What do you say? Let’s ride the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula from Cancun (Mexico) to Placencia (Belize) visiting some islets of the Caribbean on the road?
I warn you that the flight is approximately 15 hours and we haven’t booked a room anywhere! I do not want any whining! Fasten your seatbelts because we are about to land!
The plane was approaching the airport of Cancun and I was already at the window with my camera in hand. Beneath lies the dense jungles of the peninsula and in the middle of nowhere the airport. Outside the stifling tropical heat and the officer from the rental car office welcomes us. Yes, I might haven’t booked a room but I planned for a vehicle. He has the papers ready as we agreed and written permission to pass the vehicle to the borders of neighboring Belize.
And here we drive on Riviera Maya, this beautiful evening as the sun sets and paints the sky with incredible shades of orange and purple.
We are heading 60 kilometers south of Cancun in Playa del Carmen to find a room. Halfway the police stops our vehicle because we had a speed of 100 kilometers while the limit is 80. With 20 euro they can forget the incident they say, otherwise we won’t get away easily. I give the 20 euro
and 15 minutes later, we arrive at Playa. Not a good start of our trip..
Playa Del Carmen is a tourist town but without the monstrous hotels of Cancun. Every now and then in the endless beach there are small beach bars with bassinets instead of seats, beautiful hotels and of course hammocks. The upper road –the 5th avenue- is a pedestrian road with tourist shops, small bars, restaurants, taquerias, colorful with a lot of music. I let my husband and my 10yo son who sleeps in the back seat to the car and I get the map with the 3-4 hotels which I marked with “Maya Brick” hotel first in the list.
It was maybe the music, the lights, the mariachi who stopped me to tell me a song or the tourists who walk upside down the road along with the 20 hours of no sleep that made me pass about 3 times outside of the hotel without seeing it.
So I went to the second hotel in the list the “Rosa Mirador” hotel. It was good, clean with air condition and cheap.
The staff is gathered in the lobby watching mundial. Of course they do not speak English. So I recall my Spanish being proud for doing it successfully. We leave our staff in the room and we walk outside to check out Playa and find something to eat. We end up in an Italian for a pizza –it’s not time for experiments- and just before we are about to fall asleep on our plates, we head for our room and as soon as we reach it we pass out in our beds instantly.