The best laid plans

[marcohio]

Part One: One of the things I like best about vacationing in Mexico is the ease with which I can get from Cleveland to Playa on the morning of my first day off. The 7:00am flight from Cleveland arrives in Cancun at 9:40 local time which is just enough time to pass through customs and immigration and make your way over to the first bus to Playa which leaves at 10:30. This year I was meeting my friend Lisa who had arrived from London late the previous night and was going to meet up with me on the 10:30 bus. In spite of having to go through customs twice, yes, I was the guy who forgot his backpack and ran back for it; I made the bus with ease.
For those of you who have never caught the bus from the airport to Playa, it is easy, even for someone who speaks very little Spanish like me. When you walk out of the terminal, look to the right and you will see the diagonally parked busses. The destinations are on the front. A ticket agent or the driver will sell you a ticket at the bus. It was only 80 pesos. An hour later we were dragging our bags up Avenue Quintas towards our hotel in Playa, The Alhambra, and by noon we were having lunch on the beach in our swim suits. SOOOO easy.
A word about the Alhambra; I have stayed in Playa six times in the past eight years and I have never even been tempted to stay in any other hotel. It is my home in Playa and I feel wonderful the moment I arrive. But this is not a Playa holiday; this is, because of Lisa’s influence, an adventure vacation, so we only get one night in Playa before setting out for Akumul, Tulum and beyond.

[FunShine]

Keep it comin'! Can't wait to hear about your adventures and how your friend likes Playa! Has she been before or are you the pro showing her the ropes?

[marcohio]

Part Two: OK, lunch on the beach, and a swim, quickly turned to beers on the beach, and then a night on the town in Playa: we hit all the usual suspects for at least one drink, and I finished off with beers on the roof of the hotel with my best friend. It doesn’t get any better than this. I can’t believe I have only been here one day! The next morning around noon we set out for Akumul by taxi, $30 American, and arrived at Akumul Carribe just in time to check into our bungalow and have lunch at Loha, the restaurant by the beach.
I had the Loha burger which I have been dreaming about for two years. It comes stuffed with cheese and pablano peppers, and I think I passed out from bliss because I can’t remember what Lisa had, but she enjoyed it. Lisa is a professional chef back home in London. She worked for the London Metropolitan Police, better known as Scotland Yard, as a chef for several years. I am in the produce business at home in Cleveland supplying restaurants, so we are both foodies.
Lisa ingratiates herself with the cooking and wait staff by ordering picante sauce, the hottest they have, and by putting it on everything she eats, morning, noon and night. These sauces come out in small quantities, only about a tablespoon at a time, out of respect for their heat, but she eats them all and asks for more.
Akumul Bay, along with Half Moon Bay and Yalku Lagoon nearby, are all places I have been before, but only for the day, on other trips to Mexico with Lisa and others. This was my first experience staying there for a few nights. The snorkeling there is great when the weather is calm, so I’m hoping it calms down some, but during lunch it starts to rain, so we have to postpone snorkeling and drink beer all afternoon. Flexibility is one of the keys to having a good time on vacation.
The bungalow was really clean and homey although it lacked a view of the beach. It had a nice little fridge and a coffee machine, good beds, towels and showers, and air conditioning. It is less than a hundred yard walk to the beach, and the stores in the square are about as far away in the other direction. Be prepared for sticker shock at the store. While they have everything you need for cooking breakfast, by the time you add it up you would better off going out for breakfast, three times. Hey, it’s convenient, and if you need sunscreen $13 is not really that big of a deal.
We were really excited to get into the water the first thing in the morning to check out our equipment and ourselves in anticipation of trying out our new toy, an underwater case for my digital camera. Wouldn’t you know it, our trial run we see a sea turtle, our first, but we don’t have the camera with us. Later when we had the camera we saw and swam along with two turtles. It was a great experience, one of the goals of the trip, and we have pictures to remember it by.
There is not much nightlife in Akumul, and less than a half dozen places to eat, so it is a good thing to bring you own beer, and not get stuck there on election day like we did when beer sales at the store is forbidden. It was not a big problem because the bar would serve foreigners, but not Mexicans. We saw one Mexican fellow get his beer snatched away by the proprietor after he had a tourist order it for him. When In Rome, as they say. It is best to respect the rules when you travel.
Picasa Web Albums - Marc - best laid pla...

[Eileencc]

good start, marcohio! Can't wait to read more and see some photos!

[eddiet56]

Whats up Cleveland!!!! Macohio we live in Mayfield hts LOL small world we also use USA3000

[syl]

wow a newbie trip report please continue and thanks for taking the time!!I love akumal!!!

[Sol]

Great start to your trip report.

I am a big fan of the Alhambra hotel.

[HAWKEYE]

Great start!!!
Perhaps you could post your pic's with
your report instead of link's.
Couldn't view last one's.
Just red x's.
Enjoying it none the less!
Craig.

[DavidB]

Great start. Aren't direct flights great. We drive 90 minutes to fly out of Detroit direct. People ask us why to don't fly out of the local airport. Detroit: 3hours 20 min. be on beach by lunch. Local: change planes, layover, be in Playa in 6-7 hours.

[marcohio]

The best laid plans Part Three: We were planning to save money on this trip by preparing a lot of our own food and only eating one meal a day in restaurants. Of course we were also going to rent bicycles and ride to the nearby cenote and party every night at Buena Vida in Half Moon Bay, but we didn’t do any of that stuff. Akumul Bay is such an easy place to snorkel right from the beach, and there is so much to see, ( BTW the coral is really beginning to recover from hurricane Wilma), that it hardly makes sense to do anything else. By the end of the day we were so tired and satisfied, that we were content to just look at our pictures and let someone else bring us our food.
Superbowl Sunday was our last day at Akumul and we spent the late afternoon drinking beer and sampling all the delicious appetizers on the Loha menu, in preparation for the game. The last thing we ordered was made with a mysterious unnamed local specialty our waiter told us was “mushrooms”. I would like to tell you that shortly thereafter Lisa and I were psychically transported and found ourselves flying high above the restaurant with the waiter, who by that time had turned into a crow, but they weren’t that kind of “mushrooms”. What it was, was huitlacoche, otherwise known as corn smut, a black fungus that infests corn plants and is considered a disease in most countries. Of course we didn’t find that out until later when we looked it up on the internet, but I am jumping ahead.
I thought it was “interesting” and tasted like a combination of unfamiliar spices along with something totally weird. It was a little too strange for me, so Lisa, the adventurous one, ate twice as much as I did. Did I mention they also call this stuff Devil’s poop? It wasn’t long until we found ourselves back in the room lying in bed wishing we hadn’t eaten it. I recovered in time to watch the second half of the game, but Lisa was down for the count, poor thing. I don’t want get graphic here, but we are only talking about a bit of nausea, nothing else. ;-)
In the morning we checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the Alamo car rental office in Tulum . (195 Pesos), where there was supposed to be a Jeep Wrangler waiting for us. Instead Joaquin, the agent, brought around a piece of crap economy car with wheels the size of a scooter, and told us that they hadn’t rented Jeep Wranglers there in over a year, and that I must have made a mistake. I explained to him that I was planning to drive to Punta Allen down a road with car swallowing craters and soft sand, and I showed him my Alamo receipt with a picture of a Wrangler and the words 4 wheel drive in bold print.
I was determined to get a 4x4 because we had been planning to make the journey since our last stay in Tulum two years ago, so I persuaded Joaquin to call Alamo in Playa del Carmen. After reading off my confirmation number to the woman in Playa she agreed to get us a 4x4 by four o clock, so I told Joaquin we would find a hotel in Tulum and pick up the car later. This is where it gets good, Joaquin closes the office and piles us into the car and takes us up and down hotel row to find us a room in our price range. After turning up his nose at two places $180 and $280 American, he found us a place for 800 Pesos a night, right on one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen.
At four o’clock Joaquin returned with the car, a 4 wheel drive Geo, and we drove him back to town and gave him a big tip. Tomorrow, the trip to Punta Allen.

[maestranba]

Great report! When I was in Mexico City I tried huitlacoche. The look of it wasn't vary appetizing but I ate it and thankfully didn't get sick. I didn't really care for it either.

Good for you for having your car rental confirmation with you! I'd say Joaquin did right by you.

[Sol]

Sorry the huitlacoche made you sick. I don't care for it.

Where did you stay in Tulum?

[marcohio]

The best laid plans, Part Four: By the time I finished the paperwork at the Alamo office in Tulum, Lisa had picked up a Styrofoam cooler and filled it with beer and ice. Got to love that girl. We headed back to our hotel for the night. Our beach; and I say that because our cabana is right on the beach, and the beach itself is usually empty, is fantastic. The sand is soft powdered coral, the sea is turquoise and the surf pounds the beach through what must be a gap in the reef. Our plan had been to use the jeep to take us part way down the road to Punta Allen and find a primitive cabana on a beautiful quiet beach, and we realized a few minutes after we arrived, that Joaquin had already found it for us.
This room wasn’t really primitive, but it was nowhere near as nice or clean as Akumul Caribe or the Alhambra. The towel, singular, was thin and scratchy and the shower was lukewarm and brackish. The power is only on for a few hours in the morning starting at seven and again in the evening until ten. There was a fan, screened windows and a nice porch out front, but no air-conditioning. Fortunately it was windy and cool at night so we were very comfortable there, but I wouldn’t want to be there long if it were really hot and humid.
The people in the next cabana where from New York and had been returning here for years, and they regaled us with stories about the road to Punta Allen. One person said it was like driving on the moon, another said the water in bottom of the car-sized craters would flow over the floorboards, and that it would be a good thing if I had more than one “pusher” in case I got stuck in the soft sand. We had heard that most people who set out for Punta Allen don’t make it, and turn back when they get to the rickety wooden bridge across a crocodile filled mangrove swamp. The one pleasant surprise was we learned that the bridge had been replaced since we were here last.
First thing in the morning I went up to the office and reserved the room for another night and packed up the car. Breakfast at the hotel restaurant was just passable, ( I really should learn how to order toast in Spanish)and we decide not to eat there again. The trip through the Sian Khan nature preserve on the way to Punta Allen was great. The road was NO BIG DEAL. I think Lisa was disappointed that she didn’t have to get out and push. The craters the people spoke of are what we call potholes in Cleveland, and driving through 14 inches of snow like I did they day before I arrived in Mexico is much more challenging than anything I faced on that road. Ok, cars and vans will round the bend on your side of the road because the other side has more holes so you have to pay attention, but all in all it was a lot of fun. Much of the road cuts through thick jungle loaded with lizards and birds. We dawdled and stopped at a half dozen beaches and scenic vistas and still we got to Punta in about two and a half hours.
Punta Allen is a small fishing village and a destination for sport fishermen. There isn’t much there, and that is its attraction, its relative isolation, surrounded by nature. We found a little open air restaurant by the water and ordered lunch. The waiter, who claimed to have caught the fish himself that morning, was a handsome and friendly young man named Mucho who was from Playa del Carmen. He told us that he went to Playa often to visit his family and he could drive from Punta Allen to Tulum in 40 minutes! Just as I was trying to imagine him navigating that road at 75 klh, the food came out, and at once I believed everything he had told us. It was the best fillet of fish, complemented with cooked carrots and fresh cabbage salad, Lisa had the whole snapper and it was equally superior to anything we had eaten since we got to Mexico. At the end of the meal Mucho came over and gave us the name of his father’s restaurant in Playa, The Pirata on 40th and tenth. He said it was the best fish restaurant in Playa.Picasa Web Albums - Marc - best laid pla...

[syl]

Originally Posted by Sol

Sorry the huitlacoche made you sick. I don't care for it.

Where did you stay in Tulum?

yes please tell us i am curious too!

[barbj050]

sounds like cabanas tulum???????????/