Hola blog-amigos! We spent the holidays on a family trip to the Riviera Maya on the Yucatan Peninsula. We rented an Airbnb and a car in Playa Del Carmen and spent a week visiting Mayan ruins, eating, and doing beach/water activities. I'll cover the Mayan sites and adventure stuff in separate posts.
A few of us arrived early, and after settling in decided to walk the 6km to the city center. I love walking, it's a great way to overcome place-lag. You really get a feel for a new place walking through non-tourist areas. We, um, also didn't yet have the rental car or pesos for the cab.
Playa Del Carmen has a long pedestrian street, Quinta Avenue, running parallel to the beach. It's pretty touristy, but apparently less bad than Cancun. It's a great place to people-watch, eat, shop for souvenirs, and get hassled to book an excursion. The old town square is at one end, featuring the historic church from ~1970 before the town got big. There's also the Portal Maya, commemorating the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. The central plaza in every town we visited had a huge Christmas tree and nativity scene.
Most people come here for the beach, so we made sure to have a beach day! Rented chairs and umbrellas at a quiet beach club, and enjoyed chair-side cerveza service.
We also saw some educational sites: the aquarium and the Frida Kahlo Museum. There's zero reason for the museum to be here besides tourist Frida-mania (she was from near Mexico City, and there's no original art here), but it was well-done and educational for it's size.
Playa Del Carmen was nice, but I'd rather stay someplace smaller like nearby Puerto Morelos, with it's small town center and leaning lighthouse, or Tulum, closer to the jungle reserve and Mayan sites. The entire Riviera Maya is developing quickly, and small towns are quickly being commercialized and resort-ized. There was almost nothing here before the Mexican government targeted it for tourist development in 1970. That said, the region is large enough that there's something for almost every style of tourist.
Oh, also on Christmas day a tiny cat walked right into our house!
Up next: snorkeling and cenotes!
-Peter
A few of us arrived early, and after settling in decided to walk the 6km to the city center. I love walking, it's a great way to overcome place-lag. You really get a feel for a new place walking through non-tourist areas. We, um, also didn't yet have the rental car or pesos for the cab.
Playa Del Carmen has a long pedestrian street, Quinta Avenue, running parallel to the beach. It's pretty touristy, but apparently less bad than Cancun. It's a great place to people-watch, eat, shop for souvenirs, and get hassled to book an excursion. The old town square is at one end, featuring the historic church from ~1970 before the town got big. There's also the Portal Maya, commemorating the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. The central plaza in every town we visited had a huge Christmas tree and nativity scene.
Up next: snorkeling and cenotes!
-Peter
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