It's now our last night in Mexico. So many tacos in the last 3 weeks. So many mouth burning, delicious tacos!
After
two nights in Cancún with the most beautiful, clear blue water I've
ever seen, we headed to Playa del Carmen. Oh my dear god. It was what I
was expecting Cancún to be. There were more Americans than there were
Mexicans walking around. Everyone spoke English, it was touristy and
trashy. The beach wasnt as nice as Cancún and there wasn't as much of
it. In Cancún there are 18kms of beach, here there was about 1 and all
the fancy hotels and bars had to put their beach chairs for people to
rent out on that 1km.
Dont get me wrong, it was still a great beach
and we had a great time swimming there, it was just annoying having
people ask us to rent a chair and have a beer at ten in the morning.
Although the best offer we got was for cocaine by a guy that shouted
'you can trust me, I'm white!'.
There is one main street in
town and it felt more American than walking down Santa Monica in Los
Angeles. We made a few hostel friends in the bar on the roof of the
hostel where we headed for ladies night. Every night is ladies' night.
There was free vodka, tequila and rum for girls in the hostel bar from
10-11pm. I took full advantage of this. I also got to eat the worm from
the Mezcal bottle (like tequila) which isn't actually even a worm.
Technically, it's the larvae of the beetle that lives in the agavé that
mezcal is made from. Instead of going to bed like I should have after
all the tequila shots and vodka surprises, we went out to a club that
had free drinks for girls from 12-2am. We later found out that pretty
much every club has this deal. It was not pretty. I more than got my
money's worth of free drinks and shots, enough to last me the rest of
the week at least. You walk in and there is a seperate roped off bar for
ladies. They have a security guard at this area so no guys can even go
to the same bar. I got a rose from an Alaskan boy and the bartender just
kept giving me different crazy coloured shots and drinks... It didn't
end well. Luckily Jeff helped me stumble home and got me into bed pretty
much safe and sound (except the bump when I faceplanted the corner of
the bed). Needless to say, the next day was not so fun for us either. We
got up nice and early and went to the beach for a swim which normally
cures all hangovers. It didn't work. A greasy Maccas breakfast didn't
work either so I spent the rest of the morning laying in bed, holding on
because the Earth was spinning too fast. We went to the beach again
that afternoon and realised that my watch was now wrong and I had
somehow changed all the settings so it was saying the 1st of January, my
alarm was set for 1am and the day and time were way off too, this is
not good on holidays when you need to be able to check the day and date
somehow.
That's pretty much all there is to do in Playa. That
night, I decided to have a pretty quiet one for obvious reasons but
even with only two and a half beers, we still ended up being out until
1am and went to some mega club. We went out with 5 other people so the
club gave us the VIP area thinking we would be big spenders. Ha, joke's
on them. The club was so American again and ridiculously priced.
Everything in Playa was in US dollars, just to give you an idea of how
touristy it's become.
Needless to say, it wasn't my favourite town. But now we're in Tulum, a beachside town with some amazing Mayan ruins.
We
caught the collectivo (the vans that fill up with people and just drive
between small towns) with 3 French guys and an Aussie girl that were in
our hostel and we'd hung out with a bit at the bar. They were way too
comfortable with being naked in front of other people, too tanned in
places that shouldn't be and unfortunately, I'm pretty sure the French
guy I thought was cute, thought Jeff was cute (he refused to dance the
first night unless Jeff went with him and he mentioned a couple of times
that he hoped to run into us again).
Originally, we were
going to stay in Tulum for 5 nights and be in a beachside cabaña for
Christmas but the $20 places are now $60 places so we decided to skip
that, stay in a hostel for a couple nights and see how much we can get
done. All the major attractions in the area in two days? Check.
Yesterday
we went to a couple of beautiful cenotes. They are so clear and you can
see everything below the surface. Besides getting laughed at by the
ticket guy and the 3 girls already in the water because we took 10
minutes to finally fully submerge into the what felt like freezing water
at the time, we loved it. I caught a little fish in my hands, to be
honest though, I'm pretty sure it was just stupid. Then I swung around
on the rope swing until we decided to head to the other cenote across
the road. That's when I realised my ring had fallen off. The ring that
I've been wearing for the last 7 years. We borrowed a snorkel after
almost giving up hope and because the water was so clear, I found it
again in a bed of moss at the bottom.
The next cenote was
deeper and had ledges a couple of meters higher than the water. So we
spent the last hour before closing time jumping into the water and then
I'd quickly swim to the edge and get out as quickly as I could because
of the crocodiles. And no, there weren't crocodiles there. That anyone
has seen. I dont want to be the tourist that gets eaten and ruins the
cool swimming spots for everyone. I know it's ridiculous to freak out
and race to land only to keep jumping back in, especially because we're
Australian, we could just wrestle it if there was one right?
The
cenote closed at 5pm and we made our way to the exit at 5 past to
discover the chain and padlock around the gate that was half covered in
barbed wire. Luckily though, they hadn't actually fully closed the
padlock and we got out unscaved except for the mozzie bites. Apparently
the bus stops coming when the place is closed though so we enjoyed an
hour long walk (it probably wouldn't take that long if we weren't doing
the ever so graceful chaffing walk) back into town along the highway.
Dinner
that night was delicious. At the hostel we ran into a guy we'd met a
week ago in Mérida and he recommended a local burrito place that was
cheap and had big burritos. They were absolutely delicious and after
we'd both had a burrito, we had a couple of empanadas. And a one litre
juice each. He musn't have the same idea of 'big' as us. I had a
pineapple and green basil leaf looking things juice that the waiter
recommended. Yes, this was way too much to eat for one meal after a big
late lunch in case you were wondering. And the pineapple and green leaf
drink did not taste nearly as good when I threw it up at 2am.
Today,
despite me still feeling sick, we went to the popular Tulum beachside
ruins. They didn't let us climb to the top of anything but it's probably
for the best, I'm sure throwing up on ancient Mayan temples is probably
frowned upon. The beach here is wonderful yet again and a swim almost
always makes everyone feel better.
This afternoon we headed
to Akmul, a beach about 20 minutes away by collectivo. We rented snorkel
masks and swam about 30m off the shore until we got to hang around some
big sea turtles. There were also stingrays and funky fish. It was
amazing. There were at least half a dozen and we swam just above them as
they ate the sea grass. The biggest one wasn't fased at all by us and
we had to move pretty quickly when it came up for air because it
certainly wasn't getting out of our way. Jeff almost choked on the water
when he started laughing after looking at me because of how high my
bottom floats out of the water.
A pretty good way to spend our
last afternoon in Mexico, I think. It was such a beautiful country and
we'll have to come back and do more of it one day.
