Playacar public access

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March 2 - Today I explored the opening in the fence by Senior Frogs at the pier and walked down the beaches of Playacar a bit. The public access to the Playacar Beaches from Playa is a gap in the fence between Senior Frogs and the Ferry Pier. After I checked out the beach a bit I came back and watched the parade on 5^th street again.



March 3, 2014 - I stopped at a seafood restaurant today and ordered some seafood soup. I really wasn’t impressed with it so I ordered some rice to go with it. Much better.



After eating I went over to 30^th avenue to watch the parade again. I did what the locals do and watched it on 30^th street by the Wal- Mart. It was a much larger parade than the portion that goes thru 5^th street. After watching the parade I walked the short distance over to the Civic Plaza where the other events were taking place. I watched the events and listened to the music for a bit and then eased back to my hotel.



After a full day I am was back in my room repacking my suitcase and discarding what I would leave behind. One of the first rules of leisure travel is that everything is expendable.



March 4 – Tuesday – Drinking my tea and checking the details on my flight back tomorrow. I fly out at 2:45 tomorrow afternoon. So I am planning on catching the 10 AM ADO bus tomorrow morning from the 5^th street at Juarez station. The bus will take me to terminal 2 at Cancun airport. From there I was told I would need to take the free shuttle to Terminal 3 where my flight departs from (the next day when I took the bus I found out the bus actually dropped off at all three terminals and so I took it to terminal 3 which was where my flight departed from).



Today I am planning on walking down to the bus station as soon as I send this email out and buy my ticket for the 10AM bus tomorrow. Then I will walk back to where the collectivo vans leave from to Tulum and take it to Tulum Ruinas where instead of going to the ruins again, I will walk over and check out Tulum beach. Then when I come back I will finish packing up everything I don’t need for tomorrow morning, and putting the thing I will leave behind on the other bed in here for the maid as well as a 100 pesos tip. So that’s the plan for today.







After getting my ticket for the 10AM tomorrow bus to Cancun Airport I walked back up Calle 2 as planned and stopped at the Pollo Rojo there near the collective stop for a “light lunch”.



I ordered what I thought would be a single carne asada taco but it turned out to be 4 tacos instead. Much more than I wanted to eat as I knew I was about to do some serious walking today.



Although I hated to waste some of them I didn’t want a full stomach while walking around so I only ate 2 and left the rest. I could have had a couple of them put in a container to go but I would have had to go back to my Hotel to put them in my refrigerator and I didn’t want to do that.



So I caught the collectivo bus to Tulum Ruinas and after getting to the ruins instead of going to them I walked over towards where I thought the Tulum beaches would be. As it turned out getting to the beaches was a thornier issue than I had thought as hotels, property owners, and resorts have got all the beaches all hogged off. There were cabs waiting and I ended up having to get a cab to take me to the beach access about 3 miles down the road. There may have been beach access nearer but the cab driver was driving so fast with total disregard for people walking on the road that I could easily have missed it. I was more worried about being involved in a lawsuit for running someone over.



When we got to the beach for Tulum it was really a very nice beach but one’s ability to visit it was mainly determined by how far they wanted to walk carrying their stuff down the beach……and back…..and if they could find a parking space.



There were cabs around so I would think the best way to get to this beach access would be to take a collective to Tulum Pueblo and a cab from Tulum Pueblo to a beach, and then catch another one back, or make arrangements for the cab driver to come back for you at a certain time. I understand this is how most people visit the cenotes in the area. Frankly next time I go to Playa I will just rent a heavily insured car to drive around as this would be easily the best way to visit the Maya Rivera area. I would also check if my hotel had parking for its guest as well. On the way to Tulum from Playa we passed cenote after cenote and it would have been nice to have the freedom of a car to check them out. There were little roads that led off the highway to them but I had no idea how far a walk they would be from the main road.



I had the cab driver wait and walked down to the beach and took a few pictures of the beach and then back to the cab. The driver then took me several more miles to Tulum Pueblo by the bus station. The cab did all this for only 100 Pesos; about $8.00. After getting dropped off in Tulum Pueblo I walked around a bit and then caught a collectivo back to Playa. The Collectivos were lined up across the highway from the ADO bus station, and it was 40 pesos back to Playa and the Calle 2 collectivo stop.



The ride back to Playa was very rough and very fast but I survived and afterwards eased back to my hotel to finish getting everything set up for leaving tomorrow.

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