We arrived in Cancun on Wednesday 28th October at around 3pm local time. We had a fairly smooth passage through immigration and baggage collection, the only thing being that Jonny had his bag searched (dodgy looking Northerner even to the Mexicans apparently), then made our way outside to get a local ‘collectivo’; basically a minibus, to our hotel. The heat hit us as soon as we stepped out of the air conditioned airport terminal and the sweating had begun. We got into a nearby cab and after what seemed like endless and unneeded pick ups we were on our way. As we drove onto Av. ? the main street in the Zona Hotelera area of Cancun we were mesmerised by some of the hotels and began pointing out our favourite bits to each other. Some of them are absolutely huge and they can be seen all along the main strip that goes on for over 10km, if only we were staying in one of them. We passed over a bridge which gave us our first view of the crystal clear turquoise ocean that all postcards and pictures highlight and as the collectivo emptied its passengers into these amazing hotels we began to leave the glitz and glam of the hotel zone and turned into Cancun Centro or downtown Cancun. The driver turned down a side street and told us this was our hotel. We hopped out outside an empty restaurant patio and proceeded inside. After lugging the baggage up four flights of stairs (we decided Mexicans don’t care for lifts) and dripping in sweat AGAIN, we were pleasantly surprised by our room and even more so by the view from our shower which looked out over downtown Cancun.

We jumped at the chance to finally get clean after the tedious 10 hour plane journey and felt better straight away. We changed into clean clothes and headed out for a walk around but by this time it had gone dark so we decided to get some food. Jonny obviously wanted Mexican, something spicy and authentic, Hayley, not so much. We headed up to Avenue Tulum and spotted the local ADO bus station we would need when we moved on from Cancun and after being pestered by the local restaurant owners we stumbled across Parque de la Palapas, a relatively small town square surrounded by churro/fruit carts on one side and a small row of local eateries on the other. These came equipped with a few circular stone tables and stools to sit at after ordering from one of the openings. Jonny ordered a Burrito, covered it in hot sauce, beans, salad and a water for Hayley and tucked in; all this cost a whopping 40 Mexican pesos (M$40) or in our terms less than £2. As we ate a local sang some Mexican classics to the small crowd gathered there.

Now it was Hayley’s turn to sample some of the local cuisine, she opted for a ham pizza, typical!

Day Two;

As we were still functioning on English time we were awake and ready for the day around 7am so decided to head out. With a limited number of days here we went and booked a tour for the next day to Chichen Itza before grabbing a very Mexican breakfast of Tacos, stuffed with what we think, and hope was some form of pork. There will be a theme throughout this blog that all exotic, spicy, local or unusual food eaten will be by Jonny and Jonny alone, Hayley this time opted to watch and video the process before grabbing some fruit from the supermarket.

After this we caught the local R2 bus from the main road up to Zona Hotelera and made our way onto the beach via the public access spot at km 9. As most of the beach is only accessible via hotels we decided this was the best way and then we turned up the beach and managed to occupy a couple of sun beds strictly for hotel guests. It was a great spot right in front of the Hotel Riu Cancun. Calm, clear blue sea, white sand and a few small piers made for a great spot to start with those tans we both desired.

Hayley desperate to get rid of the ‘ghostly’ white skin colour she has (by her own words) was loving it and soon made for a dip in the sea. As thunderstorms had been forecast for the day we were very happy that we got to spend a good few hours alternating between sunbathing on the pier and dipping into the sea to cool off as the temperate was pushing 30 degrees. At about 2 o’clock we decided to take a break from the sun and go for a walk around the busier and more commercial side of Cancun. We strolled around lots of souvenir shops and in between chain and significantly higher priced restaurants as well as the many clubs of this part of Cancun, made famous by spring break, of course being low season it was a much different story at this time of year. We stopped for a drink in one of the local malls as they had a terrace high up looking out over the beach but really just because Jonny wanted a beer.

Hayley was hungry and fancied some seafood so we stopped at one of the restaurants Marinero’s where we both ordered fish, Salmon with creamy spinach sauce for Hayley and a white fish fillet smoothed in Yucatan spices known as Anchiote for Jonny. When they arrived they looked amazing and after the first mouthful we both looked at each other grinning, the best fish we’ve ever eaten, hands down. After the amazing meal we went back to the beach, this time using the public access spot at km 9.5 but found it wasn’t as nice here (and harder to get a hotel sun bed) so we reverted back to our original spot. The sun was just going down behind the hotel so we found a different pier to lie on and soaked up the last few hours of sunshine. We exited the beach through another hotels lobby, it was like another world inside there compared to where we were staying so before we got noticed headed out quickly. We jumped back on the R2 to downtown Cancun and after showers etc went to out for ‘a few’ drinks. The emphasis here on a few would lead you to believe, if we were the normal sort of young couple out in Cancun that we had many more than a few and ended up stumbling home in the early hours of the morning. However, this was not to be. We had one free drink in a new bar that definitely had zero alcohol content so moved straight onto the liveliest bar we could find. It was two for one cocktails so Jonny ordered two tequila sunrises, why not being in Mexico, Hayley ordered, yeah, you guessed it, a Vodka cranberry, why change the habit of a lifetime eh?! It gets better though, after 1/3 of the drink Hayley announced in between giggles that she was already drunk and needed to eat.

That put an end to that and after a supermarket stop for Oreos and water we ended up back at the room pre 11pm…

However, an early night wasn’t all bad as we were up early for our trip to Chichen Itza, keep an eye out for our next post on that

Jonny & Hayley 🙂