Cancun (Day 24 - 21/1/14)

View from our room in Cancun

Why take the bus when you can ride in style, in the back of a cab? I'm over lugging our luggage to bus terminals, waiting in lines, struggling to make myself understood when collecting tickets, stressing about the whereabouts of our bags during transit, trying to find the next hotel from the next bus station. So when Bamba (the company we've booked out interchanges through) informs me that we need to get to Playa del Carmen a bit earlier since there might be a chance we'll be relocated to a different bus station, well, I actually decide to take a taxi driver up on his offer to drive us directly to our hotel in Cancun for a "Super good price!" It's a lot more of a relaxing journey than any Mexican bus.

Cancun is strange. I expected something like Playa del Carmen - like a Surfer's Paradise on steroids; huge malls with touristy outlets and lots of activities. But it's not like that, at least not in the parts we end up seeing. The action is centred on an atoll-like landmass on the north-eastern coast of the Yucatan peninsula. This narrow, long strip of land is caked in hotels, the huge white buildings growing along the beach like masses of coral. We grab a taxi to try and check out the city but the driver is not really able to give us any recommendations. Eventually he understands us and takes us to a restaurant in town, which is nice, but afterwards we wander to the markets and they turn out to be the rundown-flea-market kind of markets - not expecially big or amazing or even all that busy. Is this Cancun? The city is a real non-event.

The Duck's favourite Mexican drink

 

I figure the Cancun that is famous, the idea of the party town, refers to the collection of resorts along the atoll - and perhaps specifically to a certain time of year? We head back to our hotel, which opens out onto a beach, has big rooms, and a big pool with a swim-up bar. I wasn't a fan of the hotel at first as it's full of seniors and families but it grows on me throughout the afternoon as we chat to a guy from North Carolina in the pool-bar. He, like most, seems mildly shocked that we have traveled over land all the way from Mexico City rather than just flown direct to Cancun. Everyone in Cancun speaks English, and all non-staff at the hotel are American or Canadian or British. The guy from North Carolina has been to Cancun before but has mainly just stuck to the resorts. He's thinking of heading out to Chichen Itza, which we recommend. 

Most people on the Maya Riviera don't seem interested in travelling around Mexico. In fact, looking around the resort, most are just here to escape the Northern Hemisphere winter. I guess that's fair enough. It's not why I travel, but there are different reasons to travel. Some people travel to get somewhere, others travel to get away from where they usually are. 

The pizza joint in our hotel was named after me.