In downtown tourist central
I woke up on the early side this morning, to blissful quiet. Playa del Carmen is so far east in this time zone that the sun rises and sets much earlier than elsewhere in Mexico. I set out for some breakfast, enjoying the peace and quiet of a party town that hadn’t woken up yet from the night before. Shops were almost all closed, and I walked down to the beach a block from our hotel to find it mostly empty. I could almost like Playa del Carmen like this.
Breakfast at Starbucks, because believe it or not it was less offensively overpriced than the alternatives. The English-speaking barista, the American couple annoyed that their Amex card wasn’t accepted, the tourists outnumbering locals fifty to one… yep, this is a resort town, all right. I resigned myself to the fact that my Mexican travels are essentially over and that I’d be spending a weekend in what is essentially Florida before heading home.
Donde es la playa?
I met back up with the group at the hotel. Nearly everyone wanted to go to Tulum, to see the Mayan ruins by the seaside and the supposedly pristine, quiet white sand beaches. Milton walked us up to the colectivo stand and gave us some general directions, and we set off for the hour’s drive south.
It being high season, Tulum was anything but quiet. We walked the kilometre or so from the highway to the site entrance, passing touts, merchants, acrobats, even a woman with a poor baby lion charging for photos. We lined up in a very long line for tickets and entered the site.
The ruins were nice and all, but here’s the thing: We have somewhat overdosed on ruins this trip, and we really just wanted to find the beach, stretch out, and have a swim in an — admittedly — spectacular and unique setting. We simply had no brain power left for archaeology or history. Also, it was brutally hot with the sun beating down, I was sweaty and exhausted and my feet hurt from doing so much walking in flip-flops. We walked up and down the crowded pathways through hundreds of tourists, looking and looking and looking for the access to the beach. But every time we thought we found it, it turned out to be roped off and inaccessible. Donde es la playa?
We finally got fed up and exited the ruins site, without having even paid that much attention to them, such was our single-minded beach focus. Like people lost in the desert seeking an oasis, we walked back to the main road. There, we finally found a sign pointing towards the public beach access and set off in that direction. On the way, we stopped for popsicles from a street vendor: sticky and drippy, but wow did they hit the spot. A few minutes later, we found the turnoff for the first public beach and ran there.
We were so happy to have sand and a sea breeze and water that we didn’t even care that it was small and seaweedy. We staked out a patch of sand under a shady palm tree and went to have a dip in the ocean. The Caribbean was warm.and blue and inviting, and though I’m not generally a beach person, today it was pretty close to perfection.
We hung out at the beach for a couple of hours, just relaxing and enjoying the luxury of having nowhere to rush to for the first time this tour. Some people bought coconuts from a beach vendor. We took cheesy photos and videos. It wasn’t even one of Tulum’s nicer beaches, but who cares? As far as I’m concerned, it was great.
Back to town
By about 2-ish, I was getting hungry. Pradeep, Tatiana, Simone and I decided to head back to Playa del Carmen for some late lunch. Feeling lazy, we splurged on a taxi instead of walking back to the highway to catch a colectivo. It was only like ten bucks apiece, so what the heck right?
Back in town, we had lunch at an Argentinian seafood place with delicious fish. I’ve had very little fish this trip and I’d been craving it, so it was perfect. We relaxed and sipped lemonade and let the minutes tick by without a care in the world.
Last evening in Playa
After a shower and a short siesta, I went back out to meet the group for our last dinner together. Milton had booked us a table at a seaside restaurant overlooking the water. The food was terrible but the view was great, and there was a live band and, afterwards, a fire show. Yep, I finally got to see a fire show after missing the one in Palenque. This one was apparently a poor substitute, but oh well, it was cool anyway.
We toasted Milton, exchanged contact details and snapped a few more photos. Everyone is leaving at different times tomorrow or afterwards, so some people would likely be seeing each other after tonight, but it was the last time the whole group was out together. Fun times. I’ll miss them.
Halfway home
After dinner, we were going to go out for drinks and dancing. But a bunch of the Kiwis wanted to go back to the hotel and drink some of the alcohol they’d bought along the way first. I wasn’t quite ready to go back yet, so I wandered a bit and stumbled on a strange sight: A Quebec flag and a Brendan Gallagher jersey flanking the sports highlights on RDS on a big screen. Yep, remember how I told you Playa del Carmen is just like Florida? I’d found the Habs bar.
For a laugh, if nothing else, I asked Milton if he wanted to grab a drink with me in a place where it was my turn to play tour guide. He agreed, and we had beer and chatted with the staff in Quebec French and I felt like I was basically home already without taking a single flight. Oh, and I found out that the Habs won last night, too. Carolina and Anders joined us after a bit, the bartender served up some free tequila shots, and we hung out in Montreal for a while before returning to not-quite-Mexico.
After that, I joined the others for some drinking card games in the hotel for a few minutes, and then said my goodnights and goodbyes and turned in for the night.