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HE SAID... We were leaving Tulum this afternoon and heading northeast to
Playa del Carmen.
Feeling suitably refreshed from snorkelling with turtles and swimming in a local cenotes (natural sinkhole) after our tour of the bustling Tulum Ruins, we jumped into the minibus and headed to Playa del Carmen, arriving at our hotel (Casa Tucan) at 4pm. We checked in, showered, dropped our laundry around the corner, picked up some drinks and settled in to our very spacious and comfortable room.
We headed out for dinner to Los Aguachiles at 7pm. We feasted on aguachile, fresh tuna and octopus tostadas, fish ceviche
figurines (lettuce leaf cups) and smoky tuna tacos. The meal was fantastic, and doubly so because we started with complimentary tostadas and sauces. On our way back to the hotel we dropped into Fah Bar on Fifth Avenue to sample a few Espadin mezcals – our first on this trip – and we loved them. It had been a long, hot travel day and we were pretty exhausted, so we wandered back to the hotel along Playa del Carmen’s busy Fifth Avenue (which runs parallel with the beach). I crashed at midnight, and Ren stayed up writing
until 2am.
We woke late and headed out to wander the streets of Playa del Carmen at 8:30am, as we had hardly explored this busy little beach town. It was extremely hot and humid, so we stopped at The Bio & Natural Way Restaurant for a smoothie. I ordered a cacao smoothie (cacao, almond milk, nuts and dates) and Ren ordered a coconut kale smoothie (coconut milk, kale, bananas and dates). Both were refreshing, and gave us just enough energy to walk back to our hotel. We dropped into a chemist on our way to pick up some more insect repellent, as we had been very vigilant over the past few weeks with our spraying due to the zika outbreak. While the label on the repellent was in Spanish, it had a ‘Zika Free’ sticker on the front, so we’re hoping this means whoever uses the repellent will be zika free. We got back to Hotel Casa Tucan, met up with some travel companions and headed out to La Cueva del Changa (at the other end of town) for breakfast at 11:30am. I ordered the
chilaquiles dish (fried tortilla chips with eggs and red/green tomato and
xcatic chili sauce),
while Ren went for the
huevos rancheros (eggs on tortillas smothered in salsa). The food was great, as were the drinks – I had a
jamaica (hibiscus) lassi and a Jogi tea (black tea, spices and milk), while Ren had a guava juice. After such a substantial breakfast, we meandered back to the hotel, picked up our laundry and some cold drinks and then retreated from the debilitating midday sun and humidity to work on our travel writing.
We headed out for dinner to Club Nautico Tarraya, a restaurant on the Playa del Carmen beachfront. Our table was set in the sand, and with the sea breeze cooling us from the humidity, it was a perfect setting for a meal. We had octopus tacos, shrimp tacos and guacamole, and I cooled down with beer while Ren went for an agua de tamarindo (cold tamarind drink). An old guy with a guitar played a couple of Mexican songs for us in the night air for 50 pesos per song, and it was very atmospheric. As I was sitting, a young child not more than five years old walked up behind me, touched my shoulder and asked for money… no matter
where you look, poverty is entrenched in the fabric of this country.
After our meal we wandered Fifth Avenue with everyone else in town. We dropped into the Corpus Christi Church and picked up a rosary as a gift, and then found ourselves in a beachfront plaza next to the church watching the
voladores de papantla, a cultural tradition where
voladores (fliers or bird men) launch themselves from the top of a pole tied by a rope to the waist, and then slowly descend circling the pole. At the same time, a type of Aztec dance was being performed under a twisted bronze statue close to the beach. There was a fantastic atmosphere in the air, and it was in stark contrast to the narcissistic feeling that had permeated Playa del Carmen’s beachfront earlier in the day. With a little help we roughly translated a plaque on the base of the bronze statue as ‘The End of the Cycle of the Large Count’, which I think relates to the Maya calendar ending in 2012.
We wandered back to Hotel Casa Tucan, jotted a few notes from the day and then crashed. We had an early start the next
day, as we were travelling northwest to Chichen Itza and then on to Merida.
SHE SAID... Given all the long days of travelling we had made from Guatemala to Belize to Mexico, it was nice to finally have a short journey. After our day of activities in and around Tulum, we were in
Playa del Carmen after a short drive.
Our cute bohemian Hotel Tucan was rambling and colourful. And while our room was very large and comfortable, the lack of air conditioning in the hottest and most humid spot on our trip (so far) was uncomfortable to say the least. On the plus side, we had two ceiling fans and a standing oscillating fan, so it was bearable but not ideal.
Once a small fishing village that was the embarkation point for the sacred island of Cozumel, Playa is now one of the fastest growing resort city communities in Mexico and considered to be the heart of the Riviera Maya.
I would have liked to have visited Playa before it became a purpose-built generic tourist pleasure hub that looks like any tourist city on a strip of coastline. I suppose when flights are
cheap, tourists are going to be abundant. In the main part of town, the dance music pumping out from the street side restaurants and bars reminded me of the beach resort towns of Thailand and Indonesia. And also like those places, Playa is a place best embraced for just what it is: a brazen resort town with a nice beach and a glut of nightclubs and beer bars that spill their not-so-sober clientele onto the streets at night. It is what it is. As much as I was glad we were only passing through, I suppose the place lived up to its marketing hype, and let’s face it – that’s why people come here. They certainly weren’t coming to the main tourist part of Playa for the local culture.
The touristy areas were full of pedestrian malls. Quinta Avenida (Fifth Avenue) was one of these – a long pedestrian-only street that runs parallel to the sea with busy cafes and restaurants, trendy bars, boutiques with designer beach clothes, massage parlours, Maya carvings and mass produced handicrafts. It’s an international, cosmopolitan mix, and apart from the Mexican hat and skull handicrafts, we could have been anywhere in the world. However,
the little streets adjacent to the tourist streets had an older world charm with smaller, more typical local shops lining the cobblestone streets.
Navigating our way around Playa Del Carmen was very easy. Streets that ran perpendicular to the beach went up in even numbers (e.g. Calle 2, Calle 4), whereas the Avenues ran parallel to the beach and went up in fives (e.g. Avenida 5, Avenida 10). There were no odd numbered streets. With deep blue waters, powdery white beaches and a very friendly feel, Playa del Carmen should have been a very attractive destination. But I have to be honest and say that I didn’t feel the love as much as I thought I would.
On our first afternoon we didn’t manage to do much apart from have a quick shower, drop off a big bag of laundry and buy some cold drinks to rehydrate after a long day in the sun and on a bus. For our last group dinner with most of the group members who weren’t continuing the journey in Mexico with us, Sophie took us to Los Aguachiles for tacos and tostadas. We tried a range of tostadas (aguachile, fresh tuna and
octopus), fish ceviche
figurines (lettuce leaf cups) and smoky tuna tacos. It was all fabulous, but by far my favourite was the octopus tostada.
Quinta Avenida was more likable at night, with a lively drinking and dining scene (and some late-night shopping too). It also helped that the touts for tours and massages had left for the day. After dinner we stopped for a quick drink at Fah Bar, which had a live band playing a range of songs from Van Halen to the Eagles to Pink Floyd. We started with a shot of Espadin Mezcal which was really lovely, especially when you sucked on the chilli salted slice of orange between sips. Yen, Hoa and I ended the night with a B52 shot (yes a very 90s chick thing!). 😊
The next morning was a slow start, but we took ourselves off for a brisk walk to the other end of Quintal Avenida and stopped at a Hipster organic food place for a cold drink… Andrew had a cacao smoothie and I had a coconut milk and kale smoothie. Well, when in the land of the hipsters…
We eventually made our way to the beach again
and took some photos, but we didn’t stay long as we had brunch plans. We met Hoa, Gavin, Yen and Megan back at the hotel and taxied to La Cueva del Chango on Calle 38. The setting in a very green part of town was very inviting. I resisted ordering
huevos motulenos (fried eggs on fried tortillas with cheese, peas, turkey ham and salsa) three mornings in a row, and instead tried my first guava juice and
huevos rancheros (eggs on tortillas smothered in salsa) dish in Mexico. Andrew really enjoyed the
chilaquiles dish (fried tortilla chips with eggs and red/green tomato and
xcatic chili sauce After brunch we said goodbye to Hoa, Gavin, Yen and Megan and settled in at the hotel to see out the hottest part of the day.
At the start of the trip we’d been quite proud of ourselves for keeping up with our travel writing and posting, but it had started to slip. So the hot afternoon was the perfect time to catch up on our travel writing in the coolness of our courtyard room, and we also posted our San Ignacio blog.
At 6pm we had our group meeting for the
next part of the trip, and met our group leader Fabian and fellow travellers - Mary and Geoff from Australia, Logan from the UK, Nadine from Germany and Crystal from the US. We were also continuing our journey with Brendan from our last trip. Fabian has varied interests, an eclectic set of skills and a good grasp of the politics of the region, so it will be interesting to hear his thoughts on the political situations of regions we will be passing through. As might be obvious by now, I love getting information on places, and I love that Fabian is focussed on imparting as much information as we wanted.
For dinner that night Fabian took us to one of the rare Mexican cuisine restaurants in the tourist precinct. We walked to Club Nautico Tarraya on the next street to us, and literally on the beach. Andrew and I shared six cerviche tacos. Fabian also paid for a lovely old guy with a guitar to sing two songs for us. The first was a love song, and then the crowd favourite Guantanamera.
While we were planning this trip at home (all those month ago), we kept hearing a
song on the radio by Lost Frequencies (called ‘Are You With Me’), and the chorus kind of described our last night in Playa del Carmen… “I wanna dance by water ‘neath the Mexican sky / Drink some Margaritas by a string of blue lights / Listen to the Mariachi play at midnight”. Cheesy, but true. 😊
After dinner, Andrew and I walked to the opposite end of Quinta Avenida and came across the gorgeous little white Corpus Christi church on a small plaza. They were raising money for the church and I bought my mum a rosary made of green onyx as a souvenir. On the rest of the plaza facing the sea there were Maya
voladores de papantla (acrobatic performers who climb a thin tall pole and launch themselves off it with ropes attached to their legs) and Aztec performers dressed in dramatic feathered costumes dancing under a large imposing sculptural arch on the beach. It was nice to see both local families and tourists relaxing in the small plaza on that warm evening.
We walked back to the hotel and prepared for a relatively early start to catch a public bus the next morning.
Next we travel west to Chichen Itza in Yucatan, Mexico.
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taracloud
Tara Cloud
Your song and a touch of the authentic
So now, when you hear, ‘Are You With Me,’ I imagine you may always be transported by to Playa Carmen. I love these aural links. How lovely that you wandered upon the adorable, little church with the voladores and the Aztec dancers--a touch of the authentic in this generic beach party town. Of course, one advantage of such a touristy place is that you foodies found fabulous dishes since there aren't many organic smoothie stands in typical, little fishing villages. Always those trade-offs!