Am I dreaming? How am I here? The beach is as white as an Eskimo's skin and the sea is as blue as his balls. Hang on - why am I thinking of cold weather, and balls? I'm with my girlfriend in the scorching hot sun! This is incredible! I thought I'd have to be working and a proper grown-up before I got to do this. How am I swimming in the Caribbean Sea at the age of 22? Meh, let's just enjoy this before I get woken up.
We'd taken an early morning flight from Monterrey to Cancún, changing (and waiting for five hours) at Mexico City. During that stopover, we stared longingly at the doors (not for the entire five hours of course, just for a moment). Do we have time to pop to the capital? To the second biggest city in the world? Apparently they had the most awesome street tacos.... but we didn't want to miss the plane.... such tough decisions!!!
We decided to not be complete idiots and stayed in the airport, where I enjoyed some quality Mexican breakfast called chilaquiles, which is Spanish for "bonerific breakfast". It had chicken, nachos (edit:fried tortillas, according to Danie... because they're so different...), salsa, cheese, refried beans, onion, guacamole.... it was the ULTIMATE Mexican breakfast!
 |
| Chilaquiles - no one knows what it means |
 |
| 5th Avenue - the main street in Playa Del Carmen |
Okay if I keep talking about the journey this will take FOREVER. Skipping to the actual holiday..........
I had heard that Cancún was basically the Mexican Magaluf, where people's idea of 'experiencing Mexican culture' is located between someone's legs with tequila in your veins. Playa Del Carmen, however, is.... not much different. It is about as Mexican as Old El Paso. The 5th avenue was the main street, a 3km long walkway full of restaurants and souvenir shops that sold giant tequila bottles, T-shirts with rude and funny slogans and sombreros that would look ridiculous even in Mexico.
Oh, not to mention the fact that every single metre you walk down that street you'll be accosted by the shop-owners trying to lure you in with their offers. Seriously, they roost just outside their shop poised and ready.... waiting for you to look at their shop window for just one second. If you make that mistake, or even worse - make eye contact with them, they will swoop down at you and get you to buy the product you had just glanced for an eighth of a second. I was yelled at many times by a stranger, startling me and leaving me rather vexed. It turns out he was offering me a massage. That's their new tactic: make them poop their pants and increase their heart rate, and you shall increase their demand for a massage to take it back down again.
You can't accuse the Mexicans for not working hard, but you can resent the fact that they don't give you the slightest moment to peruse their products before preying on your pesos - or dollars. They accepted dollars too, highlighting just how they've managed to retain the national culture there.
 |
| Example of a typical Playa Del Carmen T-shirt |
However, Playa Del Carmen is quieter than its more (in)famous neighbour, with more emphasis on bars, restaurants and just enjoying the beach, which is incredibly beautiful by the way! As we lugged our suitcases through the seemingly endless street in the tropical heat, we caught our first glimpse of the Caribbean, and it was like giving spinach to Popeye, or cocaine to Lindsay Lohan. Suddenly, we were rushing through blocks like a Lego enthusiast until before we knew it, we had arrived at our hotel.
 |
| Oh ..... |
 |
| ...... Mah ...... |
 |
| ...... GAAAAH!!!! |
Danie had done the booking, and I had no idea where we'd be staying. How did we afford this? One word: Groupon. If God were a company..... (then he'd be Duff Beer because it's fictional and responsible for people shouting a load of nonsense on the streets).
As you can imagine, with a place like this, and the beach just around the corner, we didn't feel like exploring the entire state of Quintana Roo. We just .... relaxed! My dear Danie needed it more than anyone, with her first week off since she started her final semester in Monterrey a year ago. Yeah you read that correctly - Mexicans get negligible holidays: just 6 days a year!
We chilled at the beach.
 |
| Cue crazy sombreros and Mexican stereotypes... |
 |
| ... I still have no idea why... |
Just as an episode of The X Factor has to involve a melodramatically forced sob-story, a holiday in Mexico had to involve trying the local Mexican specialities, including fish tacos. Now I'm not a fan of fish - the smell puts me off and I dislike a lot of seafood. Danie, however, is pescatarian (meaning she doesn't eat real meat, just seafood...) and hence her dietary choice was rather more limited, and heavily favoured seafood restaurants. I braved the fish tacos, and they tasted pretty damn good - almost like real meat (although it can never surpass the real thing). The fish were freshly caught each morning in that very beach, so it was as good as fish gets! I know, because I saw it.
 |
| Danie was very happy with the local fresh produce... |
 |
| .. and I was happy, because we found some street tacos! |
Whilst cooling in the sea, I saw a local wade through the lapping waves with a net, and he seemed to have an almost instinctive awareness of where the fish would be, and sure enough, his net was soon hosting a large silver fish (those things were swimming with us?! I had no clue, they must have adapted to avoiding clumsy tourist legs) and he repeated the process whilst providing me with some pretty cool entertainment.
 |
| Oh and Danie fell in the sea, which was also pretty entertaining! |
 |
| Reunion with Marisol |
Our time in Playa Del Carmen had a few particular highlights. We met up with another Mexican who had been in Rennes - Marisol. She's from Guadelajara, which, alongside Mexico City and Monterrey is the other megacity in Mexico. It was great, while again very strange, to catch up with a friend thousands of miles away from where you last saw them. We also had a night of drinking beers in a jacuzzi overlooking the bay, which was pretty much as good as life can get!
We did leave Playa Del Carmen for one day, however, and that was to visit a Wonder of the World (as you do): the ancient Mayan city of Chichén Itzá.
I also realised this may have been the first blog post I've written without swearing, so fuck yeah! Oh shit...
Done (for now)
Ollie
 |
No comments:
Post a Comment