Part 3, Food

Cancun, Mexico, January 2015

Food

One of the first things you think of when you think of Mexico, is naturally the Mexican food. Tacos, burritos, ceviche etc. Cancun has a wide variety of choices: you have your Burger King, McDonald's and Buppa Gump, if you're into that, and yes you guessed it: these are mostly found in the Hotel Zone. Then you also have the small restaurants selling mostly tacos and the likes, which can be very tasty, and not necessarily at all spicy, if you're worried about that, since you get to build your own taco from the ingredients they bring to you.

But what we went all in for, was sea food. Despite the first cockteleria/cevicheria -type restaurant in the rather outskirts of the town that we tried was a bit... strange. The house in itself was a sight to behold. A building resembling a garage, in lack of a better word, covered in murals of all kinds. Inside the walls were covered in paintings of mermaids and topless white, blonde women... The plastic table and chairs seemed to be a bit sticky. The music was on full volume, we were the only customers and the waitresses were rather odd. The first thing they offered us when we ordered beers to drink, for example, was their special offer of ten beers for some "amazing" price. Hmm, I think ten beers might be a bit much to go with your lunch around noon... We did however order a wide range of seafood, from soup to a plate of fish and ceviche mixto. Ceviche, the raw seafood "cooked" in lime juice, was an interesting experience. It was alright for the most part and didn't cause us an upset stomach (this didn't happen at all for neither of us, which was unlike Mexico's reputation would have lead us to believe), but there was a mystery creature there with very strange gristly texture. We never could identify what this sea monster was, that we were eating.

Having decided to steer clear of ceviche, the seafood options were still plentiful and we ate more prawns than anywhere before. Basically every day. One seafood restaurant was the pick of the bunch: El Pescado Ciego on Avenue Carlos Nader. Wonderful seafood soup, amazing tuna, nice tacos, good seafood pasta with a whole crab... We just kept ordering more and more as we ate.

Prawns

Seafood soup

Pasta with some crab

Mmmm... more prawns...

Around the Parque de las Palapas in the centre of the old town there are many restaurants and bars to choose from. We mostly stayed outside of this area, but we did try out one of the places there as well. Pescaditos, a seafood place (what else?), was our choice. Sampling their offerings, they were mostly just regular, but the charm of the place came in the form of a three-metre-tall puppeteer in front of the entrance trying to lure tourists in. And seemed like it was successful, seeing that there were some foreign girls inside getting a lot of attention and free alcohol from some local playboys... Luckily for everyone the girls ended up leaving without the guys.

Tacos then, lime juice, coriander (or cilantro if you like), guacamole and the optional hot sauce to compliment your choice of meat. Mmmm, awesome! My favourite was arrachera which translates to skirt steak, if I'm not mistaken. A seldom-used cut of meat in Europe, but rather tasty one. However, al pastor style tacos, similar to döner kebab or gyros, which was brought to Mexico by Lebanese immigrants, proved to be a bit over-hyped for me, which was a real shame.

To be continued...

Cancun, Part 2, The Hotel

Cancun, Mexico, January 2015

The Hotel

After a very long search online, we decided to skip all the hotels in the Hotel Zone, Zona Hoteleria, in Cancun. For a couple of very good reasons. Firstly, it's a pure tourist bubble within the town with very little authenticity. And secondly, and more importantly, the hotels were very very expensive. We're not saying the Hotel Zone is a bad choice, it just wasn't the right one for us for this trip. We opted for a downtown hotel, called Dogtown Suites, by the Lopez Portillo Avenue quite far to the north. However, the hotel is actually known by the name Santa Maria, and the "Dogtown Suites" seems to only exist online to attract, well, dog owners. That said, 0% of all the taxi drivers we had knew either of the names, so it was a very low key hotel. But the price was right: we paid in total $206 for five nights in a double room.

The location was rather good in the end, since we could take a bus to the Hotel Zone quite close by, we could get to the cheaper harbour (as opposed to the one in the Hotel Zone) to travel to Isla Mujeres, we could find cheap restaurants, hole-in-the-walls and taco stands and the neighbourhood seemed to be rather Mexican, but never felt unsafe, even after dark. We also had a small supermarket on the other side of the road and a bank with working ATM right next to us. The centre of downtown (basically close to the bus station) was 10-15 mins walk away, if we used our shortcut through the rugged neighbourhood (again, nothing to fear there).

The inner yard of the hotel

Our room was definitely good enough, despite Marta's initial shock. We had clean towels and sheets, beds were alright, there was TV and a large, fully functioning fridge with a freezer. Our shower had warm water 24/7. We had air conditioning, which however made the room quite cold. Luckily the receptionist, a very nice man that spoke good English, resolved with giving us extra blankets. All in all, we can definitely recommend the hotel, if you're not after only the luxurious of accommodations and want to have a touch of Mexican authenticity for your holiday. If not, there is always the Hotel Zone.

Fridge and air condition unit

The bathroom

The bed with an additional fan

 To be continued...

Cancun, Part 1, Getting in

Cancun, Mexico, January 2015

Getting in

We had been in Florida for holidays for some weeks before with my family and while the rest of them travelled back home for New Year, we decided to extend our trip and explore new places, just like we always do. We cancelled our flights back and looked for a decent option to spend the New Year at. Having discarded Jamaica and the Dominican Republic for various reasons, we decided to opt for Cancun. It sounded like an easy enough town to start the whole "Mexican experience" without having to worry about drug cartels and what-have-you, often associated with the country, especially among the paranoid amongst us.

The problem was, however, we were only booking this trip less than a month in advance, so accommodation was scarce. And the little that we found was extremely expensive. So we decided to spend New Year in Miami Beach instead (I know what you're thinking: "surely Miami Beach on New Year is even more expensive!", but we managed to bunk there for free at a friend's place), and fly to Cancun only on January 2nd. Miami was a natural choice, since the flight from there is mere 1,5 hours and not overly expensive. We also managed to book a flight from Cancun back to Helsinki via Manchester for a reasonable price, so we were all set.

Welcome to Mexico

Arrival was a bit hectic to say the least, and not just because of the long and slow-moving lines before the passport control. We had contacted our hotel beforehand asking about airport pick-up. Whilst they said they don't arrange such a thing, they said that they "had a guy, who can pick us up for $25", so having emailed them our flight information, we considered the matter resolved. However, when we arrived there was nobody to meet us. I phoned the hotel and they seemed to be unaware of such an arrangement, and just told us to grab a taxi, which should be $25.

However, the taxi company informed us that the fare would be $64, well over our budget (and not to mention we didn't carry that much dollars with us anyway). Haggling did us no good either. One younger guys did approach us and told us to come with him to the "other parking lot" and he'd take us downtown for $25, but the idea of leaving the crowded area for a remote location with an unlicensed driver in Mexico just didn't feel right for me. Guess that's the paranoia creeping in, or maybe it was a smart move, don't know, and I'm fine with not knowing.

However, the eventual trip downtown proved to be rather simple, so this is what we recommend. There were busses leaving for the ADO bus station in the centre every half an hour and for some five bucks we were on our way, after wondering for a while why there were young girls in bikinis waiting for the same bus. Surely airport doesn't have a beach? They didn't even have any bags with them. Maybe they were robbed by an illegal taxi driver? My friend Marta was staring at the stars with an absent peaceful expression on her face and feeling the ocean breeze on her skin. Her tranquillity was switched to shock when she saw the district we were planning to stay at and our room.

What Marta was expecting to see...

 

...and what she saw

To be continued...

Welcome!

Welcome to Roads to go, Places to be, a blog about travelling and everything surrounding it. Our posts will handle a wide variety of issues from practical advice and tips to funny or otherwise interesting anecdotes from our own excessive travels. Look out also for our special guest writers!

Jus & Marta